This lay preacher led a virginia slave in 1831

Essay On African Slavery

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE AMERICAN HISTORY

Crystal Valdez

Institutional Affiliation

In 1619, the Dutch introduced the first captured African slave in Virginia, America, planting the seeds of slavery. This would ultimately divide an entire nation. An approximation of about 500 years have passed since Europe and America first made contact with Africa and began the trading intercourse. During the trade and the subsequent years, Africans and the Europe engaged in several generations of hostility equal friendships, good and evil profit and loss; this ultimately resulted into an interwoven relationship even more tightly together. But the reasons why history had to chatter this unfamiliar course are a bewildering question.

This is the pre-Columbian era generation that incorporates the entire generational subdivisions in the history and pre-historic American. Definitely, it involves the period just before the appearance of critical European influences on America as a continent. It also unveils the initial settlement in the upper paleolitholic generation to the European colonization in the early modern period. Though pre-Columbian would literally imply the preceding years of Christopher Columbus voyages of the 1492, the intrinsic implication denotes the whole indigenous American character not excluding those traditions that were significantly altered by the Europeans. Monumental agriculture, established cities, great earth work and sophisticated societal hierarchies were the observable achievements of the pre-Columbian civilization (Confer, 2008). The civilizations however weren’t concrete enough to stand the test of European colonization and civilization that took place subsequently. Indigenous American culture however continues to evolve after the pre-Columbian period.

Though the Portuguese and the Spanish had been ferrying slaves along the Caribbean coast, the very first recorded arrival of an African in the English speaking land was in 1619 at Jamestown, Hampton and Old town in Virginia. According to Alelrod and Phillips (2008) Dutch traders imported black slaves for sale to tobacco farmers, this marked the very first establishment of an extremely peculiar institution that would survive for more than two centuries and even make a mockery out of Americans Revolutionist promise of equality, blight millions of lives, fuel sectional rivalries into bitter hatred and lead new nations into civil wars. For the wealthy farmers who bought them, black slaves were a potential source of cheap and greatly affordable labor. They would perpetually be under their master’s control unlike indentured servants who would only serve for seven years.

The Freedom Ordinance of the North West Territory in 1787 was a legal act created by the Congress of the Confederation of the United States. The main gains of the act were the prohibition of slavery, marking the Ohio River as the boundary between free and slave territory. The demarcation offered a platform for national competition over allowing free and slaved states which formed the bedrock of the American civil War. (Smith, Church, 1982).The Fugitive Slave Law in 1793 was enacted to offer a provision for the returning slaves who initially had escaped and overlapped state lines. Even though it is marked as one of the most controversial laws, it perfectly served to heighten fears of a slave power conspiracy.

Gabriel Prosser was an enslaved African American blacksmith in 1800. He choreographed a slave revolt which was intended to march in Richmond, Virginia. Virginia slave laws were further tightened. In eight years’ time, congress would ban the importation of slaves.

The Missouri Compromise was a decisive event in the national history in 1820. The Compromise promised a limit to slavery expansion. It also laid ground for a new national paradigm that vividly distinguished America from the south. (Forbes, 2009). The Compromise served as a wakeup call for the Americans to clearly understand that they could no longer rely on the whites to end slavery. An increment in the divide between the north and the south could open up opportunities for blacks to exploit. The fruits of the Compromise was however vivid in the Nat Turners Virginia Slave Revolt in 1831.

In 1822, Denmark Vasey, who was an enslaved African American carpenter who had purchased his freedom, planned a major revolt with a clear intention to lay a perfect siege on Charleston, South Carolina. The plot was however discovered leading to Vasey and his thirty four conspirators being hanged.

Nat Turner was an enslaved African American Preacher in 1831. He led the most significant of all slave revolts in the American history. Together with his band of followers, he launched a bloody revolt in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner was eventually hanged. Stricter slave laws were instituted by Virginia. (Greenberg, 2004).The Liberator; a William Garrison weekly newspaper publication began to be published in 1831. This made him one of the famous figures in the abolitionist movement.

The Wilmot Proviso was a proviso introduced by a democratic representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania in 1846. It mainly attempted to ban slavery in the territory gained from the Mexican War. The proviso was however blocked by Southerners but it continued to burn the flames of the slavery debate.Harriet Tubman, in 1849 managed to escape from slavery and became one of the most celebrated leaders of the underground rail.

There was a persistent debate of whether territory gained in the Mexican war could be open to slavery. The Compromise of 1850 served to quell the simmering tension in the debate. This resulted into California being admitted as a free state. Popular sovereignty was subjected to the states of Utah and New Mexico. This resulted into a stricter Fugitive Slave law than the initial one passed in 1793. Following the Compromise of 1850 was a influential novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe; Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It emerged to be one of the masterpieces of anti-slavery sentiments.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was an act passed by the congress in 1854. It aimed at establishing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. This was a repeal of the 1820 Missouri Compromise. This was a raw renewal of rivalry and rebirth of antagonism between anti-slavery and pro-slavery factions in America. A dead Scott case of 1857 held that the congress had no legal and constitutional power to abolish slave trade. He insisted that slaves were not citizens. John Brown and 21 other followers captured the federal arsenals at Harpers Ferry. This was an attempt to launch another slave revolt in 1859.

A seceding South, democracy limitations and failure of perfect implementation of various congressional acts were the main causes of the peculiar North American civil war. The primary cause of secession was slavery, more so Southerners were angered by the efforts of the Northerners antislavery political ideologies. The main reason why the North rejected the secession was to maintain the Union as the dream of the American Nationalism mandated. (Freehling, 1994).

On January 1st 1863 President Abraham Lincoln declared the emancipation; this stated that all persons held as slaves were free henceforth, within the confederation state. (Guelzo, 2005) This proclaimed freedom for slaves in eleven states that were still in rebellion. It applied to approximately 3million to 4 million slaves. The proclamation failed to compensate the slave masters. It succeeded in making eradication of slavery an explicit war objective and further reunification of the American Union.

The American civil war ended in 1865. At this time, The United States President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated on Friday, April 14, 1865, while in theatre watching the play, Our American Cousin, at Ford's Theatre. The assassination took place five days after the leader of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia; General Robert E. Lee had given up to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army of the Potomac. (Varon, 2013)

The beginning of African Slavery in America, the war contributed immensely in the building a tolerable and a civilized American society. This serves as a wakeup call to regions that are still entangled in bloody civil wars in Africa and the Middle East. All men deserve dignity.

Reference

Confer, C.W. (2008) Daily Life in Pre-Columbian Native America

Alelrod, A. & Phillips, C. (2006), What Every American Should Know about American history

Forbes, P.R. (2009) Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath

Greenberg, S.K., (2004) Nat Turner; A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory

Guelzo, A.C., (2005) Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The End of slavery in

America

Varon, E.R., (2013) Appomattox; Victory, defeat and freedom at the end of the civil war