These accounts, supported by memoirs such as Oladuah Equiano's, who survived the journey, informed the masses and catalyzed the destruction of slavery. The atrocities continued once the Africans arrived in the West Indies, but resistance began to grow once on the plantation. Great debate exists even today over just how and why the British Parliament voted to abolish the slave trade. By the late 1700's, the abolition movement had become strong enough to exert considerable pressure on Parliament, and an array of differing arguments were being made for abolition. Former slave Olaudah Equiano presented both a moral and an economic case for abolition, in the latter sounding a great deal like Adam Smith.
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. "
For example, there was a full scale slave rebellion in the 1790s on the island of Santo Domingo where “fighting was unspeakably savage, with whites and blacks slaughtering one another in a carnage of racial violence that ultimately cost some sixty thousand lives” (15). The insurgents succeeded in overthrowing the French and establishing independence in Haiti. The rebellion’s greatest impact was the so called “Santo Domingo virus—a sickness, whites believed, that arrived on slave ships from the West Indies, infected American slaves, and caused them to run away or murder people in their delirium” (16). This concept of the Santo Domingo virus set a precedent for insurrection in Virginia. In 1799, “Southampton County
Columbus’s exploration of the New World ended lives and heritage of many people. The Discovery of the New world was later on followed by series of minor developments in navigation, geography, astronomy and economy through the Atlantic circuit but in contrast it even these minor devalopments were ”Not..worth price of human lives.”(Sale 188). Additionally Europeans imposed and substituted their institutions, ideas,languages, cultures, technologies and economy for the New World’s original heritage and language. Also” it gave birth to the most infamous and the most atrocious of all traffics, that of slave, the most execrable of crimes against nature (Reynal /190)”. Ships of African slaves crossed the Atlantic to the Americas to work on European sugar and tobacco plantations under the harshest conditions, which led to an end of many slaves’ lives.
Furthermore in the Southern states of USA the abolition movement was resented. Plantation owners were unwilling to end slavery because it provided them with a free labour force. Many white Americans had justified slavery by thinking of slaves as racially inferior, as people without human needs, rights or dignity. The legal system had supported these racist views, and the rights of the plantation owners for many years. After 1890 many Southern governments passed a series of laws that set up a system of segregation that would last until the mid-twentieth century.
This writing was so detailed in the horrible mistreatments of the slaves that, he began to be accused of treason of his own country. His brutal descriptions of the slave’s treatment seem to prove his motives positive. It seems that he wants others to be disgusted by these wrong doings, just as he was. It is said in his writing, The Very Relation of the Devastation of the Indies, “And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pike began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them into pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house”(37).
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.
Apart from the colonist being harassed with taxes, their trade with all parts of the world except Britain was another reason why the colonists wrote the Declaration of Independence. The illegal imposition of rules over their trade and production, commonly known as the Navigation Acts, which have been pressed on them for over a century and made worse by the Sugar Act and Townshend Acts was controlled once the Declaration of Independence was written and signed. Furthermore, the colonists were being deprived in many cases. The Boston Massacre was when a mob of 50 colonists gathered to protest against the officials. As fists and clubs began flying a soldier dropped dead, this forced the soldiers to fire, killing five civilians and wounding six.
Results of the Rebellion of 1837 The results of the rebellion of 1837, consists of punishing the rebels and uniting Upper and Lower Canada. The punishments for the rebels were harsh. The major leaders of the rebellion were publicly hanged to ensure that a rebellion will not happen again in the future. The other rebels were either killed by death penalty, because of their crimes against Britain including insurrection, or they were transported to the Bermuda or Australia to work as slave laborers. The transportation was an even worse punishment then the death penalty, because the journey to the Bermuda or Australia was horrendous.
The Ku Klux Klan, Knights of White Camellia, and other terrorists murdered thousands of blacks and some whites to prevent them from voting and participating in public life. The KKK was founded in 1865 to 1866. They directed their violence towards black landowners, politicians, and community leaders. They also did this to people who supported Republicans or racial equalities. Many Africans were brave and fought against this treatment.