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Slavery in the antebellum period
Life for slaves on plantations
Slavery in the antebellum period
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Life for a slave in the antebellum South and a prisoner in Camp 14 was unbearable. The people in both situations had bad living conditions, food sources, and education. None of these people deserved to be treated like this but yet if they refused the punishments they had horrible consequences. In the South they got beaten with whips, raped, or sold to another slave owner. In Camp 14 they had a torchure building that they took people and torchured with fire and beaten, sometimes killed. The slaves in the antebellum South were not really treated like humans much like the prisoners in Camp 14. The white people of the antebellum South had absolutely no respect for the blacks. They had to do all of the work around the plantation, they even
Slavery is perhaps the most polarizing subject of American history. Because of this, actual conditions of slavery are biased and marred by personal opinion. The abolitionists made use of the plights of slave in order to push their propaganda whereas the pro-slavery apologists maintained ignorance regarding the treatment of slaves. Because of these varied perspectives, the sources regarding the true nature of slavery are littered with bias. This bias leaves the modern historian trying to decipher the truth behind manipulated propaganda tales. This was the norm until 1956. It was this year in which Kenneth M. Stampp released his book entitled, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. Stampp successfully managed to create a book regarding slavery in the South without inserting his own personal bias. Because of this, Stampp was able to conclude that slavery was used primarily to exploit labor and to produce substantial revenue gains.
1. The insight that each of these sources offers into slave life in the antebellum South is how slaves lived, worked, and were treated by their masters. The narratives talk about their nature of work, culture, and family in their passages. For example, in Solomon Northup 's passage he describes how he worked in the cotton field. Northup said that "An ordinary day 's work is considered two hundred pounds. A slave who is accustomed to picking, is punished, if he or she brings less quantity than that," (214). Northup explains how much cotton slaves had to bring from the cotton field and if a slave brought less or more weight than their previous weight ins then the slave is whipped because they were either slacking or have no been working to their
Within the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave” Douglass discusses the deplorable conditions in which he and his fellow slaves suffered from. While on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, slaves were given a “monthly allowance of eight pounds of pork and one bushel of corn” (Douglass 224). Their annual clothing rations weren’t any better; considering the type of field work they did, what little clothing they were given quickly deteriorated. The lack of food and clothing matched the terrible living conditions. After working on the field all day, with very little rest the night before, they must sleep on the hard uncomfortably cramped floor with only a single blanket as protection from the cold. Coupled with the overseer’s irresponsible and abusive use of power, it is astonishing how three to four hundred slaves did not rebel. Slave-owners recognized that in able to restrict and control slaves more than physical violence was needed. Therefore in able to mold slaves into the submissive and subservient property they desired, slave-owners manipulated them by twisting religion, instilling fear, breaking familial ties, making them dependent, providing them with an incorrect view of freedom, as well as refusing them education.
The issue of Slavery in the South was an unresolved issue in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During these years, the south kept having slavery, even though most states had slavery abolished. Due to the fact that slaves were treated as inferior, they did not have the same rights and their chances of becoming an educated person were almost impossible. However, some information about slavery, from the slaves’ point of view, has been saved. In this essay, we are comparing two different books that show us what being a slave actually was. This will be seen with the help of two different characters: Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass in The Narrative of the life of Frederick
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...
Throughout this course we learned about slavery and it's effects on our country and on African Americans. Slavery and racism is prevalent throughout the Americas before during and after Thomas Jefferson's presidency. Some people say that Jefferson did not really help stop any of the slavery in the United States. I feel very differently and I will explain why throughout this essay. Throughout this essay I will be explaining how views of race were changed in the United States after the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, and how the events of the Jeffersonian Era set the stage for race relations for the nineteenth century.
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.
The people of a country will not always agree on national policies; such was the case after the American Revolution. As what is known as the antebellum period began, the American Nation was divided into the North and South by many issues but most economic issues arising from western expansion and slavery. While the North had abolished slavery, the South insisted on slavery for the cultivation of their cash crops especially cotton. The south had religious and racial justifications for the institution of slavery and even went so far as to proclaim slavery was for the slave’s own benefit. The North, motivated by the second Great Awakening however, had women and the Abolitionist movement that regarded slavery as evil and an institution that needed to be abolished. The Great North-South Divide had been set in motion.
