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History of slavery in america 1600s
History of slavery in america 1600s
Slavery in the us from 1830-1860
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My name Sophia Auld. I am married to Hugh Auld, who was once a shipbuilder, and we have one son named Thomas. We live in Baltimore, Maryland and this is where we bought our first slaves. I had never owned a slave before so I was not quite sure what it would be like. One of our first slaves was Frederick Bailey, he was a young boy that came from a plantain that was once owned by my brother in law, Thomas Auld. I could tell when Frederick first came to our home he did not know what to expect. He was always very shy and avoided making eye contact. I belong to a Methodist church and I have a very strong belief in my christian morals. Because of this I had no intentions of treating my slaves poorly, I wanted to help them. I wanted to be like a
mother figure to them. I started to teach Frederick how to read until my husband found out what I was doing and told me how wrong it was. I still wanted to help Frederick, so I convinced my husband to let him learn trade. He helped him do this by letting him become a apprentice caulker. To allow Frederick to do this he was sent to work on the Eastern Shore for three years. While he was here he was not treated well and I could tell when he got back. Being a Christian and following my morals I took care of him like anyone should. Even though I was always kind to him I later read his book and discovered that he had nothing good to say about my family. However, because of my belief in the holy bible I know not to get involved. It is inappropriate for a women to stand up for something. This would be a threat to the men of the household and a woman who speaks out never gets her way. Along with being very religious I am also a major defender of the constitution, so I agree with most things written in it. In Article 1 Section 2 of the United States Constitution is where I see a problem written in the constitution. In this section it states that people of color are only counted as three fifths of a person. I believe that all people are created equal and should be counted the same. However, I can understand why this is said in the Constitution. Slaves do not get as much pay and they do not currently have the same rights and abilities as white people. I hope that one day this rule can be changed and everyone is treated the same. In Article 1 Section 9 the constitution discusses that slaves are not prohibited to be imported. This met that no more slaves were allowed to be brought over to the United States. This is an act the I completely support. By putting this into effect it was one of the major movements to put an end to slavery. Another article in the Constitution is Article 4 Section 2 this article discusses what should happen to a slave if they escape their owners in the south. It states that all escaped slaves should be returned to their owners. This act was put in place for people like my husband who would be infuriated if one of our slaves ever disappeared. In 1791 the first 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights, were ratified. Starting at the First Amendment it states that there should be no established religion. I agree that everyone should be able to exercise their own beliefs and express their own thoughts. Even though I strongly believe in my Christian morals and I will always be willing to help anyone, I wish that I could speak my mind. I want to take care of my slaves, teach them how to read, and treat them like children of my own, but if I continued to do this my husband would look down on me. I have already been lectured enough after teacher Frederick how to read.
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born on February of 1818 in Tuckahoe, Maryland to Harriet Bailey. Even though his single mother raised him, his biological father is believed to be one of his mother’s previous owners. In his family, he has five siblings: Eliza, Perry, Arianna, Kitty and Sarah, Frederick Bailey was raised under the belief that all people were created equality and should be treated the same (The Literature Network). Although he was a slave for most of his childhood, he was luckily benefitted with a thoughtful owner that taught him how to read and write at the age...
Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like.
On July 11, 1761, a slave ship from Fula, West Africa docked in Boston, Massachusetts (Weidt 7). John Wheatley, a wealthy merchant and a tailor, and his wife, Susanna, were at the auction searching for younger, more capable slaves (Weidt 9). Among those chosen, they picked a cheaply priced girl, estimated by her missing front teeth to be about seven or eight years old (Weidt 7). She was also chosen because Susanna felt sorry for her, probably because she was so emaciated (Weidt 9). Because the little girl had no identity, as it was left behind in West Africa, the Wheatleys needed to name her. Like all slave owners, they gave the young girl their last name (Weidt 10). Her first name came from the ship she was on, Phillis, which was owned by Timothy Fitch (Mason 3).
Slave-owners forced a perverse form of Christianity, one that condoned slavery, upon slaves. According to this false Christianity the enslavement of “black Africans is justified because they are the descendants of Ham, one of Noah's sons; in one Biblical story, Noah cursed Ham's descendants to be slaves” (Tolson 272). Slavery was further validated by the numerous examples of it within the bible. It was reasoned that these examples were confirmation that God condoned slavery. Douglass’s master...
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery sometime between 1817 or 1818. Like many slaves he was unsure of his birthday; it was one of the many things that he was deprived of. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is a memoir written by former slave himself, Frederick Douglass. The book explains his hardships ranging from losing family members, being moved from owner to owner, and being whipped at least once a week. One of Frederick's many owners, Auld, considered him unmanageable. Auld rented Frederick to Mr. Covey for a year, also known as the slave breaker (pg 34). Mr. Covey was one of the most cruel slave owners Frederick had. Mr. Covey treated him with barbarity. Throughout Douglass’ stay with Mr. Covey he grew as a person.
Frederick Douglass emphasizes the dehumanization aspect of slavery throughout his narrative. As is the general custom in slavery, Douglass is separated from his mother early in infancy and put under the care of his grandmother. He recalls having met his mother several times, but only during the night. She would make the trip from her farm twelve miles away just to spend a little time with her child. She dies when Douglass is about seven years old. He is withheld from seeing her in her illness, death, and burial. Having limited contact with her, the news of her death, at the time, is like a death of a stranger. Douglass also never really knew the identity of his father and conveys a feeling of emptiness and disgust when he writes, "the whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose" (Douglass, 40). Douglass points out that many slave children have their masters as their father. In these times, frequently the master would take advantage of female slaves and the children born to the slave w...
Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and Olaudah Equiano all have extremely interesting slave narratives. During their lives, they faced plenty of racist discrimination and troubling moments. They were all forced into slavery at an awfully young age and they all had to fight for their freedom. In 1797, Truth was born into slavery in New York with the name of Isabella Van Wagener. She was a slave for most of her life and eventually got emancipated. Truth was an immense women’s suffrage activist. She went on to preach about her religious life, become apart of the abolitionist movement, and give public speeches. Truth wrote a well-known personal experience called An Account of an Experience with Discrimination, and she gave a few famous speech called Ain’t I a Woman? and Speech at New York City Convention. In 1818, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery in Tuckahoe, Maryland. When he was older, he made an escape plan by disguising himself as a sailor and going on a train to New York. When he became a free man, he changed his name to Frederick Douglass and married Anna Murray. He went on to give many speeches and he became apart of the Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass wrote his story From My Bondage and My Freedom and became a publisher for a newspaper. In 1745, Olaudah Equiano was born in Essaka, Nigeria. Equiano and his sister were both kidnapped and put on the middle passage from Africa to Barbados and then finally to Virginia. He eventually saved enough money to buy his freedom and got married to Susanna Cullen. Equiano wrote his story down and named it From the Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. He spent the rest of his life promoting the abolition movement. Throughout the personal slave narra...
As the United States grew, the institution of slavery became a way of life in the southern states, while northern states began to abolish it. While the majority of free blacks lived in poverty, some were able to establish successful businesses that helped the Black community. Racial discrimination often meant that Blacks were not welcome or would be mistreated in White businesses and other establishments. A comparison of the narratives of Douglass and Jacobs demonstrates the full range of demands and situations that slaves experienced, and the mistreatment that they experienced as well. Jacobs experienced the ongoing sexual harassment from James Norcom, just like numerous slave women experienced sexual abuse or harassment during the slave era.
Slavery was a practice throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and through slavery, African-American slaves helped build the economic foundation of which America stands upon today, but this development only occurred with the sacrifice of the blood, sweat, and tears from the slaves that had been pushed into exhaustion by the slave masters. A narrative noting a lifetime of this history was the book The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African written by Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was a prominent African involved in the British movement for the abolition of the slave trade. He was captured and enslaved as a child in his home town of Essaka in what is now known as south eastern Nigeria, later he was shipped to the West Indies, he then moved to England, and eventually purchased his freedom (Equiano). Olaudah Equiano, with many other millions of slaves, faced many hardships and was treated with inconceivable injustices by white slave masters and because of the severity of these cruel and barbarous occurrences, history will never forget these events.
Lee, Desmond. “The Study of African American Slave Narratives “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” and “Narrative of Frederick Douglass”.” Studies of Early African americans. 17 (1999): 1-99. Web. EBSCO
Growing up, Frederick Bailey dealt with a harsh slave life. His grandmother raised him, and he rarely saw his mother. All slaves slept on the ground with no extra comforts, like blankets or pillows. Frederick was only entitled to one t-shirt yearly and he witnessed lashings of other slaves. Most slaves on the plantation pick cotton and worked from dawn to dusk. All slaves were fed small corn oriented meals. At the age of eight, Frederick was sold to a slave-owner by the name of Master Auld. Master Auld owned a house in the city of Balitmore. Although he was still separated from most of his family, he was given a full set of clothes and a bed to sleep on. Slaves in the cities were treated different from slaves of the plantations. While the slaves of the plantations were treated with little respect, city slaves were seen as show dogs. You had to make your slave look the best in your neighbor’s view. Here, Frederick Bailey learned to read from poor white boys whose payment for a lesson was a piece of bread or any other food. At age twenty, Frederick ran away to New York City, New York. Many slaves, at the time, ran away t...
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.
Freedom is something many slaves never had the opportunity to witness. They were simply uneducated, illiterate machines who did whatever they were told. But few fortunate slaves were given the gift to be educated by someone. One of these fortunate persons was named Frederick Douglass. Douglass was born a slave. He never had the chance of knowing his mother. As mentioned before, slaves were stripped from their families, leaving them no sense of compassion. In the book, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass says, "Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with much of the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger."(2) Douglass secretly met with his mother about 4 times during his whole life. He said he never really got to know her being he was only a child and the never had much of a conversation. These sorts of incidents happened to slaves throughout America and permanently scarred most slaves and their families.
Servitude is a usual part of African ritual. Tribes would often use trade to obtain slaves by going to the head chief and trading for livestock. Not only did various tribes trade with the people of their countries, but with the Europeans of other nationalities as well. There were times that tribes would go to war and keep chiefs and prisoners of war were kept as slaves, to trade with European countries. Many times slaves were sold due to being punished, or to rape and other various crimes. Some were also forced into life of captivity. It was common for young individuals to be kidnapped and taken to a home of a common family to work and serve them. Many owners would treat their slaves fairly. The masters would own a piece of property and have an apartment for their own personal family along with a home for the enslaved family. Equiano talks about how many slaves owned their own slaves in some cases. If a family was wealthy enough, they would accommodate their property, meaning the slaves. They were a part of the owner’s family and were as brutally treated comparing to slaves of the Colonial U.S.
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.