In the beginning I was disillusioned and disheartened. I am a proud and patriotic American and I could not reconcile my love of country and admiration for the Founding Fathers with the fact that so many of
them owned people who had been kidnapped from their homes in Africa, or were descended from people who had been kidnapped.
Because it wasn’t just Franklin. Decade of our first twelve presidents owned slaves, the notable exceptions being John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams. Interestingly, Abigail Adams grew up in a slave-owning family. Her father, Rev. William Smith, owned at least two African Americans: Pheby and Tom. Aaron Burr was a slave owner, as were generals Philip Schuyler and Horatio Gates, first chief justice of the United States John Jay, the famous artist Charles Wilson Peale, and one-third of the members of the Continental Congress.
In 1776, while the rhetoric of freedom and liberty was thick in the gentle wind of Boston, Providence, New York, Albany, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Williamsburg, and Charleston, fully 20 percent of the population of the newly christened United American States — one in five — were owned as property and sold like
Cows. Uncovering this bewildered me and got me queasy to my tummy.
As I researched I began to discover my main role, Isabel, whispering to me. She was chained between two countries. The
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My melancholy about the vicious effects of slavery lifted as I realized that people like Isabel and her friend Curzon were the real Americans, the quiet ones who fought battles every day and grew harder in the facial expression of opposition. They were willing to gamble everything for liberty, recognizing that it is more honorable to die fighting than to be in chains. Merely it is best to dwell free, in a world where we are all valued, in the world that our Founding Fathers and Mothers dreamed of, even if they weren’t hardy enough to make the journey in their
America’s history will be scarred forever by the evils of slavery which once existed here. Slaves lived lives of pain and hardship. But some, like the slave and later abolitionist Frederick Douglass, rose up from the tribulations of slavery and led the way for progress and change in America. In his autobiography “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass tells his inspiring yet harrowing story of his life as a slave in Maryland and his escape to freedom in New York and later Massachusetts, where he eventually became an abolitionist. Douglass masterfully uses ethos, pathos, and logos to craft his powerful narrative that exposes to his audience, the American people, the horrors, absurdity, and hypocrisy of slavery.
Not so long ago few Americans spoke of slavery – which was swept under the rug until the civil rights movement in the 1950s. The shame of slavery gradually rose to public consciousness over the last five decades. Now the topic appears everywhere, in movies, television documentaries and academia. Nearly every major museum has mounted an exhibition on slavery. This issue has become an integral part of the foundation for understanding America’s past. With specific attributes, slavery is distinct from all other forms of oppression, giving it a unique place in human history. Many consider Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) as the best among anti-slavery propaganda that appeared with increasing frequency during the years preceding the Civil War. The primary reason of its appeal is the unsurpassed clarity of Douglass’ writing, which displays his superior sensitivity and intellectual capacity as he addresses the woeful irony of the existence of slavery in a Christian, democratic
Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass both wrote narratives that detailed their lives as slaves in the antebellum era. Both of these former slaves managed to escape to the North and wanted to expose slavery for the evil thing it was. The accounts tell equally of depravity and ugliness though they are different views of the same rotten institution. Like most who managed to escape the shackles of slavery, these two authors share a common bond of tenacity and authenticity. Their voices are different—one is timid, quiet, and almost apologetic while the other one is loud, strong, and confident—but they are both authentic. They both also through out the course of their narratives explain their desires to be free from the horrible practice of slavery.
Slavery was an embarrassing time in America’s history. In 2016, slavery has become a distant memory. It’s easy for us to admit that slavery is wrong but, in Frederick Douglass’s time no one thought that it was. Frederick Douglass went on to write books and give speeches in hope that one day all slaves would be free. In the book called “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, he attempts to shine light on the American Slave system in the 1800’s.
The Civil War caused a shift in the ways that many Americans thought about slavery and race. Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over helps readers understand how soldiers viewed slavery during the Civil War. The book is a narrative, which follows the life of Union soldier who is from Massachusetts. Chandra Manning used letters, diaries and regimental newspapers to gain an understanding of soldiers’ views of slavery. The main character, Charles Brewster has never encountered slaves. However, he believes that Negroes are inferior. He does not meet slaves until he enters the war in the southern states of Maryland and Virginia. Charles Brewster views the slaves first as contraband. He believes the slaves are a burden and should be sent back to their owners because of the fugitive slave laws. Union soldiers focus shifted before the end of the war. They believed slavery was cruel and inhumane, expressing strong desire to liberate the slaves. As the war progresses, soldiers view slaves and slavery in a different light. This paper, by referring to the themes and characters presented in Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over, analyzes how the issue of slavery and race shifted in the eyes of white Union soldiers’ during Civil War times.
Slaves’ future lives all depended on who would “win” them and buy them. For Douglass, it was unbearable to observe human beings cry in desperation and pain. Frederick’s mistress was the only person, besides himself, that was able to experience pure dismay; causing them to ache together and understand the terror.
