Chattel Slavery

Another important characteristic of the Reconstruction after the civil war was the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Its responsibilities according to Foner (2014) were related with social work, “ Bureau agents were supposed to establish schools, provide aid to the poor and aged, settle disputes between whites and blacks and among the freedpeople, and secure for former slaves and white Unionists equal treatment before the courts” (p. 562) . Still, the Bureau lasted only until 1870, but made many achievements helping the black community.

Following the Civil War, America was in shambles. There were many groups with strong, conflicting ideas of how things should be. However, most groups had one idea in common: reducing the rights of African Americans as much as possible. Freed slaves had very little freedom under the law, were treated like a lesser species by those around them, and faced dangerous environments everywhere they went. Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation may have legally freed slaves, but African Americans were barely more than paid slaves.

Chattel slavery, so named because people are treated as the personal property, chattels, of an owner and are bought and sold as commodities, is the original form of slavery. When taking these chattels across national borders it is referred to as Human Trafficking especially when these slaves provide sexual services.

Researchers found that more than ten thousand people are in forced labor across 90 US cities. These people are forced to work in sweatshops, clean homes, work on farms, or work as prostitutes or strippers. Many of these cases are accumulated in areas with large immigrant populations, like California, New York, and Florida. Most of the victims of forced labor are “imported” from 38 different countries. China, Mexico, and Vietnam top this list of countries (Gilmore 1).

As a result of the North’s victory in the civil war and the reconstruction period that followed, African-Americans were seemingly on the verge of being able to enjoy the freedom of no longer being slaves. During the reconstruction era, important pieces of legislature were written in order to protect the rights of the newly freed men. Those pieces of legislature were essentially trying to somehow transform former slave into free productive members of society. However, a number of disgruntled southerners took it as their duty to prevent African-American from being free of their former masters. They saw the northerners demand as an infringement of the South traditional values. Although the

Slavery was not a word that was unknown in the United States of America; the word was at the tip of almost everyone’s tongue, only it came with many names. After the civil war, slavery became more pronounced for the black people. The south then thought something ought to be done and passed laws called the black codes which begun the limitation of blacks’ rights and separated them from the whites; white supremacy began. Before, these laws would have been unnecessary because most of the black people were slaves and they were already segregated in public places like schools and theatres. In 1866, Congress did not like this and they responded to these laws by putting a stop to it. Republicans had managed to begin reconstruction on the society and understand the black community. But in 1877 things took a turn for the worse when the Democratic parties recovered control and stopped the progress of reconstruction. This in turn caused the reverse of all the progress made in the past few years to understand the black community; they lost their rights to hold political seats, vote and generally participate as though they were members of the community. Slowly but surely, the south started to restore their racially unfair laws. The aim of the laws? To ensure segregation and alienation of the black community. One of the main powers taken away was the right to vote and they did this by imposing poll taxes, having expensive fees to be paid at the voting booths and

With the Union victory in the Civil War in 1865, millions of slaves were given their freedom. Although these millions of slaves are now free, the rebuilding on the South during the Reconstruction introduced many obstacles. These obstacles include sharecropping, tenant farming, the “black codes”, and not to forget the lack of education and rights African Americans had at the time. Sharecropping is consisted of a slave renting land from a white man and having to give up a portion of their crops at the end of each year. The black codes were basically laws against what type of labor African Americans can be given. In the state of South Carolina, blacks were only able to work as farmers or servants; the same jobs these free people worked as slaves. After decades of slavery, blacks were still under the control of the white people due to lack of education and rights.

Slavery was like an addiction that the south could not break. Although it provided economic benefits to both the north and the south, the addiction or “curse” bound the people to the downfalls of slavery as well. Slavery created an oligarchy of which a small aristocracy of slave-owners would dominate political, economic, and social affairs of both blacks and whites. The institutions negative impact on the South, and even the entire nation would eventually lead to a great tragedy: the civil war.

The emancipation of slaves in the southern US and the after effects of the Civil War caused General Sherman to, in January 1865, issue Special Field Order Number 15. Thousands of former slaves were basically refugees, having no jobs, homes or property. Many slaves thought erroneously that after they were freed they would be given the land on which they worked. This didn’t happen and they were turned out on their own. Order Number 15 was issued as a response to the refugee/slave issue. 400,000 acres along the South Carolina, Georgia and Florida coasts was set aside to be given to Freedmen. The area was to be populated by blacks only and by a government made up those peoples. The allocation of land was to be not more than 40 acres of tillable land per person or family, self-governed and self-ruled. The decision to give land to the freed slaves came about by Sherman asking leaders of the Negro community, 20 Baptist and Methodist ministers, what did their people want. They said land.

