Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Religion of african slaves
Slave revoluyions in the caribbean
African american slavery history
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Religion of african slaves
Building on the theme of brutality, this paragraph will discuss the idea that some owners tried to not inflict punishment on their slaves for everything. This was due to the ideology among the elite class of paternalism. ‘Paternalism was a fragile bridge linking master and servant with mixed benefits for both’. To clarify, the slaves were to carry out tasks submissively and economically, while the masters were to provide the basic needs of the slaves. However, as stated above, these needs were not fully fulfilled to the highest effect. The best paternalism, according to K.M. Stampp, originated from the small plantations, where contact between the two classes was frequent. This would allow for the slave driver to have the belief that the slaves were uncivilised, and he was the teacher in a school, or the …show more content…
The strength of the ideal of paternalism illustrates the answer to this essay, as it reinforced the ideology of white supremacy. To further understand the role of the owners’ inference and belief in civilising the slaves, this section will explore the role of religion in developing the slave community. The religion of Christianity was regarded by the whites as the religion of the civilised. For this reason, slaves had to be indoctrinated into Christianity. This conversion began in the second half of the eighteenth century and was a prominent element of the lives of Antebellum slaves. Yet, this created a problem for slaveholders. The problem was that the religion which they were trying to promote, stressed on equality of all, and to treat others how you would like to be treated. Therefore, a solution was that the slaves heard selective teachings of Christianity, the theology of which focused on obedience in life, and salvation in the afterlife. Obedience to masters while on Earth will result in the rewards in heavens. Christianity is an umbrella religion, with many variants under
...gro Slavery tried to influence the reader all too much. Instead, Stampp preferred to let the statistics and anecdotes tell the tale which allowed both scholars and non-scholars to draw their own conclusions based upon the evidence presented. Because of this, The Peculiar Institution is an invaluable source of information regarding both the institute of slavery as well as southern culture during the ante-bellum period. Personal anecdotes as well as impersonal plantation records solidify this work as an important piece of research that seeks to present the realities of slavery to a modern audience. This impersonal presentation provides a more scholarly approach to a long sensitive topic of debate in the United States. It serves as a reminder to the modern generation of the horrors of slavery and seeks to debase the romantic notion of the paternalistic slave holder.
Douglass continues to describe the severity of the manipulation of Christianity. Slave owners use generations of slavery and mental control to convert slaves to the belief God sanctions and supports slavery. They teach that, “ man may properly be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained by God” (Douglass 13). In order to justify their own wrongdoings, slaveowners convert the slaves themselves to Christianity, either by force or gentle coercion over generations. The slaves are therefore under the impression that slavery is a necessary evil. With no other source of information other than their slave owners, and no other supernatural explanation for the horrors they face other than the ones provided by Christianity, generations of slaves cannot escape from under the canopy of Christianity. Christianity molded so deeply to the ideals of slavery that it becomes a postmark of America and a shield of steel for American slave owners. Douglass exposes the blatant misuse of the religion. By using Christianity as a vessel of exploitation, they forever modify the connotations of Christianity to that of tyrannical rule and
During a period of time, the world lost its values due to ambition. Blacks were enslaved for being different. Races became a huge part of people’s everyday talk and to succeed, farmers and business owners had to make African Americans do their dirty work for them. During this period of time, people like Joe Starks from “The Eyes Were Watching God” and people like Frederick Douglass’s slavemasters became abundant in the world. The belief that they were superior to everyone else lead them to impose power in a way that even themselves could not tolerate. Even though “The Eyes Were Watching God” was written after slave abolition, Joe Starks and Douglass’s slavemasters have many characteristics in common and differences which are worthy to be noticed.
Slave-owners looked upon the African Americans as lesser people who were in desperate need of support. They were not capable of surviving on their own without white guidance (Boston). Dr. Flint, the master over the plantation where Harriet Jacobs lived showed a great example of paternalism. He cared for Harriet but in a possessive way to which he continuously sought the woman for his personal needs. For Dr. Flint, the slaves he owned should be grateful towards him and be willing to do what he asked with no rebuttal. This wasn’t the case with Harriet. She simply refused him at every chance which only angered the slaveholder. Jacobs resisted the doctor and his paternalistic ways. Harriet Jacobs sheds light onto the self-interest that drives the paternalism displayed by the masters. The slaves were property and who wanted to showcase poorly groomed property? If there was someone visiting, the slaves, except for those within the house, would be hidden away and those who worked within the master’s home would dawn nicer clothes and better meals would be prepared all in a show for the
Frederick Douglass, the author of the book “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, said “I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder” (Douglass, p.71). Modern people can fairly and easily understand the negative effects of slavery upon slave. People have the idea of slaves that they are not allow to learn which makes them unable to read and write and also they don’t have enough time to take a rest and recover their injuries. However, the negative effects upon slaveholder are less obvious to modern people. People usually think about the positive effects of slavery upon slaveholder, such as getting inexpensive labor. In the book “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass also shows modern readers some brutalizing impact upon the owner of the slaves. He talks about Thomas Auld and Edward Covey who are his masters and also talks about Sophia Auld who is his mistress. We will talk about those three characters in the book which will help us to find out if there were the negative influences upon the owner of the slaves or not. Also, we will talk about the power that the slaveholders got from controlling their slaves and the fear that the slaveholders maybe had to understand how they were changed.
