The degradation and cruelty slaves endured led to the death of their culture and identity, as well as multiple uprisings during the nineteenth century. Violence was used against slaves to express society’s ideology that the master was dominant. As a means to ensure that slaves would not retaliate against such treatment, they were denied the opportunity to learn, read or write. However, their yearning for freedom increased as their identity continued to be lost throughout time due to their assimilation to American culture to prevent punishment. As a result of the brutality against slaves, slave rebellions such as Nat Turner’s revolt, Gabriel’s conspiracy, and the German coast uprising, arose as a way to express a slave’s hope for freedom. Yet, …show more content…
In the 1830’s, republicans were in favor of abolishing slavery throughout the United States. This ideology aided in Gabriel Prosser’s desire to lead a slave revolt (Gueye 4). In hopes to create a democratic republic in Virginia, Prosser attracted anti-abolitionists to raid Richmond, Virginia. However, two of his conspirators betrayed him and in response, Virginia authorities accused several Northerners of creating a conspiracy against the South (Gueye 8). As a result, Prosser’s conspiracy encouraged white society to constrict legal restraints on slaves. In particular, literacy became illegal to ensure that one would not form conspiracies against the southern government. Thus, these restrictions were an unfortunate result for the African American’s desire to attain freedom. Prior to Prosser’s conspiracy, Charles Deslondes conducted a slave revolt to liberate black slaves in the territory of New Orleans. Charles’ drive for freedom was a result of him working as a sugar cane slave in the island of St. Domingue (Anderson 77). During this time, a slave revolt was held in St. Domingue and Deslondes became a refugee. As a result, Charles recruited several runaway slaves to march to the New Orleans territory (Anderson 77). As a result, these slave rebellions only increased the fear of the white society’s view on slaves, causing many to migrate, and created restricting laws on slaves to maintain what they thought was
It could be argued that the revolt was entirely reactionary and in response to the myriad of abuses propagated by the white, slave-holding society (Garrison). Slaves were treated as little more than chattel – subject to the caprice and whims of their owners. In one infamous case, a slave woman was executed for killing her master when he attempted to rape her. As a slave, the court literally did not recognize her as a woman but only as an item to be used and abused (Foner 410). Such callous treatment is difficult to fathom, and perhaps helps to put the slave’s rebellion into context; however, Turner’s actions were highly reprehensible in that his slaughter was not confined to those who had perpetrated these abuses, but was instead an indiscriminate massacre of the innocent and the guilty
The North is popularly considered the catalyst of the abolitionist movement in antebellum America and is often glorified in its struggle against slavery; however, a lesser-known installment of the Northern involvement during this era is one of its complicity in the development of a “science” of race that helped to rationalize and justify slavery and racism throughout America. The economic livelihood of the North was dependent on the fruits of slave labor and thus the North, albeit with some reluctance, inherently conceded to tolerate slavery and moreover embarked on a quest to sustain and legitimize the institution through scientific research. Racism began to progress significantly following the American Revolution after which Thomas Jefferson himself penned Notes on the State of Virginia, a document in which he voiced his philosophy on black inferiority, suggesting that not even the laws of nature could alter it. Subsequent to Jefferson’s notes, breakthroughs in phrenological and ethnological study became fundamental in bolstering and substantiating the apologue of racial inadequacy directed at blacks. Throughout history, slavery was indiscriminate of race and the prospect acquiring freedom not impossible; America, both North and South, became an exception to the perennial system virtually guaranteeing perpetual helotry for not only current slaves but also their progeny.
South Carolina was one of the only states in which the black slaves and abolitionists outnumbered their oppressors. Denmark Vesey’s slave revolt consisted of over nine-thousand armed slaves, free blacks, and abolitionists, that would have absolutely devastated society in South Carolina for slave owners, and could have quite possibly been a major step towards the abolishment of slavery in the United states. Robertson succeeded in describing the harsh conditions of slaves in pre-civil war Charleston, South Carolina. This book also helped me to understand the distinctions between the different groups. These groups including the black slaves, free blacks, extreme abolitionists, and the pro-slavery communities.
middle of paper ... ... Although Nat’s expectations were not met, the rebellion injected some sense of slavery and more need for freeing the slaves. In conclusion, this book shows us that slavery is against mankind and all people are equal concerned with the race. Racism has become wide-ranging in many of the countries, mostly in northern Europe and Russia.
“ The sky flushed as they put him in the cart, and suddenly Gabriel thought of others, the ones who were to follow him, the ones who waited in their cells because of his leadership, these and others, others, and still others, a world of others who were to follow”( Gabriel’s Rebellion). Gabriel Prosser was a slave leader who in 1800 proposed a plan to liberate slaves. Gabriel drew up a plan to free his fellow slaves in Richmond, Virginia and the surrounding countryside. Gabriel was a blacksmith, working in Brookfield and in Richmond, who had learned to read and write. He was inspired by the declarations of freedom during the Revolutionary War.
