Time Changes Everything

1295 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Economic consequences of the slave trade

Time will inevitably change everything. That being said, more than roughly a century and a half ago the institution of racial slavery was a heavily debated societal issue, which led to the Civil War. It is my own personal opinion that slavery is best defined as the absolute ownership of another human’s life as personal property, and this practice of racial slavery served widely as one of the only means for economic prosperity throughout the Deep South. Wealthy plantation owners, subsistence slaveholding farmers, and even northern abolitionists who were involved in the purchasing cotton from southern slave states and weaving that cotton into clothes for sale benefited economically from slave labor. This unique American practice of forced labor was especially horrific compared to other forms of slavery because it targeted a specific ethnic group to be human bondservants who were typically indebted for life to masters, while dehumanizing everyone of that same ethnicity in the process. This truly incriminating social injustice did not rest easily with American’s conscience. Often being seen as undemocratic, slavery was in needed of a persuasive moral justification in order to avoid abolishment. This “moral justifier” often presented itself in the form of religion in which slavery was argued to be a socially moral upstanding institution, an argument supported by several verses in the bible referring to how slaves should behave towards their masters. Historians have often studied this complex relationship between religion and slavery in American history, and this paper will also seek to examine the impact that Christianity had on the convoluted issue of slavery in antebellum American society. Some Christian preachers like George Whitefi...

... middle of paper ...

...the Governor of South-Carolina.”
Pattillo, Henry. “The Plain Planter’s Family Assistant; Containing an Address to Husbands and Wives, Children and Servants.”
Whitefield, George. “Three Letters from the Reverend Mr. G Whitefield: viz….Letter III. To the Inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, North and South-Carolina, Concerning Their Negroes.”
Oakes, James. “I Own My Slaves, But They Also Own Me”: Property and Paternalism In The Slave South.” Reviews In American History Dec 2010: 587-594. History Study Center. Web 23 Apr. 2014.
Young, Jeffery. “Richard Furman, 1823.” Proslavery and Sectional Thought In the Early South, 1740-1829. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006. 226. Print
Young, Jeffery. “George Whitefield, 1740.” Proslavery and Sectional Thought In the Early South, 1740-1829. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006. 68. Print

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Apostles Of Disunion

    1039 Words  | 3 Pages

    In, “Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War,” Charles B. Dew analyzes the public letters and speeches of white, southern commissioners in order to successfully prove that the Civil War was fought over slavery. By analyzing the public letters and speeches, Dew offers a compelling argument proving that slavery along with the ideology of white supremacy were primary causes of the Civil War. Dew is not only the Ephraim Williams Professor of American History at Williams College, but he is also a successful author who has received various awards including the Elloit Rudwick Prize and the Fletcher Pratt Award. In fact, two of Dew’s books, Tredegar Iron Works and Apostles of Disunion and Ironmaker to

    Read More

  • Paul Finkelman Defending Slavery Summary

    1545 Words  | 4 Pages

    Paul Finkelman takes on the role of devil’s advocate in his book “Defending Slavery”. Within the first section of the book, Finkelman explains the background of slavery both in America and around the world, past, post-American Revolution, and around the world. He then goes on to explain the revelations which prompted the South to develop a course of action to defend slavery. In detail and chronological order, he describes the various means of defense used by those in favor of slavery in America. Their justifications for slavery and resistance against its abolishment were rooted in religion, politics, economics and other aspects that drive society.

    Read More

  • Mary Surratt: An American Secret

    1804 Words  | 4 Pages

    What The South Intends. THE CHRISTIAN RECORDERS August 12, 1865, Print. James, Edward, Janet James, and Paul Boyer.

    Read More

  • Oakes The Ruling Race Summary

    1356 Words  | 3 Pages

    In James Oakes, the Ruling Race, the author tackles many of the toughest questions that arose in southern history. In the Ruling Race, Oakes argues against Eugene Genovese ' American slavery 's ideology of paternalism. The author believes that paternalism died by the end of the colonial era and as a result, there came new slaveholders who were diverse, and influenced by the materialistic buildup in the South due to their search for economic opportunity. Oakes views most slave owners as greedy capitalists who embraced the marketplace. When Oakes says “the ideology and culture of slaveholding were not fully developed when Americans declared their independence from Great Britain” (p.34)

    Read More

  • Overlooked Southern Contributions in the American Revolution

    609 Words  | 2 Pages

    4. If Don Higginbotham’s argument or line of reasoning is true, it means that South Carolinians and Georgians believed that the preservation of slavery would be completed and they could find out about independence later. “Perhaps Pinckney was close to the truth about free white males in the late eighteenth century. If so, it was a condition worth preserving and enlarging”, the last paragraph of this article, explains what he is trying to prove in the article. Furthermore, this paragraph supports his idea, if his argument is

    Read More

  • Denmark Vesey

    985 Words  | 2 Pages

    South Carolina was one of the only states in which the black slaves and abolitionists outnumbered their oppressors. Denmark Vesey’s slave revolt consisted of over nine-thousand armed slaves, free blacks, and abolitionists, that would have absolutely devastated society in South Carolina for slave owners, and could have quite possibly been a major step towards the abolishment of slavery in the United states. Robertson succeeded in describing the harsh conditions of slaves in pre-civil war Charleston, South Carolina. This book also helped me to understand the distinctions between the different groups. These groups including the black slaves, free blacks, extreme abolitionists, and the pro-slavery communities.

