Essay On Slave Codes

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

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.

Slavery as a Cruel Institution Cruelty can be defined as an inhumane action done to an individual or group of people that causes either physical or mental harm. Slavery, at its very core, was a cruel and inhumane institution. From the idea behind it to the way that it was enforced, it degraded the lives of human beings and forbade the basic liberties that every man deserves under the Constitution of the United States. Three major areas where cruelty was especially prevalent were in the slaves working conditions, living conditions, and loss of fundamental freedoms. Working conditions for slaves were about as bad as can possibly be imagined. Slaves worked from dawn till dusk and sometimes even longer. Solomon Northrup describes his

Slave as defined by the dictionary means that a slave is a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another; a bond servant. So why is it that every time you go and visit a historical place like the Hampton-Preston mansion in Columbia South Carolina, the Lowell Factory where the mill girls work in Massachusetts or the Old town of Williamsburg Virginia they only talk about the good things that happened at these place, like such things as who owned them, who worked them, how they were financed and what life was like for the owners. They never talk about the background information of the lower level people like the slaves or servants who helped take care and run these places behind the scenes.

In this assignment I will be taking a further look into the history of slavery. When thinking of slavery the immediate thought that comes to mind is all the negative aspects of the system. Prior to this research, I was unaware of slave systems that were not based on the long labor hours and the torture of slaves. Granted, there were still forms of slavery that practiced these brutal rituals, where slaves were treated as animals and were malnourished. One prime example of this, is the book titled “Am I Not A Woman And A Sister”, looks at the history of a Bermudan slave named Mary Prince. Another example of slavery that will be incorporated in this paper will come from a source about a woman slave named Semsigul, born in Caucasus an area that

When black slavery first started in the United States, all the slaves were being imported from Africa. Slowly overtime slaves were being born in the United States instead of solely being brought from Africa. The birth rate of the slaves was not high enough to depend on the reproduction of slaves in the south though. This resulted in a combination of both American-born slaves and African-born slaves on plantations. Eventually, there was a division between the two groups of slaves in the Southern part of the United States.

In 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation declares “that all persons held as slaves with the confederate states are, and henceforward shall be free”. It was not until 1865 when the Civil War ended and the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. As a replacement of slavery, whites created Whites in the southern states enacted the Black Codes. Black Codes were thought to uphold a social caste system, reflecting the racial hierarchy of slavery. Slavery was abolished, however it still serves as a form of punishment for those found guilty of a crime. In the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) lies a description of the policy: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to the jurisdiction.” A major contributor to blacks becoming criminalized and, in turn, enslaved again were laws that penalized the homeless and unemployed. When black people traveled without proper documents that verified their employment or a home address, they would often be charged with trespassing (Browne-Marshall 2007). As newly freed people, most had no income to pay the consequential fines, thus, they would become prisoners and their enslavement would be legally justified.

Former slaves were not allowed any weapons or access to the town, among other things. The codes stretched the law enough so that African-Americans were even forced to be “in the service of some white person or former owner”, and could not do many things without their express permission. (Document B) These laws were put into place by white men, dependent on the African-American’s continued labor for their farms and plantations to thrive. As the slave trade had greatly enhanced the economy of the South, white landowners were not eager to give up the majority of their workforce. Although legally, former slaves were considered free, the black codes forced them to stay in place and obey unfair laws. Without the word slavery ever mentioned, the black codes represented much of the South’s attitude towards African-Americans, destroying their personal rights as

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

In 1865, the American government successfully passed the thirteenth amendment: ending the institution of slavery in America. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The thirteenth amendment opened up economic opportunity for African Americans as slaves were no longer owned by someone else. However, not long after the thirteenth amendment was passed, former slaveholders and southerners created the black codes. Black Codes were a set of laws intended to restrict African American freedoms, causing them to go into low wage labor. A black code passed in the state of South Carolina stated, “To do farm work, a black in South Carolina had to have a written contract, attested to by white witnesses; failure to obtain one before commencing to work was a misdemeanor

Slavery has a lot of effects on African Americans today. History of slavery is marked for civil rights. Indeed, slavery began with civilization. With farming’s development, war could be taken as slavery. Slavery that lives in Western go back 10,000 years to Mesopotamia. Today, most of them move to Iraq, where a male slave had to focus on cultivation. Female slaves were as sexual services for white people also their masters at that time, having freedom only when their masters died.

Despite being held at the bottom of the social pyramid for throughout colonial times, the labor of the colonies would prove to be far from useless. While vast, open land was turned into numerous plantations in the colonies by rich planters, the plantations could not purely be run by their owners, creating a great need for labor. This lack of labor would eventually be solved through the use of African slaves, but after the first shipment of slaves to Jamestown in 1619, few were purchased due to high prices for an extended amount of time. The planters, however, would be able to fulfill their need for labor through English indentured servants. Through the use of indentured servants, basically free labor was provided to land owners, while

Prior to the publication of any slave narrative, African Americans had been represented by early historians’ interpretations of their race, culture, and situation along with contemporary authors’ fictionalized depictions. Their persona was often “characterized as infantile, incompetent, and...incapable of achievement” (Hunter-Willis 11) while the actions of slaveholders were justified with the arguments that slavery would maintain a cheap labor force and a guarantee that their suffering did not differ to the toils of the rest of the “struggling world” (Hunter-Willis 12). The emergence of the slave narratives created a new voice that discredited all former allegations of inferiority and produced a new perception of resilience and ingenuity.

“SLAVERY was abolished 150 years ago, right? While it is true that slavery is illegal almost everywhere on earth, the fact is there are more slaves today than there ever were…” Despite the grim reality described in this quote, I believe Robert Alan successfully undermines a common misconception held by Americans, both young and old. Although we are brought up thinking that Abraham Lincoln with his Emancipation Proclamation along with the Civil War Amendments brought an end to the enemy known as slavery, in today’s society, however, that is sadly not the case. The harsh reality is that this problem never truly

The dynamic of the relationships between slaves and their master was one which was designed to undermine and demean the slave. The master exercised complete authority and dominion over his slaves and