As terrible as an event such as slavery may turn out to be, Slavery, much like all other events in life had its pros and cons. At this point in American history, liberty and equality were brand new ideas. So new, in fact, these ideas were not recognized to their full potential until much later after America and its ideas were founded. Slavery, was an idea many at the time thought was a constructive force; however, now people know just how destructive slavery can be.
Upon its fruition, America became a land built on the backs of slaves. A cheap source of renewable labor proved to be extremely valuable to those who could afford it. Economically, slavery makes a ton of sense. There is a pool of laborers, those of whom do not have to be paid, feed, clothed, or even cared for. Most slave owners did offer a combination of those aforementioned items; however, there was no such law stating the necessity to do so.
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Slaves did not need to be paid, this meant there was a vast labor source who would do anything for practically no money, the idea beat hiring American workers to do the projects who would cost more to hire and more time to complete the job. This business behavior, interestingly enough, is paralleled by business today, businesses find American’s too expensive to hire so they move to another country.
In Slavery Justified, George Fitzhugh mentions the intrinsic qualities slavery brought to the world and the development of the new nation. One quality, as such, is mentioned showing the dynamic relationship shown between the slave and his owner. While the image of a man whipping someone to death just to work comes to mind when slavery is pictured, as it was rather common, there were occurrences where slaves and owners got along where well, almost to the point where the master of the slaves considered the slaves to be family. In some cases, the master would feed, clothe, and pay the slaves for the work they did. Also, if a slave became sick, the master would give the slave the day off in order to rest up.
Slavery definitely had its high points and its lows, the high points seemed to be few and far between. Slavery was an institution in play for thousands of years. Most notably, the Romans used slaves before Americans had. This institution was trying to be perfected in America as it was deemed cruel by Americans for its use in the Roman era. However, American’s were not much better.
A stereotype of a slave’s life comes to mind where the slave would have to work had for little to no pay, with the constant fear of being raped or beaten. In some cases, the slave was lynched.
Lynching slaves was a popular method of punishment in the days prior to slaves being considered free Americans, and unfortunately for sometime after. A lynching was a town event. In some lynching events a slave would be strung up in the middle of the town and beaten, tortured, and killed. During these events, street vendors would be out surrounding the crowd trying to get people to purchase memorabilia or food. The lynching process was all too graphic; the slaves were tortured to death while the whole town watched.
A slave’s life expectancy was much lower than the life expectancy of a free man. Slaves were worked much harder throughout the course of their life and as a result, tended to die sooner. In some cases, slaves were no allowed to take days off to try and get over any ailment they may have. Sickness would often transfer quickly amongst the slaves due to their close quarters and their environment; this in combination with never having a day off tended to take a toll on slaves, typically ending their life much sooner than it should have been.
More often than not, slaves received no form of education with the fear of a revolt looming over head if the slaves ever did learn how to read and write. Almost all slaves went through their entire lives not knowing how to do much of anything, other than the work necessary to make their master happy.
These slaves, both men and women, were offered life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Most never were able to achieve this dream. While slavery had several pros and cons, overall slavery would be considered a terrible thing. Although, without slavery America would not be shaped into the great nation it is today, no human being should be subjected to the torture lived by slaves in early American history.
- Allen, Richard. “Richard Allen’s “Address to the Free People of Colour of These United States”.” Document 2.11.10. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
