Chattel Slavery

African Americans had won their freedom out of slavery after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." and no longer were they seen as possessions of the slave-owners. However, during the 1900’s there were still problems that arose, which made the life for African American people to struggle and be discriminated. The term for this was called segregation. African Americans were forced to attend separate schools and other facilities. During that time, white males controlled the workforce and many African Americans could barely find any well-paying jobs and were separated and discriminated all over. But at some point notable people who were against segregation

The emancipation of slaves in the southern US and the after effects of the Civil War caused General Sherman to, in January 1865, issue Special Field Order Number 15. Thousands of former slaves were basically refugees, having no jobs, homes or property. Many slaves thought erroneously that after they were freed they would be given the land on which they worked. This didn’t happen and they were turned out on their own. Order Number 15 was issued as a response to the refugee/slave issue. 400,000 acres along the South Carolina, Georgia and Florida coasts was set aside to be given to Freedmen. The area was to be populated by blacks only and by a government made up those peoples. The allocation of land was to be not more than 40 acres of tillable land per person or family, self-governed and self-ruled. The decision to give land to the freed slaves came about by Sherman asking leaders of the Negro community, 20 Baptist and Methodist ministers, what did their people want. They said land.

The black codes, written on July 3, 1865, were “a series of discriminatory state laws” (Open Stax page 458) which made it illegal for African American men to be in town limits unless they had a written document from their employer saying that they were allowed, (Document B). These documents aimed to maintain the social and economic structure of the previous slave society in the absence of slavery itself. The black codes made strict regulations on when African American men were allowed to be in town without a white employer, including not letting them “be on the streets after 10 pm” and that they could not “live within the town limits” (Document B). The black codes aimed to reverse the effects of the 14th amendment by allowing them to own land but only under strict guidelines. In Document C, it states that “you all are not free yet and will not be until Congress sits” meaning that African Americans were not viewed as freedmen by Southerners, but still as their slaves because Congress did not enforce the 13th and 14th amendments. The black codes also influenced white men to beat and shoot any black men or women that tried to escape the South. This was cause because white plantation owners did not want to lose their workers because then they would have to pay a significantly higher wage to any other workers. The black codes also forced freedmen and women to sign contracts saying that they would only work for one employer, making it difficult for any man to raise enough money to buy their own land. As the book states. “blacks could not positively influence wages and conditions by choosing to work for the employer who gave them the best terms” (Openstax pg 459). These contracts lowered the competition between plantation owners so they were not influenced to raise wages based on other owners. The black codes deprived African Americans of their rights to vote, serve on juries, carry or

This meant that newly freed slaves would be entitled to a certain amount of land. This was made by Special Field Order No. 89. 15 that was issued in 1865.1 At this time, black people and land were also interesting predicaments. Many African Americans did not have anything of their own after emancipation, and so to make money, they had to work. Oftentimes, with no education, they would be sharecroppers.

Former slaves did not enjoy equal civil rights, to vote or even owning a property which could help them to sustain this newly liberty. Freedom could be defined differently by blacks and whites considering their own experiences; whereas white people wanted to reach highest ranks in a community, ex-slaves only wanted to have fundamental rights Americans already benefited from. William T- Sherman issued his Special Field Order No. 15 in 1865, confiscating some territories and redistributing them. “By June, some 40,000 freed slaves had been settled on Sherman land” (Foner: 587), ensuring them to entail the economic independence they considered crucial to achieve authentic freedom. It is hypocritical how now they decided to give captives freedom yet operating with new labour forces composed of indentured servants form India and

As a result of the North’s victory in the civil war and the reconstruction period that followed, African-Americans were seemingly on the verge of being able to enjoy the freedom of no longer being slaves. During the reconstruction era, important pieces of legislature were written in order to protect the rights of the newly freed men. Those pieces of legislature were essentially trying to somehow transform former slave into free productive members of society. However, a number of disgruntled southerners took it as their duty to prevent African-American from being free of their former masters. They saw the northerners demand as an infringement of the South traditional values. Although the

Following the Civil War, America was in shambles. There were many groups with strong, conflicting ideas of how things should be. However, most groups had one idea in common: reducing the rights of African Americans as much as possible. Freed slaves had very little freedom under the law, were treated like a lesser species by those around them, and faced dangerous environments everywhere they went. Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation may have legally freed slaves, but African Americans were barely more than paid slaves.

