Slavery: Different Point Of Views

Slavery is a condition in which individuals are owned by others, who control where they work and live. Slavery has been around since the 1600’s. Jacobs a young female who recounts her life in the book “Incident’s in the life of a slave girl”, gives us an in depth look into her life and how she overcame slavery and gained herself the title of freedom. Now life was not easy for Jacobs. She struggled for much of her life and the kids she had out of wedlock had to suffer because she was a slave. Slavery is not a status that anyone wants to have especially if you are a woman and a slave.

Slavery has long inspired controversy among historians. Many have different views on slavery whether it was slaves lived under kind masters, or slavery was a brutal system that drove slaves into constant rebellion, but neither viewpoint is accurate although both contain some truth in it. Many masters wanted to earn profit off of slaves no matter what because some masters were kind causing the slaves to develop genuine affection for their owners. Although slaves had affection for owners they did not even question themselves when deciding to desert to Union lines when northern troops descended on the plantations during the Civil War. The experience of slaves working on cotton plantations in the 1830s and 1700s differed because of reasons unrelated to the kindness or brutality of masters. More of reasons like the plantation system, the work and discipline, the slave family, and the longevity, health, and diet of slaves.

Slavery has always been the most shocking phenomena of our world. Slavery, by itself seems very unnatural and provokes mixed feelings from the heart of each person. Some faced “slavery” even in the contemporary times. And some people just simply do not understand the possibility of one human being considering another human being its Slave. Slavery is the practice or system of owning Slaves. Nevertheless, there is still much to say about it and a lot of things to recall.Some of the big central ideas that I have found so far in my research are some of the ways Slaves were tortured, why was this portrayed, and what really led to this. Important insights that I have derived from my research topic include Slaves who helped other Slaves become free

Ophelia Settle Egypt, informally known as Ophie, was an African American woman ahead of her time. She attained the educational status of less than one percent of the American population, was liberal and accepting of others despite the criticism around her, fought to end racism, worked independently of her husband, and believed in limiting family growth. All of Egypt’s beliefs and lifetime achievements represent a new type of woman: a woman who refuses to assimilate to her gender stereotype of weak, inferior, and domestic. Egypt dedicated her life to social work through various activities. She worked as a sociologist, researcher, teacher, director of organizations, and social worker at different times in her life. Egypt’s book, The Unwritten History of Slavery (1968), and the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Southeast Washington D.C. named after her represent Egypt’s legacy and how one person is capable of social change.

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.

“Knowledge can never imprison you, but you can be captive to your ignorance.” (Quotes 2). Slavery was a terrible time in our country when people were brought against their will in the hulls of ships, herded like cattle into tight, damp quarters for weeks for what was often a deadly voyage. Upon arrival into the United States these people were sold and treated like property instead of the people that they were. It would not be until January 1, 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by Abraham Lincoln, that slaves would begin the long and enduring journey to freedom and having rights like the whites.

Have you ever tried to imagine slavery? Picture this, you and your family having a nice dinner and out of nowhere someone kicks in your front door and takes you away from your family. Scared and confused, you are constantly hit and yelled at but you don’t understand the language. You are loaded up on a ship as you set sail for a new world that you know nothing about. All without your permission. From reading and looking at documents A- E I’ve discovered that the European people had to fan out and search for someone who they could get labor off of while making them feel inferior, to display what would happen if they were to go rebel against their masters, and to follow the plan that God had for slaves.

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

By contrast, slavery was the formal ownership of persons by an individual. Enslaved people had no rights and were considered their owner's property, rather than human beings. They could therefore be killed legally, for no reason whatsoever, or abused however their master saw fit. Slaves were basically slaves for life, unless their master saw fit to free them (if this was even legal, in various times and places it was not).

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.

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

Slavery was a way of life in the South for African-Americans. It was a form of discipline and cruelty to the slaves. Life for slaves consisted of resistance and durability. Although slavery was horrible, some slaves managed to escape their terrible life and did it with success, while others couldn't unfortunately and had to suffer the consequences from their master. Slave families dealt with the fear of being separated, the only way slaves could be separated is by the husband or wife being sold to a different owner or a slaveholder's death could result into the breakup of an enslaved family.

What does it mean to be a slave? Ask any human being, and they will state that they too have been a slave. Being a slave to addiction, to a slave in a relationship, a slave to anxiety, a slave to work, maybe a slave to mental illness, and a slave to one's self-being. Sure, there may be moments in one's life that makes them feel like they have no other choice but to give in. However, there are some things that these people have that is a privilege, the right to say "no," the liberty to decide, and the freedom to act on decisions, to prohibit the temporary entrapment of, obstacles. African American slavery twisted the definition of what it was to be a slave. It meant that one is a product, and a tiny element apart of a more significant something,

The coming of the civil war was the result of inevitability, with minor influences of the blundering generation. The North and South had become vastly different in morality, and both blamed the other upon grounds of conspiracy, resulting in a refusal to compromise and the split within the nation. As the union stood divided, the coming of the Civil War was ultimately attributed to the unavoidable conflict within the institution of slavery.

"You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted.” Abraham Lincoln stated. What is slavery? Slavery is the brutal act of forcing someone to work hard without paying them a fair wage or sometimes without paying with at all. What if Abraham Lincoln didn’t issue the Emancipation Proclamation, what would life be like? Therefore, the purpose of slavery in the United States was to make African Americans feel like they were below everyone else, feel like they will never mount to anything and other people felt as if God doomed African Americans to be slaves.