Slavery, the “Peculiar Institution” of the South, caused suffering among an innumerable number of human beings. Some people could argue that the life of a domestic animal would be better than being a slave; at least animals are incapable of feeling emotions. Suffering countless atrocities, including sexual assault, beatings, and murders, these slaves endured much more than we would think is humanly possible today. Yet, white southern “Christians” committed these atrocities, believing their behaviors were neither wrong nor immoral. Looking back at these atrocities, those who call themselves Christians are appalled. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, Harriet A. Jacobs describes the hypocrisy of Southern, Christian slave owners in order to show that slavery and Christianity are not congruent.
Slavery was a dominant part of the political and social arenas of 1800’s America. However, it was not homogenous as it divided America into two distinct groups: those who supported it and those who did not. Traditionally, the states in the north had been anti-slavery while the states in the south had been pro-slavery. Southern life and economy depended on slavery and therefore staunchly supported the continued legal status of slavery. The northern states on the other hand recognized the inhumane nature of slavery and campaigned to establish equality for all citizens. In order to establish solid reasoning for their stance, both pro-slave and anti-slave groups turned to theological inspiration for their actions. The Bible inspired both pro-slavery advocates and anti-slavery abolitionists alike. Religion was used in order to justify slavery and also to condemn it.
To understand the desperation of wanting to obtain freedom at any cost, it is necessary to take a look into what the conditions and lives were like of slaves. It is no secret that African-American slaves received cruel and inhumane treatment. Although she wrote of the horrific afflictions experienced by slaves, Linda Brent said, “No pen can give adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery." The life of a slave was never a satisfactory one, but it all depended on the plantation that one lived on and the mast...
There are several factors that contributed to the Old South’s peculiar institution; an institution in which masters would describe their relationship to their slaves as “love” of their “people.” Kolchin tells us that while there is “no one slavery that
In Frederick Douglass’ Narrative, Christianity is a prominent feature of both slave and slave-owners’ lives. However, Douglass highlights the discrepancies between the religions of these two groups, finding the Christianity of slave holders to be false, malicious and hypocritical. Though he makes clear he is not irreligious himself, Douglass condemns the insincere ideology of slave owning America.
Douglass's narrative is, on one surface, intended to show the barbarity and injustice of slavery. However, the underlying argument is that freedom is not simply attained through a physical escape from forced labor, but through a mental liberation from the attitude created by Southern slavery. The slaves of the South were psychologically oppressed by the slaveholders' disrespect for a slave’s family and for their education, as well as by the slaves' acceptance of their own subordination. Additionally, the slaveholders were trapped by a mentality that allowed them to justify behavior towards human beings that would normally not be acceptable. In this manner, both slaveholder and slave are corrupted by slavery.
Moreover, many owners later came to feel that Christianity may actually have encouraged rebellion (all those stories of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt, after all, talked about the liberation of the slaves), and so they began to discourage Christian missionaries from preaching to the slaves. African Americans have taken their own spiritual, religious journey. God was looked upon as a source of peace and encouragement. The community of enslave Africans were able to use religion and spirituality as a way of overcoming the mental anguish of slavery on a daily basis. To a slave, religion was the most important aspect of their life. Nothing could come between their relationship with god. It was their rock, the only reason why they could wake up in the morning, the only way that they endured this most turbulent time in our history.
In their quarters, slaves expressed themselves with some what more freedom from white slave owners. Religion provided a feel of similar freedom and also gave slaves mental support. By attending church, slaves created a Christianity that emphasized salvation for every race, including slaves.
While for some may revere the purpose of slavery as undefined, the central reason for slavery in Virginia was to constitute a submissive and acquiescent working class that complemented the strenuous labor of agricultural work. Since Virginian landowners needed an efficient work force to tend their cash crop, slaves were the perfect solution to Virginia’s problem. According to the slave code of Act 1 from 1669, it states “If any slave resists his master…and is punished and dies from the punishment, his death will not be a crime…since [the master] will have already lost his own property.” Clearly, slaves, whose own lives were the equivalent of property, were chastised and possibly executed for any sign of rebellion. This example displays how
treated them harshly. The masters’ perception of blacks was that they lacked self-discipline and morality. They justified slavery by claiming that they were training the slaves to master self discipline through work and also train them in the precepts of God. Not all masters were harsh and cruel. Some treated their slaves with kindness and subsequently were well loved. However, it still emerges that a majority of even the kindest masters still did not attach much humane value to their slaves. This has been exemplified in that despite amicable relationships, the slaves were rarely freed but instead passed on to other masters after the demise of their master like any other property owned by the late master.