Slavery
was a very dark time in the history of The United States. Great amounts of
people were tortured, seriously harmed, or killed throughout the history of
slavery. Slavery tore apart families and truly was a terrible period of time.
In our most recent unit in Honors History we learned a lot about slavery and
how it became entrenched in American Society. In class we read three parts from
The Founders Constitution. An interesting quote from this was, “No
Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping
into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be
discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of
the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” This quote states that if
slaves escape from their state and get to a new state they are not free. Even
if the state they escape to is in the north. In all three of these articles the
words slave, slave labor, or slavery are never mentioned. This is intriguing
because it means that the writers were afraid to use worlds like slave. Sooner
or later slavery soon took over life in the southern part of the United States.
This started when the textile business began to boom in the north, which lead
to an increased need for cotton, which the south had to fulfill. As the need for cotton rose so did the need
for slaves to harvest the cotton. One major problem with some cotton was the
small sticky green seeds, which were tangled in a lot of the cotton. These
seeds were a major pain to remove. Eli Whitney was a smart young man who saw
this problem and engineered a solution. He was the creator of the cotton gin,
which made the task of removing the seeds a lot easier. Whitney thought his
invention would lessen the need for slaves because there would be less work.
Unfortunately his invention did quite the opposite. After the invention of the
Cotton Gin the number of slaves in the United States grew by 33%. 70 years
after the invention there were four million slaves in the United States. Before
Whitney’s invention there were 700,000 slaves in the United States.
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| Cotton and Slavery 1800 |
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| Cotton and Slavery 1860 |
Slavery may have had a good affect
on the United States Economy, however it had a terrible affect on human
dignity. For this section of the lesson we watched a movie called Prince Among
Slaves. . My group was assigned Abdul Rahman. Abdul Rahman was a prince while
he lived in Africa, but once he was kidnapped and brought to the United States
he was just another slave. He wasn’t even a person anymore. Abdul’s owner,
Tomas Foster, ordered Abdul to cut his hair and had him chained to a tree. This
was a man who used to help lead large groups of people and now he doesn’t even
have the power to decide what he wants his hair to look like. Abdul Rahman had
a lot of talent because of his background as a prince, but it didn’t matter
because he was black so to the eyes of Tomas Foster he was only good in the
fields. Abdul had no dignity. He had no control over his life, all because of
the color of his skin. There was an African American abolitionist named
Fredrick Douglass who once said, “What, to the American slave is your Fourth of
July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in a year,
the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is constantly the victim.” Douglass
was a former slave and through this quote he is showing how disrespectful it is
for the white American to just flaunt their freedom on this day when they
themselves have slaves.
Another activity we did in class
was; we split into groups and each group was assigned a pro or anti slavery
advocate. Our group was assigned George Fitzhugh. He was a disgusting man with
very poor views on slavery. Fitzhugh believed that slaves were some of the
happiest and in a way some of the most freest people on earth. This is an insane statement because it was so
obvious that slaves lived terrible lives and had zero freedom.
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| George Fitzhugh |
Slavery
did not just ignore a couple of human characteristics; it ignored a ton of
human characteristics. Slaves could rarely make decisions for themselves. They
worked when told to work. They had sex with whom they were told to have sex
with. And they ate what they were told to eat. The food these slaves to eat
were often in very small portions and were very crudely made. Slaves were
tortured and whipped very often. Slaves who were pregnant or sick still had to
work their butts off in the fields. Slave owners did not care about their
slaves as long as they were still making money. This reasoning caused slave
owners to ignore many human rights.
Mapping Pics-http://mappinghistory.uoregon.edu/english/US/US18-03.html
George Fitzhugh Pic -http://thewallmachine.com/files/1351745114.jpg
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