Historically, slavery was a mixture of debt-slavery, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves. The Greeks believed in the theory of natural slavery, this meant that some men are slaves by nature. Slavery in the United States was an important part of the plantation economies. There are many reasons to support slavery including biblical, historical, sociological, economic, constitutional and political. Pro-Slavery Arguments Biblical Nowhere in the Bible does it express even mild disapproval of enslaving human beings by God.
Even under kind masters, slaves suffer, however, most of them try to find a relief in God. Christian theology is fundamentally incompatible with slavery, but it makes slaveholders more sensitive and provides a safe haven for slaves. In contradiction to circumstances presented above, the Legree plantation is the place, where the evil of slavery appears in its most naked and hideous form. Slaves suffer beatings, sexual abuse, and even murder in this harsh and barbaric setting. If slavery is wrong in the best of cases, in the worst of cases it is a nightmare and very inhuman.
But not all of them made it to freedom and ended up punished by their masters. Benjamin, Brent’s brother’s failed attempt to escape to the North is a good example. “Before reaching that port Benjamin managed to get off his chains and throw them overboard. He escaped from his vessel, but was pursued, captured, and carried back to his master.” (Brent 463). By trying to escape a horrible hardship in his life, which was slavery, he only managed to get himself into more trouble, causing even more hardships.
Did Slavery Cause the Civil War? The claim of historians that the civil war in America was an outcome of slavery is true, as it was the issue of abolition of slavery that was considered not acceptable by Southern states of the country, as their major plantation and trade was there because of African slaves. According to the people of the South, North was trying to eliminate slavery with unjustified reasons. The Southerners regarded the Northerners as their enemies because, they thought that the government of North was interested in subjugating Southern States by ending slavery and by given equal rights to the slaves. There were eleven States of America that were slave states, as they held slaves in a large ratio; they named themselves as “Confederates of America” while the other side was named as “The Union” (Valley of the shadow).
In past history, enslavement of another was usually the result of an unpaid debt, the spoils of a victorious war, or the consequences of a crime. Enslavement of another human life without reason, however, is a critical sign of the downfall of humanity. In American history, slavery warped from being temporary servitude of any immigrant or unemployed citizen in the hopes of helping them in the end into lifetime enslavement of Africans with no pay and very little hope of escaping the harsh conditions employed by enslavement. Not only did enslavement of the Africans occur, but the harsh racism that formed towards them only worsened their conditions, with the white society’s hate being expressed negatively towards the slaves. Since the time of slavery, many scholars and historians have studied the American enslavement of the Africans to further understand the cause.
Slavery, which was a major uproar from colonial America to the civil war, is the racial epidemic of the enslavement of people for money and cheap labor with extensive abuses. The question that could be asked is were the slaves dignified, did they still keep their dignity? The word dignity is the conducting of self-respect as a person sees himself or herself rather than, how others perceive that person. Slavery has been around for years and slaves have been treated unfairly for countless of reasons and situations. Did they still keep their self-respect?
He supports this argument by looking closely at the meaning of the symbolism behind the color black. (Winthrop 14) The skin color of many enslaved cultures were often linked to the hard labor that was done outside, exposed usually to the burning sun. He ultimately argues that a dark skin became a rationale for enslaving people of darker skin tones. The argument that Williams makes is that Economics was the main driving force behind the creation of Slavery, not so much Racism. To support his thesis, he pointed out that any lower social class was sent to do manual labor.
He is almost completely shunned from the town because he is trying to help a black man accused of rape. Mayella had told Tom, “I said come here, nigger, and bust up this chiffarobe for me, I gotta nickel for you.” (p.241) She had tricked him to coming over to her. Then that’s about the time when she accuses him of rape. He had felt sorry for her, which is why he was falsely accused in the first place. Courthouse segregation was one of the biggest bits of racism I found in this book.
Not only did this case show the Abolitionist fight against slavery and to stop it, it also showed our questionable laws that come from the Constitution. When comparing and contrasting how Spielberg accurately portrayed this time in American history he did it well. In class we talked about how slaves were captured by others of their kind and sold, treated very horribly while on the slave ships and some left to die. The movie illustrates the horrors of the slaves, all the things they undergone, and how they were captured and taken from their homes and brought to a new world. It was very hard to look at and see all the cruelty and things that went on with the slaves after they had been captured, due to the fact they had been minding their own business a significant amount of years and then someone comes along, suggest that Africans are not to be treated inhuman and turned into a slave.
One of those things was slave codes. Which gave more power to the slave owners and even less power to the slaves on page 434, it says "in existence since the 1700's slave codes were written to prevent the event white southerners dreaded most-became more severe. This shows that the slaves had absolutely no access to freedom to the slave codes another way that the slaves resisted was that they faked an illness, so they can get revenge to their masters on page 437 it gives a specific explanation on how they faked their illness. It says "For the most part enslaved people resisted slavery by working slowly or pretending to be ill. Occasionally resistance took more active forms, such as setting fire to a plantation building or breaking tools.