The Southern Slave Economy

Slaveholders too were being secretly victimized during this time

As a result, the slave is upset or depressed in that he has to live through this. Although he is a good person at heart, he is still not given the chance to prove himself or get the rights he

Slaves were warned to obey their masters, “As to the Lord and not to men.” However, their masters were also held to this same standard. Masters were expected to treat their slaves well and even to treat them as brothers, as God is the master of all people, including

Economic systems provide the framework for a society to properly allocate and distribute resources amongst itself. When multiple systems get interchanged and brought up at the same time in a country, something bad is bound to happen. For America in the 18th century, this was exactly the case. With the long standing planter-slaveholding system causing moral unrest in the country, an industrial capitalist economy quickly emerged. These two systems would divide the country, causing an eventual civil war.

Imagine being an enslaved child in the 1800’s, tending to the animals, cleaning your owners house, and doing many light chores around the plantation. In this essay I will use two documents and my knowledge of slavery to explain the life of a child slave. The first document I chose was “A Slave Family” this document explained the basic education that a slave child received. The document states “Most colonists did not feel that slaves needed a formal education...

The first view, the slaves or the color people seen religion as “God seeing everyone great and small, bond and free, everyone were sinners in the sigh of God.” To the slaves religion offered a way for the slaves to achieve grace. On the opposing side you had the slaveholders, the masters, or white people; seen religion as a way to be cruel to slaves. Through this they were able to beat, murder, labor, and make slaves bleed in the name of religion. In the last chapter of the story; the Appendix Douglass explains three things.

Slave owners felt that it was their responsibility and duty to dominate the “less fortunate and the less

Slavery was in opposition throughout the northern states, almost everyone opposed the concept of slavery. William Henry Seward, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Henry David Thoreau were a few of the thousands of people that opposed the concept of one not getting paid for work and having the same rights as objects. These people had two options to show what they believed in, break the law and oppose the government completely, or give their opposition due process to go through the government and see if what they believe in is just and constitutional. If you do not believe in something should you break the law to fight for what you stand for?

And every night his master and mistress would kneel in the most holy position and pray that God would bless them with more food. Contrary to the indoctrinated cruel nature that masters would have over slaves, not providing enough food for slaves to eat whether good or bad was determined as the most wicked a master could be. The barbaric torture that befell on the slaves unfourtantly did not end with hunger but but with physical anguish inflicted on the disabled. Douglass remembers his master Capitan Auld “tie up a lame young woman and whip her with a heavy cowskin…and in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage of scripture- “

It is a common argument for Christian slaveholders to make “…that God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is right…” (5). this argument exposes their hypocrisy as it conveys how they attempt to stretch small pieces of scripture to justify the violence of the American slavery. Douglass thus asks if it is humane to use a small piece of writing to damn an entire race to hardship and subhuman treatment. This case of blasphemy is amplified by the observation that Douglass makes of one of his slave masters, Mr. Covey, in that “he seemed to think himself equal to deceiving the almighty” (61).

From 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.

Auld’s misinterpretation of the passage emphasizes slave owners use of religion to reinforce their power over their slaves. Christianity rationalized the concept of buying and selling human beings, and that God approved this too. In addition, Douglass used religion as a way to fuel his abolition movement. Under Master Hugh’s, Douglass began to learn how to read and write. Once

One of those things was slave codes. Which gave more power to the slave owners and even less power to the slaves on page 434, it says "in existence since the 1700's slave codes were written to prevent the event white southerners dreaded most-became more severe. This shows that the slaves had absolutely no access to freedom to the slave codes another way that the slaves resisted was that they faked an illness, so they can get revenge to their masters on page 437 it gives a specific explanation on how they faked their illness. It says "For the most part enslaved people resisted slavery by working slowly or pretending to be ill. Occasionally resistance took more active forms, such as setting fire to a plantation building or breaking tools.

He later goes on to say he could hear the cries of chained slaves passing through the docks in the dead of night and it having a profound affect on his psyche. He also points out that the church is not doing its job because it has the power to condemn slavery and their choosing to remain silent on the issue. He brings to light the Fugitive Slave Law, which gives blacks no due process and civil rights. Under this act freed blacks could very well be accused of being a fugitive slave and have to be transported back to the south.

In America, we generally believe that our country’s political system is one of democracy, but there are various times we see that business and economics also play a huge part in our society. If we even go back to the beginnings of our country and look at England, which also had a huge impact in the development of our political system, we can see that the emergence of a very capitalist society. Through close analysis of the economics of early plantations and manufacturing work, one can go about understanding the mindset and conditions of those individuals who were apart of the creation of the economy we have today. Through the article “The Hoe, the Plow, and the Whip: Gang Labor-Agricultural Improvement in Plantation Economies” by Lorena