The Cause And Justification Of The Dehumanization Of Slaves In America

Throughout the book, The Origins of Slavery, the author, Betty Woods, depicts how religion and race along with social, economic, and political factors were the key factors in determining the exact timing that the colonist’s labor bases of indentured Europeans would change to involuntary West African servitude. These religion and racial differences along with the economic demand for more labor played the key roles in the formation of slavery in the English colonies. When the Europeans first arrived to the Americas in the late sixteenth century, at the colony of Roanoke, the thought of chattel slavery had neither a clear law nor economic practice with the English. However by the end of that following century, the demand for slaves in the

In reviewing the book American Slavery, American Freedom, historian and author Edmund S. Morgan provides a chronological approach to the growth of slavery in North America. Morgan starts his journey with the first settlements in Virginia and continues until the start of the American Revolution. Morgan gives explanation of how ideals of freedom and English sense of superiority came to be a major stepping stone for independence and racism. Morgan’s question of how a country that proclaims liberty, equality and religious virtue can at the same time foster the opposing ideals of slavery and subjugation is the underlying question throughout the book. Morgan puts the critical issue on display, broken down into four areas or books, to guide our understanding of colonial Virginia, the development of slavery, and the link between racism and equality.

The introduction of Africans to America in 1619 set off an irreversible chain of events that effected the economy of the southern colonies. With a switch from the expensive system of indentured servitude, slavery emerged and grew rapidly for various reasons, consisting of economic, geographic, and social factors. The expansion of slavery in the southern colonies, from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to just before America gained its independence in 1775, had a lasting impact on the development of our nation’s economy, due to the fact that slaves were easy to obtain, provided a life-long workforce, and were a different race than the colonists, making it easier to justify the immoral act.

The cause for this shift in social policy cannot be accurately traced through the events of the 17th century, but several clues to this alteration in slave treatment can be found. It is often presumed that racism led to the inevitable slavery acts in the 18th century, but this rationale is rather unfounded based on the idea that many African-Americans were in fact free and maintained their own farms in Virginia. The cause of slavery is much more subtle than a prejudice view of racial differences.

The first twenty Africans to arrive in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 were eventually traded by the Dutch for food and supplies. A point worth noting, the first twenty Africans were not identified as legal property(slave). The former Spanish owners had baptized and given each a Christian name. In fact, Africans worked as indentured servants for a specified time because English law disallowed the enslaving of Christians. Africans became landowners and were of equal standing with the poor English Pilgrims. However, by 1640, Virginia court documents started displaying verdicts for a life of servitude. These were verdicts given to runaway indentured servants. African indentured servants to be exact. Between 1661 and 1662, a child’s status in the colonial United States depended on whether the mother was free or a slave.

In the article “The Root of the Problem,” Orlando Patterson describes the historical events that leads Jamestown, Virginia from a slave owning state to the birthplace of a new era. One of the events began near the mid-16th century. White indentured servants and African slaves worked with each other in the same field as a mixed population. According to Patterson, the idea of letting slaves free was a common idea that some freed slaves were able to prosper as other African slaves and white indentured servants fell in love. The matter of letting slaves free never occurred to the white elites, because they believed in their own indentured servants. Before the 1660s, white indentured servants were bought by the white elites to help support the labor force, because they were cheaper. Then not long after, the order of things

Slavery’s rise as the dominant force of labor in the Virginia colonies allowed for racism to spread and therefore justified the use of Africans for slave labor. Racism came as a direct result of slavery and allowed the divide between the Africans and Europeans to intensify. The profit that came from slavery encouraged many powerful landowners to switch to slavery, and eventually leave indentured servitude behind. In the colonies, slavery became vital to the new colonial society for economic reasons, and brought on a birth of racism that distinguished Africans and Europeans.

Colonists began to open schools of thought that taught to fight colors rather than to fight amongst themselves. In this way they began to promote African slavery in order to cool the tensions between the rich and the poor colonists. Slaves only needed to be paid for once, than it was free labor throughout the duration of the slave’s existence. Indentured servants were much more expensive. The idea of indentured whites began to dispel as the colonists grew fonder of each other. They couldn’t fathom the idea that people of color were also deserving of slaves, especially white slaves. The colonists began to muscle their way into the Chesapeake area with an incentive to purchase as many African slaves as possible. The Portuguese and the Spanish owned slaves to produce their sugar. Longstanding racism rendered Africans inferior in order to justify permanent

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the

During the seventeenth century, the colonists confronted poverty epidemic by creating the servant labor system in which indentured servants and slaves provided labor work that directly and positively affected the colonial economy. Although servants and slaves were the main source in keeping the economic system of colonial America steady, they had such low social standings that Colonies and masters had become accustomed to abusing and mistreating them. In addition, in 1669, a law had been passed that enabled masters, free white men, to legally hunt and murder slaves if a rebellion were to occur (“Virginia Servant and Slave Laws, in Handout Set, p. 3). This law, along with many more in “Virginia Servant and Slave Laws,” allowed masters to remain dominant over servants and slaves- which historically is the root for the racial ideology of white supremacy- and created countless racial equality rebellions and movements.

The controversies surrounding slavery have been established in many societies worldwide for centuries. In past generations, although slavery did exists and was tolerated, it was certainly very questionable,” ethically“. Today, the morality of such an act would not only be unimaginable, but would also be morally wrong. As things change over the course of history we seek to not only explain why things happen, but as well to understand why they do. For this reason, we will look further into how slavery has evolved throughout History in American society, as well as the impacts that it has had.

Slavery was the backbone of the American economy for much of the 19th century. The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney created a surge in the need for slavery in America. The cotton gin was created by Whitney to actually decrease the need for slaves by separating the cotton seeds from the cotton but, his invention only rapidly increased the demand for slaves. Even the anti-slavery advocates participated in the popularity and demand for slavery. Slavery is indescribably horrendous. The horrors of this dehumanization and abuse cannot even begin to be described fully, and yet Harriet Jacobs does her best to explain slavery from her perspective in her novel Incidents In The Life of a Slave Girl. Jacobs demonstrates the dehumanization

In 1619 when the Dutch ship the ‘White Lion’ landed in Jamestown Virginia carrying ten African slaves there was a change in the world that is still felt today. The beginning of slavery wasn’t what they had planned those first slaves thought that they were to receive the same rights as indentured slaves until the productivity of the farming industry in the new world. The only difference was that the indentured slaves were European

The United States, Africa, the Middle East and mostly all of the countries around the world have been known to in some shape or form to inhabit slaves and to engage in the business of slave trading. According to the text, in 1619 there were a small group of people, 32 to be exact that reached the shores of America in the Chesapeake (D. Hine, W. Hine and Harrold, 55). It has been long believed that this was the first group of African Americans in British North America; apart of a group who was taken from their home in Angola. Unfortunately during this time, it became apparent that the slaves and those of African descent would be apart of “chattel slavery,” a term coined by the British in the Chesapeake in reference to the enslaved being treated equally to that of the livestock and thus legally treated as property (57). Though the Emancipation Proclamation wouldn’t be a key event until 1863 that would ultimately “free the slaves,” there was a revolt thousands of years earlier by slaves that would lay the ground work for those like them in the future.

In the year 1619, a Dutch ship hauled 20 africans over the Atlantic to Jamestown, Virginia. These 20 sparked the colonies new practice of racialized slavery. Landowners saw these african slaves as a lifelong investment. To them, these foreigners would be the key to expanding production for their farms while having the