Jefferson feared the immigrants could explode into “unbounded licentiousness” doing so would bring down the curtains of the new republic. He also feared that unless men obeyed their moral sense and exercised self-control they would “live at random” and destroy the republican order. In Jefferson’s view, slavery was not only a violation of black’s rights to liberty, it also undermined the self-c...
To understand the desperation of wanting to obtain freedom at any cost, it is necessary to take a look into what the conditions and lives were like of slaves. It is no secret that African-American slaves received cruel and inhumane treatment. Although she wrote of the horrific afflictions experienced by slaves, Linda Brent said, “No pen can give adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery." The life of a slave was never a satisfactory one, but it all depended on the plantation that one lived on and the mast...
First, Lemann documents horrible accounts of violence against freed blacks. The casual observer views the underlying reasons for these attacks as simple racial hatred. However, Lemann connects the acts of violence to show an orchestrated movement intended to undermine both keys to the freed blacks’ quality of life, organizing abilities and voting rights. Violence against blacks existed for years, but in the form of a master supposedly disciplining his slave. The acts of violence outlined by Lemann show a shift from fear and ignorance to organized intimidation. After all, whites of the time viewed themselves “as protectors of [the] natural order” meaning racial superiority (65). What first started as a fear of being the minority turned quickly to a fear of losing political power and economic wealth. In the end, the use of violence all...
For over two hundred years, slavery engulfed America as one the largest economic opportunities. As soon as millions of Africans forcibly left their homeland for the new founded states, they immediately began their new lives controlled by their relentless owners. Not only did slavery corrupt the slaves, but also the slave owners. The idea of absolute power over others led to the longing of total dominance at all times. Fredrick Douglass’s narrative clearly depicts the perception of mental corruption as a tyrannical slave owner. As slave owners experienced a constant craving for power, they utilized a variety of evil schemes and actions to fulfill their desires.
Slavery in the eighteenth century was worst for African Americans. Observers of slaves suggested that slave characteristics like: clumsiness, untidiness, littleness, destructiveness, and inability to learn the white people were “better.” Despite white society's belief that slaves were nothing more than laborers when in fact they were a part of an elaborate and well defined social structure that gave them identity and sustained them in their silent protest.
During the nineteenth century, America faced what is considered to be one of the most gruesome times in today’s history. Because of slavery in the South and the effects of the Civil War, people in today’s society recognize this time period as one many would avoid discussing. According to Stephen V. Ash, “Southern Slavery was a harsh system —cruel is a better word—that was now and then tampered by acts of kindness on the part of paternalistic whites” (xv). Although there were a small amount of slave owners who were kindhearted, the majority of the South was dominated by slave holders who believed in white supremacy. Ultimately, because many slaves endured extremely callous experiences through forced marriages, repressed education, and revolting living conditions, slave owners were able to create a suppressive atmosphere for slaves during
In the year 1826 Fredrick Douglass realized that he would eventually escape slavery. He would recount this thought four times in his life when he has to become most rebellious in order to survive slaveholders attempting to establish control and dominance in different ways. Each time one comes along Douglass responds using a different form of retaliation or rebellion to show his masters that they don’t own as much control over him as they think they do. All of these attempts to resist his masters control, slavery, and what slavery stood for were detrimental to Fredrick’s escape but the most influential one, the resistive act that started, and kept, the ball rolling was Fredrick’s determination to become literate. Knowledge is power and without his ability to read and write Douglass would have never escaped slavery or written a Narrative of his life.
After the American Revolution, slavery began to decrease in the North, just as it was becoming more popular in the South. By the turn of the century, seven of the most Northern states had abolished slavery. During this time, a surge of democratic reform swept the North to the West, and there were demands for political equality, economic and social advances for all Americans. Northerners said that slavery revoked the human right of being a free person and when new territories became available i...
The American Revolution was a “light at the end of the tunnel” for slaves, or at least some. African Americans played a huge part in the war for both sides. Lord Dunmore, a governor of Virginia, promised freedom to any slave that enlisted into the British army. Colonists’ previously denied enlistment to African American’s because of the response of the South, but hesitantly changed their minds in fear of slaves rebelling against them. The north had become to despise slavery and wanted it gone. On the contrary, the booming cash crops of the south were making huge profits for landowners, making slavery widely popular. After the war, slaves began to petition the government for their freedom using the ideas of the Declaration of Independence,” including the idea of natural rights and the notion that government rested on the consent of the governed.” (Keene 122). The north began to fr...
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.