Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery

They were used to hard labor and they had nowhere to flee to once transferred to the colonies. The settlers themselves began to feel that they could not endure without African workers. Until the 18th century, the impression of Africans was mostly positive. They were agriculturalist and stock-farmers; they had businesses, arts, governments, and trading. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the interpretation of Africans started to shift drastically. The leading cause of this alteration was the growth of a prominent antislavery movement that spread and gained popularity during the Revolutionary Era both in Europe and in the United States. As a repercussion proslavery groups would create radical arguments for justifying the institution. Concentrating on physical differences, they hid behind the concept of the innate inferiority of Africans and their naturally-given properties for slavery. Thomas Jefferson would go on to publish his highly discriminatory book “Notes on The State of Virginia”, consequently his influence would prompt the writings to be widely acknowledged, thus setting white supremacy in stone and sewing it further into

In 1791 Benjamin Banneker, the son of former slaves, astronomer, and almanac author, wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson, in a courteous but forceful manner, challenging the framer of the Declaration of Independence and secretary of state on the topics of race and freedom. He touches on the topics of the way blacks were treated and seen by the common white American citizen and how it is an injustice. In his letter, Banneker uses ethos, logos, pathos, repetition, syntax, and juxtaposition to sympathize with Jefferson about former hardships to perhaps reach common ground.

As we already noted – in the 1800s expediency of slavery was disputed. While industrial North almost abandoned bondage, by the early 19th century, slavery was almost exclusively confined to the South, home to more than 90 percent of American blacks (Barney W., p. 61). Agrarian South needed free labor force in order to stimulate economic growth. In particular, whites exploited blacks in textile production. This conditioned the differences in economic and social development of the North and South, and opposing viewpoints on the social structure. “Northerners now saw slavery as a barbaric relic from the past, a barrier to secular and Christian progress that contradicted the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and degraded the free-labor aspirations of Northern society” (Barney W., p. 63).

In the article, Jefferson initially shows a concern for the African Americans. He expresses emancipating the slaves. He also suggested sending them to another country. Jefferson speaks on how all men are created equal and how slavery is not right.

During the eighteenth century, a young America was fighting for the liberty, freedom, and equal rights while the second largest economy in America was the practice of slavery. While many middle-class Americans appreciated the values which were being fought for, they began to realize the stark contrast between the values which America was fighting for and the values which slavery supported. Some of these Americans, who wanted a say in the foundation of America, reached out to the founding fathers calling for change. One such American calling for change was Benjamin Banneker, a freed African-American slave who taught himself calculus as well as published his own almanac. Banneker, upset with the inferior description which Jefferson associates with African Americans, wrote a letter which argued against Jefferson’s claims through the implementation of various rhetorical strategies. By varying tones throughout the letter, providing accounts of personal experience as evidence, as well as using Jefferson’s own arguments against him, Banneker’s letter persuades Jefferson that his ideas about black inferiority are false; thus, black people should gain all of the rights which are entitled to white men accordingly.

Jefferson was educated under a doctrine that sought to perpetuate the slaves’ place in society as inferior. He argues that “the whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading subjugation on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it: for man is an imitative animal.”

The philosophies of Thomas Jefferson are often at odds with one another. On one hand, he looks to enlightenment ideals and writes of natural rights and equalities for all men in his drafting of the Declaration of Independence (more on Jefferson’s and the Enlightenment can be found here). He also proposes legislature that prohibits the spread of slavery to new states. However, his role as a slave owner contradicts his philosophy on liberty in a profound way. His book Notes on the State of Virginia represents the depth of his thought against black people as an equal race to whites, and he includes a breakdown for the reasons that he believes integration is not a viable alternative to the problem of slavery (the full content can be read half way down the page here). Then, there are the facts surrounding his personal relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings and the children he fathered with her. This contradiction of attitude and philosophy is directly related to Jefferson’s cultural influences having grown up surrounded by slavery as an acceptable way of life. He ultimately falls back on society’s view of black people as inferior to justify his way of life, and calm his fears of the possible violent ramifications of emancipating his slaves (this is a reference to slave revolts). For more on this topic see my complete work here.

Jefferson was firm in his belief that blacks were inferior to whites. Nevertheless he admits some educational accomplishments when he singles out Phillis Wheatley. However, he casts doubt on her accomplishments. He used whatever weaknesses he found in her work to support the notion that blacks could not produce poetry.

