Max Bruckner History 203 Makimura Book Review #2 The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth Century Atlantic Odyssey by Randy Sparks The largest forced migration in human history, the African Slave Trade, has left little documentation records for historians to work from. Given the long lasting historical repercussions of the estimated eleven million African captives forced to cross the Atlantic from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, we know amazingly little about the individual experiences of the horrific middle passage. Randy Sparks’s book corrects this silence. It tells the remarkable story of two African princes enslaved at Old Calabar in the Bight of Biafra, taken first to the Caribbean and then shipped to Virginia. They then escaped to England where they sued for their freedom, and finally made their way back to Old Calabar.
The African Americans, united in their quest for creating ‘a perfect union’ which at its very earliest ended when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified. Barker (2013), in his book, recollects the autobiographical notes and personal anecdote of various events from the black and white slaves who played an integral part in the American war against slavery. A socio political approach is used by Barker to engage his readers in how the African Americans continued their battle in middle 1800s. There are eight cases of the fleeing bondsmen included in the books who were pursued by their owners and in some cases, by the federal allies who claimed ownership of these slaved under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. In the chapters that follow, along with the well reclaimed fugitive slaves, Barker also introduced their abolitionist allies including Theodore Parker, Lewis Hayden, Frederick Douglas, Wendell Phillips and Samuel Joseph May who are proclaimed as the Revolutionary war heroes.
A lot of these leaders were born into slavery and escaped, passing on powerful messages to the people to come together and fight for their rights. I found Fredrick Douglas to be a good example of one who was born into slavery. He had a slave mom and a white dad that resulted in him being sent to another plantation to be a servant because of his color. In 1838, Douglas escaped and became part of an Anti-Slavery Society in 1841. He gave a powerful speech on the fourth of July addressing his fellow African Americans called ‘What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July.’ He portrays how all of America celebrates Independence Day with their political freedom.
(McKay, Chap 21, pg 570) In order to get a good perspective on what being a slave was like, we will look into a narrative written by Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was a native of Iboland who was captured at the age of eleven. He describes how some villagers would wait until the adults would go out in the plantations to work to abduct their younger children. Once Equiano was sold to the Europeans he says that they were treated horribly beaten and cramped on a very small boat. The reason that the slaves were treated badly could have been due to the fact that the Europeans had to pay a high price for them or just due to a lack of space.
Slavery: “The Peculiar Institution” Slaves were brought to the colonies first as indentured servants then slave traders started capturing slaves from Africa and bring them to the Caribbean. The colonist found slave labor cheap compared to indentured slaves who eventually ended their service. Slavery began in the United States about the 1630’s. During this time the colonial courts and legislatures made Africans property and enslaved to their masters for a life time. The legislature also ruled that slave status would be inherited by their children.
10. The Underground Railroad was an underground system that helped slaves escape from the south into the North as a freed American. Harriet Tubman helped man the Underground Railroad. 11. South Carolina threatened to secede because of the aftermath of the Tariff of Abominations; it shrunk English demand for southern raw cotton and increased the final cost of finished goods to American buyers.
Teresita U. Sanchez American Nation Mr. Howard Cole October 11, 2006 Mid-Term 1. Describe the lives of slaves, and the efforts to free then and to stop the trade in slaves, during Colonial times and the early Republic. Slavery in America began in Chesapeake after 1619. In the beginning the slaves were treated as indentured servants. Slaves can gain freedom if they worked out their term of being an indentured servant.
The slaveholding system had become self-sufficient and this dictated the end of many tribal practices among black slaves. Blake, by Martin R. Delany, takes place in the antebellum period in America. One may realize that most of the slaves depicted in the novel are now converted to Christianity, their masters’ religion. The problem here is that this conversion is nothing less than a subversive way to control the group of slaves in the Franks plantation. Master Frank uses religion to pour fear and obedience in his slaves’ minds.
Ch.4 Sec 1: Slavery and Empire -Mercantilism realized: the triangular trade. -West Africa had become a thriving slave industry since the Portuguese had arrived while going to the West coast. Most slaves went to other destinations, like South America( Brazil), Caribbean and then some to the Americas. Very little of them went straight to North America. *The Ordeal of the Slave* -A state of perpetual terror: 1) first caught from her/ his tribe by the Europeans or another tribe.
David Walker – The Appeal (418) A freed black who published “Walker’s Appeal”; Declared “America is more our country than whites-we enriched it with our blood and tears.” “Slaves should cut their master’s throats”…”Kill or be Killed”24. Frederick Douglass (419) - The greatest African-American abolitionists of all, born a slave in Maryland, he escaped to Massachusetts in 1838. After returning in 1847 after spending 2 years in England lecturing, he bought his freedom from his Maryland master in 1847 and founded the North Star, an anti slavery newspaper.25. Amistad (420) - Africans destined for slavery took over the ship and attempted to return to Africa but the U.S. navy seized the ship and treated them as pirates. The Africans were declared free in 1841(one reason being that the slave trade was illegal by then), and anti slavery groups funded their passage back to Africa.26.