HISTORIAN AND SLAVERY

Historian and Slavery

Historian and Slavery

Introduction

The Biblically ancient institution of slavery is sadly worldwide, going well beyond the United States. It is basically a social and economic system under which the people known as slaves are deprived of their freedom, and indefinitely condemned to performing free services for the people known as their masters, who own them as property. They are usually not allowed any personal liberties, being entirely subject to the whims of their masters, and are driven into oppression and hard-pressed circumstances (Woodrow Wilson, 1918).

Discussion and Analysis

American slavery actually began in 1619, a few years after the foundation of the first English colony in Virginia. It ended officially in 1865 with the passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It didn't end with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln, as many people think, on New Year's Day in 1863. Dr. King stated that Lincoln was averse to ending slavery at first, being unsure that he could manage to persuade the southern states into following abolition which meant total abolishment of slavery practices.

These involved the keeping of black people as physical property, otherwise called "chattel slavery," where they were to be eternally held against their will, and bred as servants, lackeys and field labor in plantations and farms owned mostly by white people. Lincoln was quite correct; the South remained adamantly opposed to the death of slavery, to the point where some stubborn white people are trying to reinstitute it nowadays (Woodrow Wilson, 1918).

The first English colony in America was in need of able-bodied workers, as it had lost many to disease, malnutrition and the ongoing war with Native Americans - otherwise called "Indians." The Dutch ship needed food, and the settlers needed workers, so the human cargo was traded in for ...