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.
Throughout the Narrative, Douglass shows how the use of ignorance was employed against the slaves. Using this theme, we will focus on how they kept the slaves from learning, and how Douglass felt after trying to learn. To start, at the time Douglass was writing, many people believed that slavery was a natural state of being. They believed that blacks were inferior to whites and they should be kept as workers. From birth, slave owners started the tactic of keeping slaves oblivious to the world around them by keeping basic facts like their birth date or paternity away from them.
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.
Trade in iron, cotton and coal was growing, and so the British didn’t have to use slaves to work the sugar plantations anymore. But these are only the reasons on why the people weren’t so keen on the trade, not the reasons for why the trade was abolished. The reasons on why the slave trade was abolished are now going to be explained in more depth, and I will also decide which reason had the most impact and why. One of the reasons was the slaves themselves. Because they were forced to work and always punished badly for the slightest mistake, they were extremely unhappy and most hated they’re owners.
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.
Slave masters were under the impression that slaves were having church so when caught, of course slaves had to ‘pay the price’. Slaves were punished physically and sometimes even murdered for this small act. “The master might claim the body of his property but could never quite claim their soul” (L.Rivers) Slavery was controlled in many different ways so no one could actually subdue this epidemic. However, the article shows how master to slave relationships were in Florida. Slaves were simply to obey their masters and do whatever what asked of them.
Instead of focusing on the obvious unconstitutional and emotional treachery of slavery which is very much overdone, the economic event was very much overlooked. Though its strong economic gain for the entire nation forever impacted our dominance, the negative effects will always pour through. It was the existence of slavery, with its negative impact on politics, economics, and social relations that fatally crippled the South in its bid for independence. The slave trade eventually played a central role in determining the fate of the South, as a business that created a unified South under proslavery ideology and encouraged western migration to preserve the institution of slavery. As mentioned by William Harper, “The cultivation of the great staple crop cannot be carried on without slaves.” (Harper, Memoir in Slavery, 1837) In a time of western expansion and the cotton boom, some slave traders were able to accumulate great wealth from the slave-trading business and sought opportunities to acquire higher social status and financial stability.
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?
Most likely these successes or disappointments were determined by an external factors which were beyond their control. America was the dream land for the new comers and the land of slavery and bad memories that haunted the African Americans, however in some occasions the dream land was a nightmare for the immigrants, and the land of slavery was the land where African Americans were ready to pay their lives to protect their freedom. Immigrants who came to America in last decades of the 18th century and early 19th century didn't differ much from their predecessors. Escaping racial, religious, and political persecution, or seeking relief from a lack of economic opportunity or famine were the main reasons that pushed many immigrants out of their homelands. They imagined the United States as a land of freedom, where all persons enjoys equality before the law, could worship as they pleased , enjoyed economic opportunity.
Slaves had resisted their being traded since slavery had started. Adding to this, slaves had been inspired by the many people that had led the major slave revolutions like in Barbados, Demerara and Jamaica. The revolutions shocked the British Government and made them start to understand that the costs keeping the trade were too high. Eventually that led to the abolition of the slave trade because the plantation owners and the traders started to understand and accept the abolition rather than having a large world war which was what it could have come to if the abolition hadn’t taken place. Some slaves resisted in passive ways against the trade and slavery.