The black codes, written on July 3, 1865, were “a series of discriminatory state laws” (Open Stax page 458) which made it illegal for African American men to be in town limits unless they had a written document from their employer saying that they were allowed, (Document B). These documents aimed to maintain the social and economic structure of the previous slave society in the absence of slavery itself. The black codes made strict regulations on when African American men were allowed to be in town without a white employer, including not letting them “be on the streets after 10 pm” and that they could not “live within the town limits” (Document B). The black codes aimed to reverse the effects of the 14th amendment by allowing them to own land but only under strict guidelines. In Document C, it states that “you all are not free yet and will not be until Congress sits” meaning that African Americans were not viewed as freedmen by Southerners, but still as their slaves because Congress did not enforce the 13th and 14th amendments. The black codes also influenced white men to beat and shoot any black men or women that tried to escape the South. This was cause because white plantation owners did not want to lose their workers because then they would have to pay a significantly higher wage to any other workers. The black codes also forced freedmen and women to sign contracts saying that they would only work for one employer, making it difficult for any man to raise enough money to buy their own land. As the book states. “blacks could not positively influence wages and conditions by choosing to work for the employer who gave them the best terms” (Openstax pg 459). These contracts lowered the competition between plantation owners so they were not influenced to raise wages based on other owners. The black codes deprived African Americans of their rights to vote, serve on juries, carry or

It is commonly believed that after the onset of the Civil War, Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation was the key driver to freeing the slaves of the south. After the Civil War, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Constitutional amendments were passed which aided newly freed slaves in being equally treated under the law, or so the story goes. The fact of the matter is that even after the Emancipation Proclamation and after the amendments, slavery in the United States was still “legal” and not only that, but it took on a much different form. The institution of slavery changed from having the direct enslavement of blacks, to the United States legal and prison system enslaving blacks. Yet, the enslavement itself was changed as black convicts

Former slaves did not enjoy equal civil rights, to vote or even owning a property which could help them to sustain this newly liberty. Freedom could be defined differently by blacks and whites considering their own experiences; whereas white people wanted to reach highest ranks in a community, ex-slaves only wanted to have fundamental rights Americans already benefited from. William T- Sherman issued his Special Field Order No. 15 in 1865, confiscating some territories and redistributing them. “By June, some 40,000 freed slaves had been settled on Sherman land” (Foner: 587), ensuring them to entail the economic independence they considered crucial to achieve authentic freedom. It is hypocritical how now they decided to give captives freedom yet operating with new labour forces composed of indentured servants form India and

The seventh section of these black codes allowed for the return of freed blacks to their employers if they were to quit “the service of his or her employer before the expiration of his or her term of service without good cause.” What a blacks’ term of service and what defined just cause for ending that term of service, would likely be left up to the employer, creating a system which virtually defined slavery itself. Since blacks were required to be employed, this meant that they could be held in slave-like conditions to white employers.

Under the chattel slave system the slave status was imposed on children of the enslaved at births. The slaves were actual property who could be bought, sold, traded or inherited and do not have personal freedom or rights to decide their own lives. This is the slavery that the Europeans introduced. It was supported and made legal by European governments and monarchs. Europeans divided the land into five coasts: Upper Guinea Coast, Ivory, Coast, Lower Guinea Coast, the Slave Coast, the Bight of Benin , Gabon and Angola. The person who was enslaved is considered as dying because from the moment he was enslaved everything that was his passed to his master, including the power of life and death.

Slavery is morally objectionable. We all know this. We’ve heard the stories about the fugitive slave act, middle passage, emancipation proclamation, and we’ve all seen the famous propaganda image of the Slave Ship Brooks, an image that depicts a “slaver” (slave ship) filled to the brim with 454 slaves packed into its small hull. But have you ever heard the stories from slaves themselves? Have you ever had someone make those numbers, nine million here, six thousand there, and so on and so forth, come to life? That is what Marcus Rediker did in his award-winning book, The Slave Ship: A Human History.