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Slaves during the cotton revolution
Southern rationalization of slavery in south
Southern rationalization of slavery in south
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The Southern Mindset on Slavery “Furious at the sight, he sprung upon him like a tiger. In a moment, the overseer was down, and, mastered by rage, my father would have killed him if not for the entreaties of my mother, and the overseer’s own promise that nothing should be said of the matter. The promise was kept—like most promises of the cowardly and debased—as long as the danger lasted” . This is an excerpt from the horrific biography of a slave named Josiah Henson. Born June 15, 1789, in Charles County Maryland, Henson describes his life growing up as a slave and what he saw growing up, moving around the colonies, and being separated from his family. Because of the cotton boom, the relocation of slaves across the colonies, and the separation of slave families, Josiah Henson described his horrific dealings with his white overseers to show the twisted beliefs of his white counterpart and the way they treated an entire race of people like animals. In the first excerpt, he describes his father turning on an overseer that was assaulting his wife and the overseer’s promise that nothing would come of it if he let him walk away unharmed. This was not the case, of course, and authorities soon followed him until he was captured and tortured. “…The …show more content…
They believed that bringing other slaves to see these cruel and unusual punishments would minimize, if not eradicate, slave rebellion. Whether or not this worked is still up for debate because of the small amount of slave rebellion in the first place. After the black population became greater than the white population, laws were put in place before slaves even had a chance to think about a revolt or rebellion and were heinously punished even for defending a family member. Seeing the gruesome and frightful sights of a slave being tortured would render even the strongest slave into
When reading about the institution of slavery in the United States, it is easy to focus on life for the slaves on the plantations—the places where the millions of people purchased to serve as slaves in the United States lived, made families, and eventually died. Most of the information we seek is about what daily life was like for these people, and what went “wrong” in our country’s collective psyche that allowed us to normalize the practice of keeping human beings as property, no more or less valuable than the machines in the factories which bolstered industrialized economies at the time. Many of us want to find information that assuages our own personal feelings of discomfort or even guilt over the practice which kept Southern life moving
In The book Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass writes about how a slavemaster Mr.Covey attacks one of his slaves with a long rope catching him by his legs for no reason. This shows unpredictable his slave master is when he decided to try and punish him for whatever reason he think is a good one. Because of this, slaves were held back and lived in fear all the time. We see, though, that Douglass decides to take control of his life. Douglass want the reader to understand the control that fear had and admire the willingness of slaves to take chances for their freedom.
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.
The narrative enables Douglass to flaunt his hard-earned education. As stated before, his diction brings pathos to his work. He describes his experiences in a way that lets his audience feel the indignity of being owned by another person. For example, D...
During the 1980's southern blacks from the United States dedicated to migrate to the north with the belief that the north had more opportunities and advantages blacks. Although, Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington opposed a migration to the north, millions of blacks migrated northward. The industries for the blacks migrating t o the north was what Douglas and Washington feared, black northern workers being placed in the same situation prior to their movement. Blacks were going to experience the same obstacles and disadvantages as they had in the south just with different situations. Northern blacks were going to experience prejudice, riots and murdering.
According to Douglass, the treatment of a slave was worse than that of an animal. Not only were they valued as an animal, fed like an animal, and beaten like an animal, but also a slave was reduced to an animal when he was just as much of a man as his master. The open mentality a slave had was ...
Southern Pro-Slavery Rhetoric By 1860, the slave states had approximately four million slaves making up approximately one-third of the South's population. However, opposition to slavery began as early as the 1700's by religious leaders and philosophers in North America and Europe who condemned the practice, arguing that slavery was contrary to God's teachings and violated basic human rights. During the Revolutionary War, many Americans came to feel that slavery in the United States was wrong because they believed that protection of human rights was one of the founding tenets of the United States, and slaves were not accorded rights. Slavery was likely opposed more rapidly in the North, in part because fewer people in the North owned slaves.
