Living, Eating, and Working as Slaves In the early 1865, slavery had come to the United States of America. Millions of slaves were told that they were free, and therefore many of them had been interviewed to share both of their happy and awful conditions they had during their slavery. The various conditions related to food, living, and work influenced whether or not slaves challenged their owners in the late 1800s. Some slaves were pretty satisfied with their owners but the others had lived the lives that people nowadays could ever imagine. The desire of being free resembled the awful conditions that some of them had.
Frederick Douglass’s Life Slavery is a huge topic that includes inspiring stories from slaves, and many heroes. The story of Frederick Douglass is no exception to that. Douglass was born a slave, and was constantly beaten and punished, but that did not stop him from making a difference. After escaping, he tried to do anything he could to stop slavery. He made many lectures where talked about his experiences with slavery, and also made a newspaper called “The North Star” that talked about abolishing slavery.
When Frederick Douglass addressed the audience with his speech, it was very emotional and straight from his heart. As we all know, he was a freed slave and mainly considered his “slavery” as not being able to read and write, until his white master’s wife taught him to do so. With Douglass becoming a freed man and moved up North to pursue the life he dreamed to live, all he wanted was for the rest of the African American slave population to be free as well. Douglass believed that everybody had the right to succeed in society; he never understood how our country was founded on freedom but not everybody was free. Throughout Frederick’s speech, he repeatedly would ask the crowd uncomfortable questions and somewhat “guilt-trap” the people, example being “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.
The slave era can be agreed it was a terrible atrocity upon our fellow man, and it cannot be brought into a light of just, but it did give birth to some true characters who we can look up to and live alike. The characters in both Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass are ideal examples of true characters as they pushed through slavery and gained freedom but did not stop there. Jacobs’ spent her freedom getting her families’ freedom and Douglass went on to help others escape and spread knowledge on the cruelty of slavery. The last thing, and most powerful thing this book left me with is that each slave was an individual unalike any other, and these individuals were in fact an individual, individuals who lived their life for the betterment of others and accomplished an impossible
The reason that is so is because they recognized the wrong they were doing and still aimed to approve slavery. Even when slavery was abolished, the federal government supported those who continued to do a more minute type of slavery (long arm slavery). W.E.B. Du Bois stated that if the United States was to give all the million of slaveholder family a forty-acre freehold would highlight the democratic aspect of the American political party. African Americans did seize some abandoned plantations, but the government tried to regain these lands to give to the whites while excluding
Some were even offered bonuses. What was interesting to me is that Vermont refused to help the Federal government and President Fillmore threatened to use the army to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Nothing came out of this incident. The new law of 1850 left a very bitter taste in a lot of mouths. The author of these pages wanted us to focus our attention on all the hardship that African Americans had to endure whether slave or free.
Chapter 7 Quote 7: “Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her to these heavenly qualities” (Douglass, Page 43) In this quote its explaining how his mistress was a very good person to the poor and then when slavery started it stopped her from being able to do good deeds. He is explaining how selfish slavery is and how unfair it is that his mistress can’t do good things for un lucky people all because slavery begun. Slavery wasn’t fair to any colored Americans, especially for ones like her. Chapter 8 Quote 8: “We all felt that we might as well be sold at once to the Georgia traders, as to pass into his hands; for we knew that that would be our inevitable condition-a condition held by us all in the utmost horror and dread.” (Douglass, Page
Yes, Anacona and little Ephraim had grown up as slave traders and depended on the slave trade to keep their royal stature intact, but they were able to experience a rare firsthand account of what the slaves endured after they were captured and sold to the Europeans because they became slaves themselves. It is evident that the Robin Johns was left with no choice other than to embrace the slavery at first in order to survive. This would not be a problem for the Anacona and Ephraim, considering the environment they had been surrounded by their entire life. Once they were kidnapped they understood the only way for them to have a chance at freedom was going to be if they used the knowledge, which they acquired through the slave trade to their advantage. Sparks writes “Whether the Robins Johns’ better understanding of their situation made them more or less desperate is impossible to say, but it is certain they had a more realistic view of their situation than did typical captives.
Alexander Downey History 111 5/16/12 Slavery The south plantation owners way of saying how good they were to slaves and how they treat them well. They were lying; they said they treated their slaves like they treat their own family. They wouldn’t make their sons do what slaves did. They would saying all these nice these about them, when none of this was really going on. Slaves they said weren’t a real citizen, they have no rights or freedom, they said they weren’t equals to them.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin shined a light onto their cruel, abusive lives. Although this book made people feel sympathetic towards slave, it also made working-class whites aggressive towards slaves because they now felt that African Americans were competition in the working world. Because of this book people thought she fuelled this war. Even President Lincoln said, “Is this the little woman who made this great