Unfortunately, Presidents were not the only Government officials who possessed views on rights and slavery. Congress officials along with the Supreme court also rejected blacks "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." Furthermore, George Washington was one of the first to own slaves, along with the highest amount owned in the nation, with an alarming 317. I only guessed about 10 slaves and I was way off. However, even after slavery had ended it was noted that many Presidents thereafter would still exhibit radical prejudice. Further, Thomas Jefferson owned the second largest amount of slaves with a total of 237, he was also the first president to have had a slave child born in the White House. Unfortunately, with Slaves also came punishment, more common of these were whipping or beating and chaining or handcuffing. Despite the cruel means of punishment all three of the U.S. presidents with the highest amount of slaves owned also are on U.S. currency. In addition to, replacing the face on the U.S. $20 bill, from Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman, this is something I did not know.
Slavery during the colonial period of America is a regrettable memory for the nation. The lack of freedom, captivity, and visual imagery of chains stokes the fire in many American hearts. Paine uses slavery to incite the emotions of the readers. He writes, ¨But ‘to bind us in all cases whatsoever’, and if being bound in that manner is not slavery, then there is not such a thing as slavery upon earth” (94). Paine uses a previous decree issued by Britain to analyze its impacts on American freedom, a cornerstone of the infant nation, to support a continued fighting effort. Pathos is expertly used in the case of slavery to extend Paine’s writing
During the 1840s, America saw increasingly attractive settlements forming between the North and the South. The government tried to keep the industrial north and the agricultural south happy, but eventually the issue of slavery became too big to handle, no matter how many treaties or compromises were formed. Slavery was a huge issue that unraveled throughout many years of American history and was one of the biggest contributors leading up to the Civil War (notes, Fall 2015). Many books have been written over the years about slavery and the brutality of the life that many people endured. In “A Slave No More”, David Blight tells the story about two men, John M. Washington (1838-1918) and Wallace Turnage (1846-1916), struggling during American slavery. Their escape to freedom happened during America’s bloodiest war among many political conflicts, which had been splitting the country apart for many decades. As Blight (2007) describes, “Throughout the Civil War, in thousands of different circumstances, under changing policies and redefinitions of their status, and in the face of social chaos…four million slaves helped to decide what time it would be in American History” (p. 5). Whether it was freedom from a master or overseer, freedom from living as both property and the object of another person’s will, or even freedom to make their own decisions and control their own life, slaves wanted a sense of independence. According to Blight (2007), “The war and the presence of Union armies
Many slaves on the plantation had been drafted by the confederates to fight everyone of them have not been heard from since. One day nathaniel came by to talk to me when I was picking cotton when he announced that he had just been drafted to fight. I had never seen Nathaniel in so much despair. He was was so sad because he had to fight against his own freedom.”
Harriet Jacobs, a black woman who escapes slavery, illustrates in her biography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) that death is preferable to life as a slave due to the unbearable degradation of being regarded as property, the inevitable destruction of slave children’s innocence, and the emotional and physical pain inflicted by slave masters. Through numerous rhetorical strategies such as allusion, comparison, tone, irony, and paradoxical expression, she recounts her personal tragedies with brutal honesty. Jacobs’s purpose is to combat the deceptive positive portrayals of slavery spread by southern slave holders through revealing the true magnitude of its horrors. Her intended audience is uninvolved northerners, especially women, and she develops a personal and emotionally charged relationship with them.
Slavery has always been viewed as one of the most scandalous times in American history. It may seem that the entire institution of slavery has been categorized as white masters torturing defenseless African Americans. However, not every slave has encountered this experience. In this essay I will focus on the life of two former slaves Harriet Smith and Mr. George Johnson and how in some cases their experience were similar as well as different in other aspects. The negative aspects of slave life were unquestionably heinous and for that reason especially, it is also important to also reveal the lives of slaves whom were treated fairly and with respect.
The experiences, memories and treatment in any situation are viewed upon differently between a man and a woman. Obvious in the case of slavery, the two sexes were treated differently and so therefore their recollections of such events were-different. In the following short essay, we look closely at the perspective of the female slave, Harriet Jacobs in “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, and respectfully compared to that of a man slave, Frederick Douglass in “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”. Although both experienced their freedoms despite facing great
Early American Literature reflects many conflicting differences in the presentation of slavery during that time period. Through the two chosen texts, the reader is presented with two different perspectives of slavery; Frederick Douglass’s narrative provides a look at a slave’s life through the eyes if a slave while Benito Cereno showcases the tale of a slave uprising from the viewpoint of the slave owner.. Benito Cereno’s work shows the stereotypical attitude towards African-American slaves and the immorality of that outlook according to Douglass’s narrative. Cereno portrays the typical white slave owner of his time, while Douglass’ narrative shows the thoughts of the slaves. The two stories together show that white Americans are oblivious to the ramifications and overall effects of slavery. These texts assist a moralistic purpose in trying to open up America’s eyes to the true nature of slavery by revealing it’s inhumanity and depicting the cruelty that was allowed.
Hughes’s descriptive writing prompts the reader to visualize strong images of oppression in America. The speaker provides an image of an extremely suppressed group of people in the statement: “I am the red man driven from the land” (Hughes 21). This simple phrase creates a picture of the Native Americans being driven from their lands and forced to live on undesirable land, and, as a result, this invites the reader to acknowledge their severe oppression. Similarly, the speaker mentions the people who were “torn from Black Africa’s strand” (Hughes 50). This generates an image of boats packed with a depressing amount of broken people, waiting to be sold into slavery. These visual examples portray the severity of the situation that many Americans found themselves in. These