Slavery During The 19th Century

The conditions on the Middle Passage were horrible. The space allotted to each slave was often too small to move the shoulders and the neck and legs were chained down. Many slaves died on the voyage and never made it out of the hull of the slave ships.

During the 19th century slavery was a very prominent and controversial issue between the north and the southern states. In the South, most people believed that slavery was a profitable way of life and if the slavery was to be abolished it would then affect their economy. On the hand the northern had different opinions about slavery and intended to stop it. The fact that the perception were different between the two led to a very difficult situation in resolving the issue.

During the 19th century, so known “peculiar institution” of slavery dominated labor systems of the American South, also dominated most production in the US and led to a boost of the economy of the New Republic. By the 1850 's, US had become a country segregated into two regional identities, known as the Slave South and the Free North. While the South maintained a pro-slavery identity that supported and protected the expansion of slavery westward, the North largely held abolitionist views and opposed the slavery’s westward expansion. Until the 1850 's the nation uncertainly balanced the slavery subject between the two opponents. However, the acquisition of the Louisiana territories in 1803 by the Jefferson administration doubled the size of the US and the victory in the Mexican-American War extended the territory to the Pacific which quadrupled the area of the US. Ultimately, the territorial expansion led to the spread of slavery. In this essay, I will describe some of the reasons for the expansion of slavery including its influence in national politics, and consequences such as political debates and crises of 1850’s.

During the 1800’s many people had slaves in the United States and in 1865 slavery was abolished. Recently, a bill HR 40 is currently being reviewed by Congress to examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the US from 1619 to present and recommend appropriate remedies. Americans certainly cannot pay reparations to slaves because no one who was a slave is alive. Reparations will not remove the agony that a slave faced and most likely the money will be spent incorrectly. Slavery happened so long ago that it is impossible to find out whose family actually had ancestors who were slaves. Also, during the 1800’s slavery was legal and people that are going to pay reparations never owned a slave. So, in truth, there is no actual way to

It's hard to believe that there was a time in American history where human beings had no rights, were considered possessions, and could be treated in the most horrific ways and then be prosecuted for being pushed to the limit where they break down and do terrible thing they wouldn't naturally do just because of their skin color, ethnicity or gender. By The time of the mid-1800's slavery in the northern states seemed to have been getting better not to say the same for the south. Slavery was still a big part in the southern state; you had indentured servants and field workers. Each was having their own task given by their master. However, slaves were not just used for field work or helping out with crops or around the yard. White men would also get woman slaves to be a "wife

In the mid 1800’s the use of slavery was growing really fast in North America. Most of the use of slavery was much more focused in the South than in the Northern part of the U.S. While cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, rice and sugar were highly produced and very popular in the South, slavery was still a number one priority. From 1820 to 1860 the population of the slaves drastically climbed from 1.5 million to almost 4 million. In 1845 James Henry Hammond who was a South Carolina planter and politician, wrote a letter to an English Abolitionist to show his opinions on what slavery really meant to him. In this letter he stated that the use of slavery was not a bad thing, he even mentioned translations from the Holy Bible and the Holy Scriptures. For example, he mentioned in the Holy Bible Leviticus Chapter twenty-five that says, you cannot deny that a “BONDMAN FOREVER” is a “SLAVE”; yet you endeavor to hang an argument of immortal consequence upon the wretched subterfuge, that the precise word “slave” is not to be found in the translation of the Bible. This example was used to help show how he used both Holy Scriptures and the Bible to help backup his statement on his own opinions toward slavery. In Chapter 13 The Slave South, there were 5 documents, they were titled Madison Heming’s Recalls life as Thomas Jefferson’s Enslaved Son, The Plantation Rules, Fanny Kemble Learns about Abuses of Slave Women, Nat Turner Explains Why He Became an Insurrectionist and lastly the

