Attitudes towards Slavery in America - Essay Example

May 31, Attitudes towards Slavery in America Objections to slavery existed in early colonial times. But opposition to slavery did not develop in an organized effort until the age of the Revolutionary War. As the settlers requested the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, were forced to question and be reconciled with the hypocrisy of slavery in the emerging nation free. The slaves also acknowledged the paradox of living in an occupied country to the promotion of fundamental rights, keeping blacks in bondage. Many of them use this time of uncertainty for freedom. When the British forces called slaves to join their ranks and promised them freedom to change, black men enrolled. When the colonial army made the same offer, black men have joined their lines well. Others, men and women, petitioned the courts for freedom, so their arguments on the same philosophical reasons that the Patriots used to validate the war.1 The Declaration of Independence not only declared the colonies of Britain, but also helped inspire Vermont to abolish slavery in their State Constitution 1777. In 1804, all northern states, has voted to abolish the institution of slavery within their borders. In most of these states, however, the move was immediate. In contrast, gradual emancipation laws to establish deadlines by which all slaves were freed, freeing people when they reach a certain age or the end of a shift of some. This has left some African Americans remain in bondage. Pennsylvania passed its law on the gradual abolition of slavery in 1780. However, as late as 1850 the federal census showed that there are still hundreds of young blacks in Pennsylvania, which remain slaves until their 28th birthday.2 When they were issued freedom in the first half of the nineteenth century, African-Americans, the northern states began to shape their lives as free people. They changed their names were given as slaves, they are looking for educational opportunities, have created institutions to provide physical and spiritual needs, and formed communities, social support and the opportunity for cultural growth. In addition, many of them African-Americans joined or established company dedicated to exempt them from blacks who were slaves of the rest of the country. Although abolitionists of both black and white, are not directly responsible for the end of slavery in the U.S. system of support for the Underground Railroad helped thousands to flee their freedom and their vociferousness helped define the approach to slavery in the north.3 The clash between abolitionists in the North and slaveholders in the South was a contributing factor in the outbreak of the Civil War. Nevertheless, when fighting broke, President Lincoln insisted that the wars sole purpose was the preservation of the Union. In the early years of the war, Lincolns actions with regard to slaves were motivated by military strategy and necessity.  In August 1861 he accepted the first confiscation act of Congress, which declared that slaves fled to Union lines, would be considered contraband. Before the enactment of this Act, the EU leaders had turned away trying to recruit blacks and returned escapees seek protection in the north to their masters in the South. Legally defined as contraband and therefore subject to capture, could be thousands of slaves fled the South now be put into service for the Union Army. Second Confiscation Act, passed shortly after the first, gave the president the power to recruit black men for the Union Army. Although freedom was granted to those who fought, it was considered a reward, not an inherent right.4 In 1863, the nature of the Civil War shifted. On January 1st of that year, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the Confederate states. The Proclamation applied neither to slaveholding Border States that had remained loyal to the Union (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri) nor to rebel states subdued by Union forces prior to its issuance. Nonetheless, its significance was profound. With the Emancipation Proclamation, the struggle between North and South transformed into a war to end slavery. Concurrent with the wars end in 1865, the thirteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. Slavery was declared illegal in every part of the newly restored Union. African-Americans across the nation were free.  The most famous African American revolt was Nat Turner’s rebellion of 1831. On August 12, 1831 the revolt started. By August 23, 1831 the rebels had come to a total of seventy. Set again in Virginia, Turner and five other enslaved cohorts began with the murder of Turner’s master’s family. As they traveled through the countryside, their numbers grew to nearly sixty, and they left behind them at least fifty murdered whites. After several days, Turner’s band was hunted down and destroyed. Turner was captured and later hung, though not before he described divine inspiration as his motive for rebellion. Historians are mainly in agreement of the impact of the insurrection in Virginia. White fear and hysteria commenced a “reign of terror.”5This resulted in massive oppressions of the blacks and slaves, their imprisonments and a move to crush possible rebellion amongst them. A debate was arranged in Virginian Government regarding the issue of slavery. In March 1832, the Virginia Legislature rejected emancipation and introduced a harshly repressive slave code. The fact that Turner’s revolt brought about these effects shows that the aim of the rebellion had been achieved and now it was the direct indicaion of the future of slavery in North America, Turner’s rebellion demonstrated to the North the level of anger held by the enslaved, as well as the lengths freedom seekers were prepared to go for liberty. Southerners, meanwhile, saw their own vulnerability in the most shocking way possible. Southerners, then, asserted more control over the enslaved by further restricting African American gatherings and travel. A feeling of paranoia and fear descended over Southern slaveholders as never before. As far as the movement against slavery is concerned on of the most important figures is Frederick Douglass. His speechmaking and literary brilliance thrust him into the forefront of the U.S. abolition movement, and he became the first black citizen to hold high rank in the U.S. government. Separated as an infant from his slave mother (he never knew his white father), Frederick lived with his grandmother on a Maryland plantation until, at age eight, his owner sent him to Baltimore to live as a house servant with the family of Hugh Auld, whose wife defied state law by teaching the boy to read. Auld, however, acknowledged that learning would make him unfit for slavery, and Frederick was forced to continue his education stealthily with the aid of schoolboys in the street. Upon the death of his master, he was returned to the plantation as a field hand at 16. Later, he was hired out in Baltimore as a ship caulker. Frederick tried to escape with three others in 1833, but the plot was exposed before they could get away. Five years later, however, he fled to New York City and then to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he worked as a laborer for three years, eluding slave hunters by changing his surname to Douglass.6 At a Nantucket, Massachusetts, antislavery convention in 1841, Douglass was invited to describe his feelings and experiences under slavery. These extemporal remarks were so emotional and naturally eloquent that he was unexpectedly catapulted into a new career as agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. From then on, despite heckling and mockery, insult, and violent personal attack, Douglass never flagged in his devotion to the abolitionist cause. To counter skeptics who doubted that such an articulate spokesman could ever have been a slave, Douglass felt impelled to write his autobiography in 1845, revised and completed in 1882 as Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Douglasss account became a classic in American literature as well as a primary source about slavery from the bondsmans viewpoint. To avoid recapture by his former owner, whose name and location he had given in the narrative, Douglass left on a two-year speaking tour of Great Britain and Ireland. Abroad, Douglass helped to win many new friends for the abolition movement and to cement the bonds of humanitarian reform between the continents.7 Douglass returned with funds to purchase his freedom and also to start his own antislavery newspaper, the North Star (later Frederick Douglasss Paper), which he published from 1847 to 1860 in Rochester, New York. The abolition leader William Lloyd Garrison disagreed with the need for a separate, black-oriented press, and the two men broke over this issue as well as over Douglasss support of political action to supplement moral suasion. Thus, after 1851 Douglass allied himself with the faction of the movement led by James G. Birney. He did not allow violence, however, and specifically counseled against the raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (October 1859).8 References Biography.com, Frederick Douglass Biography, March 31, 2011. http://www.biography.com/articles/Frederick-Douglass-9278324 Herbert Apthekar, Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion, New York 1966, pg 57. Nicholas Boston and Jennifer Hallam, Freedom & Emancipation, Pbs.org, May 31, 2011, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/freedom/history.html Read More