slavery

A detailed Summary of slavery

The Slaves' And The Slaveowners' Views Of Slavery

"That face of his, the hungry cannibals

Would not have touched, would not have stained with blood;--

But you are more inhuman, more inexorable,

Oh! ten times more than tigers of Hyrcania."

I chose the topic about slavery for my research paper because I thought it would be an interesting experience doing research about slavery. It is American history and the more we know about it, the better we can understand what is going on today in our country. I think that because slavery was abolished very recently in terms of historical periods of time, it still has an impact on today's economic and political life. Searching for the writings by slave owners was a more difficult task then searching for the writings by slaves. However, I found a lot of useful material in various sources.

The slavery in the United States is no doubt a shameful history of our country. White people transferred the slaves living in Africa to the New Land and treated them as their property, not as human beings. The living and working conditions of slaves and their food were extremely poor. Those were inhuman conditio

The most terrible and sad aspect of slavery described by the slaves is their punishments by their masters. It is the fact that the whippings often were very severe. It is hard to believe that some people could do all these terrible things to other people. Harry Thomas, a fugitive slave, remembers one of the terrible mornings. "...The master came for me, took me home, stripped me stark naked, made a paddle of thick oak board, lashed me across a pine log, secured my hands and feet, and whipped me with the paddle. ... He whipped till he broke the paddle. After that, he took me to the house, and hit me with a hickory stick over the head and shoulders, a dozen times or more: then he got salt and water, and a corn cob, and scrubbed me. Then he sent me to water the hogs, naked as I was, in January"("Testimony Of The Canadian Fugitives" 7). It is very scary what this person went through while he was a slave. William Hall, another fugitive slave, described one more example of the executions. "I saw nine persons at different times, made fast to four stakes, and whipped with a leather strap from their neck to their heels and on the bottoms of their feet, raising blisters: then the blisters broken with a plaited whip, the overseer standing off and fetching hard blows. I have seen a man faint under this treatment. I saw one about eighteen years old... used in this way: seven weeks after he fainted in consequence; his nerves were so shattered that he seemed like a man of fifty"("Testimony Of The Canadian Fugitives" 9)

Many slave owners accepted that the slaves worked very hard. One of the former slave owners testified that when the business went quite poorly, "...the slaves were called up to work long before daylight... and worked... some of them all night"(Moulton 18). However, in his saying, there is no hint of regret. He states it as a very usual thing, and justifies it by the bad business situation. He still does not realize how evil it was to force the slaves to work for so long time. Another ex-slaveholder, Colonel Bingham, wrote an essay on slavery when slavery was already abolished, but he was still confident that slavery was more beneficial for black population then a free state. In his essay, Bingham says that "...the race antagonism... [is] no where perhaps more strong then among the white laborers of the North West against the negro..."(Bingham 247). He implies here that the slaves' labor was more beneficial for the slaves because they were not oppressed racially. However, the institute of slavery oppressed the slaves in a enormous degree and some personal antagonism in the North is nothing in comparing with slavery. Also it does not justify the inhuman exploitation of the slaves.

With so scarce food as the slaves had, it was almost impossible to survive. Charles Ball, a former slave, wrote that there were a lot of "...raids on the smokehouse..." (Feldstein 43). That was the only way slaves could get some extra food to feed themselves and their children. However, Charles Ball added that "...if a slave were caught stealing, his punishment would... be severe"(Feldstein 43). A former slave remembers that he used to steal some food from his master to survive. He says that if a turkey was stolen by the slaves, they tried to implicate an imaginary fox. When they stole potatoes, they tried to implicate the hogs (Feldstein 45). As we can see the conditions of the slaves were inhuman. They had to have a lot of endurance to survive in their situation.

Moulton, Horace. American Slavery As It Is: Testimony Of A Thousand Witnesses. New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1968. 17-45.

A former slave remembers that the very typical thing for a plantation was that children younger than eight years old did not receive any food at all. They could eat only what their parents left over from their meals (Feldstein 44). Certainly, many female slaves did not eat already very scanty food to feed their

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Approximate Word count = 3695
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History