A Slave No More By David Blight Essay

John. W. Blessingame, The Slave Community: The Plantation Life in The Antebellum South (Oxford University Press, Inc: 1972, 1979).

Students are taught in most schools that slavery ended with President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. However after reading Douglas Blackmon’s Slavery by Another Name I am clearly convinced that slavery continued for many years afterward. It is shown throughout this book that slavery did not end until 1942, this is when the condition of what Blackmon refers to as "neoslavery" began.

Slavery was created in pre-revolutionary America at the start of the seventeenth century. By the time of the Revolution, slavery had undergone drastic changes and was nothing at all what it was like when it was started. In fact the beginning of slavery did not even start with the enslavement of African Americans. Not only did the people who were enslaved change, but the treatment of slaves and the culture that each generation lived in, changed as well.

Although, Slavery had existed for centuries as a lowest social status in different parts of the world like Africa, Roman Empire, Middle East and etc., in English colonies slavery gained an importance, because of increasing demand for labor force and becoming relationship legitimated by law. Therefore, Englishmen were the reason of slavery in the colonies and its consequences.

Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

(1) The use of natural dialect can be seen throughout the slave narrative interviews through words and phrases used that were common during the period of slavery, but are not used today. One example can be seen in the dialect used by former slave Mama Duck, “Battlin stick, like dis. You doan know what a battling stick is? Well, dis here is one.” Through incomplete sentences and unknown words the natural dialect of the time can be seen. Unfamiliar words such as shin-plasters, meaning a piece of paper currency or a promissory note regarded as having little or no value. Also, geechees, used to describe a class of Negroes who spoke Gullah. Many examples can be seen throughout the “Slave Narratives”

Abolishment of Slavery Slavery was caused by economic factors of the English settlers in the late 17th century. Colonists continually tried to allure laborers to the colony. The head right system was to give the indentured servant, a method of becoming independent after a number of years of service. Slavery was caused by economic reasons. Colonists chiefly relied on Indentured Servitude, in order to facilitate their need for labor. The decreasing population combined with a need for a labor force, led colonists to believe that African slaves were the most efficient way to acquire a labor force that would satisfy their needs. Slaves were people who were taken from their homeland in Africa and brought to America, to serve as servants on

In the American colonies, Virginians switched from indentured servants to slaves for their labor needs for many reasons. A major reason was the shift in the relative supply of indentured servants and slaves. While the colonial demand for labor was increasing, a sharp decrease occurred in the number of English migrants arriving in America under indenture. Slaves were permanent property and female slaves passed their status on to their children. Slaves also seemed to be a better investment than indentured servants. Slaves also offered masters a reduced level of successful flight.

Slavery, especially in America, has been an age old topic of riveting discussions. Specialist and other researchers have been digging around for countless years looking for answers to the many questions that such an activity provided. They have looked into the economics of slavery, slave demography, slave culture, slave treatment, and slave-owner ideology (p. ix). Despite slavery being a global issue, the main focus is always on American slavery. Peter Kolchin effectively illustrates in his book, American Slavery how slavery evolved alongside of historical controversy, the slave-owner relationship, how slavery changed over time, and how America compared to other slave nations around the world.

git beatin's and half fed... Mostly we ate pickled pork and corn bread and peas and

In the nineteenth century, the idea of abolishing slavery was a sensitive topic in the United States. John Greenleaf Whittier was not shy about his belief that slavery should be abolished from the whole country. With the United States on the brink of a civil war, Whittier published his poems and gave slaves a new voice. It’s because of his strong belief in abolishment that I can relate to Whittier’s writings. Although I was not alive in the nineteenth century, nor was anyone I know that is alive today, slavery is still a relevant topic to me.

The article on “slave no more” was written by David Blight. The article is about a period in the history of America when two men, Washington and Turnage, escaped the hands of slavery. Even though it is not clear whether the slaves freed themselves or were freed by Lincoln, some literature tells that both literature and the 16th American president could be liable for their release. These two men were born at a period when union forces and the civil war was advancing in their hometown. The article was written some months before the emancipation proclamation. Washington had escaped through the Rappahannock River in efforts to free himself. He was among the rare children who had learnt to read and write ever since he was a child. His notes were recorded in a manuscript that he entitled, “memories of the past”.

The dichotomy of freedom and slavery in rhetoric and rise of the United States of America has long been an enigma, a source of endless debate for scholars and citizens alike who wonder how a nation steeped in the ideals of republicanism could so easily subjugate and enslave an entire group of people. The Chesapeake region was home to America’s great statesmen, men who espoused ideals of freedom and liberty from tyranny. Yet at the same time, these men held hundreds of men, women, and children in conditions of lifelong bondage. How then did this dichotomy arise? The dangers posed by indentured servants that became freemen resulted in the development of a system of African-descended chattel slavery in the Chesapeake, a system whose creation and continuance was aided by a continuum of racial thinking and racial prejudice aimed at Africans in Virginia.

American History can be a complex subject to understand; its hard to understand when someone tries to explain a story to you when you weren’t there. Events throughout time would be changed or learned differently if it weren’t for autobiographies. I believe that autobiographies are very important when it comes to American History. Since American History could be very difficult to understand at once, so autobiographies help break down personal story of certain people who lived through their specific time period and tell the story they saw through their own eyes. I believe that American History is so accurate because of autobiographies. Slavery, in my opinion, is the most studied and learned event or time period in American History because people were treated so badly and it was “normal,” it was acceptable. These slaves lived and worked in very harsh conditions. I believe the only reason why we know so much about how bad slaves were treated is because of three autobiographies, Incidents in the Life of a Slave by Harriet Jacob, Autobiography of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, who had a huge impact during the times of slavery, and Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. Because of these three autobiographies historians can accurately explain how bad slavery was.

The article that I chose is from an organization called Free the Slaves. Kevin Bales, Peggy Callahan, and Jolene Smith are the founders of Free the Slaves. They all joined this foundation because they wanted to make a difference in this world. Free the Slaves was born in 2000. It was originally the sister organization of Anti-Slavery International. Even though the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in America, it is still legal in other countries such as Haiti, Congo, Ghana, India and Nepal. Migrants come from poor countries into wealthy ones, some traffickers trick the migrants into thinking that they are labor recruiters and the migrants are taken in to be slaves. Free the Slaves say that slavery start in 6800 B.C. and is still going on today.