Slave Oppression

During the mid-1800s, it was challenging being a slave. Belonging to another human being instead of being free brought numerous hardships African Americans had to endure. It brought about unimaginable pain, frustration, disruption, and stress. In America, slavery was glorified, even though, families were separated and destroyed. Slavery made it tedious to have stability in families because of the effects it had on the African American people. After reading “How Affected African American Families” and “Narrative of Jenny Proctor,” slavery caused African American families to cope with separation, unfair marriage stipulations, horrible living condition, mistreatment and labor, and also the ending of slavery.

Slave resistance began for many enslaved Africans before they reach the Americas. Karenga explained the many arrangements in which Africans resisted to enslavement, while in Africa, during the middle passage, and in the Americas. Employing the Karenga text one can evaluate the different resistances that transpired in Antigua as Cultural, Resistance, Day-to-Day Resistance, Abolitionism, Armed Resistance, Revolts, Ship Mutinies, and Afro-Native Alliance. One can conclude that enslaved Africans had an unrelenting resistance to enslavement (Karenga).

Slavery was like an addiction that the south could not break. Although it provided economic benefits to both the north and the south, the addiction or “curse” bound the people to the downfalls of slavery as well. Slavery created an oligarchy of which a small aristocracy of slave-owners would dominate political, economic, and social affairs of both blacks and whites. The institutions negative impact on the South, and even the entire nation would eventually lead to a great tragedy: the civil war.

Nineteenth century America was a nation wracked by hypocrisy. While asserting notions of equality and liberty for all, the young land coveted these values for its white majority. African Americans, held in bondage for economic exploitation, were robbed of the principles of democracy and freedom so championed by the United States. This dissonance in American rhetoric was omnipresent, for slavery was a constant and fundamental aspect of life in both the North and South for decades. This duplicity of American equality was not lost on all whites, and a growing sect of reformers arose to combat the wrongs of African enslavement. These

Slavery, often called the “Peculiar Institution”, was an integral part of the United States economy. Prior to the civil war, the economy of the south was based on the use of slave labor for cotton. Even though the North did not have as many slaves, it relied on cotton from the South, which was the biggest import from the United States. Slavery became an important part of the culture of the south. Plantation life became an idealized way of life. Many whites came to view blacks as inferior and uncivilized. The United States was one of the last countries to abolish slavery and many of the ideas of white supremacy still exist today. For example, in The Growth of The American Republic by Samuel Eliot Morrison and Henry Steele Commager, a textbook used from the 1930’s until the 1960’s, the authors wrote about slavery having been beneficial for everyone, even the slaves. They wrote about how slaves were happy to be slaves and treated well. They claimed that slaves became devoted to their masters and were faithfully obedient. They wrote that slaves worked less than free workers of the North. Contrary to what Samuel Eliot Morrison and Henry Steele Commager thought, slaves were not treated well, content, or devoted to their owners, and suffered from overworking and terrible conditions.

The institution of slavery was meant to be a permanent condition for Black males. This condition lay the historical outline for structural and societal racism resulting in a degrading formation of identity within Black. Africans were imported to the United States as purchased goods beginning around 1620. By 1770, almost 700,000 people, nearly 18 percent of the Americans were slaves. By the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, that number had exploded to over 4 million Davidson, J., DeLay, B., Heyrman, C., Lytle, M., & Stoff, M. (2011). Blacks were systemically dehumanized for hundreds of years, a practice that had unique social and psychological effects on men. They worked and were whipped in fields like animals. Any resemblance of pride, any call for justice, and any measure of manhood was tortured, beaten, or sold out of them. Most were forbidden from education, which included learning to read and write Davidson et al. (2011).

Slavery has existed for eons in human history, as we can trace slavery back to Babylonian times. The African Blacks were definitely not the first to be enslaved. However, it seems as if they were indeed treated the worst by their white masters than had any slaves before them been treated. The stories of the horrendous treatment endured by many slaves for the simple wish to be free are horrendous and heartbreaking. I believe there is no person better qualified to inform the world of the horrors of slavery, and to stand behind the idea of abolition, besides a former slave. This man was able to rise above every adversity thrown at him, he taught himself how to read, he observed everything going on around him, and learned from those experiences.

