Simon Legree Analysis

“State laws made him liable to arrest, fine, and imprisonment for charges of contract of fraud, vagrancy, and other allegations” (Deborah, et al. 475). In other words, this was a complex system in which a black man would arrested for not working. He was ordered to pay a fine that he could not afford to pay and incarcerate. A third party, usually plantation owner, would pay his fine and hire him until he could pay off the fine himself. However, the peonage would force to work for the debtor as long as possible. To keep peonage working long, the debtors/ owners usually cheated peonage and forced them into a pattern of cyclical debt. Although the amount of money which peonage owned the owners was not big, but it always grew larger instead of smaller years after years. If he ran away, he could be chased and killed. In reality, the labor contracts were difficult to break for most peonage couldn’t read or write. Therefore, those contracts were favored the owner’s interests. As a result, peonage are forced to stay against their will,

The Black slaves after receiving this indoctrination shall carry on and will become self-refueling and self-generating for HUNDREDS of years, maybe THOUSANDS. Don’t forget, you must pitch the OLD black male vs. the YOUNG black male, and the YOUNG black male against the OLD black male. You must use the DARK skin slaves vs. the LIGHT skin slaves, and the LIGHT skin slaves vs. the DARK skin slaves. You must use the FEMALE vs. the MALE, and the MALE vs. the FEMALE. You must also have white servants and overseers [who] distrust all Blacks. But it is NECESSARY THAT YOUR SLAVES TRUST AND DEPEND ON US. THEY MUST LOVE, RESPECT AND TRUST ONLY US. Gentlemen, these kits are your keys to control. Use them. Have your wives and children use them, never miss an opportunity. IF USED INTENSELY FOR ONE YEAR, THE SLAVES THEMSELVES WILL REMAIN PERPETUALLY DISTRUSTFUL. Thank you gentlemen.” Willie Lynch Letter The Making of a Slave (2009)

“You've always stood it out agin me: now, I'll conquer ye or kill ye!-one or t' other. I'll count every drop of blood there is in you, and take 'em, one by one, till ye give up!” (Uncle Tom's Cabin, page 467) This quote was said by an evil master named Simon Legree to Uncle Tom. From this one quote, I could feel the intense anger and hatred against slaves. Moreover, this is just coming from one person. Knowing that there were thousands of Simon Legree during the Civil War era can leave you flabbergasted.

The slaves did not have basic human rights. The slaves had to be sold to the white people. Frederick Douglass once said, “ I was about twelve or fourteen years old when I was sold, I was a boy then big enough to work. I had a brother named John and a cousin by the name of Brutus. Both of them were sold and about three weeks later, it came my turn. On the day I left home, everything was sad among the slaves. My mother and father sung and prayed over me and told me how to get along in the world (Doc. 1).” What Frederick Douglass was saying is that once you were sold, it is a big tragedy for your friends and family. You pretty much don't ever see them again(X1). Once the slave was bought that person was the property of

Now it might be said that it would be easier and more humane to free the slaves and pay them. But the answer for that is simple. Slaves are seen as Capital there is no need say in an economic downturn to get rid of slaves as there would be for paid workmen. To turn out a slave is to lose money. (Fitzhugh, Sociology, 1) Then there is the fact that a lot of Americans lower class white men are in poverty. They do not have enough food, enough clothing, or enough shelter. The condition of these people is worse than the slaves. Slaves are brought from the wild confines of Africa to live in comfort in America. (Fitzhugh, Sociology, 2) Slaves are hard workers, the are better at working in the climate of the south than those europeans that try and work the land. Sure it would be better to free them and pay them if we were in a place like england which has little land and lots of people. But in America it is opposite, there is tons of land and little people. If slaves are free what is to stop them from going and finding their own land? If that happens it will destroy the economy. It is better to have 1 plantation with 100 workers rather than have 100 plantations with 1 worker. The latter example will gain less income and the economy will fail destroying

To be a slave in the south back then was to suffer a deprivation of freedom so extreme as to be qualitatively distinct from all other forms of unfreedom. The master-slave relationship became violent to where slaves could not form any work or family relationship without the master approval. By law then the slaves could not make contracts, own property, or form legal partnership on his or her own. This does not mean that the master did not feed or support his slaves. “In the one, the end in view is the happiness of the youth; born to equal right with that governor, on whom the duty devolves of training the young to usefulness, in a station which he is afterwards to assume among freeman.(6) The end is the profit of the master, his security and the public safety; the subject, one doomed in his own person, and his posterity , to live without knowledge, and without the capacity to make anything his own, and to toil that another may reap the

Why would it matter if your master was rich or poor, you all are slaves their is no difference in the way that you are treated. You both are deemed as cattle, meaning that you are considered being less than a human being! “it was worth a half- cent to kill a "nigger," and a half-cent to bury one.” This quote evoked a lot of emotion,because if you sit and ponder on it they(slave masters) pay hundreds of dollars for them(slaves) and in return the slaves make hundred or thousands of dollars for their master(s). Even though, they pay money for them and go through a lot to retrieve the slaves they can be quickly replaced because of how quickly slaves are brought over from their home to the united states which makes the death of a slave equal nothing. "there is no flesh in his obdurate heart." This quote really gives you somewhat of an insight on how the slaves felt about a particular overseer who was merciless on the slaves, he was deemed as the worse overseer they had ever encountered many said that he was every where around every corner and under every tree. Everywhere they looked he was their waiting and watching

