Slavery Argumentative Essay

In the United States there was a heated debate about the morality of slavery. Supporters of slavery in the 18th century used legal, economic, and religious arguments to defend slavery. They were able to do so effectively because all three of these reasons provide ample support of the peculiar institution that was so vital to the South.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of African slavery in America in the antebellum by late eighteenth century and before the antebellum crisis as discussed in Paul Finkelman’s book: Defending Slavery.

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.

Slavery was not fully addressed in the Constitution, in fact the word slavery was not mentioned in the constitution. There different sections in the constitution that prevent the government's involvement with slavery. Some may say that if government had the power to ban slavery the Southern states would refuse unite with the Northern states. It seems that the framers of the Constitution were trying to keep the South happy in order to keep the country United. The framers had no way to avoid slavery at that time, they did what they needed to do in order to keep the country together.

Europeans, after the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, vindicated the enslaving of Africans by depending on religious authority because they supposedly followed God’s will (notes). According to Pope Nicholas V, the African enslavement has helped the Catholic Church (source A). In a 1455 letter, he wrote, “... A large number of these have been converted to the Catholic faith…” (source A). The quote suggests the pontiff held a positive outlook on slavery, but he only supported it for the conversion of the slaves (notes). Over 100 years later, a letter surfaced from Jesuit Brother Luis Bandaon to Father Sandoval that read he and other educated Fathers from Brazil support slavery for the purpose of more conversions and labor (source B and

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.

After analyzing and interpreting the speakers purpose's in “Old Plantation Days”, Speech at hartford, Connecticut from Abraham Lincoln, and Sojourner Truth's “Ain't I a Woman” I concluded what the speakers purpose was for giving or publishing their literature and their personal bias on slavery. According to the text of Abraham Lincoln, he could go either way on slavery but this is because if he chooses to turn to on side or the other, half of the country would be mad and may rebel or opt out of the “More Perfect Union” (The Country) and I believe his bias is that he thinks slavery is wrong. I can safely say Sojourner Truth is against slavey for many reasons and she has an opinion on how woman deserve rights as well as men. The speaker in “Old Plantation Days” thinks that a slave owner is saving the slave because they take care of them and she claims black people who went into the real world and gained freedom suffered rather than the slaves who stay back home with their masters.

Slavery, especially in America, has been an age old topic of riveting discussions. Specialist and other researchers have been digging around for countless years looking for answers to the many questions that such an activity provided. They have looked into the economics of slavery, slave demography, slave culture, slave treatment, and slave-owner ideology (p. ix). Despite slavery being a global issue, the main focus is always on American slavery. Peter Kolchin effectively illustrates in his book, American Slavery how slavery evolved alongside of historical controversy, the slave-owner relationship, how slavery changed over time, and how America compared to other slave nations around the world.

Being a free black in the time period of 1776 - 1861 may have sounded like a good thing. Yes, free blacks were living in the Northern states, free from slavery, but their rights were very limited compared to whites. Slavery was still very common in the Southern states. Slavery is when a person is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them. In this case, Africans were taken to America to obey their masters; which were whites. Slaves had to do hard agricultural work in the plantations for long hours under the blazing sun. Slaves also worked in their houses, cooked, cleaned, and cared for their children. It was clear why being a slave was not the ideal life. Although being a free black was safer than being a slave, free blacks did not have equal rights as whites did. Free blacks had very limited political, economic, and personal rights.

If only we could let things go and accept our wrongs, this country would be a very different place

Ever since the beginning of time, black people have always been looked upon as the inferior race compared to the ever powerful white male. Since all these acquisitions have been made about these people, the whites have taken it under their power that they can own these human beings and control them to in any way they please because they believe it is their constitutional right to property. However, the white male has taken it to an extreme saying that another human being is their property to control. When the Founding Fathers were drafting the US Constitution, they knew the debate over slavery was a critical flaw in their newly founded nation, but chose not to abolish nor allow of this sinful act knowing that it would not be approved by the southern states. When Frederick Douglass and Jefferson Davis wrote their documents about slavery they both proved their by by saying the constitution either said it was okay or it was implied that it was constitutionally approved.

Throughout history many things have happened that were by many thought to be unconscionable. Yet, the people who were putting their mark of unacceptance upon those committing these thought to be deplorable acts, were unaware of the actual situations, and in many cases, committing the same acts themselves. This was true during the Holy Wars, the Crusades and similar events. People who were not involved, often thought these acts of inhumanity to be reprehensible, but the parties involved, in their minds, had just cause

In 1787, delegates arrived in Philadelphia to begin work on revising the Articles of Confederation. Most states agreed that the Articles had not provided the country with the type of guidelines that it needed to run smoothly. There were many things missing, and many issues that needed further consideration. One of the most controversial topics at the Constitutional Convention was figuring out the country's policy towards slavery. When all was said and done, slavery was still legal after the Convention because the southern economy depended on it and because most people decided that this was an issue that should be decided by each individual state, rather than the country as a whole.

There has been much debate on the topic of slavery in the early times, although most of the countries considered slavery as a criminal activity. Some countries such as Myanmar and Sudan do not abolish it. They even expedite the slavery system. It is no doubt that slavery violent the human rights. However, it was commonly spread in the early times from 17th to 19th century. In this research, I will talk about the origin of the slavery, the reasons for people to becoming slave and the life of the slave.

A historian once wrote that the rise of liberty and equality in America was accompanied by slavery. There is truth in that statement to great effect. The rise of America in general was accompanied by slavery and the settlers learned early on that slavery would be an effective way to build a country and create free labor. There was a definite accompaniment of slavery with the rising of liberty and equality in America.