The seventh section of these black codes allowed for the return of freed blacks to their employers if they were to quit “the service of his or her employer before the expiration of his or her term of service without good cause.” What a blacks’ term of service and what defined just cause for ending that term of service, would likely be left up to the employer, creating a system which virtually defined slavery itself. Since blacks were required to be employed, this meant that they could be held in slave-like conditions to white employers.

It is commonly believed that after the onset of the Civil War, Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation was the key driver to freeing the slaves of the south. After the Civil War, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Constitutional amendments were passed which aided newly freed slaves in being equally treated under the law, or so the story goes. The fact of the matter is that even after the Emancipation Proclamation and after the amendments, slavery in the United States was still “legal” and not only that, but it took on a much different form. The institution of slavery changed from having the direct enslavement of blacks, to the United States legal and prison system enslaving blacks. Yet, the enslavement itself was changed as black convicts

Researchers found that more than ten thousand people are in forced labor across 90 US cities. These people are forced to work in sweatshops, clean homes, work on farms, or work as prostitutes or strippers. Many of these cases are accumulated in areas with large immigrant populations, like California, New York, and Florida. Most of the victims of forced labor are “imported” from 38 different countries. China, Mexico, and Vietnam top this list of countries (Gilmore 1).

The Americans say every man should have freedom as an inalienable right yet they are the people keeping slaves captive. The nerve of those Americans. They come onto mexico land and decide how we live our lives and how the government works. How can they tell others to follow their rules when they cannot follow their own

Chattel slavery, so named because people are treated as the personal property, chattels, of an owner and are bought and sold as commodities, is the original form of slavery. When taking these chattels across national borders it is referred to as Human Trafficking especially when these slaves provide sexual services.

During the end of formal reconstruction in the south in 1877, a new beginning of racial segregation began in the United States of America. “White people don’t like to see a nigger with to much… white people was afraid, afraid the money would make the nigger act to much like his old man”(Wormser) a quote by Ned Cobb a labor worker who had so little because when he had much the white people would take it away from him. It was hard to work in horrible conditions with low pay and then placing food on his families table. Many were trapped in contracts or in debt due to not being able to read the contract. So even though African Americans were not slaves they were under the rule of the person they owed money too. Many were lynched, which meant they were hung from a tree. “If we got to fight and die for America, why should we be treated like slaves in America?”(Wormser). A quote by former soldier Hosea Williams who served in the army during World War Two and was the only one in his squad to make it out alive. After his return to the

Despite the black codes had provided rights such as the marriage legalization and the ownership of property, they violated the free labor principle and denied the African-Americans the right to vote, and sue any white man. Foner (2014) found “In response to planter’s demands that freed people be required to work on the plantations, the Black Codes declared that those who failed to sign yearly labor contracts could be arrested and hired out to white landowners” (p. 570) . In fact, it was a totally failure of what freedom was supposed to be.

Slavery is morally objectionable. We all know this. We’ve heard the stories about the fugitive slave act, middle passage, emancipation proclamation, and we’ve all seen the famous propaganda image of the Slave Ship Brooks, an image that depicts a “slaver” (slave ship) filled to the brim with 454 slaves packed into its small hull. But have you ever heard the stories from slaves themselves? Have you ever had someone make those numbers, nine million here, six thousand there, and so on and so forth, come to life? That is what Marcus Rediker did in his award-winning book, The Slave Ship: A Human History.