In “Slaves and the ‘Commerce’ of the Slave Trade,” Walter Johnson describes the main form of antebellum, or pre-Civil War, slavery in the South being in the slave market through domestic, or internal, slave trade. The slave trade involves the chattel principle, which said that slaves are comparable to chattels, personal property that is movable and can be bought or sold. Johnson identified the chattel principle as being central to the emergence and expansion of slavery, as it meant that slaves were considered inferior to everyone else. As a result, Johnson argued that slaves weren’t seen as human beings and were continually being mistreated by their owners. Additionally, thanks to the chattel principle, black inferiority was inscribed …show more content…
Pennington explained how it angered him when people used the excuse of “kind masters” or “well fed and well-clothed slaves” as a form of justification for slavery. This relates to paternalism, the notion that masters took responsibility for their “dependents” (women, children, and, slaves). Owners claimed that they considered slaves “part of the family” and provided them with religious instruction, food, housing, medical care, care in old age, etc.. However, this notion of “paternalism” can be misleading, as even the “mildest form of slavery” still included separation of families, starvation, physical punishment or whipping if their slaves defied them, nakedness, etc. According to Pennington, even “good” owners were not masters of the slave system; the slave system was a master of them (p.374). They claimed to “love” their slaves, yet they were always willing to sell them for a certain price. Most importantly, due to the chattel principle, even if one had a “good” owner, he could easily be moved and sold to a bad owner. The chattel principle became one of the main critiques of slavery by northern abolitionists and motivated them to decimate the pro-slavery …show more content…
This was one of the most common places where slave auctions took place. Through this cartoon, Miller helps prove Johnson’s point that slaves were seen as chattel property. The fact that there were auctions for slaves taking place proves that they weren’t seen as humans and were considered property who can be moved and bought or sold. Furthermore, you know the saying how you can’t put a dollar value on another human being? Many people think of their children as invaluable, as they believed you can’t put a price tag on them. They wouldn’t sell their children for anything in the world, even if they were offered millions of dollars. Well, according to Johnson, many slave masters tried using paternalism as a form of justification for slavery. However, if this were really true and they treated them like they were their children, how could they possibly be willing to sell their slaves in such auctions and tread them so brutally? Every slave owner was willing to part with their slaves for a certain price. As Johnson stated, this proves that the paternalism justification is just an outright lie. Additionally, a mother is seen holding her baby in the drawing, as others are bidding for her and her baby’s services. Once again, this proves how slaves were treated so cruelly, as Johnson pointed out, even putting a
On March 8, 1655, Anthony Johnson made history by becoming the first legal slave owner in America( Woodbridge 1999). How could Johnson, a former indentured servant and fellow african, force someone into lifelong servitude? This man was John Casor (Nicholson, 2015). In order to justify forcing this man into slavery, Johnson used relativism.
Hammond’s voice was very loud when it came to the issue of slavery. He was not ashamed to let everyone know how much he supported it. In 1831, Hammond became the owner of a cotton plantation called Silver Bluff. There were 147 slaves at Silver Bluff when Hammond arrived to take possession of it. They were eager to meet their new master. “Hammond had acquired seventy-four females and seventy-three males, a population with a median age of twenty-five. He would certainly have noted that forty-six, nearly a third of these slaves, were not yet fifteen, too young to be much use in the fields but a good foundation for a vigorous future labor force. Undoubtedly, too, he observed that sixty-four of the slaves were between fifteen and forty-five, the prime work years. These were the individuals upon whom Hammond would rely to plant, cultivate, and harvest the cotton and corn that would generate most of his yearly income” (Faust, 71). The rest were older slaves that couldn’t really do a lot of hard labor in the field, but they could do chores that didn’t require such demanding work ethics like watching over the children whose parents are out working in the fields.
1. The insight that each of these sources offers into slave life in the antebellum South is how slaves lived, worked, and were treated by their masters. The narratives talk about their nature of work, culture, and family in their passages. For example, in Solomon Northup 's passage he describes how he worked in the cotton field. Northup said that "An ordinary day 's work is considered two hundred pounds. A slave who is accustomed to picking, is punished, if he or she brings less quantity than that," (214). Northup explains how much cotton slaves had to bring from the cotton field and if a slave brought less or more weight than their previous weight ins then the slave is whipped because they were either slacking or have no been working to their
A Eurocentric understanding of the early modern era would the Islamic world. While, the role of the Europeans on a global scale was that the Europeans were becoming involved in world affairs. The Europeans also became involved in the oceanic journeys of European explorers and the European conquest and colonial settlement of the Americas. The Europeans also became involved in the global silver trade.
Slavery as it existed in America was a practice founded on the chattel principle. Slaves were treated as human chattel to be traded, sold, used, and ranked not among beings, but among things, as an article of property to the owner or possessor.
