Slavery in America Slavery And Injustice In America As Portrayed In Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years A Slave

17 In all the English colonies, north and south, slavery got off to a slow start in the 17 th century but increased rapidly in the 18 th century, as the colonists recognized the need for a large labor force to develop the new continent. They looked first to the Indians and then to Africans, who were already laboring as slaves in vast numbers elsewhere in the New World. Over time, slavery moved to south. It was because the South planters needed many hands to clear, drain, and cultivate the fertile lands along the coast. With the invention of the cotton gin and the boom in the international demand for southern cotton, planters turned to the Southwest for new, fertile land and to slavery to supply the workers for this labor-intensive crop. In 18 th century, the slavery spread throughout the American colonies because the African slaves were cheaper and more plentiful labor source than indentured servants who were mostly poorer Europeans. But, most of slaves were treated so badly by their master. William Goodell in the book The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice: Its Distinctive Features Shown by Its Statutes, Judicial Decisions and Illustrative Facts. It is a key antislavery work centering on legal discourse and practice. This book gives more understanding about slave code that is used at the time. It also shows that the slave shall always be reputed and considered as real estate; shall, as such, be subject to be mortgaged, according to the rules prescribed by law, and they shall be seized and sold as real estate. Goodell 1853:15 said that it is often maintained that the ‘legal relation of master and slave” is not a criminal one, and that there is no sin, or moral wrong, in the mere fact of sustaining that relation. 18 According to 2 Brevard’s Digest, 229 ; Prince’s Digest, 446 in South Carolina in Goodell 1853:23 says, “slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed and adjudged in law to be chattels personal, in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever.” Civil Code, Art.35 in Louisiana in Goodell 1853:23 says, “A slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry and his labor. He can do anything, but what must belong to his master.” Civil Code, Art.173 in Goodell 1853:23 says, “The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master, who may correct and chastise him, though not with unusual rigor, or so as to maim and mutilate him, or expose him to the danger of loss of life, or to cause his death.” Statue of June 7, 1806; 1 Martin’s Digest, 612 in Goodell 1853:24 says, “Slaves shall always be reputed and considered real estate; shall, as such, be subject to be mortgaged, according to the rules prescribed by law, and they shall be seized and sold as real estate.” The slave codes that have mentioned before show how bad slave status and position are towards society in America. Slave as considered as an subject, a real estate, not a human being. They are treated as a thing that can be possessed and sold by their masters. As Goodell 1853:77-78 says, “Slaves are not persons in the view of the law, for any purposes of benefit to them; as will hereafter be more fully shown. The rights of a slave are not recognize, and no limitation of the master’s use 19 of him can come from that quarter. “The slave” says the law “is entirely subject to the will of his master.” Nothing, therefore, can prevent the master from putting him to any use he pleases. The Slave Code places slaves upon a level with other live cattle. It never attempts or pretends to protect the slaves. It is known that they are only as mere animals. Their rational and moral natures, not being recognized by the laws, can claim no legal protection. The slave has not equal protection, in some respects, with other animals. Mr. Samuel Blackwell in Goodell 1983:80 visited many of the sugar plantations in Louisiana, and says: That the planters generally declared to him that they were obliged so to overwork their slaves, during the sugar-making season, from eight to ten week, as to USE THEM in seven or eight years. For, said they, after the process is commenced, it must be pushed without cessation, night and day, and we cannot afford to keep a sufficient number of slaves to do the extra work at the time of sugar-making, as we could not profitably employ them the rest of the year.

2.7 Treatment of Slaves in America.

The treatment of slaves in America varied by time and place, but was generally brutal and degrading. Whipping, execution and sexual abuse of women, including rape, were common. Schneider 2007:90 said that the slave system was founded on and sustained by brute force—physical punishment. Both masters and mistresses themselves could beat their slaves or order them beaten by overseers, black drivers, or men employed for that purpose in slave jails. Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding andor imprisonment. Punishment 20 was most often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but masters or overseers sometimes abused slaves to assert dominance. Slave masters even beat pregnant women, devising ways to do it without harming the baby. Slave masters would dig a hole big enough for the womans stomach to lay in and proceed with the lashings. In addition, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese in Schneider 2007:90 says, “Mistresses whipped slave women with whom they might have shared beds, whose children they might have delivered or who might have delivered theirs, whose children they might have suckled and who frequently suckled theirs.” The mistreatment of slaves frequently included rape and the sexual abuse of women. Some slaves died while trying to resist sexual attacks. Others sustained psychological and physical trauma. The sexual abuse of slaves was partially rooted in the patriarchal nature of contemporary Southern culture and its view of women of any race as property. After 1662, when Virginia adopted the legal doctrine partus sequitur ventrem, sexual relations between white men and black women were regulated by classifying children of slave mothers as slaves regardless of their fathers race or status. Jenny Hill in Schneider 2007:85 explains the bitterness of such treatment when she was separated from her husband and child to be enslaved: How well I remember how I would sit in my room with the little ones on my lap and the tears would roll down my cheeks as I would ponder the right and wrong of bringing them into the world. What was I bringing them into the world for? To be slaves and go from morning to night. They couldn’t be educated and maybe they couldn’t even live with their families. They would just be slaves. All that time I wasn’t even living with my husband. He belonged to another man. He had to stay on his farm and I on mine. That wasn’t living—that was slavery.