Download Slavery - History

Slavery & Beyond
Slavery is the condition in which one human being is owned by another. A slave was
considered by law as property (chattel) and was deprived of many of the rights
ordinarily held by free persons.
Slaves were objects of the law, not its subjects, like an ox or an axe. As a “marginal individual” or
“socially dead person” the slave’s rights to participate in political decision making and other social
activities were fewer than those enjoyed by his owner. The product of a slave's labour could be
claimed by someone else, who also frequently had the right to control slaves’ reproduction.
Slaves had been owned in Africa throughout recorded history. In the second half of the C15th
Europeans began to trade along the west coast of Africa, and by 1867 7 million - 10 million
Africans had been shipped as slaves to the New World.
Slaves were first brought to Virginia in 1619. Tobacco was initially the profitable crop that
occupied most slaves in the Chesapeake, however, the invention of the cotton gin in 1793
changed this, and thereafter cotton created a huge demand for slaves. By 1850 nearly twothirds of plantation slaves were engaged in the production of cotton.
More than 36% of all the New World slaves in 1825 were in the southern United States. Like Rome had
been in the Ancient World, the South was totally transformed by the presence of slavery.
The process of becoming a slave in America was brutal. Africans were captured by other Africans in
raids and then transported to the African coast. The captives, primarily adult males, were assembled
on the coast and kept in holding pens until wholesaled to European ship captains. Once a ship was
loaded, the trip, known as “the Middle Passage,” usually to Brazil or an island in the Caribbean, was a
matter of a few weeks to several months. The slaves were then sold at auction. After the auction
the slave was delivered to the new owner, who then put him to work. That also began the
period of “seasoning” for the slave, the period of about a year or so when he either succumbed to the
disease environment of the New World or survived it.
In 1807 the British abolished the slave trade with their colonies. In America, the anti-slavery
movement created immense hostility between the non-slave North, where most states had voluntarily
abolished slavery by 1804, and the slaveholding South, where slavery was firmly entrenched because
of the spread of cotton cultivation. However, it took the South's secession, the Civil War and
Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 to end slavery in America.
Throughout history slaves have often been considered to be stupid, uneducable, childlike, lazy,
untruthful, untrustworthy, prone to drunkenness, idle, boorish, lascivious, licentious, and cowardly. A
major issue in the topic of attitudes toward slavery is that of race. In the South the owners were of
northern European stock and the slaves of African stock. The degree of social isolation
of, and dehumanising contempt for, slaves was extraordinary. Southern slaves were
forbidden to engage in occupations that might demonstrate their capacities, inter-marriage almost
never occurred, and “manumission” (the freeing of a slave) was almost unheard of, as the owners
proclaimed that Blacks lacked any capacity to maintain themselves as free individuals.
The institution of slavery usually tried to deny its victims their native cultural identity. Nonetheless,
studies have shown that there were aspects of slave culture that differed from the master culture.
Afro-Christian religions and rituals appeared nearly everywhere throughout the New World. AfroAmerican music and dance are known to have African roots, and they differed dramatically
from the practices of the European master culture; the use of drum and banjo were especially
significant. Songs and spirituals borrowed their strong call-and-response patterns from the West
African style.
The American Civil War
The American Civil War was a four-year conflict (1861–65) between the federal
government of the United States and 11 Southern states that asserted their right to
secede from the Union (leave the union of the United States).
The secession of the Southern states (in chronological order, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida,
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina) in 1860–61 and
the outbreak of the Civil War were the result of decades of tension over the issue of slavery. This
tension was caused by fundamental differences between the economies of the Northern
and Southern states. The North had a growing manufacturing sector and small farms
using free labour, while the South's economy was based on plantations using slave
labour. By the 1850s, some Northerners had begun calling for the complete abolition of slavery, while
several Southern states threatened to secede from the Union in order to protect their right to keep
slaves. When Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party, was elected
president in 1860, the Southern states carried out their threat and seceded from the Union.
The seceded Southern States organized themselves as the Confederate States of America
under President Jefferson Davis. They aimed to win a short war of independence. The Northern
states of the federal Union, under President Abraham Lincoln, commanded more than twice the
population of the Confederacy. War began in Charleston, South Carolina, with the firing of
Confederate artillery on Fort Sumter on April 12 1861. The famous Ulysses S. Grant and General E. Lee
played important roles in commanding the Union and Confederate forces respectively.
During the period of the war, many slaves fled from the South along the Underground
Railroad to the North and to freedom. Many freed slaves also joined the ranks of the Union
Army.
The North's victory in the American Civil War resulted in the preservation of the Union,
the abolition of slavery and the granting of citizenship to the freed slaves. The war also
marked the new economic and political superiority of the rapidly industrializing, increasingly
urbanized states of the North.
