The most famous was Harriet Tubman. She was very courageous and brave. A former slave herself, she helped many slaves escape, making almost nineteen trips to the South. She was known as ‘Black Moses’ because she was like Moses in the Bible when she led all her people to freedom. White southerners placed a bounty on her head for a lot of money to bring her in, but they never caught her.
There was a lot of rebellions against the slavery process. The south was terrified because of the slaveholders. The main slaveholder was Nat Turner and he had 75 black people and 60 white people and he got that in two days so the other slaveholders were terrified. They finally hated Turners Rebellion. He said he didn’t discipline them and then they figured out he did.
With the aid of heroic people like Harriet Tubman, Thomas Garrett, and Levi Coffin the Underground Railroad was able to have a high success rate in the freeing of enslaved African-Americans. To begin with, Harriet Tubman played a very large role in the Underground Railroad. Before Harriet’s time as a conductor, she was born a slave. Her birth
In 1860 15 states had a population of 12 million, and of that one-third were slaves, and 2% were free African Americans. One in particular was once a former slave who eventually became free and educated and sought out to speak on the injustice of slavery. As Frederick Douglas spoke of his injustice in being sold as a slave and all he endured one can only imagine. In his speeches and writings he highlighted the torture slaves endured. What was once spoken to American citizens was slaves did not know how to function as regular citizens, but here Frederick Douglas proved different.
The relationship between slaves and the cotton gin was a complicated one, although the cotton gin did free the slaves from having to separate cotton from its’ seeds by hand, it did increase the demand for them to work in cotton plantations. This was a result of the dramatically inexpensive price of cotton, which increased the demand for cotton by large textile factories. Cotton production also proved to be well suited to slave labour. Being a reasonably labour intensive process, farmers chose to employ a method involving slaves working in small groups, while mostly always being supervised by a white overseer. This made for much more efficient work method, allowing overseer’s to supervise and when required, discipline groups of slaves concurrently.
As miserable as it is to be a slave in the South, being a black women worsens the condition. The role of a black women in both the Union and the Confederacy have always been portrayed and elaborated on the orthodox that black women are meant for manual labor, for being tools and for assisting men. However, black women in the South are treated much harsher of course. Majority of black women enslaved were vulnerable to rape, physical abuse and having their families taken away. While the Confederacy took black male slaves into the camp, black women were left to care for their children themselves while managing their plantations and other labor.
According to (History. Com) President Gerald R. Ford stated “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” African Americans were given this month because they achieved so much in history and without this month most of the history of African Americans would be lost. For example, an African American who made great accomplishments was Harriet Tubman. She led the Underground Railroad for slaves to get to freedom to start a new life.
Living conditions for slaves were dreadful, with long work hours and low wages. Slave masters separated families and sold off children from their parents, or vice versa. Slaves were prone to severe punishment for even trivial offenses. Whippings and beatings were prevalent. Running away allowed them to get away from all the hostility, if only for a while.
Frances Harper was one of the most well-known African-American poets of the 19th century. In 1858, her poem “Bury Me in a Free Land” was published. In this poem, Harper manifested the suffrage and misfortunes the black slaves had to endure and her protestant of being buried in a land where slavery still exists. By using a simple yet a formal English language, Harper manages to convey the reality of how slaves were treated brutally and tortured continuously on a daily basis and how she hopes that slavery would vanish and never return.
Despite gaining their freedom, the vast majority of African Americans became farmers as they were well experienced in the trade. However, most of them had to become a sharecropper, or a farmer who works someone else’s land for a share of the profit. Buying land was even more of a challenge for colored people, as many whites refused to sell it to them. Being a sharecropper meant that not only did one have a job, but they were also provided with a place to live on their small share of land.
Often times, the individuals who would be helping the slaves would often hear about the horrors of slavery, but they could not feel or visualize the suffering of slaves. The Underground Railroad was that tool that spread a change of perceptions because even the most stubborn of individuals, when they witnessed the conditions of the slaves, and they heard the stories the slaves told when slaves became free, that challenged the dominant ideologies of slavery being good. When thousands of slaves permeated the borders of the northern states, naturally even those who wanted to reject African Americans had to confront and live with the fact that African Americans are not slaves. This generated support for abolition because African Americans were quite competent when they did not have to the basic servile duties for their slave masters. Talented black men like Benjamin Banneker and Phillis Wheatley, a mathematician and a famous poet, proved that free black men could contribute to society (Divine et al 138).
On the other hand, the main point was that slaves planting and picking cotton would heavily boost the economy. There were plenty of other reasons justifying why slavery should be legal, but these were some main points. African-American people during pre-civil war times had a harsh life. Many black people during this time just mainly worked all of their lives non-stop. Thinking back, if slavery still existed now with all of this technology it would be even more wrong than it was before.
The American Revolution, was an inspiration to black people and they’d hoped the words and rules of the Patriots go for them as well. But that wasn’t the case. When all of the Armies had gone away from the land, we were a country of farmers founded by notions of freedom. We had over 700,000 slaves working in the US at its birth.
“Almost overnight, it seemed, an institution that had long been taken for granted came under intense scrutiny and debate: critics questioned its efficacy and morality, proponents rushed to its defense, and thousands of slaves took advantage of wartime turmoil to flee their bondage” (Kolchin 63). It was the begging and near end of slavery. After the war slavery was still practiced and abundant however it was diminishing, even some slave owners decided to let go and free their slaves because all the bloodshed that was caused. Slavery aimed straight at the public and was given much attention. The Revolution constructed new views and ideas about "liberty" and "equality," which established new laws on human rights.
She was always against slavery and became an abolitionist when she started freeing people. Harriet Tubman never had off springs. At this time, they passed the fugitive slave law, which let owners of freed slaves able to go to the north and south to get their slaves. Abolitionist Views: