Slave Revolts

886 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Slavery the struggle for freedom

The topic of slave revolts is often overlooked in American history due to the lack of uprisings and the size of rebellions when they occur. Even though the amount of successful revolts were lacking, the threats for revolts were much more effective in that they had a great influence on several aspects of slavery and life. The few thriving rebellions were great in history and affected many. The Declaration Of Independence, Virginia Declaration of Rights, as well as in the Massachusetts Constitution and others state that “all men are created equal” but slaves were not included considering how inhumane they were treated. This treatment of the slaves lead to the constant threat and follow through of rebellions against slave owners. This hints at questions of whether slaves were even thought to be humans or citizens at this time. Based on the rebellions, documents, and actual definition of what a human and citizen are, slaves were not considered or treated equal. The slave uprisings that were successful helped prove some reasons for why the slaves rebelled in the first place. The most common explanation for slave rebellions between mid 1700s to late 1800s was the slave’s owner treatment towards the slaves. The way the owners of these slaves treated them was inhumane and wrong on many levels. In a passage written about slave life, the author spoke about the conditions the slaves had to endure on a daily basis. “Life on the fields meant working sunup to sundown six days a week and having food sometimes not suitable for an animal to eat.” This type of surrounding was one of the major explanations for why slaves revolted. Slaves were whipped, tortured, and/or killed if they did something wrong. The owners were “paid to get the most work ... ... middle of paper ... ...t considered humans or citizens. Starting with the Three-Fifths Compromise, they were seen as sub-human and not equal to their white owners. There was an on going issue during the making of the Three-Fifths Compromise, which was allowing slaves to vote as a “person”. This problem caused a split between the two groups of delegates. The delegates from the south wanted to count the slaves so they could be used to their advantage while the northerners did not want them to be counted with the whites because it would be seen as a disadvantage. This disagreement was settled when the “Three-fifths Compromise allowed each state to count three fifths of each Black person in determining political representation in the House” As time passed the amount laws for owning slaves and dealing with slaves grew. Slaves were looked at as property by law, “no different from a cow”

Show More
Related

  • If I Stay In This Bloody Land David Walker Summary

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    David Walker describes the fact that slaves are humans just as much as their White American masters are. He states the pressing matter is that “You [colored people] have to prove to the Americans and the world, that we are MEN and not brutes, as we have been represented and by millions treated.” (Page 33) He asks the question “How can those enemies but say that we and our children are not of the HUMAN FAMILY, but were made by our Creator to be an inheritance?” Although nowadays many people agree that black people have the same anatomy as whites do, but back then many people did not view blacks as equals to themselves.

    Read More

  • The Three-Fifths Compromise, The Great Cocomise, And Slave Trade Compromise

    1137 Words  | 3 Pages

    The founders’ disagreements about this issue based on their economic backgrounds and coming from states with different economy had influence the creation of the Three-Fifths Compromise which dealt with how to count slaves as a part of the population. According to "The Slavery Compromises,” the Southern state 's economy, such as South Carolina, depends on the labor of slaves working in their large plantations (University of Louisiana Lafayette 2016). Since the Southern states that depended on slavery naturally owned more slaves, many of the founders from these states wanted slaves to be counted as any other white people to gain more representatives and more voice in Congress. On the other hand, the Northern states’ economy does not heavily rely on slavery, and many of these states are “free” states which restrict slavery (University of Louisiana Lafayette 2016). Many of these Northern delegates such as Elbridge Gerry countered that “Blacks are properties” and should be counted as properties that can be taxed, but not as people when they don’t have the rights of citizens (Hart et al. 111). From this, we can infer that the Northern delegates fear that the South will get more voice, more representation due to more slaves, and they thought it was ironic how the

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of Slave Insurrection

    723 Words  | 2 Pages

    Slave insurrection occurred in a multitude of ways. Slaves practiced everyday resistance as well as planned and executed more elaborate forms of resistance. One form of resistance was strikes. During a strike Negros would flee to the swamps or forests and send back word that they would return if their demands were made. Demands would often include food, clothes, fewer beatings, shorter hours, or a new overseer. If demands were met they would return. However during the Civil War the demand of payment of wages. During this era they won “lifting themselves by their own bootstraps from chattels to wage workers”.3

    Read More

  • The Growing Opposition to Slavery

    1222 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Three Fifths compromise states that a slave be counted as three-fifths of a person. Therefore, the population of the southern states equaled the population of the northern states. Now that the populations were balanced, the south and the north sent the same amount of representatives to the House of Representatives. Pro-slavery southerners felt as if the north still had an advantage, but it was actually the south that had the advantage in the Senate and the House of Representatives.... ...

    Read More

  • Religion's Influence on the Slavery Debates

    1362 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The right to have a slave implies the right in some one to make a slave; that right must be equal and mutual, and this would resolve society into a state of perpetual war.” Senator William Steward, an anti-slavery supporter, issued this claim in his “There is a Higher Law than the Constitution” speech. Steward, like all abolitionist, viewed all of man as equals. This equality came from the “higher law” that is the Bible. Since all men were created by God then all men were equals in God’s eyes. Abolitionist believed that whites had no more right to make a slave out of a African American than the African American had to make a slave out of a white man.

