Slavery In The 19th Century Essay

Slavery was created in pre-revolutionary America at the start of the seventeenth century. By the time of the Revolution, slavery had undergone drastic changes and was nothing at all what it was like when it was started. In fact the beginning of slavery did not even start with the enslavement of African Americans. Not only did the people who were enslaved change, but the treatment of slaves and the culture that each generation lived in, changed as well.

The existence of the slaves in the south was hard, also a persistent labor forced and abuse. They utilize them as field hand growing sugar, rice, tobacco, and most of the time cotton, but also they place them to work as house servants, artisans, carpenters, or ironworkers and countless of jobs took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, Charleston and South Carolina. Every slave was hold as property with the option of sold them or purchasing them or exchanged each moment their owners said. They had a lot of options to work, but the plantation works were split into pairs, the task system and gang system. The gang system was under the control of masters organizing slaves into categories of twenty-five employees managed through white supervisor or a

Between the time period of 1840 and 1860, slavery played an influential and pivotal role in the development of a new southern lifestyle. In the struggle for dominance in America, slavery was the South’s stronghold and the underlying cause in much of their motives for many of the economic instigations along with the affirmative political actions. By dominating the everyday southerner’s life, slavery also dominated the economic and political aspects of life during the height of the slavery period. By the 1840’s the Southern economy had become almost entirely slave and and agriculturally dependent. Without the dependence of slaves in the south, a person was to remain landless, poverty stricken or struggling to sustain life through the means

The crops grown on plantations and the slavery system changed significantly between 1800-1860. In the early 1800s, plantation owners grew a variety of crops – cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, hemp, and wheat. Cotton had the potential to be profitable, but there was wasn’t much area where cotton could be grown. However, the invention of the cotton gin changed this - the cotton gin was a machine that made it much easier to separate the seeds from cotton. Plantation owners could now grow lots of cotton; this would make them a lot of money. As a result, slavery became more important because the demand for cotton was high worldwide. By 1860, cotton was the main export of the south. The invention of the cotton gin and high demand for cotton changed

In the late 1800s America’s North and South were very different, indeed while the South’s economy was constructed on the backs of African slaves, which provided easy cheap labor. About one million of the four million slaves in America at the time worked in industry, construction and mining. The North had about 90% of all the factories in America at the time which produced textiles. The North’s labor was expensive, and their workers were lively. There were a multitude of immigrants coming to the North to work, however this kept the wages of the North from growing very quickly.

Social developments after slaves were freed shows the great extent in which former slave’s lives were not all that different after they gained their freedom. Many former slaves had to go back and voluntarily work for a white owner or even purposely enslave themselves again just have some financial support because most blacks had nowhere to go. Those who were fortunate enough to gain some land were often extremely poor and had to work their farm by themselves because they were too poor to afford help or assistance. What commonly brought blacks back into slavery and sometimes even mired whites and blacks into heavy debt was the sharecropping system. Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on the land.

Slaveholders viewed themselves as a superior class of people. “A yeomen farmer from Bell Buckle, Tennessee, Keysaer complained that before the Civil War the slaveholders always acted as if they were of a better class and there was always an unpleasant feeling between slaveholders and those working themselves” (80). Nonslaveholders were known as yeomen and actually did their own work. On the other hand, slaveholders had the slaves work for them. They were lazy and never participated in the work on their plantations. There was often confusion associated with a slaveholder and nonslaveholder. Many questions were asked concerning how their views were alike or different about slavery. Not owning a slave, was not an indication of the preference of a yeomen farmer. Yeomen often wanted to take care of their own responsibilities rather than depending on the help of a slave. However, according to slaveholders, slave ownership was viewed as the preference of the superior class of people. “Indeed, owning slaves apparently made a difference in the perception of class relations in the Old South” (80). “Thus the more prosperous of Keysaer’s fellow Tennessee veterans interviewed many years remembered that relations between slaveholders and nonslaveholders were grounded in “social equality” (80).

