A Nation of Savages

This unit we are examining the causes of the civil war, specifically slavery. Looking at back at America's slavery history it seems like a simple decision to either allow slavery or not, and to us it's a no brainer to not enslave people. But this wasn't the case in the 18th and 19th centuries. As time went on abolishing slavery became a more complex task, by the early 19th century it was economically entrenched in American society.

Slavery had been a part of American society since the country's establishment. It is mentioned in the constitution that slaves can't be freed by escaping to free states and they must be returned to their owners.

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due. (Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3)

In the late 18th Century people believed slavery to be coming to an end, with the ideas of liberty expressed in the French and American revolutions, it seemed slavery was on its way out. However, Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin turned that around drastically. (A video showing how it works) With cotton being cheaper and easier to produce the industry expanded rapidly. But to make more cotton, these huge plantations would require a lot more workers. And the most profitable kind of employment? Slave labor.

This website shows the increase of cotton production, slavery, and export value between 1790 and 1860

The growth in slave population was mostly in the South, as the cotton industry moved South West the slaves followed; drifting further from the North. The cotton industry boomed in the south bringing in huge amounts of profit using their slave labor. However, while the cotton industry was located in the South, the North also benefited from the rise in production. They used the cotton in textile mills so instead of shipping in or paying more for their resources, the plentiful source of cheap cotton made their industry more profitable too.

This racially based system of slavery was unsurprisingly problematic in creating a white superiority complex that has continued to be an issue to this day. The general mentality of the American population grew so warped from years of validated mistreatment towards black people and social prejudice. George Fitzhugh, a sociologist from North Carolina in the mid 1800s wrote:

The Negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. ... The women do little hard work, and are protected from the despotism of their husbands by their masters. ... [The free laborer] is more of a slave than the Negro, because he works longer and harder for less allowance than the slave, and has no holiday, because the cares of life begin when its labors end. He has no liberty, and not a single right. . .. Free laborers have not a thousandth part of the rights and liberties of the Negro slaves. Indeed, they have not a single liberty, unless it be the right or liberty to die.

The whole thing is absurd. It completely disregards every aspect of slavery and even goes so far as to make slave owners the victim in this situation. Escaped slave, Frederick Douglass, was a bit more accurate in his accusation of oppression,

Morality of Slavery Documents

He calls out white Americans on their hypocritical celebration of freedom, they celebrate liberty while enslaving a huge amount of the country's population. When he says the people of the United States are guilty of the most shocking and bloody practices in the world, he refers to their ignorance of humanity but also how terrible the slavery system was here.

Over the course of a few days we watched a movie in class, Prince Among Slaves, in which Abdulrahman Ibrahim Ibn Sori, an African prince, is taken from his homeland to be sold into American slavery. He himself owned slaves back in Futa Jallon but the two systems of slavery were very different. In Africa they didn't buy and sell slaves as property; they enslaved war prisoners they had captured. These slaves worked separately from their owners, rarely seeing them. They were allowed to own property and by the 3rd generation, they were pretty much freed. Any children born of a free father and enslaved mother were born free.

As Abdulrahman learned, slavery in Mississippi was much worse. Slaves there had been randomly kidnapped and were bought and sold as if they were animals rather than humans. They worked closely with their owners, constantly under supervision and they were ruled by fear. It was impossible to get out of American slavery, your future family would be born into it and any child conceived by a free parent and slave was also raised a slave. Both cultures had slaves work different kinds of jobs, not just field work. And both enslaved outsiders; Non-muslims were the enslaved because of their religion in Futa Jallon and black people were enslaved in America for their race. Neither allowed slaves to travel without permission.

In America, Abdulrahman's noble status earned him nothing but a sarcastic nickname of "Prince". His education was also not respected, even though he was fluent in multiple languages. He was broken of his pride and forced into submission to his owners. The Americans saw him as nothing more than property. When sold at auction he was examined like an animal, checked for any noticable illnesses or disabilities. The system of slavery in America ignored every human characteristic of the enslaved humans and treated them as animals for no reason other than their race.