What if the Africans/African Americans were the slave owners? Would it be wrong? It made some slave holders and their overseers brutal, it made other white people feel guilty and ashamed. Slavery was a moral sickness upon the society. Most slave owners were of white descent and for them to turn their back on their own kind is awfully inhumane, you could tell immediately that these people had no type of conviction or mercy within their own race.
Douglass ends his main portrayal of slavery as unnatural for all involved. Douglass defines typical behavior patterns of slaveholders to portray the hurtful effects of slavery. He describes how many slave owning men have been tempted to adultery and rape, fathering children with their female slaves. This adultery jeopardized the union of the slave owner’s family, as the father is obligated to either sell or continuously punish his own child, while the slave owner’s wife becomes bitter and cruel. Douglass’s key demonstration of the corruption of slave owners is Sophia Auld, a woman who had never been a slaveholder before her husband attained Douglass.
He was particularly not very fond of Thomas Jefferson, who he thought to be a racist. In his “Appeal in Four Articles” we can detect the tone and seriousness in his voice right away. This is obviously not a topic he takes lightly. He blasts the institution of slavery right away when he says, “But we, (coloured people) and our children are brutes!! and of course are and ought to be slaves to the American people and their children forever“ ( Walker 792).
I do not like to get reminded of how dark and terrible slaves spent their pure life suffering by their cruel punishments like whipping or getting killed to stop the problem right away. Masters were so cruel. I do not understand what kind of heart God had them at birth. I wonder what thoughts masters had in mind during a torture of slaves. It was money and power that took over their minds.
Brittany had created a social system that allowed the upper class African nobility to be treated respectfully, and treat peasants badly while still regarding them as fully human. Harms also explains what drove and inspired the slave traders. He admitted it was “driven by greed and afflicted with inhumanity and caused people to be treated like cattle” (Harms 18). However, Harms mentioned how not everyone involved in the slave trade thought they were doing inhumane acts. Some people defended the slave trade.
Précis Kolchin, Peter, American Slavery 1619-1877. New York, 1993. Chapter 5, Sections VI-VII, p. 155 – 166 The Southern States of America were manipulated by politics to be an oppression for enslaved black's. In the Early 1700's, slaves who attempted rebellion often had their efforts suppressed, with little or no threat to the whites. These threats were often met with little force and extinguished.
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,
De’Ja Moore African-American Slave Trade 25 January 2012 11:00-11:50 De’ja Moore The African slave trade was made to dehumanize and demeaned the black man but I can’t figure out why people believe it was so harsh. Although I may have not been able to live in such harsh conditions but at the same this slave trade makes me who I am today. Although I don’t know where from, I am a decedent of an African slave that was once in slavery. I do believe that slavery was harsh and unimaginable but why should we only focus on the negative. The Europeans must had felt some type of superior to the Africans because why else would you want to dehumanize a person.
It was all a plot to dehumanise us, to allow our oppressors to rationalise their actions, and reduced us slaves to animal property- as implied by the term “ chattel slavery. " This made our masters perceive us as inhuman property, and made us perceive ourselves as inhuman property as well. I still wonder, why must the southern states of America’s economy revolve around agriculture and slavery? Even after the industrial revolutions impact on the Northern states, why must the Southern state appear oblivious to the urbanisation. Was it because Thomas Jefferson heavily idealised agrarian farming, or is it impudence?
To conclude, the Middle Passage is clearly the roots of the slavery that occurred in the United States. Learning about the Middle Passage, gives us a better understanding of the long journey that the slaves endured. How being treated as cargo made them less superior and the torture and living conditions were unimaginable. Hopefully we can end the road, which racism has paved in this country. But more importantly, that no other human being should ever have to go through what the African slaves