Slavery (the ownership of another human as one’s own property) is one of the oldest traditions in human history. History shows that ancient Rome and Greece valued their wealth upon the number of slaves an individual owned. Their service was to provide slave labor for their owners. As time progressed, slavery began to evolve into something much different– especially in the North American colonies. A new nation was emerging, fueled by a drive for expansion and a growing economy. The United States exploited African Americans through racial slavery to fill the labor shortage and created a system that stripped them of their basic rights, dignity, and created social barriers to ensure their subservience to Southern society.

A valid point Howard Zinn wrote in A People's History of the United States was that African Americans were "ensnared" into American slavery for many reasons, those of which include desperate settlers, the helplessness of Africans outside their home country, the greed of colonists, the control against rebellion, and the consequences of black and white collaboration. I believe he makes a very valid point, for all his reasons have historical evidence to back them up.

Tocqueville anticipated the future these three races. For the Native Americans, Tocqueville anticipated that they were bound to vanish. With a specific end goal to survive, they should be acculturated or begun a fight were one of the two races could vanish. What 's more, Tocqueville anticipated that they will be secluded by the whites. For the Negros, he anticipated the racial blend will extend Negros race everywhere throughout the country. Additionally, they will be more acknowledgeable of their rights and battles will occur between those two races. Moreover, the bondage will be passed from one era to the next residual disgrace and disrespect to the Black race and hate to the white. At long last, Tocqueville proposed that intermix of

Back when there was Slavery it was unfair to some people, at least to the African Americans. By unfair I mean the whites, like most of us would torture the Africans. Some of the things the owners did was made the slaves work in fields without pay and they had no control over their own self, their owner did. But, if they were not doing, that the owners would do something bad like whip them with a whip with metal on the end.

Slavery, defined in Webster’s dictionary as the “condition in which one human being is owned by another”, was a heinous crime against humanity that was legal and considered a normality in America from 1619 to 1865. In 1865, the Union won the Civil War against the Confederates and declared that African American slaves be emancipated. Before their emancipation, African American families were split up, never to see each other again. Their rights of political and social freedoms were also stripped away from them, and they were “reduced to a bare life [,] stripped of every right by virtue of the fact that anyone can kill him [or her] without committing homicide… and yet he [or she] is in a continuous relationship with the power that is banished him [or her]” (Agamben). Slaves were kept under strict rule in the South, making their chances of gaining freedom very slim. State governments in slave states enforced anti-literacy laws, outlawing African Americans from writing, or learning to read and write. These laws helped ensure that slaves stayed slaves for life and were unable to escape. This form of bare life, that slaves were subjected to, can be compared to a less extreme version of Hitler and the Jews. Instead of a mass killing spree, however, African Americans were exploited and oppressed as a labor force.

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.

Slavery is a stain in the history of the United States that will always be particularly remembered for the cruelty it exhibited. Up until 1865 slaves were imported in shiploads and treated as if they were merely cattle. On the farms slaves were given no mercy and had to work long, arduous days for nothing. Additionally they were often subject to cruel overseers who would beat and whip them on a regular basis. As brutal and destructive as the institution of slavery was, slaves were not defenseless victims. Through their families, and religion, as well as more direct forms of resistance, Africans-Americans resisted the debilitating effects of slavery and created a vital culture supportive of human dignity.

In the land of the free, saying slavery is a dark part of the United States’ history would be an understatement. From the early 1600’s until the abolition of the practice in 1865, slavery would be a common sight amongst plantations. The slaves would not stand idly in their predicament, learning how to improve their situations and sometimes reaching compromises or rebelling against slave masters. Slavery during the antebellum United States encompassed the ideals of whites in the North and South, the influential relationships between the whites and blacks, and the controversial lives the slaves led.