Slavery is a big ol' black eye for America. The irony is that if slavery hadn't existed, neither would we. Slavery allowed America to become a global leader in agriculture, provided cash crops like tobacco and cotton for international trade and made the settlement of the southwest possible after the Louisiana Purchase. African slaves were first brought to Virginia in 1607 on ships through the middle passage. The people were chained together in the bellies of ships where it was often devastatingly hot, living for weeks to months at a time in their own excrement with disease- ridden rodents. Many humans did not survive the trip. A speculated one-third of human cargo died from disease or malnourishment. Those who did survive had the unfortunate fate of being scrutinized and sold to mercurial tempered plantation owners and put to work in the fields of the south. Tobacco and cotton crop cultivation was tremendously taxing work. The temperatures in the south were blistering and a workday often lasted from sun up to sun down. Some slaves were whipped, beaten, tortured and outright murdered by their owners. They lived in squalid conditions in small shacks and there might be two entire families in it. Slaves were encouraged to procreate. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "A child raised every two years is of more profit than the crop of the best laboring man (Norton)." Women often died in childbirth due to lack of medical attention and infection. Young girls and women were often raped by white masters producing "mulatto" offspring, which brought shame upon many. A number of slave owners actually took on slave women as mistresses.
One now infamous case of this is the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings which has gained notable attention of late. Arguably, though, even with all of the physical violence and violation slave men and women had to endure, the worst part was the mental dehumanization. The psychological effects slavery had on the human spirit were detrimental.
African slaves reacted to this horrid treatment in different ways. Some ran away, some held secret prayer meetings to worship, some revolted. More common was the day to day resistance which alerted to slaves' discontent. Sabotage was a tactic often used according to an article in December 2007 issue of "History Review". Slaves, in reaction to brutal treatment would harm livestock, deliberately break tools, fake illness, or work inefficiently. Some resorted to arson. Women often performed acts of infanticide. One slave woman named Sylvia had given birth to thirteen children whom she promptly murdered explaining that she'd rather have them dead than suffer slavery (Phillips). Another widespread form of resistance was running away. The majority of slaves ran temporarily and returned when danger of punishment had subsided. Cruel and brutal punishment, even death deterred most of the enslaved attempting permanent escape. Well organized slave recovery parties administered these punishments and then the fugitives had to deal with their masters upon return. The stakes were very high for those attempting to flee to northern free states and Canada. Spending a few days away from the plantation hiding out was a more feasible way of negotiating with cruel slave drivers. One former slave who had lived into the 1930's recalled that even though those around him were whipped, he never was because when he thought they were coming for him, he'd run off into the woods.
The owner's men would come after him and tell him to come on back and they wouldn't whip him. Many stories like this are recorded. For the slave, this action established to the master that his stronghold on the enslaved men and women was not absolute. Perhaps one of the most historically infamous slave rebellions was that of Frederick Douglas. After being hired out from a life as a house servant to a cruel master, Douglass endured six months of brutality and beatings. Douglass became fed up and fought back on one instance, which ended with the master, Edward Covey, giving up. After this, the whippings stopped and more importantly, Douglass had an epiphany. Douglass wrote, "The cowardice departed and bold defiance took its place." Douglass went on to escape into New York by disguising himself as a sailor. He was taught to read by the wife of a former master and while working as a laborer in New Bedford, he wrote a book detailing his life as a slave in Maryland. The book, entitled "Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass" was published in 1845 and he became a popular speaker as well as an anti-slavery spokesperson. He fame grew so rapidly that he moved to England fearing that he would be arrested as a fugitive under the 1850 legislature. He Moved back to Rochester, NY in 1847 and began publishing an abolitionist newspaper, "The North Star." Douglass went on to become one of Abraham Lincoln's trusted advisors recruiting soldiers for the union and speaking out for equal pay for equal work for them during the civil war. In 1848, the "North Star" published a letter from Douglass to his former owner where he attacks the horror of slavery and writes, "I intend to make use of you as a weapon with which to assail the system of slavery… I shall make use of you as a means of exposing the character of the American church and clergy- and as a means of bringing this guilty nation, with yourself, to repentance. I am your fellow man but not your slave."
