Life Inside The Antebellum Slave Market By Walter Johnson: Chapter Summary
Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market by historian Walter Johnson focuses specifically on New Orleans during the 1800s. Even more specifically, Johnson drills down to the showrooms were people were treated like objects to be bought and sold. He examines the ins and outs of the slave trade through the activities that took place in these showrooms. The thesis of this nonfiction book is that slavery was caused and supported in large part by mercantilism in that people were commoditized in the same way tobacco, sugar, and cotton were, for example. Unfortunately, the 1808 ban of international slave trade did not diminish this trend, but rather forced it to morph into a domestic slave trade, which led to worse conditions for enslaved persons as cotton became a more powerful market. Another important underlying thesis of this book is that the New Orleans slave market was …show more content…
In the first chapter, Johnson presents the chattel principle. Basically, this principle tied a slave’s identity to his or her worth on the market. In other words, they were their bodies—bodies that were worth a certain price. Johnson argues that without a commercial culture, the slave market could not have subsisted. Due to the nature of commoditization of people, slave owners had to come up with justifications to sell slaves—this also allowed them to keep up a façade of paternalism.
Chapter two examines slave traders when they weren’t trading people. Johnson looks at the other roles and jobs they filled. He also examines the sense of community among enslaved persons that developed during slave markets. Johnson differentiates between the stakes held by auctioneers versus those held by traders, for
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552 Words | 3 PagesThe Slave Ship, by Marcus Rediker was wrote in 2007 about the cruel and brutal actions the slaves endured on their journey across the Atlantic Ocean. He states, “this has been a painful book to write, if I have done any justice to the subject, it will be a painful book to read.” Marcus Rediker accomplished exactly that. This book was not only compelling but emotional, heartbreaking, and makes a reader think, how could someone be so cruel to another living being. Within the first couple pages, the book brought me to tears.
Slavery In Walter Johnson's Soul By Soul
348 Words | 2 PagesIn Antebellum America, slavery was a common practice and way to increase economics in the south. In Walter Johnson book, Soul by Soul, he discusses life inside the antebellum slave market, and brings readers on a journey of the human drama of buyers, traders, and slaves. Johnson focuses his research on the New Orleans slave market, where more than 100,000 men, women, and children were priced and sold. He captures the attention of his readers by analyzing these chilling statistics and the brutal economics of trading. He utilized primary documents and accounts to support his research, in order to illustrate to readers how the slave market functioned first hand.
Dbq Voices From The Slave Trade
532 Words | 3 PagesIn the documents “Considering the Evidence: Voices from the Slave Trade” it shows how the Atlantic slave trade was an enormous enterprise and enormously significant in modern world history. In document 15.1 - The Journey to Slavery it talks about the voice of an individual victim of the slave trade known as Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was taken from his home and sold into the slave trade. He worked for three different families while in the slave trade but what is different about him is that he learned to read and write while being a slave. He traveled extensively as a seaman aboard one of his masters' ships, and was allowed to buy his freedom in 1766.
Eli Whitney's Effects On Slavery
784 Words | 4 PagesEli Whitney’s invention helped give slavery a new life in the 1700s and 1800s (11). Eli Whitney was a mechanical engineer, who was the first to invent the cotton gin. The cotton gin is a machine that quickly and efficiently separates cotton fibers from their seeds (2). His machine moves like brush like teeth through the raw cotton, which makes the hard task go by faster. The cotton gin grew to produce a thousand pounds of cotton a day in the 18th century (11).
Soul By Soul Analysis
985 Words | 4 PagesHe also wants the reader to understand slave trading from the perspective of the slave, the slave owner, and the slave trader. This history provides the reader a description of slavery on their harsh lives,
Slavery Reflected By Harriet Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl
1025 Words | 5 PagesBeing viewed as tools for reproduction and pieces of property, enslaved black women were more likely to witness and experience traumatic separations from their families through slave trading. In Jacobs’ narrative, her maternal grandmother, Aunt Marthy, had suffered through countless separations since childhood. Despite being a free black girl in South Carolina, she was kidnapped on her way to visit her relatives, and was forced to separate from her mother and siblings. “She was the daughter of a planter in South Carolina, who, at his death, left her mother and his three children free, with money to go to St. Augustine, where they had relatives. It was during the Revolutionary War; and they were captured on their passage, carried back, and sold to different purchasers” (12).
