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.
'Uncle Tom's Cabin' is a book dominated by a single theme - the evil and immortality of slavery. Stowe challenges conventional dichotomies between black and white, male and female, and North and South. Circumstances of geography and birth may decide whether a person practices slavery, but Stowe does not allow circumstances or chance to excuse these slaveholders. All people possess some measure of evil, and therefore all people are capable of the evil of owning slaves. Depending on the circumstances of one's birth, the evil in one's life takes different forms.
Another way by which Douglass illustrates that slavery can be defined as robbery was by how the slaves were treated with regards to the value of their lives, their dignity and their sense of justice. Douglass shows in several examples where the value of a slave’s life was almost worthless. These were examples in which white overseers and slave owners would wantonly murder slaves without any fear of reprisal by the law. To all this, Douglass writes: “It was a common saying, even among little white boys, that it was worth a half-cent to kill a nigger, and a half-cent to bury one.” (Douglass, 27). Another instance in which Frederick Douglass very aptly defines slavery as robbery is how he describes the ships along the Chesapeake Bay as follows: “You are loosed from your moorings,
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; Relations between the Black and White Man When looking upon American history in its entirety, there is a dark stain that spreads for a good chunk of the whole, starting almost from the beginning. Slavery, a word that doesn’t give enough justice to its name, a word that puts a bad taste in your mouth even though the people of today have never lived through its cruelty. Slavery may have started out as the selling of white European servants who came to America seeking a better life, but this is not the slavery that I speak off. The slavery that I speak off is the more vicious aspect of the word that grew out of that beginning. This slavery is by far one of the more difficult subjects to look upon when discussing American history and its influences.
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.
Illiteracy was high among slaves, mostly due to white owner’s fear of education leading slaves to revolt. Those who were capable of reading and writing made use of newspapers, poetry, pamphlets, and other forms of literature to spread their message. Not only slaves, but abolitionists of all kinds used this method and some of the most famous anti-slavery publications were made available thanks to them. Two famous anti-slave narratives are Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, penned by Douglass himself and Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, like most other slave narratives was written by a former slave himself, however Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written by a white abolitionist and a woman.
The reason being that it was risky to kidnap Africans and there were consequences. The crew risked getting killed by the natives, and sometimes the slaves from this vessel would be sold to another slaver, leaving the captain with no profits. During these times of gathering the slaves aboard the ship, it was not orderly and kind. The crewmembers abused the slaves and did not tell them where they were going. However, the slaves did not go without a fight.
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.
She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach” (page 367). Frederick as a slave did not agree with slavery and by her actions being very different then the others, she had the same opposing opinion to slavery as did Frederick Douglass. He said “Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me” (page 367). 2. After he beat up the slave breaker named Mr.