To southern men, honor was everything. I dictated their standing in society, whether or not they could own slaves; it basically was a secret caste system. A man held in the highest honor experienced a good life from a social stance in the south. The honor system used in the south was related to the language used by southern gentlemen.# Honor and Slavery by Kenneth S. Greenburg attempts to explain the vernacular and customs used by men in the antebellum south. It would be hard for a person in today's society to understand the way honor was shown; it would have even been a challenge for men living in the Northern United States to understand at that time.# As Greenburg states, "Since the language of honor was the dominant language of the men who ruled the slave South, we will never understand masters, the nature of slavery, or the Civil war without first understanding that language."# To be a powerful man in the south, society also had to consider you to be an honorable man. Honor and power in the South were parallel to each other; a man with a high honor ranking was usually a prominent member of society.#
Shining a light on the cruel treatment of slave masters and their overseers. It would seem as though he wanted to ease the readers into the violent topic while at the same time painting a vivid picture.
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave details the progression of a slave to a man, and thus, the formation of his identity. The narrative functions as a persuasive essay, written in the hopes that it would successfully lead to “hastening the glad day of deliverance to the millions of [his] brethren in bonds” (Douglass 331). As an institution, slavery endeavored to reduce the men, women, and children “in bonds” to a state less than human. The slave identity, according to the institution of slavery, was not to be that of a rational, self forming, equal human being, but rather, a human animal whose purpose is to work and obey the whims of their “master.” For these reasons, Douglass articulates a distinction between the terms ‘man’ and ‘slaves’ under the institution of slavery. In his narrative, Douglass describes the situations and conditions that portray the differences between the two terms. Douglass also depicts the progression he makes from internalizing the slaveholder viewpoints about what his identity should be to creating an identity of his own making. Thus, Douglass’ narrative depicts not simply a search for freedom, but also a search for himself through the abandonment of the slave/animal identity forced upon him by the institution of slavery.
As both the narrator and author of “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself” Frederick Douglass writes about his transition from a slave to a well educated and empowered colored young man. As a skilled and spirited man, he served as both an orator and writer for the abolitionist movement, which was a movement to the abolishment of slavery. At the time of his narrative’s publication, Douglass’s sole goal of his writings was to essentially prove to those in disbelief that an articulate and intelligent man, such as himself, could have,in fact, been enslaved at one point in time. While, Douglass’ narrative was and arguably still is very influential, there are some controversial aspects of of this piece, of which Deborah McDowell mentions in her criticism.
Throughout our history, there has been several different things that our country has done and supported that we are not proud of now. One of those things is slavery. At the time, slavery was a widely controversial topic from 1800-1860, known as the antebellum period. It soon became known that two regions of the United States had very different views on slavery, for very different reasons: the North being against, and the South being for slavery. With this in mind, the South began to construct arguments in order to defend and legitimize their reasoning as to why slavery should exist and not become abolished. This paper is meant to argue against the Southerners’ defenses of slavery. The South had constructed several different arguments to defend their position on slavery, and among them were the Religious Defense, the Political Defense, and the Economic Argument. Though the South made very compelling arguments regarding the practice of slavery, these three arguments can be proven wrong and dubious by stating that there is a sense of a moral code in the Bible regarding the treatment of slaves, that blacks are not subjected to being lower than whites just because of their race, and that if slavery was to be abolished, the economy would still thrive just as it was in the north.
Slave-owners looked upon the African Americans as lesser people who were in desperate need of support. They were not capable of surviving on their own without white guidance (Boston). Dr. Flint, the master over the plantation where Harriet Jacobs lived showed a great example of paternalism. He cared for Harriet but in a possessive way to which he continuously sought the woman for his personal needs. For Dr. Flint, the slaves he owned should be grateful towards him and be willing to do what he asked with no rebuttal. This wasn’t the case with Harriet. She simply refused him at every chance which only angered the slaveholder. Jacobs resisted the doctor and his paternalistic ways. Harriet Jacobs sheds light onto the self-interest that drives the paternalism displayed by the masters. The slaves were property and who wanted to showcase poorly groomed property? If there was someone visiting, the slaves, except for those within the house, would be hidden away and those who worked within the master’s home would dawn nicer clothes and better meals would be prepared all in a show for the
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.
Douglass's narrative is, on one surface, intended to show the barbarity and injustice of slavery. However, the underlying argument is that freedom is not simply attained through a physical escape from forced labor, but through a mental liberation from the attitude created by Southern slavery. The slaves of the South were psychologically oppressed by the slaveholders' disrespect for a slave’s family and for their education, as well as by the slaves' acceptance of their own subordination. Additionally, the slaveholders were trapped by a mentality that allowed them to justify behavior towards human beings that would normally not be acceptable. In this manner, both slaveholder and slave are corrupted by slavery.