2. Pinedo 2 Slaves being transported to the South were usually ripped from their families and the surroundings they were familiar and comfortable with. These slaves then faced their new life at the plantation, a very different environment from what they were used to. They faced harder work, such as clearing trees and planting crops, than they had back in the ‘old Southern states’. The great demand for slaves on the plantations produced two very distinct types of slaves, rural and urban. Rural slaves, as you might have guessed worked on the plantations usually from dawn till dusk, driven by their overseer. Whereas urban slavery resulted from the lack of white laborers in the mining and lumber industries, because so many whites defected to the cotton industry in hopes of making a larger profit. As a result there was an increased demand for slaves in mills and in ships, so slaves that had learned specialized skills in the plantations, were in high demand in Southern cities. Slave owners hired out their slaves to work wherever their skills were required. This means that the owners left their slaves unsupervised all day, unlike the plantations where they were always under his watchful eye. Many of the slaves who worked in the cities cited them as incredibly different from working on the plantation. In the city a slave was almost a free man compared to the plantations, he got better food, clothes and privileges. Also the acts of cruelty

He wants to protect others when they try to escape, since slave owners would frequently encourage their slaves to escape and see which one reports them. This allows slave

Auld was born poor and only acquired his property and slaves through marriage. Douglass describes Thomas as "a slaveholder without the ability to hold slaves . . . [and] incapable of managing his slaves either by force, fear, or fraud" (Douglas, 380). The fact that he was brought into slave holding made him inexperience and unconfident when it came to managing his slaves. There are unspoken rules about slave treatment that all slave holders must follow. Auld, unfamiliar with being a slave holder, did not follow the unspoken rules. His slaves suffered from little food rations that weren’t enough to sustain themselves. Depriving them of food “is regarded as the most aggravated development of meanness even among slaveholders” (Douglas, 379). He never gave them enough course or fine food, and forced up too four slaves including Douglas share half of a bushel of corn-meal, and little amounts of meats ant vegetables a

By the mid 1800’s nearly four million blacks were held as slaves in the southern United States. Life was a nightmare for slaves: the work was hard, their masters cruel, and their liberties stripped away. This turmoil caused slaves to try and escape. There were numerous ways a slave could flee, but not without the risk of road blocks and lashes around every corner. Creativity, money, intelligence, and courage were just some of the attributes slaves had to have when trying to escape.

This Thursday, I was asked to read and present on Humphreys' chapter 2. I hope to bring forth some things that were not said in discussion, but some repetition is necessary to recap the main argument. Essentially, Simon Caney, the author of this piece, argues that a human rights approach is a useful way to think about climate change, and that it covers territory that other approaches do not. He spends some time talking about what human rights are, defining them as: "moral thresholds to which all individuals are entitled, simply by virture of their humanity, and which override all other moral values." This is a satisfactory defintion, and fits what we have discussed in class. Caney also talks about positive vs negative rights. Negative means the government cannot infringe, positive means the

Uncle Tom is also not used to working down south on a plantation which is where he is now with Legree. Legree never liked Tom, he always had it out for him because he spread the word of god and helped out a lady that was struggling picking enough cotton for the day. Legree was tough on all of his slaves he didn’t care if they died or not he said “I used to doctor them when they were sick and give them clothes and blankets but it was no use, I lost money. Now I just put them straight through sick or well. When one slave is dead, I buy another, and I find it comes cheaper and easier.”(155) Legree has no feelings of grief or sorrow for his slaves. Legree is so harsh that when two of his slaves “ran away” he decided to beat Uncle Tom till he told him where they went, but Uncle Tom didn’t know. Legree is so unpleasant that he beat Uncle Tom so bad just a few days later Uncle Tom died.

In my opinion, this planner is a very accurate representation of what Simon’s day would consist of on a regular basis. Simon is a regular high school student with an irregular life. When a popular boy finds out that Simon is gay through reading his emails with another unknown student, he blackmails him. Martin, a very well-known person in their high school, took screenshots of the emails and says that he will tell people that Simon is gay, unless Simon helps him get a girl.

One of the most important descriptions involved the cruel treatment of the slaves in general because the Southerners thought the slaves as their own properties. From Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Tom met Prue who was a slave from down the street and felt miserable about her life because her master did not want to feed her baby resulting in the death of her baby. After few days later, Tom eventually heard that Prue’s master had whipped her to death by his members of the St. Clare household: “What now? Why those folks have whipped Prue to death!” said Ophelia (Stowe, 250). St. Clare explained that since the slaves were considered as one of the properties, people had the rights to control and destroy at their slaves at will: “It’s commonly supposed that the property interest