    Read More

  • Slavery In Colonial America Essay

    791 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Indentured Slavery: A Brutal Pillar of American History

    298 Words  | 1 Pages

    Before the horrid civil war, slaves, indentured servants or anything of the sort, were considered no less then pets and treated the same way as animals. What it meant to be a slave, was that you and all of your sons and daughters will either be inherited or sold. As horrible as this was, it was the truth. Your future grand son’s son could become a slave for nothing they did, but because you foolishly signed away your life

    Read More

  • White Man's Burden Summary

    1766 Words  | 4 Pages

    Slavery is the idea and practice that one person is inferior to another. What made the institution of slavery in America significantly different from previous institutions was that “slavery developed as an institution based upon race.” Slavery based upon race is what made slavery an issue within the United States, in fact, it was a race issue. In addition, “to know whether certain men possessed natural rights one had only to inquire whether they were human beings.” Slaves were not even viewed as human beings; instead, they were dehumanized and were viewed as property or animals. During this era of slavery in the New World, many African slaves would prefer to die than live a life of forced servitude to the white man. Moreover, the problem of slavery was that an African born in the United States never knew what freedom was. According to Winthrop D. Jordan, “the concept of Negro slavery there was neither borrowed from foreigners, nor extracted from books, nor invented out of whole cloth, nor extrapolated from servitude, nor generated by English reaction to Negroes as such, nor necessitated by the exigencies of the New World. Not any one of these made the Negro a slave, but all.” American colonists fought a long and bloody war for independence that both white men and black men fought together, but it only seemed to serve the white man’s independence to continue their complete dominance over the African slave. The white man must carry a heavy

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast The Point Of View Of Slavery

    1385 Words  | 3 Pages

    From 1750 until 1800 the colonial United States endured a period of enormous achievement along with a substantial amount of struggle. Before 1750, the new colony’s first struggle was between the colonists and England over who would have leadership within the New World. Once settled, the issues emerged from within the colonies themselves, particularly with the “belongings” they brought and imported. African American slaves were seen as property, and were not given any innate rights such as liberty or freedom when following their master to the New World. The revolution for the colonists from England began, with new freedoms received by the colonists; the slaves began to question their rights as humans. Innate rights such as liberty and freedom

    Read More

  • Slavery as the Cause of the American Civil War

    1746 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • African American Freedom Essay

    1020 Words  | 3 Pages

    This concept was later expanded upon in the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson and became the motto of American democracy: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. However, the founding fathers and their influential Enlightenment Era philosophers often referred to blacks as “savages” and “inferior humans”, denying them these “inalienable” rights. It is through this manipulation of language and human understanding that African Americans were denied the most basic elements of freedom. The Constitution itself is highly influenced by Enlightenment thought and meant to serve as the mark of an egalitarian republic. However, it includes no mention of the word “slave”, yet directly condones the foreign importation of slaves for at least 20 years after its ratification. This is evidence that African Americans were marginalized in their aspirations for freedom, strictly because their subjugated position in society benefited

    Read More

  • Ancient Roman Slave Revolts

    1737 Words  | 4 Pages

    The slavery system in Rome is one of the most complex systems in their society, in extreme cases one’s life would be better if they were a slave. The system was not base on races or other discriminating facts. Slaves normally came from the defeated nation’s males of fighting age or from people culminating mass amount of debt. Slavery at the time of Ancient Rome were not the same as slavery found in America. Slaves were treated very well and were able to pay their freedom or were grant it, in Ancient Rome. Why was their three big slaves revolts that also crippled the Republic and in the case of Spartacus threaten the city of Rome. The three revolts had very special people that led them, with them having a very interesting background and leadership

    Read More

  • Slavery and Abolition

    1581 Words  | 4 Pages

    The term slave is defined as a person held in servitude as the chattel of another, or one that is completely passive to a dominating influence. The most well known cases of slavery occurred during the settling of the United States of America. From 1619 until July 1st 1928 slavery was allowed within our country. Slavery abolitionists attempted to end slavery, which at some point; they were successful at doing so. This paper will take the reader a lot of different directions, it will look at slavery in a legal aspect along the lines of the constitution and the thirteenth amendment, and it will also discuss how abolitionists tried to end slavery. This paper will also discuss how slaves were being taken away from their families and how their lives were affected after.

    Read More

  • The Slave Revolt In Morality

    1755 Words  | 4 Pages

    The slave revolt in morality that Friedrich Nietzsche discuses reveals how a transvaluation of values comes about. The slave revolt in morality also helps reveal some of the contradicting and questionable things about the two great Christian Commandments. In addition to these beliefs that Nietzsche has, he also has a response to Descartes claim “I think therefore I am”. Descartes believes we are thinking things, but Nietzsche seems to believe otherwise.

    Read More

  • Modern Day Slavery Essay

    1371 Words  | 3 Pages

    Slavery has been a part of human practices for centuries and dates back to the world’s ancient civilizations. In order for us to recognize modern day slavery we must take a look and understand slavery in the American south before the 1860’s, also known as antebellum slavery. Bouvier’s Law Dictionary defines a slave as, “a man who is by law deprived of his liberty for life, and becomes the property of another” (B.J.R, pg. 479). In the period of antebellum slavery, African Americans were enslaved on small farms, large plantations, in cities and towns, homes, out on fields, industries and transportation. By law, slaves were the perso...

    Read More

More about Slave Revolts

Open Document