Slavery As A Form Of Tranquility

During the time prior to the twentieth century our world accepted slavery as a normal part of life. Aphra Behn and Phillis Wheatley, both female authors born about 100 years apart, had their own views of slavery and wrote poems and stories about the subject. These women were physically different, Aphra was a Caucasian, and Phillis was an African American, and their lives were rather different as well. Aphra was a spy and playwright, who lived the middle class life and Phillis, was a slave who was taken from her homeland, brought to America, sold into slavery, then later freed. I believe that both writers’ views were difficult to figure out, especially by just reading their works.

The United States half-slave and half-free is a nation divided. “United we stand together we fall.” As a nation in the United States we are to unite as one. Abraham Lincoln, (Schweikart, L., & Allen, M. P. 2004. A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror pp 303) stated the Republican party looks at the institution of slavery as morally, politically, and socially wrong. Nominated for the United States Senate, Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous words

100 years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free... and this nation, for all it hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizen are free. Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made in this century to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law (Loevy 17).

Human beings have been in bondage for thousands of years. Slavery originated in early civilizations. It has not only affected our modern world, it has affected the advancement of the human being itself. In most civilizations, humans establish class systems and look upon other humans as if they are “lesser than” or “subhuman”. The process of dehumanization is a key psychological factor in why slavery has existed since the formation of civilizations.

When referring to the days of slavery, it is often assumed that the south was the sole force behind its continuance. However there were many factors which lead southerners as well as some in the north to quietly accept slavery as a good thing. John Calhoun declared in 1837 “Many in the South once believed that [slavery] was a moral and political evil…That folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world” (p. 345). This statement was justified by various reasons. There was the fundamental belief that Africans were inferior to their white counterparts. Many saw the slave population as a labor force that

Slavery of the "Peculiar Institution" was a way of how life was in the South. African Americans were treated poorly in slavery, and they were brutally beaten. In slavery, their lives involved resistance and survival.

Introduction: In 1619, Jamestown, Virginia, African Americans were brought to North America to aid in production of crops such as tobacco. Slavery happened from 1619 through 1865. Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin was invented in 1793 and led slaves to great demand in the South. The cotton gin influenced the history of the United States. Slavery was finally abolished when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation the book. In The Glory Field, by Walter Dean Myers, developed the central conflict by using figurative language to explain how difficult slavery was for African Americans. Walter Dean Myers uses metaphors, imagery, and symbolism to demonstrate the era of what slaves experienced in the 1750s-1860s through nine

When we think of the word slavery, extremely negative connotations to mind. We think of how millions of African people were rounded up like sheep, stuffed into boats with horrible conditions, and brought to this country where they were treated as lesser people. They were forced to work without pay, in one of the most unforgiving occupations, farming. All this because of where they were from and the color of their skin. Despite this, many people actually defended slavery using the bible. Passages such as St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians approves slaves where he writes, “Slaves, obey your human master in everything, not only when being watched, as currying favor, but in simplicity of heart, fearing the Lord.” However, due to the inhumanity of slavery, during Vatican II the Church reversed its ideas on slavery. This massive change took place more than 80 years after the end of reconstruction. This long period of time raises many questions regarding the Church 's ability to make that big of a change, and why the Church waited so long make those changes. These types of questions can be answered by going back into the bible, and into the Church’s history through a process called Biblical criticism.

Benign is associated with words like; kind, gentle, mild. Hence, benign does not come anywhere close to slavery, especially when we examine the punishment, humiliation, and condition, the African Americans went through when they were under slavery. Benign only comes up when the southern white males (for example, Ulrich B. Philips’s “American Negro Slavery”) wants to promote their propaganda of making the society see slavery as parental relationship were the slave masters is caring towards their slaves.

It is not clear to say whether Slavery was a source of social stability or tension in the South between 1820 and 1860’s, in order to establish the correct answer, we must first discuss them, the arguments that exist between the two, the statistics and figures which exist between the two, as well as the overall general opinion at that time. Both points have their own arguments in themselves, people may argue that without the slave trade, America wouldn’t be what it is today, others would argue that the slave trade, has created instability as well as tension due to the cycle of poverty, that has borne fruit in America amongst African American’s with no way out, for ancestors of old southern slaves. It also should be

The movement to eliminate slavery in the United States during the antebellum years was difficult and did not go unchallenged as there were many people who were pro-slavery while others were anti-slavery. Before the Civil War there was debate over the issue of slavery. Slaves were considered property, and were property because they were black. Many people in the South were strong advocates of slavery, while people in the North were opposed to it. In the South, slavery was a social and powerful economic institution. During this period in the south Pro-Slavery activists did not empathize with the system and conditions the

Howard Zinn began his writing by describing how quickly the production of cotton increased between 1790 to 1860. As the cotton progressively increased across America, so did slavery. The life of a slave was very difficult. Families were separated as they were sold to different slave owners, and the work they did was long, hot and hard. Slaves began to attempt to escape and revolt. Slavery was a major social decline for America at this time. There was much resistance to slavery, which included stealing property, slowness at work, killing overseers and masters, burning down plantation buildings and the most common, running away. By 1850, nearly one thousand slaves escaped to North Canada and Mexico in a year. The slaves

The Americans say every man should have freedom as an inalienable right yet they are the people keeping slaves captive. The nerve of those Americans. They come onto mexico land and decide how we live our lives and how the government works. How can they tell others to follow their rules when they cannot follow their own

“The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible.” - OSCAR WILDE, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

In "There is No Such Thing as Rest," former free man Solomon Northrup was captured and sold into slavery for the period of twelve years. Slavery is now acknowledged as one of the most shameful periods of American history. Slaves were utilized mostly in the American south on the large farms and plantations (Butler 2004). These were heavily agricultural communities which depended on farming to survive and to grow economically and politically. The more product that the Southern colonies were able to harvest and export, logically the more the community would progress. More and more slaves were imported to the New World in order to provide the bodies necessary to continue to make a profit. This, unfortunately, did not stop when America became its own nation and slavery continued as a practice in the new country. This is what led to men like Northrup becoming imprisoned in the system, even if they were born free men.