At the beginning of the book, Jefferson sees himself as powerless in a white-dominated society. Following the Antebellum period in the South, laws made “separate but equal” legal and created the societal view that the black man is unintelligible, uncivilized, and only three-fifths of a man (Brown). The author can relate to Jefferson and uses him as a symbol for the oppressed people because he has also felt in trapped in a predominantly white society (Gaines). Jefferson tells Grant that he is “just an old hog they fattening up to kill for Christmas” (83). He views himself as just an animal waiting to be slaughtered. He cries when he thinks about the stereotypes that have been set by the society; however, the readers witness a reflectional moment when Jefferson says, “manners are for the living” (130). He is reflecting upon how his dignity has been taken away. He only eats his food “like a hog

The “new” negro no longer embodied “old” characteristics that defined a black man. Society had always taught a black man how to act; however, now he was adapting to the world. Locke declared that ‘the Old Negro’ had long become more of a myth than a man” (Locke, 1). A furthered and detailed definition of an “Old Negro” was that he “was a creature of moral debating historical controversy” (Locke, 1). The four

In Ralph Ellison’s What America Would Be Like Without Blacks the author explains the roles of the black persona and the impact that they had on America under a political light. African-Americans were the underlying source for declaration of war, demand of law enforcement and creation of organizations in the United States. The south was not in agreement to the idea of a free black man though, the north wanted to stop the expansion of slavery beyond it’s borders. In the south there was a need for slaves to work on the plantations and on the fields. Seeing as though, slaves were the ones who kept their owner’s homes up and in good shape while the northern states had no use for slaves because the need for labor was more based on industry rather than agricultural aspects such as farming, and cotton picking. Climatically, this is

So many people wanted slaves, especially in the South. They had more farms than they could handle on their own. Northern owners wanted them because they would have to do less work. Very few owners treated their slaves nicely and paid them to do work around the house. They would not be treated like family but would get treated a whole lot better than your “typical slave.” Those kinds of circumstances occurred more in the Northern states than the Southern states.

In Jefferson's own words, he speaks of his own observations of blacks Jefferson speaks of the slaves ability to “ be induced by the slightest amusement to sit up till midnight… knowing he must be out with the first dawn of morning.”. Though this a characteristic that displays wonder and creativity to some, to Jefferson and many others it is just evidence showing how simple minded blacks are and has implications that blacks are better suited to captivity than whites. He also shows some admiration towards blacks, though not without criticism, “They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought”*. Even though Jefferson is giving praise to a quality of blacks, his racism and narrowed vision encourages him to chastise their actions and insult their capabilities. Jefferson maintains throughout his life that blacks are incapable of thinking critically and unable be free among the American

This tolerant attitude led to a wide range of “race classification.” According to how much “white” a slave had, their value in the eyes of society increased. Slaves could be black, octaroon or mulatto to name a few. Thus this led to a classification based on one’s degree of white blood. In the United States no such classes existed. If a slave was born to a black mother, that slave was black. In essence, Latin America judged based upon the degree of “blackness” while the South saw only two races, black or white. Outward appearance, the color of the father or anything else deviated the classification in the United States. It has been said, half-facetiously, that Southerners are color blind, in the sense that individuals, despite their racial composition, are considered to be either white or black, while Latin Americans recognized degrees of blackness and whiteness.

The black freedom struggle has not yet come to an end – there are still prejudiced and racist radicals that try to negotiate white supremacy and dominance in order to prevent the blacks from their long wait for equality. Consequently, the movement has progressed very sluggishly in the past few centuries. Nevertheless, the campaign for equal rights has led to the triumph over slavery and has led to the accrual of suffrage rights. However, this is still not enough, not after centuries of enslavement, lynching, segregation, and discrimination. Oftentimes, there is still no justice in court houses, especially when black people are accused and convicted, even for the simplest of crimes – as compared to the white and powerful who are charged for heinous misconducts and get away scratch free. Hence, throughout the period of the Blacks’ long fight for freedom and equality, several Black intellectuals have come front with ideas that could administer better treatment for their people. A good strategy to encourage the black populace to fight for their freedom and their rights is by inverting popular ideas so that there is a clear distinction between the reasonable and unreasonable notions of equality and justice. Thus, it was not uncommon for these literati to undermine dominant discourses in order to bolster their own analyses. Among the discussed black intellectuals who inverted prevailing dissertations, three that stood out the most are Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, and