Antebellum Louisiana Slavery
1095 Words | 5 PagesThe Portrayal of Slavery in Antebellum Louisiana in Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave In his memoire Twelve Years a Slave, illegitimately enslaved Solomon Northup does not only depict his own deprivations in bondage, but also provides a deep insight into the slave trade, slaves’ working and living conditions, as well as religious beliefs of both enslaved people and their white masters in antebellum Louisiana. Northup’s narrative is a distinguished literary piece that exposes the injustice of the whole slaveholding system and its dehumanizing effect. It is not a secret that the agriculture dominated the economy of antebellum Louisiana (Louisiana: A History 183). Therefore the Southern planters needed relatively cheap workforce to cultivate
Slavery During The Antebellum Period
1036 Words | 5 PagesFreedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. The foundation of America is freedom. Freedom from Britain. However, the freedom is limited to white males who own property. When colonists started to immigrate to America, they wanted to escape from under the rule of Britain.
What Was The Impact Of Slavery On The Old South
766 Words | 4 PagesThe impact of slavery on the Old South is a difficult measure to establish because slavery was the Old South. While the popular adage was “Cotton is King,” it was simply a microcosm of the delusion of the day. Truly, slavery was king. Slavery was the growing tension of the time, political catalyst and ironically crux of American power. To the masses, slavery was a social defining stance; the “peculiar institution” to some and a defining moral line to others, American life was changed depending on what view you took of slavery.
Frederick Douglass Hypocrisy Essay
1049 Words | 5 PagesGroup Essay on Frederick Douglass “That this little book may do something toward throwing light on the American slave system”, and that Frederick Douglass does in his eponymous autobiography. Douglass throws light by dispelling the myths of the slave system, which received support from all parts of society. To dispel these myths Douglass begins to construct an argument composed around a series of rhetorical appeals and devices. Douglass illustrates that slavery is dehumanizing, corrupting, and promotes Christian hypocrisy. Using telling details, Douglass describes the dehumanizing effects of the slave system which condones the treatment of human beings as property.
Analysis Of The Half That Has Never Been Told By Edward Baptist
790 Words | 4 PagesChapters 3 and 4 are “piggybacked” of on one another and are, “Right Hand” and “Left Hand”, and they reveal the inner secrets of slave owners power and their spread in networks, whereas chapters 5 and 6, “Tongues” and “Breath”, talk about how slave owners had not only found ways to silence the tongues of their critics they had also built a system of slave trading that served as expansion’s lungs and a way for America to breathe. Chapter 7 is titled, “Seed” and it tells of the horrific time period from 1829 to 1837, and the terrible actions that were performed during that time. Chapter 8, “Blood”, focuses on the economic crash of 1837 and is to blame for the problems that it brought to American families, especially to the families that owned slaves. Staying on the economic theme, chapter 9, “Backs”, explains that by the 1840s the North had built a nice, stable economy on the backs of slaves and their cotton
Literary Devices In The Underground Railroad
1642 Words | 7 PagesFrom this, derives a bond with the reader that pushes their understanding of the evil nature of slavery that society deemed appropriate therefore enhancing their understanding of history. While only glossed over in most classroom settings of the twenty-first century, students often neglect the sad but true reality that the backbone of slavery, was the dehumanization of an entire race of people. To create a group of individuals known for their extreme oppression derived from slavery, required plantation owner’s of the South to constantly embedded certain values into the lives of their slaves. To talk back means to be whipped.
Frederick Douglass Rebunk The Myth Of Slavery
814 Words | 4 PagesIn the 1700-1800’s, the use of African American slaves for backbreaking, unpaid work was at its prime. Despite the terrible conditions that slaves were forced to deal with, slave owners managed to convince themselves and others that it was not the abhorrent work it was thought to be. However, in the mid-1800’s, Northern and southern Americans were becoming more aware of the trauma that slaves were facing in the South. Soon, an abolitionist group began in protest, but still people doubted and questioned it.
Inhuman Traffick
933 Words | 4 PagesThe detailed descriptions included in primary sources, along with the descriptive and emotional illustrations included in graphic history are crucial elements in studying and understanding the process and history of the transatlantic slave trade. Rafe Blaufarb and Liz Clarke tie both of these together to help readers truly understand this historic tragedy in the book, Inhuman Traffick: The International Struggle Against the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Although different than the standard book that may be used, that simply spews information out in an uncreative and somewhat boring way, this book is a tool that can be chosen in classrooms to teach different aspects of the slave trade. Working together, the primary sources and graphic history
Frederick Douglass Negative Effects On Slaves
753 Words | 4 PagesFrederick Douglass’s narrative provides a first hand experience into the imbalance of power between a slave and a slaveholder and the negative effects it has on them both. Douglass proves that slavery destroys not only the slave, but the slaveholder as well by saying that this “poison of irresponsible power” has a dehumanizing effect on the slaveholder’s morals and beliefs (Douglass 40). This intense amount of power breaks the kindest heart and changes the slaveholder into a heartless demon (Douglass 40). Yet these are not the only ways that Douglass proves what ill effect slavery has on the slaveholder. Douglass also uses deep characterization, emotional appeal, and religion to present the negative effects of slavery.
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