Slavery in the United States is a legal institution of human slavery, mainly African and African American, existing in the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery was practiced in British America from the early colonial period, and legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It took place in several countries until its abolition through the American Civil War (1861-1865). As an economic system, it is largely superseded by revenue sharing.
At the time of the American Revolution (1775-1783), slave status has been instituted as a racial caste associated with African ancestors. When the United States Constitution was ratified (1789), a small number of free blacks were among the voting population (male property owners). During and immediately after the Revolutionary War, abolitionist laws were passed in most of the northern states and a movement developed to abolish slavery. Most of these states have a higher proportion of free labor than in the South and economies based on different industries. They abolished slavery in the late 18th century, some with a gradual system that made adults slave for two decades. However, the rapid expansion of the cotton industry in the Deep South after the discovery of cotton gin greatly increased the demand for slave labor, and the Southern states continued as slave societies. These countries seek to expand slavery to new Western regions to preserve their political power in the country; Southern leaders also want to annex Cuba for use as a slave territory. The United States becomes polarized over the issue of slavery, represented by slaves and free states, which are basically divided by the Mason-Dixon line depicting Pennsylvania (free) from (slaves) Maryland and Delaware.
Congress during the Jefferson administration prohibited the importation of slaves, effectively 1808, although smuggling (illegal imports) through the Spanish Florida is unusual. Domestic slave trade, however, continues rapidly, driven by labor demands from the development of cotton plantations in the Deep South. Over a million slaves were sold from Upper South, which had a surplus of labor, and taken to the Deep South in forced migration, separating many families. New African-American cultural communities developed in the Southern End, and the total slave population in the South eventually reached 4 million before liberation.
When the West was developed for settlements, the Southern state government wanted to maintain a balance between the number of slaves and free countries to maintain a balance of political power in Congress. New territories obtained from Britain, France and Mexico were subjected to major political compromises. In 1850, the rich southern cotton-rich South threatened to break away from the Union, and tensions continued to rise. Many white Southern Christians, including church ministers, sought to justify their support for slavery as modified by Christian paternalism. The largest denominational group, Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, is divided into slavery to regional organizations in the North and South. When Abraham Lincoln won the election of 1860 with a platform to stop the expansion of slavery, seven states broke away to form Confederate. The first six breakaway countries hold the largest number of slaves in the South. Shortly after, the Civil War began when the Confederate forces attacked the US Army's Fort Sumter. Four additional slave states were separated. Because of United's actions such as the Emancipation and Emancipation Forcellation and Proclamation Act of 1863, the war effectively ended slavery, even before the ratification of the Third Amendment in December 1865 formally ended legal institutions throughout the United States.
Video Slavery in the United States
Kolonial Amerika
In the early years of the Chesapeake Bay settlement, colonial officials found it difficult to attract and retain workers under harsh border conditions, and there was a high mortality rate. Most workers come from Britain as contract laborers, sign contracts to work with their pay, maintenance and training, usually on a farm. The colony has an agricultural economy. These contract workers are often young people who are meant to be permanent residents. In some cases, convicted criminals are transferred to the colony as contract laborers, rather than imprisoned. The contract workers are not slaves, but are required to work four to seven years in Virginia to pay for their travel and maintenance expenses. Many Germans, Scottish-Irish, and Irish came to the colony in the 18th century, settled in the interior of Pennsylvania and further south.
About 19 of the first Africans to reach the British colonies arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, carried by Dutch merchants who had arrested them from a captured Spanish slave ship. The Spaniards usually baptize slaves in Africa before beginning them. As an English custom, baptized Christians are considered free from slavery, the invaders treat these Africans as mandatory servants, and they join the approximately 1,000 English servants involved in the colony. Africans are released after a specified period of time and are given use of land and supplies by their former master. The historian Ira Berlin notes that what he calls the "charter generation" in the colonies is sometimes composed of mixed race people (Atlantic Creoles) who are obligatory servants, and whose ancestors are Africans and Iberians. They are descendants of African and Portuguese or Spanish women working in African ports as traders or facilitators in the slave trade. For example, Anthony Johnson arrived in Virginia in 1621 from Angola as a contract worker; he becomes free and the property owner, ends up buying and owning his own slaves. The transformation of African social status, from indentured slavery to slaves in racial caste that they can not abandon or miss, occurs gradually.
There is no law on slavery early in Virginia history. However, in 1640, a court in Virginia convicted John Punch, an African, became a slave after he attempted to flee from his ministry. The two whites with whom he escaped were sentenced to just one additional year from their indenture, and three years serving the colony. This marks the first legal sanction of slavery in the British colony and is one of the first legal differences made between Europeans and Africans.
In 1641, Massachusetts became the first colony to legitimize slavery through legislation. Massachusetts passes through the Body of Freedom, which prohibits slavery in many ways, but allows for three bases of the law of slavery. Slaves can be held if they are prisoners of war, if they sell themselves into slaves or bought from elsewhere, or if they are punished by slavery as a punishment by the governing authority. The Body of Liberties uses the word "stranger" to refer to the person who is bought and sold as a slave; they are generally not the subject of English. The colonists came to equate this term with Native Americans and Africans.
