History of Slavery (Essay Sample)

Slavery
Name
Institution
Date
History of Slavery
Slavery is termed as a condition in which one or more people are owned as property by another person and are under the control of that person. This occurs especially in involuntary servitude. Slavery is dated back to the year 1619 in North America where Dutches brought the first Negros slaves to Virginia. These Negros were mainly Africans who were brought as indentured servants and not as slaves. They were expected to serve for seven years.
The Black people were taken from their native lands by force where they were never allowed to see their families again. In their new homes, they had to work hard for their masters and being treated cruelly since they were viewed as they had no rights as slaves. As research shows that slavery was not invented in the United States but were existent in Africa. In Egypt for instance, slavery was practiced by people being held as captives for committing an indecent act not acceptable to the community. Moreover, some people were peasants and had to sell themselves as slaves in order to repay their debts.
Americans didn't like the idea of slavery that lead to African took advantage and demand to be replaced by these Native Americans. They in turn proved to be profitable laborers in the islands of the Caribbean and the lowlands of the South American mainland. The act of slavery subjected people to cruelty. However, the British ship owners and sailors saw that slavery was lucrative and thus liked the business. They were responsible for shipping slaves from Africa to other parts of the world in a movement termed as the Triangular Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (Lewis, & Lewis, 2011).
The stages for executing the acts of slavery involved ships leaving British port with the goods made in England. These goods mainly included tools and weapons which were needed in Africa. Those with guns went ashore and captured any black people they come across. Other African rulers from other side helped in capturing these blacks to be sold. When the ships were fully packed with the Black, the sailing began for a distance approximately two and a half thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean towards America.
Journey to America usually takes them about eight to ten weeks to arrive. In the journey, some Africans grew desperate as expected and tried to jump over to escape and others wanted to kill themselves by refusing to eat anything. At times, crew members were forced to break their teeth and force food in them. This was seen as a loss for the sailors since a loss in life is monetary loss to them. On reaching America, the Africans were sold to be slave laborers.
In the 17th Century, the slave trade rate hastened. The area of the North America was being colonized, and English Colonies was set up along the coast. Portuguese and the Spanish decided to take over the southern part of America. In these actions, they all wanted to use slave sin their colonies. The average of the ships leaving the British port was once in every two weeks. This implies that the number of slaves being sold increased.
Approximately twenty million Africans were captured and taken to be sold as slaves against their wills. A lot of them died with an exact figure not given to date. During the 1807 parliamentary proceedings, it sought to stop the British ships from taking part in this kind of trade. This became somehow fruitful since no more Africans were captured and sold as slaves. However, slavery continued internally (Buell, 2004).
Research carried out showed that the slave trade emergence was from the settlers in America. They wanted slaves to work for them so that they could force them to work for long hours. This is because they saw this as cheap labor as compared to the white Americans. Due to the emergence of a machine that separated the cotton fuzz from its weeds, cotton became a great crop in the Northern part of America which the settlers wanted to plant it. They needed slaves to carry out these tasks.
Other justification reveals that the African seemed to be used to extreme temperatures that were witnessed in the United States. Moreover, the slaves gave birth to the slaves who became an advantage for the masters. They had choices to keep the children as slaves or sell them to people who needed laborers. In addition, the trade claimed that black were inferior since they spoke strange languages rather than English. This they saw as the right to keep and treat them as slaves (Hummel, Jeffrey, 2014).
Slaves comprise of both sexes, the roles of females mainly was to cook, clean and do the house chores. Men were sent to plantation farms to do the farming. Young girls helped the older women in house tasks while the young boys helped in the farm by bailing and loading the wagons that were used in farming. Some of the slaves fell into the masters who were inhuman. They did not respect them. Their standards of living were below subsistence level. This made the life expectancy of such slaves be between twenty-eight years to thirty-six years. Also, the infant mortality rate doubled.
Other slaves who fell into good masters were treated well and viewed as ordinary workers. However, they had no rights at all since they had been forced out of their homeland. The major purpose of slavery was to supply cheap labor for the plantation owners, and the masters of these slaves had exclusive powers over them. Despite the fact that the masters were not supposed to kill, they sometimes kill them and the courts had nothing to say about it (Lewis, & Lewis, 2011).
Impact of slavery in contemporary society
Slavery has impacted the society in many ways. The enslaved African American families much resembled other families who had lived in other times and places under vastly different situations. The once loving families have been affected critically by slavery. It brought constrictions and disruptions in their life. Moreover, it resulted in frustrations and pain. It is quite a coherent that slavery did not only inhibit the formation of the family; it also made it stable and secure. This implied that the enslaved people had no rights to marry in any American State or Colony.
This restriction to the marriage was still effective even after slavery ended. The vast majority of the African Americans was used to this requirement and thus could not legally marry. For instance, in the Northern part of the American states such as New York and Pennsylvania, slavery ended in 1830 and the African Americans became free and were even allowed to marry from their choices. In the southern states, they were not allowed to marry but only to enter into relationships and consider themselves as husband and wife despite the fact that they knew their unions was not recognized by state laws (Ira Berlin, 1999).
Slavery made each member of the family engulfed by a feeling of fear since anytime, one of the family members might get kidnapped and be sold as a slave. Family members are threatened with the constant fear of separation. This also happened when a master died; a slave was sold in order to liquidate assets if he had unsettled debts. The fear impacted on these people still lingers in their minds and get scared in case of any conflict arising between them and the whites.
During slavery period, the black people captured as slaves depict the African Americans who live in the Diaspora. Their masters generally ate good and lean fleshy parts of the farm animals and left the fleshy parts of the animal to the slaves. They were forced to assemble the leftovers of food and eat them as their main meal. This leftover included the cow feet, pigâ€&trad...