Slavery's Journey To America Book Report

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1821- Every single day of this dreadful journey, I still contemplate what could’ve happened if I was not intrigued by the colossal ship and the beautiful merchandises. I still recall the events that led to my capture, countless European traders rushed down from the boat, enticing us to buy red handkerchiefs, dress goods, beads, bells, and trinkets in bright colours. Numerous black men and women rushed into the boats to receive some accessories. However, it was a massive hoax… they began forcing us below the deck and locked us up before the transportation to America. European men dragged me below the deck and began separating us into numerous groups. What occurred next was horrendous... They started physically violating us, treating us like…show more content…
They stripped me down naked, forced me to jump around and overall embarrassed me to the point of death. After that, I was sent to the plantations, and it wasn’t any better than the Middle Passage journey… I didn’t work for a pay cheque, I worked for my survival and the avoidance of torture. However, even if I obeyed every law the slave drivers and overseers enforced- working from dawn till dusk under the hot sun, prevention of marriage, and overall respect for them, I still experienced heavy torture and arbitrary whipping. It was dehumanisation… The whippings, the rape, the branding. 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? I just cannot understand or relate why we must be held captive under white oppressors! However, all this will change! After the Second Great Awakening, countless white men manipulated their Protestantism to…show more content…
Because in my perspective, this contradictory proclamation seems to be a political propaganda to support only the whites. Today I stand, as a runaway slave who escaped the grasp of slave owners and harsh Fugitive Slave Laws presented in the Compromise of 1850. However, tension has finally reached a peak between the North and the South due to the secession in 1860. I believe that several key events from 1845-1861 caused all this turmoil and crashed the regional differences between the Union and the Confederacy together. Eventually leading to the outbreak of the Civil war in 1861. This all began with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1847, providing new land in the south-western territories. However, the main problem was what to do with this new found land. Free Sollers and Northern Whigs heavily opposed the spread of slavery, but the southerners wanted more land for agriculture and increase their political power. Henry Clay’s proposition was accepted in 1850, however, this did not fix all issues. Eventually, tension had reached a new height in 1854, with the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This was a proposition from Stephen Douglas’s and opened Kansas and Nebraska to ‘popular sovereignty, ’ which allowed male settlers in those regions to decide if the country was a free or slave state. However, this brought up controversy because it repealed

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