In 1654, John Casor, a black slave in colonial Virginia, was the first to be declared a slave in a civil case. He had claimed to an officer that his master, Anthony Johnson, himself black-skinned, had kept him through his contract. A neighbor, Robert Parker, told Johnson that if he did not release Casor, Parker would testify in court for this fact. Under local law, Johnson risked losing some of his land for violating indenture provisions. Under pressure, Johnson freed Casor. Casor signed a seven-year deal with Parker. Feeling tricked, Johnson sued Parker for pulling Casor. A Northampton County, Virginia court ruled for Johnson, stated that Parker illegally detained Casor from his legitimate employer who legally held him "for the rest of his life".
During the colonial period, the status of slaves was influenced by interpretations related to the status of foreigners in England. Britain does not have a system of naturalization of immigrants to the island or its colonies. Since Africans are not the subject of English at birth, they are among those who are considered aliens and generally outside the common law of England. The colonies fought by way of classifying people born to strangers and subjects. In 1656 Virginia, Elizabeth Key Grinstead, a mixed race woman, managed to gain her freedom and her son in challenge to her status by making her case a baptized Christian princess of the free English Thomas Key. His lawyer is an English subject, which may have helped his case. (He was also the father of his mixed race son, and the couple married after Key was released.)
Shortly after Elizabeth Key's experiment and similar challenges, in 1662 the royal colony of Virginia approved the law of adopting the principle of the partiter sequitur ventrem (called partus , for short), stating that every child born in the colony will take the status of the mother. A child of an enslaved mother will be born into slavery, whether her father is an independent British or a Christian. This is the opposite of the common law practice in England, which decides that children of English subjects take the status of the father. The change institutionalized the tilting power relationship between slave owners and female slaves, freeing white men from legal responsibility to recognize or financially support their mixed race children, and rather limit the open scandal of mixed race children and miscegenations into territories slave.
The Virginia Slave code 1705 is further defined as the slave of the people who are imported from non-Christian countries. Native Americans sold to colonies by other Native Americans (from rival tribes), or captured by Europeans during a village attack, are also defined as slaves. It codified the original principle of slavery of non-Christian strangers.
In 1735, the Georgian Superintendent enacted a law to ban slavery in the new colony, which had been established in 1733 to allow "decent poor" as well as European Protestants who were persecuted to have a fresh start. Slavery was then legal in the other twelve British colonies. Neighboring South Carolina has an economy based on the use of enslaved slavery. The Georgian Superintendents wanted to eliminate the risk of a slave uprising and make Georgia better able to defend against attacks from Spain to the south, which offered the freedom to escape from slaves. James Edward Oglethorpe is the driving force behind the colony, and the only trustee who lives in Georgia. He opposed slavery for moral and pragmatic reasons, and vigorously defended the prohibition of slavery against the fierce opposition of Carolina slave traders and land speculators.
Scottish Protestant Scottish settlers in the present place Darien, Georgia added the moral anti-slavery argument, which became increasingly scarce in the South, in their 1739 "New Inverness Population Petition". In 1750 Georgia officially slavery in the state because they could not secure enough servants as laborers. When economic conditions in Britain began to improve in the first half of the 18th century, workers had no reason to leave, especially to face the risk in the colony.
During most of the British colonial period, slavery existed in all colonies. People enslaved in the North usually work as domestic servants, artisans, laborers and craftsmen, with larger numbers in cities. Many men work on the dock and in shipping. In 1703, more than 42 percent of New York City households had slaves, the second highest proportion of every town in the colonies after Charleston, South Carolina. But slaves are also used as agricultural workers in farming communities, including those in northern New York and Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey.
The South develops an agricultural economy dependent on commodity crops. The planters quickly acquired significantly higher numbers and slave proportions in the population as a whole, as the commodity crops were labor intensive. Initially, the enslaved people in the South worked mainly in agriculture, in agriculture and plantations growing tilapia, rice and tobacco; cotton did not become a major crop until after the American Revolution and after the 1790s. Prior to that cotton-long staple cultivated mainly in the Georgian and South Carolina Sea Islands.
The discovery of gin cotton in 1793 enabled short-cotton cultivation in various terrestrial areas, leading to the 19th century for the development of large areas of Deep South as a cotton state. Tobacco is very labor intensive, as are rice cultivation. In South Carolina in 1720, about 65% of the population consisted of those who were enslaved. Planters (defined by historians in Upper South as those holding 20 or more slaves) use workers who are enslaved to plant commodity crops. They also work in folk trade in large estates and in many southern port cities. Inland subsistence farmers, the next wave of settlers in the 18th century who settled along the Appalachians and inland, rarely held back the enslaved.
Several British colonies sought to wipe out the international slave trade, fearing that the import of new Africans would interfere. Virginia's bill for the effect was vetoed by the British Privy Council. Rhode Island banned the import of the enslaved in 1774. All the colonies except Georgia had banned or restricted the African slave trade in 1786; Georgia did so in 1798. Some of these laws were later revoked.
Fewer than 350,000 of the enslaved were imported into the Thirteen Colonies and the US, accounting for less than 5% of the twelve million enslaved people brought from Africa to America. Most enslaved Africans are transported to sugar colonies in the Caribbean and Brazil. Because life expectancy is short, the number of them must be constantly replenished. Life expectancy is much higher in the US, and the enslaved population is successful in reproduction. The number of people enslaved in the US grew rapidly, reaching 4 million by the 1860 Census. From 1770 to 1860, the natural growth rate of those enslaved to North America was far greater than the population of every nation in Europe, and that was almost twice as fast as in Britain. Louisiana
Louisiana was founded as a French colony. The colonial official in 1724 imposed Louis XIV of the French , which regulated the slave trade and the institution of slavery in New France and the French Caribbean colony. This resulted in a different pattern of slavery in Louisiana, purchased in 1803, compared to other parts of the United States. As it is written, Noir Code gives some rights to slaves, including the right to marry. While endorsing and codifying the cruelty of cruelty to slaves under certain conditions, it prohibits slave owners to torture them or to separate married couples (or to separate young children from their mothers). It also requires owners to order slaves in the Catholic faith.
