Slavery in United States

Slavery in the United States

Introduction

A slave is an individual deprived of liberty and subjected to the tyrannical authority of a person or of a State. He is forced to do hard labor. His master imposes hardships. It can be bought and sold like an object, and treated worse than an animal. It can be subjected to torture, violence and sexual abuse. The history of the United States is inseparable from the slavery of blacks in the South of the Union. It is important to know that the original African-Americans were the only immigrants who had not chosen to settle in the United States. Americans would get them in Africa with the sole purpose of enslaving them. In the late 1980s, the system of slavery was like a capital investment, in the United States. The slaves were not without reaction and tried to rebel against their masters. Alliances were forged between even slaves and Indians, united in common hatred of the white man. At the international level, the slave trade was officially banned in 1807, after having killed more than 20 million Africans. In the United States, the end of slavery was proclaimed the first day of January, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln, leading to the emancipation of 3 million slaves. Blacks become American citizens in their own right.

Discussion

No doubt, slavery determined the type of public relations in the South. Traditionally, there has developed a caste society in which the upper class for centuries ruled over the lower. Skin color was determined by social rank southerner, and the existing system of slavery was to guarantee the inviolability of this rank. Not one black man whether slave or free could rise above the allotted space. Similarly, no white whether rich or poor could descend to the level allocated to black. All white Southerners existed above the poverty line, and the heavy, non-prestigious workforce remained confined to the lower classes. It is a fact that in any society, there must be a class of people doing menial, thankless job and most menial duties. In the South, all white, belonged to the class of slave owners or not, benefited from the existence of a system of slave labor.

If the expansion of the system had hurt someone, it was the free blacks and their enslaved brothers. On the eve of 1810 free black Americans were the fastest-growing segment of the population of the southern states. Some of them managed to buy freedom for the money; others received it in recognition of military merit. There were those who got their freedom from the hosts. After 1810, with the development of cotton farming and thus the system of slave labor, the situation got radically changed. White southerners obliquely glancing toward free blacks saw them as a threat to provoke Negroes. Having freedom colored by the fact of its existence, blurred the line between necessary of "higher" class independent white masters and "lower" class of black slaves. At the same time the local legislature had ...