GROUP 1A

Slavery in the United States of America

Where did the slaves come from? Who were the slaves owners? How were slaves

treated?

Where did the slaves come from?

All slaves in the United States did not come from Africa

Before slaves were brought from Africa, some early settlers in North America tried to make slaves of the local people who were living here.

Where did the slaves come from?

However, these Native Americans, because they knew the land so well and because they usually had families nearby, were often able to escape to their own people.

Where did the slaves come from?

The law prohibited importing any more people from Africa or the Caribbean.

However, the law was not well enforced, and some slaves continued to be captured and brought here directly from Africa and from islands in the Caribbean.

Who were the slaves’ owners?

White people were mostly the slave owners. They usually managed farms, plantations or factories where the black people would then work in.

How where the slaves treated?

Slaves’ lives didn’t matter to anyone. An owner of a slave could do anything to them.

slaves were treated as items you buy instead of human beings.

If a slave didn’t work hard, their owner usually didn’t treat their slave well. Some owners treated their slaves well, so they would do good work because slaves were very expensive

How where the slaves treated?

Some people did not treat slaves well. They sometimes beat slaves, and they also

punished them very badly. the owners had complete power over their

slaves, and they thought their slaves would work harder if they were afraid of being punished by their owners.

The owners considered them to be property (not people) that they could treat as badly as they wanted.

What was the three-fifths compromise? How did it affect

how blacks were regarded?

What was the three-fifths compromise?

The three-fifths compromise was an agreement between Southern and Northern states reached during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, during which the basic framework of the United States was established.

What was the three-fifths compromise?

Under this compromise, slaves were counted as three-fifths of a human being for the purpose of taxation and representation in Congress. As a result, slave-owners and the Southern states got a deal of political clout.

political clout - political power, influence.

How did it affect how black people were regarded?

Black people were then regarded as a lower race, not an equal. As most Black people were slaves to the white people, the were abused inhumanely and unjustly as the white people felt superior and better than the black people.

Who was Harriet Beecher Stowe? How did she contribute to the abolitionist movement?

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) - original name Harriet Elisabeth Beecher

American writer and philanthropist, best-known for the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851-52).

Stowe wrote the work in reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made it illegal to assist an escaped slave.

In addition the Fugitive Slave Law, passed by Congress in 1850, arose much protest – giving shelter or assistance to an escaped slave became a crime.

And finally a personal tragedy, the death of her infant Samuel from cholera Infectious Diseases], led Stowe to compose her famous novel.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was smuggled into Russia in Yiddish to evade the czarist censor.

Leo Tolstoy praised the work and it remained enormously popular also after the Revolution.

Who was Frederick Douglass? How did he

contribute to the abolitionist movement?

Frederick Washington Bailey, the son of a white man and a black slave, was born in Tuckahoe, Maryland, on 7th February, 1817.

After hearing him make a speech at a meeting in 1841, William Lloyd Garrison arranged for Douglass to become an agent and lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Douglass was a great success in this work and in 1845 the society helped him publish his autobiography, the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”.

Douglass held several public posts including assistant secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission (1871), marshal of the District of Columbia (1877-1881) and U.S. minister to Haiti (1889-1891). In 1881 he published the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass died in Washington on 20th February, 1895.

Radical Republican - Some members of the Republican Party were not only in favour the abolition of slavery but believed that freed slaves should have complete equality with white citizens

Link to the Novel

Mankind has the ability to develop an immoral sense of integrity suited to their needs, yet morally accept their sense of integrity. The author of To Kill a Mockingbird illustrates this illusion portrayed by a Southern society. By using a 1930's Southern point-of-view, Harper Lee demonstrates that integrity not only has the power to unite humankind, but to divide humankind as well.

The setting of To Kill a Mockingbird, in a small Alabama community is constructed from the contradictions of Christianity and prejudice. Through prejudice and bigotry, the Southern society builds a strong sense of integrity that masks their immoral prejudice. The Southern culture of Maycomb derives from the antebellum culture of Christianity and slavery. The morals of slavery greatly clashed with the morals of Christianity.

While Southerners desperately needed slavery, they also needed to maintain their Christian sense of integrity that stated all of humankind must be treated according to the laws of God. To mask the immorality of prejudice, Southern society classified Negroes as not human, but of an inferior race. Incapable of confronting their immoral sense of prejudice, Southern culture permitted a sense of integrity based on this deception. This occurs in all prejudiced senses of integrity and is a powerful dividing force of mankind. The community of Maycomb is built from this sense of integrity. Several events in To Kill a Mockingbird indicates that the community holds this immoral integrity.

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