Together with the more permeable historical French system that allows certain rights to gens de couleur libres (people of color free), often born from their white fathers and mixed concubines, a much higher percentage of African Americans in Louisiana are free at the 1830 census (13.2% in Louisiana compared with 0.8% in Mississippi, whose population is dominated by Anglo-American white.) Most "third class" blacks are free, native-born French and African slave mass, living in New Orleans). The colored Louisiana people are often literate, have gained an education, and a large number of businesses, property, and even slaves are owned. The Noir Code prohibits inter-racial marriage. However, racial unity is widespread under a system known as slavery. The cf. creoles of color children of such unions are among those in the middle social caste of colored people. British colonists insist on a binary system, where mulatto and black slaves are treated equally under the law, and are discriminated fairly if it is free. But many free people of African descent are of mixed race.
When the US took over Louisiana, Americans from the South of Protestant entered the area and began to impose their norms. They officially downplay racial relations (although white people continue to have union with black women, both enslaved and free.) The Americanization of Louisiana gradually yields a binary system of race, causing free people colors lose status because they are grouped with slaves. They lose certain rights when they are classified by white Americans as "black" officially.
Maps Slavery in the United States
Revolutionary Era
Slavery in the UK has never been passed by law. In 1772 it was made partly unenforceable in general law in England by legal decision. The great British role in international slave trade continued until 1807. Slavery developed in most of the British colonies, with many wealthy slave owners living in Britain and holding great powers. They were bought in 1833 and the slaves were released.
In early 1775, Lord Dunmore, the governor of the kingdom of Virginia, wrote a letter to Lord Dartmouth about his intention to free the slaves owned by the Patriots in the event of an uprising. On November 7, 1775 Lord Dunmore issued Lord Dunmore's Proclamation which declared a state of martial law and promised freedom for every American patriot slave who would leave their master and join the royal army. Slaves owned by Loyalist masters, however, were not affected by the Dunmore Proclamation. About 1500 slaves belonging to the Patriots escaped and joined forces with Dunmore's troops. Most die from illness before they can fight. The three hundred freed slaves managed to achieve freedom in England.
Many slaves use war disturbances to escape from their plantations and fade into cities or forests. For example, in South Carolina, nearly 25,000 slaves (30% of the total enslaved population) escaped, migrated or died during the war. Across the South, slave losses are high, with a lot of breakouts. The boy also fled across New England and the middle Atlantic, joining the British who had occupied New York.
In the closing months of the war, the British evacuated 20,000 free from major coastal cities, transporting more than 3,000 for resettlement in Nova Scotia, where they were listed as Black Loyalists and finally granted the land. They transported the others to Caribbean islands, and some to England.
At the same time, the British transported the Loyalists and their slaves, mainly to the Caribbean, but partly to Nova Scotia. For example, more than 5,000 enslaved Africans owned by the Loyalists were transported in 1782 with their owners from Savannah to Jamaica and St.. Augustine, Florida (later dominated by the British). Similarly, more than half of blacks evacuated in 1782 from Charleston by Britain to the West Indies and Florida were slaves owned by white Loyalists.
Slaves and free blacks also fought on the rebel side during the Revolutionary War. Washington ordered freed slaves who fought with the American Continental Army. Rhode Island began registering slaves in 1778, and promised compensation to owners whose slaves were registered and safe to gain freedom. During the war, about a fifth of the northern army was black. In 1781, Baron Closen, a German officer in the French Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment at the Battle of Yorktown, estimated the American army to be about a quarter black. These people included former slaves and free blacks.
In the 18th century, England became the largest slave trader in the world. Beginning in 1777, the Patriots prohibited the importation of slave countries by the state. They all act to end international trade but then reopen in South Carolina and Georgia. In 1807 Congress acted on the advice of President Jefferson and made imported slaves from abroad as a federal crime, as permitted by the Constitution, beginning January 1, 1808.
United States Constitution
The United States Constitution came into force in 1789 and included several provisions on slavery. Part 9 of Article I prohibits the Federal government from prohibiting the importation of slaves before 1 January 1808. As a protection against slavery, the delegates approved Part 2 of Article IV, which prohibited countries from freeing slaves who fled to them from other countries, return of property property to owner.
In the section negotiated by James Madison of Virginia, Section 2 of Article I designates "others" (slaves) to be added to the total free population of the country, at the level of three-fifths of their total, to establish the official population of the country for the purpose of dividing the representation Congress and federal taxation. The protection afforded by slavery in the Constitution disproportionately strengthens the political power of the Southern representatives, since three-fifths of the slave population (not voted) are counted for the division of Congress.
In addition, many parts of the country are tied to the Southern economy. As noted by historian James Oliver Horton, supporting politicians and commodity crops in the South have a strong influence on the politics and economics of the United States. Horton said,
in the 72 years between George Washington election and the election of Abraham Lincoln, 50 of those years [had] a slave owner as president of the United States, and, during that time period, no one was elected to a second term that was not the slave owner.
