Slavery: Destroying Human Rights

Recently in history class we have been studying the rise of slavery in the early to mid 19th century.  We learned that the amount of slaves in America increased dramatically from around 1790 to 1860, the start of the Civil War.  There are many flaws in the system of slavery, though the US government ignored these flaws and continued selling slaves to landowners.  The Civil War began after conflicts arose between the Northern and Southern states in which the states disagreed with the slavery system of the south.  In these couple of lessons, we discovered the answers to three essential questions through a variety of sources, activities, and documentaries.

http://mappinghistory.uoregon.edu/english/US/US18-00.html

http://mappinghistory.uoregon.edu/english/US/US18-00.html

Slavery became economically entrenched in American society by the early 19th century mainly because of the invention of the cotton gin.  Slavery was decreasing at the end of the 18th century because people either began to listen to the mottos of the American and French Revolutions, and freed their slaves, or their slaves escaped.  However, in 1793, a man named Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which helped sort the seeds out of the cotton fibers.  This new machine sped up the cloth making process dramatically, and more slaves were needed in the south to handle these machines.  The price of slavery doubled, and the amount of available slaves increased.  In 1790, cotton was an economically insignificant crop, and slaves were fairly uncommon, with a population of 690,000, but by 1860, the slave population was 3,954,000 and cotton production had increased by 1.5 million pounds in 70 years.  The cotton produced by slaves in the south was used in industries in the north, so the northern states couldn't afford to lose slavery either.  Slavery was entrenched in society by the early 19th century because the slaves proceed cotton, which had become a crop that America had grown to depend on.

A system of slavery based on race, such as the one in America in the 19th century, destroys human dignity, and ignores certain human characteristics and traits.  The American system of slavery was far more brutal than slavery systems in other countries.  In countries such as Africa, slavery was beaded on religion, but there were hardly any differences between the slaves and free people.  In America, however, slavery was based on permanent bondage and racial distinction.  American slaves were expected to do hard, strenuous labor every day, and they lacked full control over their lives.  The life expectancy of a slave was much younger than the rest of the population of America.  One of the people we learned about in class who spoke out against slavery was a man called Frederick Douglass, a freed slave who gave speeches and editorials against slavery and racism.  In a speech he gave on the day after the fourth of July in 1852, he delivered a message to white people about the meaning of Independence Day.  In this speech he said the forth of July is "a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim."  Douglass explained that this holiday was pointless because it celebrated freedom, when in fact there were millions of slaves who weren't free and lived in America.  He correctly accused the people of America for celebrating a useless holiday, and encouraged them to abolish slavery.  Slavery in America abused human dignity and ignored traits such as freedom and the right to live a full life, and abolitionists rightly spoke out against this.

Primary source from:
Frederick Douglass, "The Meaning of July Forth for the Negro," a speech delivered in Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852.