Survival of African Culture on an 18th Century Sugar Plantation

In the 1700’s and 1800’s, the planter elite class of the American South conspired with both federal and state governments and other whites to institutionalize slavery in order to protect their economic and social power and way of life. Their efforts were generally wide spread, simple, blatant and generally very effective.

Historical debates about the enslavement period of America is constantly being developed and refined as new primary sources and research in academic areas progress. Stephanie Camp brings a new historical perspective that attempts to build on previous historical debates by building on underdeveloped areas of America’s Antebellum Period. It is therefore vital to understand the previous historical debates and the arguments that align and contend with Camp’s argument. The broader and earlier historical contentions of the Slave South tend to focus on the behaviour and repressive nature of slaves rather than the formation of rebellion in the South. Historian Kenneth Stampp who wrote The Peculiar Institution (1956) helped to redefine and focus on

Slavery has been a major component of human civilization all throughout history. People turn to slavery for many reasons, such as fear of different ethnicities and fear that these new foreign people will take over land that is not theirs. The conditions under which slaves work and live varies greatly by the time and location of which the slaves lived. Slaves play a major role in their society and contribute greatly to their communities, often forming one of the largest masses of the population. Though the accuracy of the information from primary sources may be tainted with exaggeration and bias, it is easy to deduce from primary works the treatment of slaves and the working and living conditions surrounding them. According to many sources,

For almost eight decades, enslaved African-Americans living in the Antebellum South, achieved their freedom in various ways—one being religion—before the demise of the institution of slavery. It was “freedom, rather than slavery, [that] proved the greatest force for conversion among African Americans in the South” (94). Starting with the Great Awakening and continuing long after the abolition of slavery, after decades of debate, scholars conceptualized the importance of religion for enslaved African-Americans as a means of escaping the brutalities of daily life. Overall, Christianity helped enslaved African American resist the degradation

The topic of slave resistance is often not covered in order to paint slaves as docile and inferior. Page 290 of the Norton readings explains that “the resource that enabled slaves to maintain such defiance was their culture: a body of beliefs, values, and practices born of their past and maintained in the present.” Page 295 of the Norton readings discusses instances of resistance in slaves. The first example occurred in

The book The Peculiar Institution takes an in-depth look at slavery in America from the beginning. The author tells the story after doing a lot of research of how the entire south operated with slavery and in the individual states. The author uses a lot of examples from actual plantations and uses a lot of statistics to tell the story of the south. The author’s thesis statement throughout this book is stated in the title of the book that tells that slavery is a peculiar institution, which also means that it is a very interesting form of service. There are many strange events that not only led up to slavery but that

Starting from a slave’s birth, this cruel process leads to a continuous cycle of abuse, neglect, and inhumane treatment. To some extent, slave holders succeed because they keep most slaves so concerned with survival that they have no time or energy to consider freedom. This is particularly true for plantation slaves where the conditions of slave life are the most difficult and challenging. However, slave holders fail to realize the damage they inadvertently inflict on themselves by upholding slavery and enforcing these austere laws and attitudes.

Thesis: Despite the oppression of slavery, African Americans were able to keep their culture alive through their music and oral traditions.

Over time Europeans begin to move more inward to capture more Africans who were much different than the Africans on the west coast. The inland Africans were considered hetmans, they had never seen a European or a white person ever, they wore little to no clothes, spoke no English and did not have a religious belief. The slaves captured during this time were a part of the Plantation Generation and the way their treated was a lot different than the Charter Generation. This generation took place during the 1680’s – 1760’s which the slaves were punished harsher then before, they ran away and slaves started the slave resistance. Also more rebellions came into play and they did not just plant tobacco they also grew indigo and

One of the methods used to control African-American slaves was whipping them. They had a certain number of lashes depending on what they did wrong. “Overseers freely admitted that they relied on whippings to make slaves in the gangs keep at their work.” Owners of slaves noticed that the slaves would cooperate more efficiently if the fed, clothed and housed them. “Thus, planters’ self-interest probably improved the living standards for slaves in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the slave population grew at a rate only slightly below that of the white southerners.” They allowed them to have families so that they can reproduce and make more slaves for the labor. The work was hard and intense, but what kept them going was the fear of getting whipped at the bottoms of their feet. The planters would use the possibility of getting a better position as a. incentive to get the workers to cooperate and work harder. They were given special privileges for working hard like “extra rations, off on weekends, passes to visit a spouse on a near by plantation and the righto have a garden plot…” These techniques didn’t work for all of the slaves, resulting in them being severely punished and even killed.

Author Viktor Osinubi states in his article, “Privileging the African Metaphysics of Presence in American Slave Culture”, “American slavery, like many perverse institutions, developed a peculiar culture of fear and oppression, and thousands of slaves had to learn how to navigate this culture for their survival”.

The autobiographies of Olaudah Equiano, a British slave, and Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, American slaves, highlight the transition from the institution of British slavery pre-American Revolution to the 18th and 19th century American plantation slavery. The explicit differences between the two systems suggest unique factors that either promoted or hindered each institution. In Britain, slavery was generally driven by economic factors that relied on trained labor. Growth and expansion of slavery in the United States, however, was deeply rooted in consistent oppression and exploitation of slaves through physical and psychological abuses, which in turn gave slave owners unchecked power that ensured the perpetuation of plantation slavery.

“It was otherwise in the Chesapeake, the colonies of Virginia and Maryland. There, the legal institution of slavery grew out of economic opportunism and evolving social custom.” However, racism was involved as well in these areas. The British North Americans again resorted to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, bringing in the labourers necessary to grow their crops; no matter how inhumane. “Economic need drove the tobacco planters to import large numbers of enslaved Africans in the late seventeenth century.” Working on these plantations was not an easy life, and the travelling conditions that these people went through were

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.

During the early 1600s, the English colonist began using African slaves in the colonies. The slaves typically believed in Christianity, for that was the primary religion that English colonist followed. Furthermore, many of these slaves couldn’t talk to each other or organize themselves in many plantations where they resided; therefore, they sang Negro spirituals and hymns to each other. This was one of the forms of communication that slaves established. These spiritual songs of hope, faith, and courage that allowed these early “African-Americans” slaves to survive. As a result, it is understood that Christianity is what drives the African-American community to conquer their challenges.