It increased the strength of the southern states in Congress for decades, influencing national policy and legislation. The planting elite dominates southern Congress delegates and the United States presidency for nearly 50 years.
1790 to 1860
Slave trade
The US Constitution prohibits the federal government from banning the importation of slaves for 20 years. Different countries issued different restrictions on international slave trade during that period; in 1808, the only country that allowed imports of African slaves was South Carolina. After 1808, the legal import of slaves ceased, although there were smuggling through Florida lawless Spain and the disputed Gulf Coast in the west. This route all ended after Florida became US territory in 1821 (but see Wanderer and Clotilda).
Replacement for imports of slaves from abroad increased domestic production. Virginia and Maryland have little new agricultural development, and their need for slaves is largely a substitute for the dead. Normal reproduction more than supplies these: Virginia and Maryland have surplus slaves. Their tobacco plantations are "outdated" and the climate is not suitable for cotton or sugar cane. The surplus is even greater because slaves are encouraged to reproduce (though they can not marry). Where demand for slaves is the strongest in the southwestern region of the country: Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and then Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Here there are plenty of land suitable for plantation agriculture, which young men with some established capital. This is an expansion of the monopolized white population: young men looking for their luck.
The most valuable plant that can be planted in plantations in the climate is cotton. To grow cotton you need workers, and the cheapest labor is forced labor. Demand for slaves exceeds supply in the southwest; therefore slaves, never cheaper if they are productive, go at a higher price. As depicted in Uncle Tom's Cabin (the "original" cabin is in Maryland), "selling the South" is very feared. A recently publicized example (2018) of the practice of "Southern selling" was the sale of 1838 by the Jesuits of 272 slaves from Maryland, to plantations in Louisiana, to the benefit of Georgetown University, which "owes its existence" to the transaction.
In stepped capitalism, in the form of John Armfield and his uncle Isaac Franklin, who "were thought to have produced over half a million dollars (in 19th century value)" in the slave trade. (They did not handle the Jesuit deal just mentioned.) Setting up an office in what was then the District of Columbia, the country's slave trade center, in Alexandria, the two men entered the business in 1828 to buy slaves in the North and sell them in the South :
Cash in Market
The customer has rented for a period of years a large three-storey brick house on Duke Street, in Alexandria city, DC previously occupied by General Young, we want to buy one hundred and fifty possible young negro of both sexes, between the ages of 8 and 25 years. People who want to sell will do well to give us a call, as we are determined to give more than any other buyer in the market, or who might come to the market. Any letter addressed to customers via the Post Office in Alexandria, will be attended soon. For information, ask the house described above, as we can at any time be found there. FRANKLIN & amp; ARMFIELD (ad at Alexandria Phoenix Gazette, May 17, 1828)
The house is on the current Duke Street (2018) Freedom House Museum, a bondage museum.
Mr. Armfield remained in Alexandria making purchases, with agents in Richmond and Warrenton, Virginia, and Baltimore, Frederick, and Easton, Maryland (in Maryland Eastern Shore, near Delaware). Mr. Franklin handles sales from New Orleans and Natchez, Mississippi, with offices in St. Louis. Francisville and Vidalia, Louisiana. Their partnership grew to the point that when the partnership was dissolved in 1836 and the business was sold, they had six ships for the sole purpose of carrying slaves, with monthly and two-weekly voyages. (Ships carrying cargo on the way home.) One of them, Isaac Franklin, was built for them.
The Franklin and Armfield sites in Alexandria are visited by various abolitionists, who have left detailed descriptions of them. They agree that Mr. Armfield was the most conscientious of the great slave traders, who did not consciously buy the abducted or liberated slaves, and his slaves were treated very well while he owned them, at least at the Duke Street facility. The slaves agreed with this relative - relative - positive picture, asking that if they would be sold, that they would be sold to Mr. Armfield. However, Armfield often took the children of their parents, and sold them to the South.
"Plush women"
The slightly discussed but important aspect of slavery in the United States is that the owners of slave girls, including children (the sale of a 13-year-old "almost fancy" boy is documented, and Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr. bought his wife when he became a wife 13) can freely and legally use it as a sexual object. (The homosexual use of male slaves may already exist, but no evidence is revealed.) They have no right over cows. It follows the free use of female slaves on slave ships by the crew.
Furthermore, the breeding age females should remain pregnant, producing more slaves for sale. Skin color variations found in the United States make it clear how often black females are infused by whites. For example, in the 1850 Census, 75.4% of "free negros" in Florida are described as mulattos, a mixed race. Nevertheless, just recently, with DNA studies, that any reliable number can be given, and research has just begun.
"Fancy" is a code word that indicates the girl or young woman is suitable for or trained for sexual use. Light-skinned girls, in contrast to black field workers, are preferred.
Sexual intercourse between a married white man and a female slave is not adultery or fornication, since slaves are things or animals, not humans. Surprisingly, vague sodomy, sometimes applied to human-animal sex, never arises.
The sexual use of black slaves by whites, whether slave owners or those who can buy service while a slave, takes on various forms. A slave owner, or his teenage son, can go to a slave settlement area on a plantation and do what he wants, usually in front of other slaves, or with minimal privacy. It's not unusual for a "home" woman - housekeeper, maid, chef, washer, or nanny - to be used by one or more domestic white men for their sexual pleasure. Prostitution homes throughout the slave state are mostly managed by female slaves who provide sexual services, to the benefit of their owners. There are a small number of free black women involved in prostitution, or concubinage, especially in New Orleans.
