The Role Of Slaves In The Civil War

410 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Everyday life for a slave in the south

Have you ever thought of what slaves in the Civil War would have had to endure? What would the slaves had to do to get themselves through slavery without going mad? Slaves could not learn to read or write because it was forbidden. If you were caught reading or writing they would chop off a toe and beat you usually.There was a man named Nightjohn who taught people to read and write, and he did so without getting caught. These are some things that nightjohn and the slaves he taught needed to get through slavery and also things the slave owners used against them. There was prejudice against slaves, the slaves and slave owners should have gotten along with each other, and the slaves needed bravery to get through slavery.

Prejudice It is not

Show More
Related

  • Slavery, The Constitutional, And The Origins Of The Civil War

    1066 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout the years, many people have been taught that the reason the Civil War happened, was to abolish slavery all through the United States. Although that is true, there were more reasons why the Civil War occurred.Referencing will be done on different articles and writers to support the findings of the authors. The article “Slavery, the Constitutional, and the Origins of the Civil War” by Paul Finkelman, discusses about the North (union) and the South (confederacy) and the disagreement of the territories following the constitutional laws regarding slavery, the article explores both sides of the territories and their beliefs of how the situation of slavery should have been dealt with. The article “The Economic Origins of the Civil War” by Marc Egnal, discusses the North’s (union) and the South’s (confederacy) economic situation that could have pushed the two territories to engage in war with one another. Finally, the last article “Politics, Ideology, and the Origins of the American Civil War” by Eric Foner, focuses on the Norths (union) and Souths (confederacy) views on politics and ideas of how each territory is ran and how they have affected the North and the South. These historians supplied specific and different explanations that explained what exactly caused the United States to enter into a Civil War. With the information provided by the authors, the evidence will lead us to the answer of what caused the Civil War.

    Read More

  • Ap World History Dbq Slavery

    1734 Words  | 4 Pages

    Slavery was demeaning to the victims. Slaves were declined the right to an education because reading brought visions, and visions led to dissatisfaction. Many states passed laws stating slaves didn't have a right to an education. At the beginning of the Civil War, perhaps 9/10 of the slaves were illiterate. Also, black slave’s marriages were rarely legally recognized, due to the ineluctable separation that would come at the slave auctions. Slaves didn't have the right to vote. Lastly, slaves didn't have the ability to testify in court. This is shown in a petition by Arthur Lee Freemen. Freemen begs the General Assembly of Virginia (audience) to let him stay in the same state with his wife and four children. He doesn't want to seek a new living in a new country away from his wife and kids. Freemen’s petition most likely was ignored by the General Assembly of Virginia, because slaves weren't able to testify in court. Virginia’s General assembly wanted to kick out Freemen because he was a free black, and free blacks were physical examples of what could be accomplished by emancipation and hence were begrudged and abominated by supporters of the slave system. Free blacks were still enchained to slavery because even after they established their lives, they were forced to move to other states due to slavery. The former slave owners still saw the free black as a slave,

    Read More

  • Slave Life In The Antebellum South Analysis

    1492 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Blacks in the Civil War

    333 Words  | 1 Pages

    For the beginning, in the middle and in the ending of the Civil War in the United States, the Black Americans were central as soldier and civilian. At first, people tried hard to get around this fact. Even President Abraham Lincoln administration sent Black volunteers home with an understanding that the war was a ''White man's war". The policy was eventually changed not because of humanitarianism but because of the Confederation's battlefield brilliance. The South brought the North to a realization that it was in a real brawl that it needed all the weapons it could lay hands on.

    Read More

  • Civil War Dbq African Americans

    597 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the end, during the civil war countless slaves fought for their freedom by giving information and supplies to the Union Army. They also ran away to Union territory and served in the Union Army. Because of these efforts, slaves earned citizenship and equal rights. These acts also came with freedom and liberty to all African Americans. Altogether the slaves during the Civil War were able rise up and earn their

    Read More

  • A House Divided: Slavery, Sectional Tensions, and the Causes of the Civil War

    1088 Words  | 3 Pages

    On April 12, 1861, squadrons of soldiers opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort 33 hours later. Sumter was one of the United States’ last outposts in the recently formed Confederacy of former Southern states. With its fall, the American Civil War began. Lasting four years, the Civil War tore apart what Abraham Lincoln had termed the “bonds of affection” between the North and South. Yet it was not a spontaneous occurrence. What incited the Confederacy to fire on Fort Sumter had its roots in deeply entrenched divisions that had been on the verge of bursting for years. The Civil War owed its existence to three crucial factors: the never-ending debate over slavery, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and sectional tensions fueled by the Republican Party. Each of these contributed majorly to the development of what would become the most devastating war fought on American soil.