America entered the 19th century as a young nation that had many problems to solve, and the biggest one was slavery. The nation was divided, the North a supporter of abolition while the South wanted to keep slavery. How did the South and slavery supporters justify and defend an institution that was barbaric and unethical? They used the Southern economy as the main justification for slavery. They thought that if Slavery was abolished, they would no longer be able to make money. They wouldn’t be able to find anyone who could work on the plantation for free or for a small amount of money. Many slavery supporters also argued that slavery was a divine institution, and god encouraged slavery. Many Christians at this time thought that slavery was good for Africans because they were in a more “civilized society” which improved them “morally and

White historians in the past wrote about slavery in a way that took the economic and political rewards out of slavery. They wrote about it as being less profitable than free labor, even when the statistics disproved this. The writing of white historians reinforced the idea that slaves had no right to wealth and because of that, no right to citizenship. Slavery was not modern because it was written about from an “Old south” perspective. To white historians, modern meant invention and creativity and not slave trade or cotton production.

Slavery in the 1800’s on plantations was a very big deal. Slavery was common in South Carolina due to the plantation based economy. Women and men were constantly being auctioned to other slave owners to work in fields (“U.S History from 1812-1914”). Slaves were usually separated from their families due to slave auctions. Whenever they arrived to the fields they were treated inhumanly. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation stated that, “Slaves were often punished for taking breaks while working. Women slaves were also used for cooking, housework and childcare.” Not only were slaves separated from their family, they were also treated very poorly. Because of the mistreatment , it would soon lead to the Civil War.

In the early years of the 19th century, slavery was more than ever turning into a sectional concern, such that the nation had essentially become divided along regional lines. Based on economic or moral reasoning, people of the Northern states were increasingly in support of opposition to slavery, all the while Southerners became united to defend the institution of slavery. Brought on by profound changes including regional differences in the pattern of slavery in the upper and lower South, as well as the movement of abolitionism in the North, slavery in America had transformed from an issue of politics into a moral campaign during the period of 1815-1860, ultimately polarizing the North and the South to the point in which threats of a Southern disunion would mark the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 (Goldfield et. al, The American Journey, p. 281).

In American History slavery was always an issue that was argued and fought over for centuries. It is one of the biggest issues that occurred around the 1800s. In the 1700s the South wanted to keep slaves and the North thought slavery should be banned. The South believed that it should be a choice if someone wants to have slaves or not. There were many acts and laws passed in the 17 and 1800s to help keep the territories happy, or the new might’ve had more wars and riots then we already have.

From the early stages of colonization, the institution of slavery would continually become established within the United States. This creation not only functioned as a system of labor, but also as a system for regulating the relations between the races. The North and South profited greatly at the expense of shackled and separated families, up until the early 1800’s as the idea of slavery became a topic to be repeatedly examined.

How many of us actually know what slavery means? We all know it happened during the 1800's, but no one really knows the definition of the word. For all we know, it could still be happening. Slavery is the owning of a person who is practically property. People who own slaves control them so they earn profit from their work. Back then, slaves were primarily African-American and were shoved on a boat into the New World. Nowadays, the word "slave" can be used for people who are overworked and underpaid. Even though slavery legally ended in 1883, people are still being affected by the same tactics fueled by vulnerability and lack of stability.

How did slaves in the nineteenth century American South deal with enslavement? White people from the South might say that the slaves are happy to serve their masters since they take care of them, but history books like Give Me Liberty! By Eric Foner, and first person experience books like Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, and documents like The Confessions of Nat Turner, 1831 in Michael P. Johnsons’ book, this was not the case for most of the time. Slaveholders gave slave’s so privileges, but by no means does this mean that this “good treatment” out weight the awful treatment. Which is why slaves found different ways, some more severe than others, to rebelled against slavery.

American’s who live in the 21st century know that slavery is terrible and also a touchy subject. But Americans used to rely heavily on slavery, how we perceive slavery in today’s society can either be the same or different from how others thought of slavery living within mid 1800s. People who resided in the northern region of American found slavery wrong as we do today. Americans who lived farther south however liked, and relied on slavery. In today’s world, we Americans almost all agree that slavery had been a negative factor of our country. But within the 1840s and 1870s, Americans had been divided by slavery. People that were against slavery created the union as the pro slavery citizens created the confederates. Today, we can see why people of the mid 19th century either supported slavery or rebelled against it by reviewing sources.