Shortly after the ratification of the Constitution, George Washington unanimously won the presidential election of 1789. Striving towards a nation of unity, Washington set up a cabinet of four strong individuals in order to inaugurate a system of both balance and credibility. Although Washington was strongly against political parties, it wasn’t long until they began to emerge. Filling the cabinet with tension, Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of Treasury, and Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, brought upon new challenges for American politics in the eighteenth century, when they brought two very incompatible visions of what they hoped America’s future would look like to the plate. Additionally, their political and economic differences greatly…
Patrick Bauer 11/9/15 HIST-105-519 Harriet Jacobs Essay In the book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, Jacobs’ tells of the many trails and hard experiences that the average slave goes through from day to day. From malicious punishments to extreme acts of hatred we see the treatment that African-Americans were subject to as they spent their lives in servitude to the slaveholders. These actions of the southern slaveholders are personified in this book by the first person account of Jacobs’ as the slave-girl Linda who she uses to help us better understand and imagine the hardships that she and other slaves had to fight through.…
The View from the Bottom Rail In the book, After the fact, by James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle, the authors researched about black African slaves living in America in the 1800s. Specifically in chapter 8 - The View from the Bottom Rail, the authors aspect of historical research that they display in this chapter are how the slaves used be treated, how they lived and how they reacted when the North won the war. People learned about slave life from stories written by white contemporaries since slaves did not write any letters, keep diaries, or leave any written records because they were illiterate. The southern legislatures passed slave codes that prohibited the white people to teach them. The relationship that the slave and the master…
In 1858, Josiah Henson, a former slave, author, and abolitionist, produced his own memoir, where he details on his life as a former slave and a current freedman. In his autobiography, Henson recollects on the tragic experiences in which he experienced as a slave; through one specific point in the autobiography, “Josiah Henson Portrays the Violence and Fears in Slave Life,” Henson elaborates on the agonizing trials in which families such as his had to endure during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Through the writing of his personal trials and tribulations, Henson demonstrates the true doctrine of Southern white supremacy and therefore showcases the cruel nature of the white race and the constant suffering and life of fear possessed…
Unimaginable and horrific treatment of slaves by white men has been documented by many who present emotionally stirring accounts from a slave’s perspective with little insight or objective analysis into how slavery was created…
Slavery is known to be a dark part in U.S. history, but why should people lie about what clearly happened? Slavery is the practice of forcing people, specifically African Americans, to do labor for an owner on his or her plantation. In the novel, NightJohn, Sarny secretly starts to learn to read and write despite the risks of getting discovered. Although Gary Paulsen’s novel, NightJohn, is considered historical fiction, Paulsen accurately depicts their support between each other, their determination to learn, and their resistance to punishments in corroboration with multiple sources. To start, Gary Paulsen accurately explained the supports between those enslaved that can be proven with first person accounts of slavery.…
Countless things were examined on a slave before a potential buyer made his final purchase. A few of the things included: their breasts, teeth, arms, general form, appearance, and primarily race. With race, the darker you were, the healthier and stronger you seemed to be. With teeth, the less decay the better, and if the inside of the slave’s mouth was white, then they were thought to have a disease or illness. Age was also looked at very closely when purchasing a slave…
Rhetorical Analysis of a slave narrative Slavery was an unfortunate and devastating mark on American history. We talk about it and learn about it in classes but it is rare that we read about honest firsthand accounts from actual slaves. The account in question comes from the viewpoint of Tempie Herndon Durham which was saved through the passage of time by the federal writers project which can be found online via the library of congresses online affiliate. This story holds influence not only socially and politically but gives us information on the history and culture of a group of people who had been tried to be silenced which makes its interest fall under the umbrella of everyone in the united states for influencing this country and how…
Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or give me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?” (Truth 2). She compares her African-American slave life with other white women lives’. This shows audience members that even though they are the same gender and sex, their lives are completely different.…
In “Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South” by Deborah Gray White goes into detail about the lives of black women in slavery. In the last four chapters of “Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slavery in the Plantation South” White informs the audience about the hardship black enslaved woman had to face during this time such as, the difficulties that came with pregnancies, child care, husbands and separation. The last four chapters shared a common theme of black enslaved females and their unfair treatment, characterization and opportunities.…
In Maria W. Stewart's lecture in Boston in 1832, she conveys her position on the injustices of slavery and the cruelty that slaves experiences through the use of diction, figurative language, and her own personal experience. Altogether, these create a sense of injustice and desparity for the cause of the African Americans and their freedoms and aspirations to be something more than just servile labor. Diction is a major influence in this lecture. With a variety of words, such as "chains", "ragged", "drudgery and toil", "exhausted", "death", and "cruel", Stewart appeals to the feelings of people in an attempt to make them understand the hardships and extreme injustice that encompass the life of a slave. To continue, there is also another set…
Deborah Gray White, author of Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South, courageously plunges into the research and understanding of the slave experience through race and gender. The overall slave experience of the antebellum South is often represented by the male experience. For the first time, White brings forth an understanding of slave life through the female lens. White reasons that the female slave experience differed from the male slave experience due to the assigned gender roles.…
Northup, Solomon. 12 Years A Slave. Originally published in 1853 by Derby & Miller. (240 pages) 12 Years A Slave, by Solomon Northup is a memoir and personal narrative about the hardships of slavery during the 1800’s. An autobiography written jam packed with several specific accounts of mistreatment in the black community.…
To illustrate, on auction blocks where they “were stripped, examined, and assigned meaning according to the brutal…slaveholding ideologies” , African-American slaves were dehumanized and “turned into products”. Slaves were denied their unalienable human right to privacy as every detail and flaw were scrutinized to degrade their self-confidence, making them submissive to their masters. Because African-Americas occupied the role of being slaves in American society, they laboriously served their masters like replaceable livestock such as “horses and other cattle” . They were understood to have no virtue or will of their own because of their skin color, making them perfect to control. Furthermore, “[s]lavery…was a system of unchecked brutality, made grotesquely visible on the suffering bodies of the slaves” as the slaveholders used violence to keep their possessions obedient.…
However, it is important to note that the abuse of enslaved women were worldwide to many plantations. Sexual abuse did not arise form a personal conflict with the owner, but it was truly believed that these women had to be used to such labors. This worldwide acceptable view of black enslaved women furthered how white men with power over these women utilized them for their own personal pleasure and gain In fact, in certain markets, they would sell these women in a more appealing way by calling them prostitutes rather than slave laborers. In Edward E. Baptist, “‘Cuffy,’ ‘Fancy Maids,’ and ‘One-Eyed Men’: Rape,…