Reconstruction
Reconstruction (1865 – 1877) was the period during and after the American Civil War
when attempts were made to solve the political, social and economic problems which
had been caused by the readmission to the Union of the 11 Confederate states that had
seceded.
As early as 1862 President Abraham Lincoln had appointed provisional military
governors for Louisiana, Tennessee and North Carolina. The following year, steps were taken
to re-establish governments in newly occupied states in which at least 10% of the voting population
had taken the prescribed oath of allegiance. However, Radical Republicans in Congress were angry
that the presidential plan did not consider social or economic reconstruction.
After Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, President Andrew Johnson further alienated Congress by
continuing Lincoln's moderate policies. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which
defined national citizenship so that it included blacks, passed Congress in June 1866
despite rejection by most Southern states.
The period known as Radical Reconstruction lasted ten years. It started with the Reconstruction Acts
of 1867. Under these laws, the 10 remaining Southern states were divided into five military districts
and, under supervision of the U.S. Army, were readmitted to the Union between 1868 and 1870. Each
state had to accept the Fourteenth or, if readmitted after its passage, the Fifteenth
Constitutional Amendment, intended to ensure civil rights of the freed Blacks. Newly
created state governments were governed by political coalitions (groups) of blacks, “carpetbaggers”
(anti-slavery Northerners who had gone into the South), and “scalawags” (anti-slavery Southerners
who collaborated with the blacks).
Southerners particularly resented the activities of the Freedmen's Bureau, which Congress had
established to feed, protect and help educate the newly freed Blacks. Resentment over issues such
as the Freedmen’s Bureau led to formation of secret terrorist organizations e.g. the Ku
Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camelia.
At the turn of the C20th, many historians argued that Blacks were racially inferior. These
“orthodox” historians also argued that the Reconstruction governments were corrupt, vindictive
against the South and that they promoted the superiority of the North.
However, “revisionist” historians since then have different opinions. These revisionist historians
argue that the Reconstruction governments introduced many positive measures in the
South, such as public school systems, feasible methods of taxation and improved judicial
procedures.
The Great Migration
The Great Migration was the movement of thousands of African-Americans from the
South to the North. African Americans were looking to escape the problems of racism in
the South and felt they could seek out better jobs and an overall better life in the North.
It is estimated that over 1 million African-Americans participated in this mass
movement.
In 1900 approximately 90% of all African-Americans still resided in the South. The Great Migration
created the first large, urban black communities in the North. The North saw its black population rise
about 20% between 1910 and 1930. Cities such as Chicago, Detroit, New York and Cleveland saw
some of the biggest increases. Between 1940 and 1970 continued migration transformed the
country's African-American population from a predominately southern, rural group to a
northern, urban one.
There were a range of reasons why so many Blacks moved from the South to the North.
Thousands of African-Americans left the South to escape worsening economic conditions and the lynch
mob. They sought higher wages, better homes and political rights in the North. World War I created a
huge demand for labour in the North when millions of men left their jobs to join the Army. There were
therefore more jobs available for Blacks in the North. In the South, a boll weevil infestation of the
cotton crop which caused ruined harvests also caused many African-Americans to leave for the North.
Railroad companies were so desperate for labour that they paid African-Americans' travel expenses
to the North.
With black labour leaving the South in large numbers, southern planters tried to
prevent the outflow, but were ultimately unsuccessful. Some southern employers promised
better pay and improved treatment. Others tried to intimidate Blacks, even going so far as to board
Northbound trains and to attack men and women to try to force them into returning to the South.
Despite the jobs and housing available in the North, the challenges of living in an urban
environment were daunting for many of the new migrants. However, the stream of migrants
continued until the Great Depression caused northern demand for workers to slacken.
The Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a period of outstanding literary vigour and creativity that
took place in the 1920s, changing the character of African-American literature to
sophisticated explorations of black life and culture that revealed a new confidence and
racial pride.
The movement was centred in the vast black ghetto of Harlem in New York City, where
aspiring black artists, writers and musicians gathered. These artists shared their experiences
and provided mutual encouragement.
One of the leading figures of the period was James Weldon Johnson, author of the
pioneering novel “Autobiography Of An Ex-Coloured Man” (1912), though he was perhaps best known
for “God's Trombones” (1927). Claude McKay produced an impressive volume of verse, “Harlem
Shadows” (1922), and a best-selling novel, “Home to Harlem” (1928), about a young Negro's return
from World War I. Countee Cullen was another important black poet. Cullen helped bring more
Harlem poets to the public’s attention by editing “An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets” in 1927.
The Great Depression caused the Harlem group of writers to scatter. Many were forced to
leave New York or to take other jobs to tide them over the hard times.