The Underground Railroad was another means of slave revolt in which thousands were able to escape to be free men but often met with another harsh reality, having to take care of themselves with little or no means of doing it. The network of individuals helping slaves escape ran from the south northward. It had two primary stops along the way, one in Philadelphia and one in New York. Most of the "Conductors" who helped the runaway slaves escape into freedom were mainly white abolitionists. Some were former slaves themselves. Harriett Tubman is probably the most remembered. She had been born into slavery in Maryland and escaped to freedom in 1849. She returned hastily to the south to aid other escapees and was personally responsible for saving 300 people on nineteen separate trips. In 1857, she was able to liberate her parents. Tubman later served in the Union army as a cook and a spy and helped to lead an additional 750 slaves to freedom through this work. She was truly an American hero.
Written by Harriett Beecher Stowe, a white preacher, in 1852, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a shocking wake up call to the injustice of slavery. Kenneth C. Davis writes of the book, "In a time when slavery was discussed with dry legalisms like "States' rights" and "popular Sovereignty," this book personalized the question of slavery as no amount of abolitionist literature or congressional debate ever had." "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was, as one can imagine, controversial and inflammatory but sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide. The book followed the story of a main character, Tom, through much hardship as well as other characters whose lives revolve around him. Although the characters were fictitious, the incidents in the book were documented accounts of actual events. Stowe wrote "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" in response to receipt of a package questioning the book's integrity and containing the ear of a slave. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best- selling novel of the 19th Century and is credited with helping to fan the flames of the abolitionist movement in the 1850's, spiraling America into the Civil war.
Not everyone agreed with or condoned slavery. The revolutionary thinking concerning slavery was born in the north, where states were far from slave societies. Abolition was gradually making its way through the north. In 1777 Vermont was the first state to ban slavery in its Constitution, Pennsylvania followed in 1780. Additional states north of Maryland followed suit as well in the years to come and this process became known as the First Emancipation. However, there was contradiction in American laws regarding slavery between the North and the South. When Slaves made their way into a free state, northern law granted the entitlement of civil rights to blacks presuming they were free. Southern law assumed them slaves and required their return to bondage. Dr. Benjamin Rush, an American revolutionary leader addressed slavery as being "A vice which degrades human nature (Norton)." In 1793 congress passed The Federal Fugitive Slave Acts or the "blood hound laws" requiring that runaway slaves be returned to their owners. This southern dominated legislation tried to force the hand of authorities in free states to remit renegade slaves to their masters. The law incensed northern abolitionists but was amended and again passed in 1850 as part of the Fugitive Slave Acts. Northerners felt that this was an attack on their principles, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all men. Some northern states in response to the unjustness of this law passed personal liberty laws requiring a jury trial to be held before the alleged fugitive slave could be extradited back to his home state. Starting in the 1830's abolitionists brought suits against slave legislation in the court system and juries refused to convict people who aided slaves escape.
Southern slave owners correlated black resistance and their loss of control with northern abolitionists. This bred bitterness and deeply divided the nation. In 1859, John Brown, a fervent abolitionist, lead an invasion of Harper's Ferry with a small congregation. The raid was not well structured and was quickly quashed, but it certainly heightened the tensions between north and south. Talk of succeeding from the union was a bound. The epidemic of mutiny turned the tide toward war. The outbreak of uprisings gave the pro-secessionists the psychological weapon they needed to launch the Civil War. The black resistance movements ultimately played an instrumental role in causing the conflict that would eradicate slavery for good.
Works Cited
Davis, Kenneth C. Don't Know Much About History. New York: Harper Collins, 2008.
Kay, Anthony E. "Neighborhoods and Nat Turner: The Making of a Slave Rebel and Unmaking of a Slave Rebellion." Journal of the Early Republic (2007): 705-720.
Many. Wikipedia. <www.wikipedia.com>.
Norton, Sheriff, Katzman, Blight, Chudacoff, Logevall, Bailey. A People & A Nation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.
Phillips, Gervase. "Slave Resistance in the Antebellum South." History
(2007): 6.
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