Racial Slavery Dbq

Race initially was based on a belief of white superiority and dominance over all nonwhites, especially those who had been conquered or colonized1. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, for example, European settlers in North America employed the word race for different peoples thrown together in the colonies2. Moreover, “as the English were institutionalizing a form of slavery for which they had no precedents, they were also constructing the ideological components of race.3” This historical linkage gave rise to a new form of servitude known as racial slavery, in which, laws were made to restrict the freedoms of slaves and further divided the differences between slaves and freed whites4. By the late eighteenth century and nineteenth century,

Moreover, Northern Abolition movements began to accept African Americans as equals20. However, as a rapid expansion of cotton production restored prosperity to the institution of slavery, the moral doubts of the Revolutionary generation gave way in the South to strong religious, economic, and racial arguments that defended slavery as a positive good21. In this view, it was the close relationship of slave owners to the enslavement that had lifted the letter to a higher stage of civilization22. Yet slavery in this argument, remained essential for the wellbeing of slaves, who according to the white southerners would otherwise revert to barbarism23. Moreover, Uncle Tom’s Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s in 1852, expressed how African Americans were not happy as slaves and attempted to pacify Southerners an, but only made them

Southern slaveholders feared the Republican administration would not protect their “peculiar institution”40. This was accompanied by proclamation of the virtues of “free labor” and distrust of what were portrayed as the expansionary ambitions of the “Slave Power”41. However, Northerners came to the South with the “explicit aim of remaking the fabric of southern culture by rebuilding the South in the image of their northern homes. These idealistic, militaristic, and occasionally opportunistic northerners would become critically important framers of the new constitutional orders of their adopted states.42” Moreover, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation declared that slaves held in the rebel states were free; however, only with the victory of the Union and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment did slaves throughout the United States gain their freedom43. Nevertheless, the Emancipation Proclamation had altered the character of war; it also facilitated the enlistment of two hundred thousand African Americans in the Union armed forces and undermined slave holders authority when it came to the Confederacy44. The freedmen received not only their freedom but also the vote, as the Republicans enlisted black support in their attempt