Perseverance In Slavery

Slavery came over to America when the first colonies were being established. But at that time they were called indentured servants. As time progressed slavery changed, because it went from indentured servitude to racial slavery. In the eighteenth century, this went even further because before, society used to include slave labor, but it had changed and become focused on slave labor. Slavery became the main and sometimes only labor system, and some colonies became dependent on this racial slave labor. Slaves held a certain silent disdain for slavery, and while they would never speak it out loud but they would find ways to discretely disobey in order to make their lives easier. Slaves may have hated the situation they were in but they knew that they could not do anything about it so instead they chose to persevere. One occurrence of perseverance is when one slaves’ master

However, they were able to bide their time and survive. Despite the fact that the slaves were uneducated, some of them were very clever. Though, oddly enough, some were very intelligent, “we hides it till ‘way in the night and then we lights a little pine torch, and studies that spelling book. We learn it too. I can read some now and write a little too.” To be able to teach yourself how to read and write with no help is very impressive, and it just shows how dedicated they were to learning. While some slaves became book smart, other gave more insightful views on their life; one slave wrote, “He delivered Daniel from the lion’s den, Jonah from de belly ob de whale, And de Hebrew children from de fiery furnace, And why not every man?” This level of insight is uncommon, especially if a person is uneducated and the content of it reflects the situation that this slave is in. They have read about all other races, but the slave raises the question, why only a select few, why cant all men be