Young, light-skinned girls sold openly for sexual use; Their prices are much higher than the field hands. Special markets for luxury girl trade are in New Orleans and Lexington, Kentucky. We have this no less authority than Abraham Lincoln:
Describing the journey of 1828, Gentry clearly remembers one day in New Orleans when he and nineteen-year-old Lincoln came to the slave market. Pausing to watch, Gentry remembers seeing Lincoln's hand and saw that he "doubled his fist firmly, his knuckles white." Men in black coats and white hats bought field hands, "black and ugly," for $ 500 to 800. And then the real horror began: "When sales of" luxury girls "started, Lincoln," could not last much longer , "Mumble to Gentry" Allen was embarrassing. If I ever lick it, I'll hit it hard. "
Those who are "considered educated and refined, are bought by the wealthiest clients, usually plantation owners, to be personal sexual companions." "There's a big demand in New Orleans for 'fancy women'."
At the very top, like the case of Sally Hemings, the now infamous and very light-skinned Thomas Jefferson slave, some kind of relationship other than sexual relations can exist between master and slave. There are parallels in non-sexual companionship, affection, and respect, limited, sometimes between owners and slaves.
A teacher can control the body of a slave - his actions and his words - but not his thoughts. Plantation owners are often isolated and lonely, and there is a single white male surplus. The Antebellum Society is not known for its happy marriage, and the life of white women in plantations is often boring; not many want to live in an area that used to be remote. Sometimes there are cases of the release of a slave woman followed by marriage, which is reluctantly accepted, at least in more liberal areas (cities and upper south). There is a greater amount in which the father/owner legally recognizes the children as their own.
The sexual use of female slaves by white people is a common secret. Abolitionists often touch on it, even in the context of more serious offenses, such as family divisions. White women usually hear it, but are generally not in a position to do anything. So it was swept under the carpet and ignored. Sexual values ​​are different then. Some of the things we hate, like sex between adults and minors, are not seen as a big deal. Instead, the things we think of today (2018) are harmless or even healthy, like masturbation, they look in horror.
The scary problem that often arises is the threat of excessive sex between black women and whites. Just as black girls are thought to have "an African trail, which should inspire sexual passion and ignorance," those people are all wild, unable to control their passions, given a chance. The need to "protect the South woman" constantly appears in the discourse of white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, trying to justify violence against African-Americans. In South Antebellum, any sexual contact between a black man and a white woman is automatically thought to be rape, and the slave is immediately killed. In fact, it remains banned in many countries until Loving v. Virginia (1967), and remains on books in several Southern countries, such as Alabama.
A colorful but unique approach to the question was offered by Quaker and Florida growers, Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr. He advocated, and personally rehearsed, deliberate racial intolerance through marriage, as part of the proposed solution to the problem of slavery: racial integration. In 1829 the Treatise, he claimed that the mixed race of people was healthier and often prettier, that interracial sex was hygienic, and the enslavement made him comfortable. Because of these views, tolerated in Florida Spain, he found it impossible to remain long in the Florida Territory, and moved with his slaves and some wives to a plantation in Haiti (now in the Dominican Republic). There are many others, including Thomas Jefferson, who are less obviously practicing interracial and legal marriages with slaves (see Partigian Vultures).
Justification in the South
"Required crime"
In the nineteenth century, slavery advocates often defended the institution as a "necessary evil." The white man at the time was afraid that the emancipation of black slaves would have more dangerous social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery. In 1820, Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, wrote in a letter that by slavery:
We have wolves near our ears, and we can not hold them, or release them safely. Justice in one scale, and self-preservation on the other.
The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, in his influential book Democracy in America (1835), expressed his resistance to slavery while observing its impact on American society. He feels that a multiracial society without slavery is untenable, because he believes that prejudice against blacks increases as they are given more rights (for example, in northern countries). He believed that the attitude of the white south, and the concentration of blacks in the south, brought the white and black populations to a state of equilibrium, and was a danger to both races. Due to racial differences between employer and slave, he believes that the latter can not be liberated.
Robert E. Lee menulis pada 1856:
There are some, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not admit that slavery as an institution is a moral and political crime. It is unemployed to estimate its shortcomings. I think it is a bigger crime for white than colored race. While my feelings are deeply registered on behalf of the latter, my sympathy is deeper involved for the first. Blacks are much better here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their next instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for the better. How long their slavery needs to be known and commanded by the generous God.
"Positive stuff"
However, as the agitation of the abolitionist movement increases and the area developed for plantations is expanded, the apology for slavery is becoming increasingly faded in the South. The leaders then described slavery as a favorable labor control scheme. John C. Calhoun, in a famous speech in the Senate in 1837, stated that slavery is "not a crime, positive virtues". Calhoun supports his view for the following reasons: in every civilized society, one part of the community must live from the work of others; learning, science, and art are built on leisure; African slaves, well treated by their employers and employers and cared for in old age, better than free labor in Europe; and under a system of slavery, conflicts between capital and labor are avoided. The advantage of slavery in this regard, he concludes, "will become more and more real, if left undisturbed by outside interference, as developed countries in wealth and numbers".