    Read More

  • The Central Theme of Southern History by Ulrich B. Phillips

    1616 Words  | 4 Pages

    Imagine a historian, author of an award-winning dissertation and several books. He is an experienced lecturer and respected scholar; he is at the forefront of his field. His research methodology sets the bar for other academicians. He is so highly esteemed, in fact, that an article he has prepared is to be presented to and discussed by the United States’ oldest and largest society of professional historians. These are precisely the circumstances in which Ulrich B. Phillips wrote his 1928 essay, “The Central Theme of Southern History.” In this treatise he set forth a thesis which on its face is not revolutionary: that the cause behind which the South stood unified was not slavery, as such, but white supremacy. Over the course of fourteen elegantly written pages, Phillips advances his thesis with evidence from a variety of primary sources gleaned from his years of research. All of his reasoning and experience add weight to his distillation of Southern history into this one fairly simple idea, an idea so deceptively simple that it invites further study.

    Read More

  • The Cross And The Lynching Tree By James Cone

    1632 Words  | 4 Pages

    Slavery is an economic, legal system where humans are sold and treated as property. The history of slavery spans nearly almost from every culture, religion and nationality from ancient to present days. Slavery in the United States is identified as one of the darkest periods of the human kind where people from the African continent were sold to the white settlers in the United States. Based on research it was evident that the white Christianity supported the establishment and the continuation of slavery in America. This paper is a study of the history on how white Christianity helped and also offered support to American slavery.

    Read More

  • Frederick Douglass: The Psychological Approaches Used to Maintain the Institution of Slavery

    1326 Words  | 3 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Civil War - North Vs. South

    830 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the early American colonies, the south and the north developed into two distinctly different colonies. Although their origins were both from Europe, their customs and living habits became so different that it would play a major role in America’s history. There are many reasons why these differences occurred but only a few major reasons stand out. Religion, greed and the composition of the colonies are some of the major reasons why the north and south grew to be so different in the late 1600’s. Different religions in specific colonies varied, but the people from the New England region were generally more devoted to their religious beliefs, whereas people from the south felt religion wasn’t as important. Children from the north are taught from The Bible as soon as possible and this instills high moral values into the people. In the south only the wealthiest families could afford education, causing the common population to be ignorant and un-educated. The people of New England were willing to work together and help each other for the sake of the community because they felt that they were working under God’s will. (Doc. A) The south on the other hand worked to better themselves through the Headright System, which ended up pitting the people against each other instead of working with each other. The people of Massachusetts agreed: "We whose names are underwritten, being by God’s providence engaged together to make a plantation…" (Doc. D) This shows that reli...

    Read More

  • Thomas Jefferson and Slavery

    991 Words  | 2 Pages

    Post, D. G. (2001, 07 02). Temple Universtiy. Retrieved 07 07, 2010, from Words Fitly Spoken: http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/slavery.PDF

    Read More

  • The American Civil War Was Inevitable

    1627 Words  | 4 Pages

    Roark, J.L., Johnson, M.P., Cohen, P.C., Stage, S., Lawson, A., Hartmann, S.M. (2009). The american promise: A history of the united states (4th ed.), The New West and Free North 1840-1860, The slave south, 1820-1860, The house divided 1846-1861 (Vol. 1, pp. 279-354).

    Read More

  • The Beliefs of Locke and Newton, Inspired Jonathan Edwards

    1493 Words  | 3 Pages

    Minkema, Kenneth P., Stout, Harry S.. "The Edwardsean Tradition and the Antislavery Debate, 1740-1865." Journal of American History 1(2005):47. eLibrary. Web. 17 Jan. 2012.

    Read More

  • Victorian Perception of Women and Vampires in Bram Stoker's Dracula

    1492 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Harper & Row, 1974. Print.

    Read More

  • Modern Day Slavery Essay

    1371 Words  | 3 Pages

    The word “slavery” brings back horrific memories of human beings. Bought and sold as property, and dehumanized with the risk and implementation of violence, at times nearly inhumane. The majority of people in the United States assumes and assures that slavery was eliminated during the nineteenth century with the Emancipation Proclamation. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth; rather, slavery and the global slave trade continue to thrive till this day. In fact, it is likely that more individuals are becoming victims of human trafficking across borders against their will compared to the vast number of slaves that we know in earlier times. Slavery is no longer about legal ownership asserted, but instead legal ownership avoided, the thought provoking idea that with old slavery, slaves were maintained, compared to modern day slavery in which slaves are nearly disposable, under the same institutionalized systems in which violence and economic control over the disadvantaged is the common way of life. Modern day slavery is insidious to the public but still detrimental if not more than old American slavery.

    Read More

More about Time Changes Everything

Open Document