Slavery was the main resource used in the Chesapeake tobacco plantations. The conditions in the Chesapeake region were difficult, which lead to malnutrition, disease, and even death. Slaves were a cheap and an abundant resource, which could be easily replaced at any time. The Chesapeake region’s tobacco industries grew and flourished on the intolerable and inhumane acts of slavery.
Fredrick Douglas was born on a plantation with his mother but they were separated. According to the book Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass “Before the child has reached twelfth month its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off.” They did this for the main hope that the child would have no affection towards a mother figure. But there were other ways to separate family in ways that were even more unfair than the last. It includes the main slave owner going into the fields to spy on his slaves, “The slaveholders have been known to send in spies among their slaves, to ascertain their views and feeling in regard to their condition.” An example of that is the next quote, “well does the colonel treat
The sexual abuse and exploitation of slaves and degradation of the slave family in antebellum America was not uncommon. Slave owners had a totalitarian authority over their slaves and subsequently over their children.
When it comes to some important events before 19th century in United States, we must mention the Abolition Movement, which began in 1930s, and ended with Emancipation Proclamation. Just like our textbook---A Short History of the American Nation, ¡°No reform movement of this era was more significant, more ambiguous in character, or more provocative of later historical investigation than the drive to abolish slavery.¡±
During the history of slavery, the enslaved African Americans’ lived a tough life. From the men, women, and children life was all about surviving being under slavery. Being enslaved and under the vision of white masters, the Africans Americans worked from the early morning until the sun went down on the plantations. Every day the African Americans suffered from illness, starvation, abuse, and more. Many slaves knew they were not going to be successful at escaping but they had their ways of resisting from their masters. Resisting was a constant feature of slavery. Resisting consisted of poor work, feigning illness, or committing crimes like stealing, arson, and poisoning to escape to the North. Some of the most dramatic occurrences
Imagine living a normal life, when suddenly a group of peculiar figures jump out of nowhere and kidnap you; the next thing you know is that you’re on a plantation thousands of miles away from your family. The pure torture that the slaves were faced with every single day made life almost unbearable, while their owners drilled the ideology of slaves being equal to property into society. However, being away from your family and friends was easily the worst part of slavery. Children were often separated from their parents and families were torn apart all over the United States. Despite all of the inhuman torment, the worthless mindset, and of course the depressing anguish felt by the victims, slavery was still thought of as an acceptable way of
Slave Life The warm climate, boundless fields of fertile soil, long growing seasons, and numerous waterways provided favorable conditions for farming plantations in the South (Foster). The richness of the South depended on the productivity of the plantations (Katz 3-5). With the invention of the cotton gin, expansion of the country occurred. This called for the spread of slavery (Foster). Slaves, owned by one in four families, were controlled from birth to death by their white owners. Black men, women, and children toiled in the fields and houses under horrible conditions (Katz 3-5). The slave system attempted to destroy black family structure and take away human dignity (Starobin 101). Slaves led a hard life on the Southern plantations. Most slaves were brought from Africa, either kidnapped or sold by their tribes to slave catchers for violating a tribal command. Some were even traded for tobacco, sugar, and other useful products (Cowan and Maguire 5:18). Those not killed or lucky enough to escape the slave-catching raids were chained together (Foster). The slaves had no understanding of what was happening to them. They were from different tribes and of different speaking languages. Most captured blacks had never seen the white skinned foreigners who came on long, strange boats to journey them across the ocean. They would never see their families or native lands again. These unfortunate people were shackled and crammed tightly into the holds of ships for weeks. Some refused to eat and others committed suicide by jumping overboard (Foster). When the ships reached American ports, slaves were unloaded into pens to be sold at auctions to the highest bidder. One high-priced slave compared auction prices with another, saying, "You wouldn’t fetch ‘bout fifty dollas, but I’m wuth a thousand" (qtd. in Foster). At the auctions, potential buyers would examine the captives’ muscles and teeth. Men’s and women’s bodies were exposed to look for lash marks. No marks on a body meant that he or she was an obedient person. The slaves were required to dance or jump around to prove their limberness. Young, fair-skinned muttaloes, barely clothed and ready to be sold to brothel owners, were kept in private rooms (Foster). It was profitable to teach the slaves skills so that during the crop off-season they could be hired out to work. Although they were not being paid, some were doing more skilled work than poor whites were.