Other Southern writers who also begin to portray slavery as a positive good are James Henry Hammond and George Fitzhugh. They presented several arguments to defend the act of slavery in the South. Hammond, like Calhoun, believes that slavery is needed to build other societies. In a speech to the Senate on March 4, 1858, Hammond developed the "Theory of Mudsill," defending his view of slavery which states, "Such a class that you must have, or you will have no other class leading the progress, civilization, and refinement. a layer of society and a political government, and you might as well try to build a house in the air, like building one or the other, except in this mud. "Hammond believed that in every class one group had to finish all the rough tasks, in society can not progress. He argues that wage laborers from the North are slaves as well: "The difference... is, that our slaves are employed to live and well compensated, no hunger, no beggars, do not want to work," while they in the North must seek work.
George Fitzhugh used the assumption of white superiority to justify slavery, writing that, "The Negro is just a growing child, and must be governed as a child." In the Slavery of Universal Slavery, Fitzhugh argues that slavery provides everything necessary for life and that slaves can not survive in the free world because they are lazy, and can not compete with the intelligent white race of Europe. He states that "Negro slaves in the South are the happiest, and in some ways, the most free men in the world." Without the South, "He (slave) will be an unbearable burden for society" and "The people have the right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting it to domestic slavery."
On March 21, 1861, Vice President Alexander Stephens of the Confederation delivered his Cornerstone Speech. He explained the difference between the constitution of the Confederate Republic and that of the United States, and laid the cause of the American Civil War, and the defense of slavery.
The new Constitution has put forever all the nagging questions related to our peculiar institutions - African slavery as it exists among us - the exact status of the negro in the shape of our civilization. This is the direct cause of the outbreak of the final and present revolutions. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, because "the rock where the old Union would split." He's right. What he speculated, now is a conscious fact. But does he fully understand the great truth upon which the stone stands and stands, perhaps in doubt. The ideas that exist today are entertained by him and most of the eminent statesmen at the time of the establishment of the old Constitution is that African slavery violates the laws of nature; that it is wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It is a crime that they know is not good how to deal with; but the general opinion of the people of the day is, that, somehow, in the order of Providence, the institution will quickly pass and pass... The ideas are, however, fundamentally wrong. They depend on the assumption of racial equality. This is a mistake. It is a sandy foundation, and the idea of ​​the Government built on it - when "the storm comes and the wind blows, it falls."
Our new government is based on opposing ideas; the foundation is laid, the foundation lies, to the great truth that the negro is not the same as the whites; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is the condition of nature and morality.
This is of course supported by research. The principal investigator is Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, the inventor of mental illness drapetomania - the desire of a slave to escape. The Louisiana Medical Association established a committee, in which he chairs, to investigate "The Illness and Physical Weirdness of the Negro Races". Their report, first sent to the Medical Association in an address, was published in their journal, and then partially reprinted in the widely circulated DeBow Review. That must be Stephens' concern.
Abolitionism in the North
Beginning during the revolution and in the first two decades of the postwar era, each country in the North abolished slavery, ending with New Jersey in 1804, although in some cases the slaves were not released immediately. This is the first abolitionist law in the Atlantic World.
In Massachusetts, slavery was successfully opposed in court in 1783 in a freedom suit by Quock Walker; He says that slavery goes against the new 1780 state constitution that provides male equality. Released slaves are subject to racial segregation and discrimination in the North, and it takes decades for some countries to extend their franchise.
Most northern states pass legislation for gradual elimination, first freeing children born to slave mothers (and requiring them to serve long bumps to their mothers, often into their 20s as young adults). As a result of this gradualist approach, New York did not completely exempt its former slave until 1827, Rhode Island had seven slaves still listed in the 1840 census. The former Pennsylvania slave exempt in 1847, Connecticut in 1848, and New Hampshire and New Jersey in 1865.
None of the Southern states abolished slavery, but it was common for slave owners in the South to liberate many slaves, often citing revolutionary ideals, in their wills. Methodists, Quakers and Baptist preachers traveled in the South, appealing to slave owners to kill their slaves. By 1810, the number and proportion of free blacks in the population of the United States had increased dramatically. Most free blacks live in the North, but even in Upper South, the proportion of free blacks turns from less than one percent of all blacks to more than 10 percent, even as the number of slaves increases through imports.
Through the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 under the Confederate Congress, slavery was forbidden in the northwestern region of the Ohio River; slaves are not freed for years, although they can not be sold anymore. This is a compromise. Thomas Jefferson proposed in 1784 to end slavery in all regions, but his bills were lost in the Congress with one vote. The southern region of the Ohio River (and Missouri) has permitted slavery. The Norths dominated in the westward movement to the Midwestern region after the American Revolution; when those countries were organized, they chose to ban slavery in their constitution when they reached state status: Ohio in 1803, Indiana in 1816, and Illinois in 1818. What developed was the Northern bloc of unified states that were united into an adjacent geographical area that is generally divided into anti-slavery cultures. Exceptions are areas along the Ohio River that are occupied by southerners, southern states like Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. Residents in these areas generally share in the culture and attitude of the South. In addition, these areas were devoted to agriculture longer than the northern part of the industrializing states, and some farmers used slave labor. Emancipation of slaves in the North led to the growth of the northern free black population, from several hundred in the 1770s to nearly 50,000 by 1810.
Agitation on slavery
Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, abolitionism, the movement to end slavery, grew in strength; most of the people and abolitionist supporters are in the North. They work to raise awareness about the crime of slavery, and build support for abolition.