Africa was once a thriving and wonderful continent filled with luxurious and wealthy kingdoms, but that had all changed when a new and appalling type of slavery was introduced. Around the 18th century, Africa became an ideal place for Europeans to trade and buy slaves from. The slave trade in Africa seemed to be manageable and somewhat peaceful before the Europeans brought in a new type of slavery. When the Europeans bought slaves from Africans, they kept them as slaves for life which were very different from how long slaves were kept in Africa. Europeans kept slaves in extremely poor conditions and treated them as if they were less than human. These actions caused a great spike in the slave trade all over the world and many

The social life in the South between 1830 and 1860, often referred to as the antebellum time period, meaning "ante" before and "Bellum" the war (Schultz, Mays, Winfree, 2010). This period in history had three distinct social groups the planters, yeoman farmers, and slaves. The social lines between the groups intermingled although these lines rarely crossed, as a yeoman could obtain riches through hard work but socially he might never reach the heights of the plantation owner. And of course, a slave should never dare to try crossing the line into either group.

During the 1800’s many people had slaves in the United States and in 1865 slavery was abolished. Recently, a bill HR 40 is currently being reviewed by Congress to examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the US from 1619 to present and recommend appropriate remedies. Americans certainly cannot pay reparations to slaves because no one who was a slave is alive. Reparations will not remove the agony that a slave faced and most likely the money will be spent incorrectly. Slavery happened so long ago that it is impossible to find out whose family actually had ancestors who were slaves. Also, during the 1800’s slavery was legal and people that are going to pay reparations never owned a slave. So, in truth, there is no actual way to

But, in the outskirts, there existed large numbers of farmers who worked their own lands and made a living off of their own crops. However, these farmers who did not own slaves, had very little power compared to the prosperous plantation owners. The nonslaveholding farmers were considered inferior to wealthy plantation owners. And even more inferior were the herdsmen (herd keeper) and the poorest whites of the South. In the South, both groups were considered at the bottom of the social ladder.

During the 1800’s many slaves were treated like animals and had absolutely no freedom. Both men and women were taken from their homeland and forced to do anything their master said. Many slaves were beaten mercilessly and were mentally and physically degraded by their “overseer”. Working as a slave meant working from sunrise to sundown daily. With Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gen in the 1790’s, the demand for slaves was higher than ever. Men were assigned to jobs like plowing the fields, carpentry, and blacksmithing, while women were assigned things like being a servant in the house or hoeing the fields (source). Depending on the type of plantation, many slaves would go without food for many days and then when they would get food it would be a disgusting remedy even pigs would not eat. Their headquarters consisted of a dirt floor too sleep on and little to no furniture. Out of fear of rebellion, the southerners created “Slave Codes”

In American history, every event and person plays a part in the future. For example, rich plantation owners helped America advance their economy. However, that would not have been at all possible without the help of their slaves. The time and institution of slavery is a time of historical remembrance. It played a primary role during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The treatment, labor conditions, and personal stories of these slaves’ treatment and labor conditions are all widely discussed around the world to this day.

American’s who live in the 21st century know that slavery is terrible and also a touchy subject. But Americans used to rely heavily on slavery, how we perceive slavery in today’s society can either be the same or different from how others thought of slavery living within mid 1800s. People who resided in the northern region of American found slavery wrong as we do today. Americans who lived farther south however liked, and relied on slavery. In today’s world, we Americans almost all agree that slavery had been a negative factor of our country. But within the 1840s and 1870s, Americans had been divided by slavery. People that were against slavery created the union as the pro slavery citizens created the confederates. Today, we can see why people of the mid 19th century either supported slavery or rebelled against it by reviewing sources.

Despite the horror of the word slavery we have to admit that slaves have played a big role in rising big empires. For example the Egyptians used slaves to build their majestic pyramids, the Chinese and Indian used slaves for large-scale construction and agricultural and the Hebrews also used slaves. Slaves were brought from Africa to the British American colonies to work in agriculture and farming, which among other factors made the British colonies in America become so strong and prosperous.