Slavery in the USA Essay Example

Slavery in the USA Essay Example Slavery in the USA Essay Slavery in the USA Essay Essay Topic: In the Us The history of slavery is one of the constituent parts of the historical development of the Untied States, actually it started from the first settlers of the USA and only in the year 1865 Emancipation Proclamation declared freedom for all slaves. (Claudia, 1986)The first mentioning of slavery can be traced from 1619, when a Dutch ship transported twenty blacks to Virginia that was at that moment the English colony. Their position was defined as indentured servants. Later on this notion developed into racial slavery. Virginia Slave Codes defined the social position of slaves in 1705.During the times of British colonies there were various types of slaves: starting from house servants and to those who were engaged to work on farms and plantations. Farmers were growing rice, tobacco and cotton. Only rich farmers, owing good lands could buy expensive slaves for developing their cotton business. In the 17th century appeared the notion – Native slaves – slaves brought to other colonies. (Menard, 1995). Thousands of them were used for work on â€Å"sugar islands†.   Some tribes like for example Cherokees also bought black slaves during 1800 – 1830s.The situation with slaves after 1776 was rather tense, the attitude to slaves was mostly very brutal: it was allowed to whip them when they were working on plantations, it was even prescribed by slave codes. For black people there were also separate Black Codes, the fulfillment of theses codes was under the control of white patrollers, who in fact had the right to mutilate or even kill runaways. Slaves could never be sure that they will have the chance to live with their families as the owner could sell any of the family members if there was such necessity for him. There were also cases of rebel from slaves who escaped or tried to revenge their owners by burning barns or killing their possessors.   Owners when buying a slave had to provide clothes and food for him, some even paid bonuses, slav es were allowed to keep the money they earned with gambling or in lottery. There was even a case, when a slave won in the lottery and then was able to buy freedom for himself. (Claudia, 1986).The first sighs of abolitionism can be traced in the 1750s, when the gatherings of Quakers pushed their members to refuse from having slaves. The American Revolution brought the spirits and beliefs that slavery was a disaster for America and its white residents. Between the years 1780 and 1804 practically all Northern States signed the emancipation acts. In the Constitution of Massachusetts of 1780 appeared a statement that all people were â€Å"born free and equal† (Menard, 1995).At the beginning of the 19th century this movement was gaining strength in the whole country.   There was even a campaign organized to deliver back the black people – former slaves who wanted to return to their homeland. This movement suddenly received a support from religion as well, in 1830 William L loyd Garrison stated that slavery was a personal sin and appealed to refusing from it. In spite of the best intentions of the movement, in reality this was the main reason of the Civil War in America.In fact refusal from slavery seemed to be not so easy step for economics, especially after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 by Eli Whitney (Barzel, 1985). This led to increase of cotton need fifty times, which in its way resulted in growing need for more slavers’ labour in the southern states. The cotton boom coincided with slavery ban in the North of the country. However not all slaves became free, a lot of them were in reality shipped to the states where there was no ban for slavery yet, this means to the South. The situation was getting tenser due to the increased number of slaves in the South; slave owners became even more convinced that slaves can not be freed because of their fear of consequences.   The supplies of slaves from outside were stopped from 1808 by the decision of the Congress, however the inside slave trade was still allowed.   After in 1820s Midwestern states also banned slavery and in the North states slaves became free due to emancipation policy, the country was divided into two parts by the Ohio River into a slave part and into a free part. This distinction between northern and southern parts of the country grew even stronger when â€Å"with the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention on the premise that the Bible sanctions slavery and that it was acceptable for Christians to own slaves† (Menard, 1995).Franciscan mission resulted in development of slavery in colonial and Mexican California. Officially it was called Native labour, in reality this was continual slavery. After inroad from America in 1848, native inhabitants of California were made slaves with the help of so-called four-month penalty for â€Å"vagrancy† (Menard, 1995). At the same time in Kansas the situation was also rather tense. In 1854 Ka nsas- Nebraska Act was signed and it was up to natives to decide whether Kansas State should be a free or a slave state. John Brown was doing his best in supporting the abolitionist movement, but Republicans were too much afraid of the slaves’ possible control of the national government.When the time for presidential election in 1860 came, the absolute partition in the country became evident. The main parties could not come to an agreement: the Southern Democrats supported slavery, The Republicans wanted to stop it, The Northern Democrats stated that all the states should take local decisions, as this would mean the real democracy, at last the Constitutional Union Party struggled for the durability of the Union. Lincoln, the representative of Republicans won the election. The great problem was that abolition of slavery presented not only moral issue, this could also negatively influence the state of economy in the county, which was already used to the profits brought by worke rs, who needed no salary. There was also a point of view that the balance in the country, which was sustained with the help of number of slave and free states, could be broken. Mostly the South was concerned, because this part of the country depended a lot on agriculture, whereas in the north the industry could develop quite well without slaves. For Lincoln slavery was first of all political problem and he would prefer to have more control over the Mississippi river region. (Barzel, 1985)The logical consequence of this opposition was the Civil War in 1861, which resulted in final abolition of slavery. On the 1st of January 1863, Lincoln signed Emancipation Proclamation. After the war around four million slaves were set free, which made more than 12 % of the whole population in the USA. Arizona and Tennessee states revoked slavery in 1863-1865 by the special Acts passed and the Union army freed the rest of the slaves in the southern states. This was actually the formal end of slavery in the USA and it was followed by the period of Reconstruction.Overall, the history of slavery in America was long and controversial, full of sufferings and political intrigues. Slavery played great role in the economical development of the country, of the other side weakening its moral and cultural traditions in a way. We mentioned briefly some key events of the whole slavery history, omitting the description of rebels and names of the slaves who took part in them, omitting the details of all hardships that enslaved people had to come through and so on.