[Slaves] seemed to think that the greatness of their master was transferable to themselves” (Douglass 867). Consequently, slaves start to identify with their master rather than with other slaves by becoming prejudiced of other slaves whose masters were not as wealthy or as nice as theirs, thereby falling into the traps of the white in which slaves start to lose their
Douglass gave many important details on how slaves were treated in the early United States. He gives in depth insight on the brutality of how a master treated slaves, “for a slave with knowledge.” Douglass explains in his autobiography how he was unaware of his position as a slave when he was a child but learned quickly from experience around the plantation he was reared. He wrote about how he didn’t know much about his mother, masters thought it was ideal to remove the mother from the child as soon as a year of the child being born in order to remove any attachment from each other in order for them to serve as better slaves. He also illustrates how he and other slaves living conditions with a monthly allowance of eight pounds of pork or its equivalent in fish as well as one bushel of corn meal. For the adults where given basically one outfit that would serve its purpose for one year, if not they would go without for the rest of the year. As for the children they were given only two coarse lien shirts and if not they would be naked for all that year as well. Douglas described that he and the other slaves all had something in common the hard dirt floor on which they al...
Slavery was the main resource used in the Chesapeake tobacco plantations. The conditions in the Chesapeake region were difficult, which lead to malnutrition, disease, and even death. Slaves were a cheap and an abundant resource, which could be easily replaced at any time. The Chesapeake region’s tobacco industries grew and flourished on the intolerable and inhumane acts of slavery.
Imagine supporting a cause without knowing all the information. The British people reinforced the Atlantic slave trade and slavery without fully understanding the slave’s treatment. The Atlantic slave trade, which began in the 17th century, had over eleven million enslaved Africans brought and traded to North America and the West Indies with the help of British traders. It was reported that the earliest anti-slavery British protestors rooted from the Quaker religion. This horrific practice of slavery was outrageous, obscene, and overaged. In the British Empire, slavery was not physically present; the people could only see the product of the slave’s forced work instead of the horrendous process. Convincing the public to believe slavery was
It is unanimously agreed upon that slavery was morally evil: the torture millions had to endure is simply unforgivable. However, some historians speculate that the Atlantic Slave Trade, despite the horrors it entailed, was beneficial to the African economy. Historian Hugh Thomas agrees with this, arguing that it strengthened the African economy and the population loss was not great enough to have a negative effect on life in Africa. However, historian Walter Rodney disagrees with this statement. Rodney claims that African slavery was both morally and economically evil as Europeans took advantage of an underdeveloped Africa, scarring millions of people and causing a technological stagnation. He also states that the Atlantic slave trade is the
village, and then burn the huts to the ground. Most of the people who were taken
Even 150 years after the abolition of slavery, it is still a hot button issue as to its lasting effects on racial relations and social hierarchy to this very day. While no sane, intelligent person would claim that the mass enslavement of Africans, Native Americans, or other nationalities and races was a good thing, simply due to human rights violations and the philosophical invention of racism, philosophers as recent as Robert Nozick are able to ask a different question with a similar moral implication: should someone be able to legally sell themselves into slavery free of coercion? While many philosophers disagree with Nozick’s affirmation of slave contracts, if principles of self-ownership are applied, it is apparent that slave contracts without coercion are justified in a free society. The philosophies that best illustrate this moral idea are Robert Nozick’s theory of libertarianism and Fredrick Douglass’s theory of coerced slavery; and it is best negated by John Stuart Mill’s theory of utilitarianism and John Locke’s theory of classical libertarianism.
Within the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave” Douglass discusses the deplorable conditions in which he and his fellow slaves suffered from. While on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, slaves were given a “monthly allowance of eight pounds of pork and one bushel of corn” (Douglass 224). Their annual clothing rations weren’t any better; considering the type of field work they did, what little clothing they were given quickly deteriorated. The lack of food and clothing matched the terrible living conditions. After working on the field all day, with very little rest the night before, they must sleep on the hard uncomfortably cramped floor with only a single blanket as protection from the cold. Coupled with the overseer’s irresponsible and abusive use of power, it is astonishing how three to four hundred slaves did not rebel. Slave-owners recognized that in able to restrict and control slaves more than physical violence was needed. Therefore in able to mold slaves into the submissive and subservient property they desired, slave-owners manipulated them by twisting religion, instilling fear, breaking familial ties, making them dependent, providing them with an incorrect view of freedom, as well as refusing them education.
Slavery was the core of the North and South’s conflict. Slavery has existed in the New World since the seventeenth century prior to it being exclusive to race. During those times there were few social and political concerns about slavery. Initially, slaves were considered indentured servants who will eventually be set free after paying their debt(s) to the owner. In some cases, the owners were African with white servants. However, over time the slavery became exclusive to Africans and was no limited to a specific timeframe, but life. In addition, the treatment of slaves worsens from the Atlantic Slave trade to th...
The slave Traders genuinely did not care about the treatment of slaves, and they treated them how ranchers would treat their cattle. This is proven by Zinn, “They are brought down to a large plain, where the ships surgeon examines every part of them, to the smallest member, men and women being stark naked… Such are allowed good and sound are set on one side… Marked on the breast with a red hot iron, imprinting the mark of the French, English, or Dutch companies” (28). The Traders did not care about the treatment of the slaves only that the slaves got to their future Owners marked and ready for servitude. If a few slaves were lost along the way it did not bother the Traders much, they still got their profit and moved on. While the slave Owners had to treat them a little better because they were their property now. The treatment of slaves in America became known as, “It was a harsh servitude, but they had rights which slaves brought to America did not have, and they were altogether different from the human cattle of the slave ships and the American plantations” (27). The slave Traders treated the slaves like products while the slave Owners simply thought of them as farming equipment. The Owners knew in order to prosper they needed to take care of their equipment, but the slave Traders had the mentality that “there’s more where that came from”. It is in this way the slave Owners and Traders are