When Slavery Was Called Freedom

The Constitution authorized slavery so Lincoln left this alone and did not technically try to change that (Pruitt). Although, Lincoln did make the first steps to ending slavery, and that was one of the best things our country did. Slaves were treated as though their only life purpose was to help their owners. It was very “degrading.” The owners physically forced the slaves to work and if they did not, they were threated or beaten (Hamner).

Frederick Douglass would most likely have a similar opinion because he recognized how contradictory the actions of the slaveholders were with faith in general. Those zealous Christians only scrambled to find something in the Bible that could ensure them that this horrific way of making money would not be frowned upon by God. They denied their conscience and had the audacity to quote the Good News as they beat their slaves almost to the point of death. The cruel actions of the slaveholders are nearly impossible to call moral, keeping in mind the overall belief that all human beings have dignity and natural

Douglass' audience for this work is those who want to know the cruelty of slavery. His audience was anyone who was interested in the topic. A majority of white men and women either didn't own slaves and wasn't able to see the cruel inhumane nature of the act or they were numb to it because black people were viewed as less than humans. If you remove the humanity from a person you become numb to any cruelty. Douglass' goal was to prove and show how slavery was inhumane and offered nothing but cons to the slaves and their masters.

People have their equal right, and should not be ranked depending on their skin color or gender. However, as “The American Story” states “The masters of these agrarian communities sought to ensure their personal safety and the profitability of their enterprises by using physical and psychological means to make slaves docile and obedient” (page 352), because of the greed of wealth and safety, some people discarded their basic humanity and discipline and made excuses to justify their cruelty, so the slavery became like a tumor growing in the human society rapidly. With physical and psychological abuse, this “tumor” tortured every struggling people from day to night. As the insight of a dark history, Frederick Douglass’s “Narrative of the Life

American slavery has always been a topic people believe as brutal, cruel, inhumane, and horrible. To many people, slavery wasn’t a lifestyle, it was a job. As we know, slavery officially ended in 1865, but do we really know the purpose behind slavery? One aspect about slavery is that we really don’t know the purpose of slavery. The purpose of slavery was to serve, labor, pleasure and greed.

Withholding this significant information will forever make it more challenging to truly abolish slavery. Therefore, Americans should not feel encouraged that the United States or other countries are free. In agreement with Frederick Douglass, it’s great in a way that some citizens celebrate their freedom, but not all share this same gratitude. In addition to this, I find it ironic how in “What to the Slave is Fourth of July,” Douglass mentions the enslavement all of am Americans felt under the British control. It affected everyone, so citizens fought for their freedom.

Jim Crow Laws Trapped in society, and treated like nothing- the government has fallen into corruption, and is no longer able to help loved ones. Citizen rights are stripped away, leaving inequality and unfair treatment. This was the Jim Crow Era. Blacks were stripped of the rights that they had gained when freed from slavery. They became soil to the white man territory.

Blacks faced inequality and injustice in society. Howard Zinn said, “Those upper classes, to rule, needed to make concessions to the middle class, without damage to their own wealth or power, at the expense of slaves, Indians, and poor whites. This bought loyalty.” Why don’t the proprietors negotiate the land with the middle class in Europe? The proprietors confiscated their land for money and possessions.

These people were sold with contracts as if they were for sale. It is incomprehensible how people could treat one another with such disrespect, and be content in such a blindness to the actions they were facing. This is a true reminder of a time in history where societal norm created a dark blindness over the people, causing great sin to be

Both southerners and northerners had to rebuild the south, but a lot of southerners rejected the help and just wanted it to be back to normal with slaves and cash crops. The question to this DBQ is: “North or South: Who destroyed the rebuilding of the south’s economy?”. The south resistence destroyed the the reconstruction even though the north forgot about the reconstruction, the KKK was distracting the north from the reconstruction by harassing the government

Nowadays the general consensus is that slavery is immoral and wrong. All people should be viewed as equal, and discriminating against a person on the basis of race, forcing them to work and not get paid, is an awful thing. However, until 1865, slavery was still legal in the United States. It is self-contradictory to own slaves in the “land of the free”, but unfortunately that was the case. One reason that slavery was finally abolished was the growing awareness of the detrimental effects of slavery.

The slaves that snuck away to hold religious services were severely punished or sent away to another plantation. Owners felt that by allowing their slaves to practice or be converted to Christianity would make the slaves think they were better than. The owners that refused to force or even allow their slaves to convert also believed that there possibly were legal complications in allowing slaves to be Christians. Based on laws by the British owners thought if the slaves were baptized, then they would have to be freed. This prompts laws being passed in 1706 changed to reflect that just because slaves were baptized they had to be freed.

The slaves would sabotage their masters, break tools, fake illness, and sometimes even steal from their own master. Another form of resistance they presented was cultural. Slave owners tried to take everything away from them, including their culture, such as names, beliefs, and languages. The slaves did not allow that, they still practiced religious beliefs and passed them down to later generations. The famous Kunta Kinte presented a great example of resistance, he would not refer to himself as Tolby, as the slave master forced him to do.

Essentially, no one should defend slavery based on the law when their actions were knowingly wrong and lacking good will. Likewise, for the Methodist, no one who identifies as Christian can condone slavery. Any God-fearing people involved in the slave trade can only expect that God will rightfully judge them according to their actions and will show them no clemency, and will punish them just as they punished their fellow humans. To Wesley, one way of doing right in the eyes of God was to stop financing this trade for it encouraged the Africans to continue partaking in this activity and have complete control over the lives of those traded. Without financing there would be less motivation for slavery to continue.

There countless bible verses that addresses slavery, so the southerners took this as an endorsement of slavery. “The emphasis from proslavery defenders was always upon a literal reading of the Bible which represented the mind and will of God himself. Slaveholding was not only justified but also moral because it was recognized as such in Holy Scripture.” (Morrison n.d.) During this time many people on the lower side of the socioeconomic were illiterate