FREE ESSAY ON PLANTATION SLAVERY

PLANTATION SLAVERY

The institution of slavery was a dark time in our country's past history. The many family
members who have been affected by this brutal institution will never forget the scar it
marked on our past. Due to the institution of slavery, many people today still feel
bitterness because of the harshness these people had to endure and the atrocious way they
were treated by their masters. Two conflicting sides on whether or not to keep the
institution of slavery was forever prominent since slavery started in the colonies. Due
to these two conflicting sides and the many disagreements, it seemed a Civil War was
inevitable. 
To begin with 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 sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and
eventually reached the southern coasts of America. The Portuguese showed the English how
to raise sugar and introduced them to slavery on a large scale and for a time dominated
the exportation and marketing of the crop. 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, which quickly became known as 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. Planters were able to
appropriate about 80 percent of their slave's labor for their own profit a rate
exploitation that probably never been reached anywhere else, and because of these great
profits slavery was able to continue. This was the beginning of the slave trade on a mass
scale, which built the foundation of our country on unsteady terms. 
Slavery also had a profound impact on the drafts of two of our most famous documents in
history - the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the United States. In
writing the draft for the Articles, the delegates had trouble figuring out how they
wanted their states to be represented. Larger states favored representation according to
population, but no census existed, and smaller states just wanted to be treated as
equals. To raise money, Congress would have to print it or requisition specific amounts
of money from the states. Northern states wanted slaves to be counted in computing the
ratios because it would add to the population and the southern states wanted to apportion
revenues on the basis of each state's free population. The Articles were finally ratified
on March 1, 1781 and contained a firm commitment to state sovereignty, but it was given
no power over Western claims and requisitions were based on each state's free population.
The Constitution on the other hand was given a provision that free and slave states were
able to agree on. The three-fifths Compromise was developed in order to apportion both
representation and direct taxes. This was important because it was able to apportion
money for the slave states, with being able to count some of their slaves towards it -
three out of every five. It was something both the south and the north were able to agree
on, but all it did was postpone the war a few more years. 
Religion did not play a huge factor in the institution of plantation slavery. Slave
owners worried that baptized slaves would declare their freedom, after learning the ways
of Jesus Christ and the Lord. The owners forbade clergyman to converse their slaves to
Christianity because of this reason. They thought the slaves would listen to the
Christian stories and it would give them the idea to escape from their chains and
shackles. Even though many slaves ignored what some missionaries taught, they embraced
evangelical Christianity and transformed it into an independent African American faith.
Some slaveowners encourages this and built them "praise houses" and permitted them to
have religious meetings. The slaves would pray, preach, sing and at their meetings they
would rehearse a faith that was at variance with the faith of their slaveholder. Religion
was a way for the slaves to bond together, and pray together and it gave them hope that
one day they may be free. 
This horrible war can also be contributed to all of the new technology springing up
throughout the country. It all started by an alarming increase in a need for cotton,
which triggered the building of a barrier between the Northern and Southern territories
of our growing nation. New machinery was changing the textile industry in New England and
Britain. These mills needed more and more cotton, creating a new demand in the south. For
this trade with Europe, after 1812, raw cotton accounted for one-third all cotton exports
of the United States. By 1830, it increased to half. Cotton quickly became a big
moneymaking cash crop for the South and North economy alike. But the demand also revived
the need for slaves. The plantations had to be worked, and blacks were a cheap, efficient
way to get the cotton picked. To make their jobs easier, Eli Whitney took advantage of
the new idea, and invented the cotton gin (short for engine). It rapidly cleaned the
seeds from the short, sticky fibers of upland cotton, the variety that grew all over the
South. In addition to this, the transportation of this crop became extremely important
since so much was being produced. Steamboats were starting to be used, and they could be
seen transporting thousands of bales of cotton up and down the Mississippi River.
Steamboats were important because they were able to go against the strong current and
were able to ship to the north. Canals and railroads was also a major contributor to
transporting cotton. Canals connected major bodies of water together for transportation.
Railroads were not around until a few years before the war, but they were an important
contributor - transporting became faster and cheaper, again, which increased the number
for more slaves. With the train, transportation became transcontinental which became
vital during the war. Due to all of these important technological contributions the
demand for slavery grew leading up to the bloody Civil War. 
There were many attempts at treaties trying to resolve slavery before leading up to this
great war. The Northwest Ordinance was the beginning for all of these treaties. It
protected civil liberties, made provision for public education, and prohibited slavery
within the region, and it allowed southern states to count three-fifths of their slaves
toward representation. Congress hoped that with this treaty it would help slow down the
expansion of slavery in the northern areas, and despite the antislavery clause all
southern delegates voted for it. Again facing conflict over new states being slave,
Congress passed another treaty, The Missouri Compromise of 1820. It states that if the
North would admit Missouri as a slave state, then the South would agree to outlaw slavery
in territories above thirty - six degrees north latitude. This line opened Arkansas
territory to slavery and closed slavery to the remainder of the Louisiana Territory -
land that would develop into around nine states. Following the Mexican War, many other
new treaties sprang - the Wilmot Proviso and the Missouri Compromise of 1850. Both of
these treaties were cures to the never-ending clash over whether slavery should be
allowed into the new territories of the South, such as Texas and California. The Wilmot
promised everyone that under no circumstance will any land from Mexico afford slavery,
and this treaty ended the debate for fifteen years. The Kansas - Nebraska Act was brought
into Congress under basis for popular sovereignty. It was brought to see if Nebraska was
brought into the nation as a free state, then could Kansas be brought in as a slave
state. This scared many people because it seemed to them the institution of slavery was
spreading like fire, and it seemed nobody knew how to bring this deeply entrenched
institution to an end. After this bill, the United Sates had become the world's largest
slaveholding society, and this bill allowed it to expand even further. 
In conclusion since the beginning of our country's time it had been built on corruption
and on unsteady ground. The institutions of slavery made are country this way. From the
beginning it should have been known are country was deemed to fall because of the great
dispute everyone felt over slavery. It was inevitable that this war was going to happen,
and it seemed nobody knew how to slow it down or stop it. Despite the booming economy and
the incredible rate at which our country was growing everything seemed to be going along
excellent, but deep down America was wrong from the start.