Slave Historiography Of Slavery

To what extent did the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 weaken political unification between the North and South through 1865?

There has been many historians and theorists who have tackled colonial slavery. One of them is Ira Berlin whose book Many Thousands Gone is his take on slavery diversity in American history and how slavery is at the epicenter of economic production, amongst other things. He separates the book into three generations: charter, plantation and revolutionary, across four geographic areas: Chesapeake, New England, the Lower country and the lower Mississippi valley. In this paper, I will discuss the differences between the charter and plantation generations, the changes in work and living conditions, resistance, free blacks and changes in manumission.

Slave as defined by the dictionary means that a slave is a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another; a bond servant. So why is it that every time you go and visit a historical place like the Hampton-Preston mansion in Columbia South Carolina, the Lowell Factory where the mill girls work in Massachusetts or the Old town of Williamsburg Virginia they only talk about the good things that happened at these place, like such things as who owned them, who worked them, how they were financed and what life was like for the owners. They never talk about the background information of the lower level people like the slaves or servants who helped take care and run these places behind the scenes.

Throughout American history slave has resist their master, the system and the idea of slavery. These resistance has became of a key stone in the history of slavery. To understand what these resistance is, we will look at incident of the past to analyze how slave in the past resisted their master, the system and the idea of slavery.

In this assignment I will be taking a further look into the history of slavery. When thinking of slavery the immediate thought that comes to mind is all the negative aspects of the system. Prior to this research, I was unaware of slave systems that were not based on the long labor hours and the torture of slaves. Granted, there were still forms of slavery that practiced these brutal rituals, where slaves were treated as animals and were malnourished. One prime example of this, is the book titled “Am I Not A Woman And A Sister”, looks at the history of a Bermudan slave named Mary Prince. Another example of slavery that will be incorporated in this paper will come from a source about a woman slave named Semsigul, born in Caucasus an area that

Ophelia Settle Egypt, informally known as Ophie, was an African American woman ahead of her time. She attained the educational status of less than one percent of the American population, was liberal and accepting of others despite the criticism around her, fought to end racism, worked independently of her husband, and believed in limiting family growth. All of Egypt’s beliefs and lifetime achievements represent a new type of woman: a woman who refuses to assimilate to her gender stereotype of weak, inferior, and domestic. Egypt dedicated her life to social work through various activities. She worked as a sociologist, researcher, teacher, director of organizations, and social worker at different times in her life. Egypt’s book, The Unwritten History of Slavery (1968), and the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Southeast Washington D.C. named after her represent Egypt’s legacy and how one person is capable of social change.

Slavery, often called the “Peculiar Institution”, was an integral part of the United States economy. Prior to the civil war, the economy of the south was based on the use of slave labor for cotton. Even though the North did not have as many slaves, it relied on cotton from the South, which was the biggest import from the United States. Slavery became an important part of the culture of the south. Plantation life became an idealized way of life. Many whites came to view blacks as inferior and uncivilized. The United States was one of the last countries to abolish slavery and many of the ideas of white supremacy still exist today. For example, in The Growth of The American Republic by Samuel Eliot Morrison and Henry Steele Commager, a textbook used from the 1930’s until the 1960’s, the authors wrote about slavery having been beneficial for everyone, even the slaves. They wrote about how slaves were happy to be slaves and treated well. They claimed that slaves became devoted to their masters and were faithfully obedient. They wrote that slaves worked less than free workers of the North. Contrary to what Samuel Eliot Morrison and Henry Steele Commager thought, slaves were not treated well, content, or devoted to their owners, and suffered from overworking and terrible conditions.

Slavery was a central institution in American society during the late eighteenth century, and was accepted as normal and applauded as a positive thing by many white Americans. In the 1770’s, there were approximately 400,000 blacks in the Southern colonies and 50,000 in the Northern colonies. Slaves were central to the operation of the colonies, especially in the South where they were a crucial element of the labour force. They were treated as inferiors, but living alongside whites, and essential as an exploited labouring class. On one hand, people were advocating liberty from slavery, while at the same time relying on slaves to drive the economy.

Slavery has a lot of effects on African Americans today. History of slavery is marked for civil rights. Indeed, slavery began with civilization. With farming’s development, war could be taken as slavery. Slavery that lives in Western go back 10,000 years to Mesopotamia. Today, most of them move to Iraq, where a male slave had to focus on cultivation. Female slaves were as sexual services for white people also their masters at that time, having freedom only when their masters died.

(1) The use of natural dialect can be seen throughout the slave narrative interviews through words and phrases used that were common during the period of slavery, but are not used today. One example can be seen in the dialect used by former slave Mama Duck, “Battlin stick, like dis. You doan know what a battling stick is? Well, dis here is one.” Through incomplete sentences and unknown words the natural dialect of the time can be seen. Unfamiliar words such as shin-plasters, meaning a piece of paper currency or a promissory note regarded as having little or no value. Also, geechees, used to describe a class of Negroes who spoke Gullah. Many examples can be seen throughout the “Slave Narratives”

During the eighteenth century, slavery was already well-established section of the American labor system. As the amount of slaves grew in size, they did not receive rights, and were mostly separated from their families. They were mostly needed for agricultural labors and had to work mostly from dusk to dawn. Frederick Douglass’s experiences as a slave was different than that other colonial labor because of the strict treatment he received from his masters, the inferiority to other humans that he felt, and the harsh conditions he lived in.

In American history, every event and person plays a part in the future. For example, rich plantation owners helped America advance their economy. However, that would not have been at all possible without the help of their slaves. The time and institution of slavery is a time of historical remembrance. It played a primary role during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The treatment, labor conditions, and personal stories of these slaves’ treatment and labor conditions are all widely discussed around the world to this day.

From the commencement of the institution of slavery in the United States until December of 1865, it has always been a topic of great controversy. Of course, the goal of the abolitionist was to maximize the hardships of slavery to the public and supporters of pro-slavery to minimize them. Books, articles, letters and such were all heavily biased at the time, making it difficult for historians to write on this topic without falling to a bias, whether pro or anti-slavery. Despite the arduous task of writing on a topic like slavery, Kenneth M. Stampp’s: The Peculiar Institution produces an exceptional look into not only the daily lives of slaves, but also how their masters treated and dealt with them.

Douglass’s fight against Mr. Covey supports Stampp’s argument in “A Troublesome Property,” that slaves were treated harshly and any act of opposition from slaves was a sign of rebellion and the desire for freedom. Stampp’s depiction of the tension between a slave and a slave owner matches Douglass’s description of Mr. Covey and himself. Stampp agrees with a white man who says that the desire for freedom “exists in the bosom of every slave” (Stampp, 260). Stampp says that rebellion, no matter how subtle, is not lesser than the daring “thrusts of liberty” (Stampp, 261). Constant resistance to their master’s authority makes them “troublesome property” (Stampp, 261) in the eyes of their owners. According to Stampp, attempts to overwork or punish a slave by a

A historian once wrote that the rise of liberty and equality in America was accompanied by slavery. There is truth in that statement to great effect. The rise of America in general was accompanied by slavery and the settlers learned early on that slavery would be an effective way to build a country and create free labor. There was a definite accompaniment of slavery with the rising of liberty and equality in America.