Antebellum Slavery

Slavery today is known as the worst thing to ever happen in the history of the United States, but not many people look beyond the common knowledge aspect of it to see the big picture. In other words, not many people really know just how it got to be such a solid part of the country not just economically, but politically. In class, we were given 3 essential questions, the first being: "How did slavery become economically entrenched in American society by the early 19th century? . To answer this question, we were given excerpts of  The Founder's Constitution, which contain detailed information about slavery. In Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3, it says "No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due., which we interpreted as a class to say that any slave who runs away from their owner in a state allowing slavery is still lawfully their property, even if they run to a state prohibiting slavery, and will be forced to return and work for them, which really highlights the strictness and seriousness of the way treated and thought of their "property". Also, in another article titled, Cotton is King: Slavery is Entrenched in American Society Antebellum Slavery, we read that at the time the people of the U.S. were under the impression that slavery was declining and were even beginning to help free slaves, as some slaves were taking matters into their own hands and running away or revolting. Many slave owners were inspired to emancipate their slaves by the ideals of equality and liberty, and after 10 years since this started roughly 10,000 slaves were released. Just as things were looking up for the slaves, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. The cotton gin was a machine that made the production of cotton remarkably easier, and they were a hit throughout the country. This meant for the slaves that rather than being emancipated they'd now be manning the new machines. Since these machines were so widely used throughout the country, the slave population doubled and eventually tripled, and as did their price. Where one slave had once cost $500, by 1825 were worth $1,500. In only 17 years, by 1860, the yearly amount of cotton produced in the South made a drastic jump from 1.5 million to 2.28 billion, which shows how greatly the demand of cotton had grown, along with the slaves needed to produce so much of it.

In this picture, you see that in just 70 years the cotton frenzy spread quickly through the country, dragging slavery rates along with it. 

Shown in the picture above, we know that as the demand for cotton grew so did the price.

The orange words were those from our source from him, Canniballs All
or Slaves without Masters, that we found to stand out and
support our answers to the essential questions.

In another section of the lesson we focused more on the morality of slavery, and were asked to answer the questions: "How does a system of slavery based on race affect human dignity?" and "What human characteristics does such a system tend to ignore?". To answer these questions we were broken into groups and were all assigned an important person from this time, who was either pro or against slavery. The period before the civil war was called the Antebellum Period, and we were trying to figure out how people looked at the issue from both sides. We were each given a primary source document from edline My group was assigned George Fitzhugh,shown in the picture to the right,  who was pro-slavery. His argument that the slaves in America were the happiest in the world since only the well and able were put to work, but every one was provided room, board, and protection. He even said that slaves are freer than people being paid too work in fields, because they were free from worrying about money or food. Then, on the other side there were people like Frederick Douglas, who had been born a slave and then went on to be the most important black man of the 19th century by being an avid slavery activist and author of slave based books. 

Then in class, we read an article  which compared the slavery in Natchez, Mississippi to Futa Jallon, Africa, which we had just watched a video tying the two worlds together and were now reading it in article form. Both the movie and the article are titled Prince Among Slaves, which is in reference to Abdull Rahman, who was taken from his father (the king of Futa Jallon), and sold as a slave in America. This article really shed light on the lives of slaves, in particular their treatment. For example, if a slave woman and free father were to have a child, that child could achieve political greatness. However, only non-muslims were to be enslaved, and Muslims were to be free regardless of any circumstance. While watching the movie in class, we gathered on a live feed at TodaysMeet.com to share details and insights with one another that we picked up on. Some of the things on the live feed were that Rahman was captured in his own country while he was on a mission with his men in the woods, and they were then ambushed and forced to walk 100 miles to the coast where there was a ship waiting to sell them. Once they got to America, he was sold in Natchez, Missouri to a man named Thomas Foster who, after a time began to refer to Rahman as "Prince" since he had tried so hard to convince him of his social ranking back in Futa Jallon. After losing his long hair which is an African sign of nobility, running away from his master only to return in defeat weeks later, and then finally getting used to his new life, Prince gained a role of authority on the plantation, and was in charge of making sure the slaves were working efficiently, which ended up making it one of the most successful plantations around. Prince was freed after a man named Marshak printed his story in a news paper, and then Prince and his wife who he had bought with borrowed money toured the country trying to get the funds to free the rest of their family, though they failed. However, he had given the people supporting him false information about himself and once they had all withdrawn their support he had no other choice but to return home to Futa Jallon with only his wife. The main point of this class was that though many important figures in history such as George Fitzhugh and others like him tried to hide it, slaves were not thought of or treated as human beings and didn't even have the luxuries of basic human rights.