| Term Paper Title |
Slavery In America |
| # of Words |
1033 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) |
4.13 |
Slavery In America
Slavery in America stems well back to when the new world was first discovered and was led by the country to start the African Slave Trade-Portugal. The African Slave Trade was first exploited for plantations
in the Caribbean, and eventually reached the southern coasts of America. The African natives were of all ages and sexes. Women usually worked in the homes cooking and cleaning, while men were sent out into the plantations to farm. Young girls would usually help in the house also and young boys would help in the farm by bailing hay and loading wagons with crops. They were shipped from Africa by the Europeans, "The Triangular Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade". This was an organized route where Europeans would travel to Africa bringing manufactured goods, capture Africans and take them to the Caribbean, and then take the crops and goods and bring them back to Europe. The African people, in order to communicate invented a language that was a mixture of all the African languages combined,called Creole. They also kept their culture which accounts for calypso music and the instruments used in these songs.
Slavery was common all over the world until 1794 when France signed the Act of the National Convention abolishing slavery. It would take America about a hundred years to do the same. George Washington, America's first president, was also a slave owner. He deplored slavery but did not release his slaves. Washington wasn't the only president to have slaves. Thomas Jefferson wrote;"All men are created equal" but died leaving his blacks in slavery.
In 1775 black Americans were sent to fight in the revolutionary army. The British proposed that if a black man was to join their army, they would be set free afterwards. America originally planned not to let
the blacks fight in the army, but when hearing this, let them enlist. Only Georgia and South Carolina refused to let them enlist, but paid for their racism when each lost 25,000 blacks to the British. The slaves returned on an honourable discharge after securing America's freedom, but not their own. Slavery continued and so did the numbers of slaves trying to escape to the free states or into Canada. A runaway slave would be found by bloodhounds, trained to find black slaves. Then the slave, upon returning, would be executed or severely whipped.
The "Underground Railroad" was a project that helped black slaves escape into Canada, especially Amherstburg. The system involved 3,000 white helpers and freed an estimated 75,000 people after the civil war.
Slavery in the middle of the 1800's was abolished except for the rebellion states in the south. In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued which made slavery illegal in the states that had rebelled and allowed black slaves to serve in the army and get other jobs, or continue to work on the plantations, as employees making money. The nightmare of slavery was over but a new one was to begin....Read entire document
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