Slavery
Slavery is immoral and inhumane. You don’t just in slave people and work them to death for your own benefit. Treat them like savage animals just to make a profit. Take people out of their homeland and threat them as slaves because of their race, of how they look, or because they re different.
This disorder that the indentured servant system had created made racial slavery to southern slave holders much more attractive, because what were black slaves now? Well, they were a permanent dependent labor force, who could be defined as a people set apart. They were outsiders. They were strangers and in many ways through out the world where people are considered outsiders and can be put in a permanent status of slavery -David Blight
The Europeans dragged the Africans out of their home country and brought them to America as slaves, just because they were different. After kidnapping potential slaves , they were forced to walk in slave caravans to the European coastal forts, sometimes as far as 1000 miles. Shackled and underfed, only half those people survived these death marches. Those t sick or weary to keep up were left behind to die. Then those who did survive and did reach the coastal forts were put into underground dungeons where they stayed, sometimes even a year until they were boarded on ships and sent off to America. That’s just a section of suffering they had to endure just so that the Europeans could have labor and not have to pay for it. Africans were often treated like cattle during the voyage. On the ships, people were stuffed between decks in spaces two low for standing. The heat was often unbearable, and the air unbreathable. Woman were often used sexually. Men were often chained in pairs, shackled wrist to wrist or ankle to ankle. People were crowed together, usually forced to lie on their backs with their heads between the legs of others. This meant they often had to lie in each others feces, urine and in the case of dysentery, even blood. In such cramped quarters, diseases such as smallpox and yellow fever spread like wildfire. The diseased were sometimes thrown overboard to prevent wholesale epidemics. Because a small crew had to control so many, cruel measures such as iron muzzles and whipping were used to control slaves.Many went mad in the dreadful, barbaric conditions: others chose to jump to the watery deaths, rather then endure. Olaudah Equiano a former slave wrote of his passage:
The Essay on Should People Be Forced to Retire at Age 65
Should people be forced to retire at age 65? Why or why not? At sixty-five years of age, and with a healthy body capable of office work just as before; retirement seems like an option that could otherwise be denied. With an average lifespan of over seventy years for men and over eighty years for women in Canada, retiring at sixty-five becomes a waste of those who are still able to continue on with ...
Often did I think many of the inhabitants of the deep much happier than myself.
The Europeans sent at least ten to twelve million Africans to the Americas.Over the centuries between one and two million persons died in the crossing. Did all these people deserved to die, and all the rest deserve to slave?
Once the Africans reached America they were converted to Christianity, they were baptized and given Christian names this just shows how immoral the slave traders/holders were changing their religion against their will.
All servants imported and brought into the Country…who were not Christians in their native Country…shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion…shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resists his master…correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction…the master shall be free of all punishment…as if such accident never happened. – Virginia General Assembly declaration, 1705
The Europeans also ad a very cruel punishment system. Whipping, branding, dismembering, castrating or death were all a form of punishment and were all legal for a while. If you re a white authority you re constantly trying to figure out how tightly you want to impose the lid with expect to people running away. How fierce should the punishments be?Should it be a whipping? Should it be the loss of a finger or a hand of a foot? Should it be wearing shackles perpetually? (Peter Wood)
The Essay on Slavery and African Slave Traders
1. What was indentured servitude like in the colonies? Was it much different from being a slave?: Indentured servants either agreed to serve for a stated period usually about five years or upon arrival to the colonies they bargained with wealthy Englishmen, Dutchmen or High German, for how long they would serve for their passage money. In the colonies indentured servants where under strict control ...
They didn’t care what happened to the slaves, there were so many that they didn’t really take their lives seriously.
In the eyes of the white authorities, slaves were worthless dirty Negroes. Animals, savage, uncivilized, of lower species just because they were black, different.
Not only is slavery immoral it is racial and could have been substituted. There are several alternatives to slavery. For example with the end of slavery, planters divided their land into small sharecropped farms. A new plantation system based upon wage labor. If they had this plantation system from the start slavery would have not been needed. They economy rise would not have been as quick, sacrifices must be made but it is a better system than slavery.The economic rise would have eventually balanced out anyway. Another alternative to slavery would be indentured servants. For a while this worked but eventually diminished. But it might have worked if the indentured servant had more in the deal. Maybe more land, or better treatment, or less labor years. This could have brought back indentured servants.
They had a choice, would they continue to hire Europeans and Africans as indentured servants? Or would they rely on enslaved African workers for life. The colonists had a choice to make, they could use laborers who were free or who would one day become free. Or the could force people to work their fields for them indefinitely, without any hope of freedom for themselves or their children. To the present day , we carry the scars of the decision they made: gradually, over several generations, they chose slavery.
