Law and Slave Identity in Dred and Pudd'nhead Wilson Essay

Although today equality is one of the main aspects of the American government, during the foundation period groups that were not given many freedoms used their rights to fight for greater equality. In 1977, African-American activists signed the Slave Petition for Freedom in an attempt to free slaves and give them freedoms. In America, slaves were treated very badly under the control of white aristocrats. Slaves were put under very strict guidelines and if those instructions were not met, they would be punished. Slaves were “Unjustly Dragged by the hand of cruel Power from their Derest (Dearest) friends and sum (some) of them Even torn from the Embraces of their tender Parents” and “Deprived of Every social privilege of Every thing Requisit

Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Contending Forces (1900), characters articulate views on race problem, full identity and citizenship. Baym (2008) describes Mark Twain’s The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) as: “a dark and troubling view of the nineteenth century American values in a Mississippi river town of the 1830’s and centered on the switching of two babies born on the same day-one the result of miscegenation, the other the legitimate son of a white slave owner. Twain’s purpose for writing this story is to reveal the absurdities of slavery and its victims and victimizers alike-the underserved self-hate of slaves and the unearned pride of whites. The way in which Twain portrays the twinning of law and customs in sustaining the institution of slavery indicates his despair over prospects for true racial equality, a despair supported by the realities of Jim Crow laws and the escalation of lynching in the post Reconstruction Period (p. 96).

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

Legally speaking, the constitution offered numerous arguments for slavery and clearly protected the protected the people’s rights to own slaves. The 3/5 clause clearly states that slaves are subordinate being who belong enslaved. This compromise also exposes the fact that slaves were thought of as property. Because the slaves are the property of whitest they are protected by the V amendment which states

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.

The documentary Slavery by Another Name reveals an astonishing fact that slavery in America went on until World War II even with the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Based on Douglas A. Blackmon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book titled Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, the film depicts how new forms of forced labor and slavery emerged in America. This was indeed a contributing factor to the Civil war, especially to the southern whites.

The phrase “art imitates life” can be used to describe many works of literature. Authors and the stories they write are often influenced by the changing world around them along with the evolution of new perspectives and ways of thinking regarding a subject. While this may sound simply like a common literary trope, it is of great importance and significance in many genres of literature. None has this been more apparent than in both the anti-slavery and women’s empowerment movement of the early to mid-1800s. Two major influence authors in their respective subjects, Frederick Douglass and Fanny Fern, were heavily influenced by the changing societal trends of the time of which they expressed through their writing. Douglass’s speech in particular “What to a Slave is the 4th of July?” was heavily influenced by Douglass’s own personal experience as a slave as well as the rising prominence of the abolitionist movement in the United States. By referencing the contradictory nature of the Constitution relegating personal freedoms exclusively to white, property owning males, Douglass bluntly references the systematic inequalities faced by people of color in the United States. Never would the works of an African American author, especially one challenging the established institution of slavery, gain so much attention if not for the anti-slavery movement and shifting perspectives surrounding it.

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.

Slavery was held out until 1865, but during this time period abolitionist are trying to do anything to stop slavery. The reason being is because slavery wasn’t slavery anymore. Slavery was beginning to become more advance due to technological innovation. The Abolitionist are people that were against slavery and would boycott anything to get rid of slavery. The argument that the Abolitionist had during this time period was its conditions as violating Christian’s principals and rights to equality. The abolishment of slavery was a significant change in the history of slavery, because of all the technological innovation that was making the slaves jobs easier. In the American Revolution war slavery played a role in which they began a sequence of abolishing slavery. Slavery played a role in the American revolutionary war to begin to grant themselves freedom, liberty, and rights. Slavery changed in 1808 due to a bill that abolished the slave trade. The westward expansion divided the nation because the north and the south weren’t coming into agreement of change going on in the United States. The abolitionist had a plan and that plan was to abolish all slavery throughout the whole United States. These are some of the main things that would lead to the abolishment of 1865.

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

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.

In American history, every event and person plays a part in the future. For example, rich plantation owners helped America advance their economy. However, that would not have been at all possible without the help of their slaves. The time and institution of slavery is a time of historical remembrance. It played a primary role during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The treatment, labor conditions, and personal stories of these slaves’ treatment and labor conditions are all widely discussed around the world to this day.

Identity changed the United States throughout time with the use of slavery. For example, in Slavery’s Legacy, stated that cotton and slaves were valuable and it needed harvesting which slaves could do so the plantation drove the demand for more slaves which also caused the civil war. Another example is the civil war which is a defining event that shaped modern American identity. Also, during the Jim Crow era relegating blacks to second class citizenship to assuage white Americans that even with slavery abolished African Americans should still know their place. Another is a Harvard professor who was wrongfully arrested for trying to enter his own house while black. And like the rise of the Ku Klux Klan during the reconstruction era to continue

Singer ’s theory that people’s moral standard shifts over time is useful because it sheds light on the problem of Woodrow Wilson’s imperfection. I agree with this point of view. First, in 1502, slavery began for about 300 years before the Spanish brought slavery to the U.S. and thousands of slaves died. Slavery eventually was overthrown after the Civil War in U.S. In the present time, slavery is impossible because people’s standard has been changed. The slaveholders were not condemned as the moral standard was different. People cannot judge a slaveholder now because the phenomenon of slavery was common in the past. Second, in early China, people could be punished very seriously and tortured to death even if they did small mistakes to the government.