Slave Experience In Early American History

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Slave Experience in Early American History “What to the Slave is Fourth of July?” ( Primary Source Reader 42) . It is unfortunate that the land we call the land of opportunity was once built on taking every right away from its real founders and building blocks, the slaves. In order to have America thrive, the blacks had to suffer, “relations and friends separated, most of them never to see each other again” ( Primary Source Reader 11) forget the families they had, “there were several brothers, who, in the sale, were sold in different lots” ( Primary Source Reader12), tend to work until their bodies burned out, “… so much fatigued from labor that they could scarcely get to their lodging places from the field at night” ( Primary Source Reader…show more content…
But they were wrongly kept under a sharp eye at all times of their existence and could not attain it on their own sometimes because they were unskillful in fulfilling the way of going about it and other times because their slave holders and masters were so closed minded that nothing but force upon then was instilled when the idea was brought up. One of the greatest rebellions in slave history was brought upon by Nat Turner who was formerly a slave preacher in Virginia. Turner’s rebellion caused an earthquake of emotions in the south and instead of the intended impact it was meant to have, the exact opposite of what was planned happened. “80 slaves had joined Turner’s band, and some 60 whites had been killed” ( Primary Source Reader 31). Slavery affected Nat Turners mental health so much to a point that it was recorded of him saying he saw black and white angels in the sky fighting. “I then found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters, and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens” (Primary Source Reader 33) . Turner’s rebellions caused not only the murder of those 60 whites but also 200 blacks and anyone that was black was not spared in the heat of the moment. Taking the lives of people was not the answer in general especially if it were to benefit the slaves. Killing to scare people at all is not the answer, and killing in general is not the answer at all. The end result of this spree of his left the hardships of slaves even more in suffering because the Virginia law makers rigidified the subjection of slaves, debarring blacks of any kind to be acting like preachers and toughening the forces, and lastly prohibiting them to read. If a slave were not educated then a slave would not be able to accumulate such ideas in order to acquire freedom, freedom that would come to them at a great cost and
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