The Atlantic Slave Trade Question: How does the absence of humanitarian concerns influence the treatment of slaves during the slave trade? Neglecting humane feelings is what influenced the terrible and horrid treatment to slaves during the slave trade. From beatings and whippings to breaking their bones, slaves were treated and considered inferior for no reason. After reading the documents, certain ones pointed out the outcomes of the absence of humanity. Document 7 reveals how these punishments were horrid and fear causing.
Question 1- How does Douglass show that slavery corrupts slave owners? Douglass shows that slave owners constantly deny the humanity of their slaves in order to justify their ownership of human beings. To convince themselves that their slaves are not quite human, slave owners treat them inhumanely. In treating his slaves like beasts, however, the master becomes a beast himself. Douglass depicts the negative effects of slaveholding on slaveholders through the characters of Thomas Auld and Edward Covey.
This pie chart can be similar to the Haitian Revolution because the Haitian slaves revolted against their masters because of bad treatment which was a social condition of this revolution. The political cartoon shows that despite the first and second estates power they were scared of the third estate because they were overly outnumbered (Doc. 3). This document also lead to the French Revolution, and also can be compared to the Haitian Revolution. It can be related to the Haitian Revolution because the masters of the slaves and political figures were scared to get overthrown by the slaves, they also treated them harshly, and they arrested Toussaint L'Ouverture who was the leader of the revolt and freed slaves.
Slaves must seek knowledge and education in order to pursue freedom. It is from Hugh Auld that Douglass learns this notion that knowledge must be the way to freedom, as Auld forbids his wife to teach Douglass how to read and write because education ruins slaves. Douglass
“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”: The idea of self-making and “respect” When reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave written by himself, I certainly wasn’t thinking about the idea of “respect” and self-making. I was too busy focusing on all the horrible things happening to the slaves and all the terrible things the slave owners were doing to them to really look at the fine lines of the story. It wasn’t until I read "Bold defiance took its place"—"Respect" and Self-Making in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Vince Brewton that I really started to look into the story on a more personal basis. The reason why Brewton repeatedly throughout his essay puts quotations around the word “respect” is because he defines “respect” as “an exaggerated version of ordinary self-respect.” He goes on to clarify that “‘Respect’ does not tolerate disrespect, and as a form of identity utilizes active disrespect of others to lay claim to power and the boundaries of that power.” It’s clear to me that Douglass’s story is a fight to earn “respect” and in order to earn that, he believes he has to be free. Douglass has no “respect” because he is thrown into a world of slavery where he must tolerate the disrespect being shoved at him.
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.
Slavery was part of southern culture. This caused debate with the North and South and caused them to spit into two separate territories. Lastly, The Northerners hated the fugitive slave law, which was another important cause of the Civil War. The fugitive slave law stated that anyone being caught helping a slave will be fined and that citizens had to report any acts of someone helping a slave to freedom. The Northerners hated this law.
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.
To him, the baby is tainted which makes his family and marriage impure. His conclusion is based on a “race that is cursed with the brand of slavery” (66). He falls out of his passionate love just as fast as he had fallen into it, “as if struck by a pistol shot” (63), because the race he believes his wife and now baby belong to is beneath him. He sees the slaves as unequal, believes he is superior and he can do whatever he pleases because they belong to him. If Armand is superior over the slaves and he can treat them however he pleases, therefore, in his mind, the same is true for Désirée and the baby.
Few people brought attention to the evil and immorality of slavery like Frederick Douglass. In his autobiographical narrative, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass described the effect that slavery had on not only slaves, but also slave-owners. “That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage” (Douglass 160), wrote Douglass in reference to his slave-owner’s wife, Mrs. Auld. What was a moral lady with a sense of conscience at first, was now a “demon” deprived of it. Slavery gave owners and white men a false sense of superiority, a sense of power, which blinded any vision of justice and equality.