This struggle comes amid strong support for slavery among the white South, who greatly benefited from the enslaved slavery system. But slavery is linked to the national economy; for example, the banking, shipping and manufacturing industries of New York City all have a strong economic interest in slavery, as do similar industries in other major port cities in the North. The northern textile mills in New York and New England process Southern cotton and produce clothing for slaves. By 1822 half of New York City's exports were linked to cotton.
The slave owners began calling slavery as a "special institution" to distinguish it from other examples of forced labor. They allow it to be less ruthless than the North's free work.
Organizations that are organized to advocate for the abolition of slavery and anti-slavery reforms in the north are the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and the New York Manumission Society. Before the 1830s the antislavery group called for gradual emancipation. In the late 1820s, under the impulse of religious evangelicals, it emerged that the idea of ​​having slaves is a sin and that the owner must immediately free himself from this mortal sin by emancipation.
Colonization movement
In the early part of the 19th century, other organizations were set up to take action on the future of American blacks. Some advise to move free blacks from the United States to places where they will enjoy greater freedom; some colonization is supported in Africa, while others advocate emigration. During the 1820s and 1830s, the American Colonization Society (ACS) was the primary organization to implement the "return" of black Americans to Africa. ACS mostly consists of Quakers and slave owners, who find common ground that is not easy to support "repatriation". However, at present, most black Americans are native-born and do not want to emigrate; on the contrary, they want full rights in the United States, where their people have lived and worked for generations.
In 1822 the ACS established the Liberian colony in West Africa. The ACS helped thousands of people who were released and free blacks (with regulated boundaries) to emigrate there from the United States. Many whites consider this to be better than emancipation in the United States. Henry Clay, one of the founders and a prominent slave politician from Kentucky, said that blacks were confronted
unbeatable prejudices resulting from their color, they can never unite with the free white of this country. Therefore, it is desirable, because it respects them, and residents of the country's residents, to drain them.
After 1830, abolitionist and minister William Lloyd Garrison promoted emancipation, characterizing slaveholding as a personal sin. He demanded that the slave owner repent and begin the process of emancipation. His position increased the defense of some southerners, who noted the long history of slavery among many cultures. Some abolitionists, like John Brown, like the use of armed force to wage rebellion among slaves, as he did at Harper's Ferry. Most perpetrators of slavery sought to increase public support for changing laws and opposing slavery laws. Abolitionists are active in lecture circuits in the North, and often feature escaped slaves in their presentations. Frederick Douglass is eloquent to be an important abolitionist leader after escaping from slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) is an international bestseller and evokes popular sentiments against slavery. It also provoked the publication of many anti-Tom novels by the South in the years before the American Civil War.
Prohibit international trade
While under the Constitution, Congress could not ban the trade of imported slaves until 1808, the Third Congress regulating it in the Slave Trade Act of 1794, which prohibited shipbuilding and equipment for trade. Subsequent acts in 1800 and 1803 attempted to prevent trade by limiting investment in import trade and banning imports into those countries that had abolished slavery, most of which in the North had at the time. The final deed prohibiting slave imports was adopted in 1807, effective in 1808. However, illegal importation of African slaves (smuggling) was commonplace.
After Britain and the United States banned the international slave trade in 1807, the British suppression of slave trade began in 1808 through diplomatic efforts and the formation of the Royal West African Navy Squadron. From 1819, they were assisted by troops from the United States Navy. With the Webster-Ashburton Agreement of 1842, relations with Britain were formalized, and the two countries jointly ran the African Blockade with their navy.
Post-revolution Southern manumissions
Although Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware are slave states, the latter two already have a high proportion of free blacks by the outbreak of war. After the Revolution, three legislatures made manumisi- tion easier, permitted by deed or will. The Quaker and Methodist pastors specifically urged slave owners to free their slaves. The number and proportion of freed slaves in these countries increased dramatically until 1810. More than half the number of free blacks in the United States is concentrated in the Upper South. The proportion of free blacks among blacks in the Upper South rose from less than one percent in 1792 to more than 10 percent in 1810. In Delaware, nearly 75 percent of blacks were free in 1810.
In the US as a whole, in 1810 the number of free blacks reached 186.446, or 13.5 percent of all blacks. After that period, some slaves were released, as the development of cotton plantations using short cotton in South Ujung encouraged internal demand for slaves in domestic slave trade and high prices paid.
Domestic slave trade and forced migration
The increasing international demand for cotton causes many plantation owners to further west to find suitable land. In addition, the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 enabled the favorable processing of short-staple cotton, which could be easily grown in the highlands. This invention revolutionized the cotton industry by increasing fifty times the amount of cotton that can be processed in a day. By the end of the War of 1812, less than 300,000 cotton bales were produced nationally. By 1820 the number of cotton produced had increased to 600,000 bales, and by 1850 it had reached 4,000,000. There is an explosive growth of cotton cultivation throughout the Deep South and greatly increases the demand for slave labor to support it. As a result, manu- facture declined dramatically in the South.
Most of the slaves sold from Upper South are from Maryland, Virginia, and Carolina, where changes in agriculture degrade the need for their labor and the demand for slaves. Prior to 1810, the main destinations of slaves sold were Kentucky and Tennessee, but after 1810 Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas from Deep South received the most slaves. This is where cotton becomes king. Kentucky and Tennessee join slave-exporting countries.