    Read More

  • African American Soldiers: Pivotal Contributions in the Civil War

    1106 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Civil War is often thought of as white northerners and southerners fighting over the freedom of African American’s. African American soldiers would fight on both sides of the war. The eventual acceptance of African American’s and their contributions to the Union Army would be pivotal in the Unions success. African Americans were banned from joining the Union Army in the early part of the Civil War. President Lincoln feared that African Americans in the Army would persuade certain states, such as Missouri, to join the Confederacy. Once African American soldiers could join the Union Army they would contribute to almost every major battle of the Civil War. 180,000 African Americans served in the Union Army in 163 different units, and 9,000 served as seamen in the Union Navy.1 President Lincoln stated, “Without the military help of the black freedmen, the war against the South could not have been won.”2

    Read More

  • A Summary Of Harriet Tubman

    1135 Words  | 3 Pages

    For about a year and a half, President Lincoln told the North to focus on saving the union and not worry about abolishing slavery. But somehow, the war for the Union managed to turn into a war for African American freedom. The Confederates depended heavily on slavery during. Slaves were used to build, carry material, tend to horses and perform camp chores. Slavery secured the Confederacy like it did in the Old South. Both Union military commanders and politicians began to realize in order to defeat the Confederacy; the North would have to destroy slavery down south. This essay will show why slaves joined the war, their experiences/ contributions and the overall outcome.

    Read More

  • Importance of Slavery to the Southern Way of Life

    1481 Words  | 3 Pages

    Importance of Slavery to the Southern Way of Life America almost from the beginning was heavily dependent on forced labour. The sand is a sand. In 1619, John Rolfe in Virginia reported about the last day of August came in a butch man-of-war that sold us 20 negers. This is the first record of Africans settling in America. The Southern colonies were more dependent on labour than the North, as the climate in the South is ideal for agricultural plantation.

    Read More

  • What Major Problems Did Former Slaves Face After Civil War Essay

    777 Words  | 2 Pages

    After the Civil War, America went through a reconstruction period which focused on rebuilding areas damaged by the war. For example, before the war landowners used slaves to tend to their crops, but once the war ended landowners ran into problems concerning the productivity of their plantations. With the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments passed, slaves were given freedom, and citizenship of the United States. The freedmen no longer had to work on plantations, but there was no alternatives given to them in order for them to make a living. In the reading, Toby Jones explained, in short, how he worked for his master for four years after slavery was abolished because his master forced him to stay because his master couldn’t afford to let him go. Toby said, “So I goes on working for him till I gits the chance to steal a hoss from him.”

    Read More

  • African Americans and the Civil War

    691 Words  | 2 Pages

    From the inauguration of Lincoln and the secession of eleven states to the Union to the first exchange of fires at Fort Sumter, the inevitable Civil War began. Ever since America began to expand as an independent country, sectionalism (where the North wanted the abolition of slavery while the South wanted slavery) and growing conflicts between the north and south has always closely revolved around the issue of slavery. This long due problem finally blows up in the “United” States of America’s face as the Civil War. Conflicts relating to African Americans caused the war, changed the course and complications of the war, and shaped the war results in both informal and formal ways.

    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

  • The Real Heroes of Slavery in the United States

    1983 Words  | 4 Pages

    As a child in elementary and high school, I was taught that President Abraham Lincoln was the reason that African slaves were freed from slavery. My teachers did not provide much more information than that. For an African American student, I should have received further historical information than that about my ancestors. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity or desire to research slavery on my own until college. And with my eagerness and thirst for more answers concerning my African American history, I set out to console my spirit, knowledge, and self-awareness of my ancestors’ history. I received the answers that my brain, mind, and soul need. Although Abraham Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution, courageous African American slaves were the real heroes and motivation of the movement.

    Read More

  • The Life of Slaves in 1850

    940 Words  | 2 Pages

    Slaves in 1850 couldn’t do much with their lives. They could stay on their master’s plantation and do all sorts of extremely hard labor, get beaten, and experience what it is like to have family members sold away. Or they could try to escape. When a slave would try to run away he would normally have people sent, by his master, to hunt him down. If the slave was found he would most likely be killed; however, frequently all of the other slaves would have to watch him be executed and then later would be beaten or punished to make sure they would not make the same mistake.

    Read More

  • Slavery as the Cause of the American Civil War

    1746 Words  | 4 Pages

    The American Civil War was the bloodiest military conflict in American history leaving over 500 thousand dead and over 300 thousand wounded (Roark 543-543). One might ask, what caused such internal tension within the most powerful nation in the world? During the nineteenth century, America was an infant nation, but toppling the entire world with its social, political, and economic innovations. In addition, immigrants were migrating from their native land to live the American dream (Roark 405-407). Meanwhile, hundreds of thousand African slaves were being traded in the domestic slave trade throughout the American south. Separated from their family, living in inhumane conditions, and working countless hours for days straight, the issue of slavery was the core of the Civil War (Roark 493-494). The North’s growing dissent for slavery and the South’s dependence on slavery is the reason why the Civil War was an inevitable conflict. Throughout this essay we will discuss the issue of slavery, states’ rights, American expansion into western territories, economic differences and its effect on the inevitable Civil War.

    Read More

More about The Role Of Slaves In The Civil War

Open Document