slavery essay introduction

slavery essay introduction

The Abolition of Slavery

1. Introduction

The real end of slavery began gradually in the Northern states. It began, in fact, with the movement for the abolition of the slave trade. The original thirteen amendments to the federal constitution, including that of the original ten in the Bill of Rights, were all concerned with the limitation of one or other aspect of the trade in men and were designed to protect the sovereignty of state governments. The climax of the movement was reached in 1807. By then, there was a growing uneasiness in the South over the future of slavery because it played so small a part in the economy of the Northern states, which were undoubtedly growing in population and prosperity at a greater rate than the South. The tobacco-planters were themselves growing less favorable to the institution because it was less profitable than it had been, and that peculiar institution, the breeding of slaves for the market, was not remunerative because cotton was becoming the staple crop. In 1808, a generation which had witnessed the rise of humanitarianism and of republicanism heard, as it were, the stroke of the bell which tolled the doom of the Atlantic slave trade. The Northern states and the Atlantic had been the middle passage. The patriot of the new republic could maintain with a fair semblance of plausibility that neither of the two sections of the country was responsible for the introduction of the Negro into the one and white servitude into the other. With the cessation of the importation of white labor and the imbuing of the white laborer in the South with a new and indelible sense of social superiority, there would soon occur the division of white and black into two hostile armies preparing to fight the longest and bloodiest of world racial wars. The irony of it all was that when the issue was forced and the Yankees gave the black man his freedom, they themselves did not secure the reality of the white man’s wage.

2. Historical Background

The information which was spread about the slave ship conditions, much through the purposeful publishing by the abolitionist movement, became common knowledge in Britain. As knowledge of the brutalities of the slave trade spread, many people began to question its moral integrity. During this period, the Romantic and Enlightenment Movements were in full swing. The idea of the “noble savage” pontificated that civilizations of the “New World” were purer before the introduction of European ideals. The common knowledge of the treatment of slaves and, in particular, the publishing of The History of Mary Prince, a first-hand account by a black slave from Bermuda, led to a tide of hostility against the institution of slavery. This snowballing movement to finally abolish the British slave trade and plantation slavery led to the passing of the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. This was closely followed by the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act.

In 1787, the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded in London. This society would later join forces with the Clapham Sect. It had a significant impact on the eventual abolition of the British slave trade and plantation slavery. The trigger for the establishment of this society was the public showing of the Brookes slave ship diagram by abolitionist Thomas Clarke. This image was a “diagram of the stowage of a British slave ship…[planned] contrary to the late regulations.” This was an attempt to lobby the British Parliament to regulate the number of slaves being transported. The image was reproduced across the country and was highly influential in the society’s inception.

The context of Atlantic history is polarized by the issue of slavery. To discuss the origins of the British abolition movement, it is necessary to first explore what brought about the change in opinions regarding the slave trade and the subsequent abolition of the slave system. The greatest change in British public opinion was influenced by the information brought to light about the slave trade and plantation slavery itself.

3. Injustice and Cruelty of Slavery

It was said that all men were created equal, but the system of slavery seemed to put a grey cloud over this stated fact. In this chapter, James Ramsay discusses injustice and cruelty in great detail.

He defines injustice as an act believed to be an infringement of an implicit or explicit agreement between two parties. With committing injustice, there is always a victim and a beneficiary. Ramsay uses this definition of injustice to explain that the slave-owner commits an act of injustice by negotiating the slaves’ labor for incredibly low wages. This contract of employment is highly exploitative and is an agreement implied under false pretenses.

A slave to European settlers had very little understanding of Western contracts and their implications due to illiteracy and possibly a different system of beliefs that doesn’t coincide with the Christianity that was forced upon them by their masters. A beneficiary is usually regarded as a person or persons gaining positive benefits as a result.

4. Movements and Resistance

Movements to abolish the international slave trade were well underway in 1807 when Britain ended its trade. Disregarding the Spanish law of 1817, the most effective step in Brazil was the creation of the Sociedade contra o Infame Comercio in 1869. This was the only anti-slavery body of any consequence in 19th-century Latin America. Owners of slaves also took steps to influence legislation. In the southern states of the USA, this was a contributory cause of secession. Treaties between European powers and African rulers were a method of stopping the trade.

Slaves in many areas showed consistent resistance. In the Caribbean and Latin America, slave revolts were permanent. There is evidence to suggest that constant heavy work to provide gold for the Spaniards led to a loss of discipline by Spanish slave owners. Revolts in Colombia and Venezuela were possibly aimed at ending slavery. Failure to do so led to a unique situation in Colombia in the movement for equality of the pardos (freedmen) and freeborn. In Portugal, the most effective resistance by slaves in Brazil was of an indirect nature aimed at reducing the time slaves were forced to work for their masters. By fleeing to the mountains or into the state of Servilheta-Brazil in 1885, slaves, although aware of the impending abolition, were able to create a situation of virtual freedom by refusing to work for their masters on the grounds that they could not be beaten for not working.

The most constant general resistance to slavery was the practice of running away. In the USA and the Caribbean, areas offering refuge to runaways developed into separate communities of maroons. This was also a common practice in Brazil. Having run away, a slave would generally attempt to buy his freedom. As early as 1548, Spain conceded that slaves who had been in the country for 20 years could buy their freedom for a ransom. This was a method of gradual manumission. Throughout Latin America, freedmen were integrated into society in a special category of libertos who were often given rights for which they did not qualify. An important example of their enduring success is the fact that in Brazil today, most upper- and middle-class families are able to trace back to a slaveowner prior to abolition, at least one female ancestor who was a negra de ganho or slave woman working to buy her freedom. This forms the basis of a great deal of modern anti-discrimination legislation in Brazil today.

5. Impact and Legacy

The impact of slavery was huge economically on the African continent and the diaspora. It caused destruction to African societies and also the creation of a free labor system that could be traced through to the present day. As shown in Berlin’s book, the attitude adopted by previous writers that Africans were able to sell their prisoners and captives with little impact on their societies has lately been dismissed by academics. The sales of their own people as slaves in order to buy weapons for defense and capture more slaves for the Europeans had vast consequences. The loss of the strongest, able working men and women caused a depletion in some areas of Africa, abandoning them to raids from other African tribes in search of slaves. It has also been suggested that the loss of spirit and trust between tribes and people because of the slave trade is a big factor in Africa’s many modern-day ‘unsolvable’ problems, for example, tribal civil wars and border tensions.

The 1807 Act and the 1833 Emancipation Act both had a significant impact on the British Empire. The 1807 Act gave Britain the official rule of looking after her colonies’ welfare and overall happiness, while in the 1833 Act, section LXV gave Britain the right to loan £20,000 to help ‘the unfortunate victims of the slave trade and slavery.’ Whether this money was already owed to slave owners in the Caribbean through government advances, or whether it was for the rebuffing of the slave trade or for compensation for the slave-owners’ loss of human ‘possessions’ has long been disputed. However, not all the money provided was to help the blacks in the Caribbean. After the act was passed on 28th August 1833, the £20,000 was split. £15 million went to slave owners as compensation for their ‘property’, while the remaining £5 million was spent on developing the West African colonies and solving the problems of European ignorance there.