By 1815, domestic slave trade had become a major economic activity in the United States; it lasted until the 1860s. Between 1830 and 1840 nearly 250,000 slaves were taken across the state. In the 1850s more than 193,000 were transported, and historians estimate nearly one million totally took part in the forced migration of the new Middle Passage. By 1860, the slave population in the United States had reached 4 million. Of all 1,515,605 free families in fifteen slave states in 1860, nearly 400,000 slaves (about one in four, or 25%), accounted for 8% of all American families.
The historian Ira Berlin calls this a forced migration of "Second Middle Passage" slaves, thus reproducing many of the same horrors as Middle Passage (the name given to transport slaves from Africa to North America). The sale of these slaves destroyed many families and caused many difficulties. Describing it as the "main event" in the life of a slave between the American Revolution and the Civil War, Berlin writes that whether slaves are directly deprived or living in fear that they or their family will be moved unintentionally, "the deportation of massive black deportations, both slaves and free. "Individuals lose their connections to families and clans. Added to earlier colonies incorporating slaves from various tribes, many African ethnicity lost their knowledge of the origins of different tribes in Africa. Most come from families who have been in the United States for generations.
In the 1840s, nearly 300,000 slaves were transported, with Alabama and Mississippi each receiving 100,000. During each decade between 1810 and 1860, at least 100,000 slaves were removed from their home countries. In the last decade before the Civil War, 250,000 were transferred. Michael Tadman writes in Speculators and Slaves: Master, Trader and Slave in the Old South (1989) that 60-70% of inter-regional migration is the result of slave sales. In 1820, a child in Upper South had a 30% chance of being sold to the south in 1860. The death rate for slaves on their way to their new destinations throughout South America was less than those suffered by captives sent across the Atlantic Ocean, but the mortality rate is higher than the normal mortality rate.
The slave merchant sent two thirds of the slaves who moved west. Only minorities are moving with their families and masters. Slave merchants are not interested in buying or transporting an intact slave family; in the early years, the planters demanded only the young male slaves needed for hard labor. Later, in order to create "self-reproducing labor", growers buy almost the same number of men and women. Berlin writes:
Internal slave trade is the largest company in the South outside of the plantation itself, and perhaps the most advanced in its work in modern transportation, finance, and publicity. The slave trade industry developed its own unique language, with terms like "prime hands, bucks, nursery girls, and" pretty girls "starting to be used in general.
The expansion of slave trade among nations contributes to the "resurgence of the economies of once depressed coastal states" because of the demand to accelerate the value of slaves to which sales are targeted.
Some traders moved their "cattle" by sea, with Norfolk to New Orleans being the most common route, but most slaves were forced to walk ashore. Others are sent downstream from markets like Louisville on the Ohio River, and Natchez in Mississippi. Traders create regular migration routes served by slave pen networks, yards, and warehouses needed as temporary housing for slaves. In addition, other sellers provide clothing, food, and supplies for slaves. As the journey progressed, several slaves were sold and newly purchased. Berlin concluded, "Overall, the slave trade, with its regional centers and centers, spurs and circuits, reaches every southern gap, some southerners, black or white, untouched."
After the journey ended, the slaves faced life on the border which was significantly different from most workers in Upper South. Cleaning up trees and planting crops in virgin fields is hard and tiring work. The combination of inadequate nutrition, poor water, and fatigue from travel and work weaken the newly arrived slaves and produce the victims. The new plantation is located by the river for easy transportation and travel. Mosquitoes and other environmental challenges spread the disease, which took the life of many slaves. They have only limited immunity to the lowland disease in their previous homes. The death rate is so high that, in the first few years after cutting down plantations in the desert, some growers prefer it if possible to use leased slaves rather than their own.
The harsh conditions at the border increase the resistance of slaves and cause the owners and supervisors to rely on violence for control. Many new slaves in cotton fields and unfamiliar with "sunrise gang work until sunset" are needed by their new life. Slaves are pushed much harder than when they had planted tobacco or wheat back east. Slaves have little time and opportunity to improve their quality of life by raising their own livestock or caring for vegetable gardens, whether for consumption or their own trade, as they do in the east.
In Louisiana, the French colony has established sugarcane plantations and exported sugar as a major commodity crop. After the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, Americans entered the state and joined the sugar cultivation. Between 1810 and 1830, the planters bought slaves from the North and the number of slaves increased from less than 10,000 to over 42,000. Planters prefer young men, who represent two-thirds of the purchase of slaves. Dealing with cane is even more physically demanding than growing cotton. Most young men, unmarried men, force dependence on violence by "especially savage" owners.
New Orleans became nationally important as a market and slave port, since slaves were sent from there upstream through steamers to plantations on the Mississippi River; it also sells slaves that have been sent downstream from markets like Louisville. By 1840, it had the largest slave market in North America. It became the richest and fourth largest city in the country, mainly based on slave trade and related businesses. The trading season is from September to May, after harvest.
Slave traders are people with low reputations, even in the South. In the presidential election of 1828, candidate Andrew Jackson was heavily criticized by his opponents as a slave trader transacting in slaves contrary to modern standards or morality.
Treatment
The treatment of slaves in the United States varies greatly depending on conditions, times, and places. The power relations of slavery ravaged many white men who had authority over slaves, with children demonstrating their own cruelty. Master and supervisors are forced to punish physically to impose their will. Slaves are punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding, and imprisonment. Punishment is most often imposed in response to disobedience or offense
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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