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Pros And Cons Of Slavery

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From the start of its almost 250 year reign in the United States region, slavery has been unjust. The idea of keeping a human being as property and treating them rather harshly is inhumane. Although today we view slavery as a barbaric practice, during these 250 years many people thought slavery was beneficial and didn’t see or tried to ignore the inhumane qualities it contained. During the start of the abolitionist movement in the 1830’s, many pro-slavery advocates formed their arguments of why they believed slavery not an unjust system. However, many of these arguments were full of lies and faults. An example of this can be found in quote from George Fitzhugh taken from “The Blessings of Slavery”. The argument Fitzhugh makes could not be farther from the truth. Fitzhugh regards slavery as a joyous thing that benefits both the enslaved blacks and the free whites that own them. Many accounts from former slaves such as the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and a WPA slave narrative by Tom Wilsonand textbooks that recount details of slavery such as Give Me Liberty! An American History refute these ideas. These readings immensely disprove Fitzhugh’s argument that slaves are happy, free people, that the children, elderly, and sick are treated well, that female slaves were better in the care of a master rather than with their husbands, that slaves were content with their present and future, that slaves were never given too much labor, and that a slave and his master

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