Essay Instructions: Paper: Each student will prepare and submit a paper examining a discreet issue, event or concept that impacted the development of American society during this period. Each paper will be from 1500 to 2000 words and must contain at least three outside sources or references; the textbook does not count as an outside source.. Papers will be prepared according to the MLA standards.
US History 1301 This is the paper I wrote, but this teacher wants this paper on my own words!! and i guess he doesnt get that English is my second language! PLEASE READ THE NOTE I WROTE AT THE END FROM THE TEACHER AND FROM ME!!!! THANK YOU (ONE NOTE FROM PROFFESOR HE WANTS A SOURCE FOR THE FIRST PAGE WHERE IT TALKS ABOUT PRINCE HENRY ON THE FIRST PARAGRAPH!
According to historians, there is a valid argument for choosing the year 1441 as the year in which modern slave trade was, so to speak, officially declared open. In that year ten Africans from the northern Guinea Coast were shipped to Portugal as a gift to Prince Henry the Navigator, captured by Portuguese sailors. These ten Africans were brought back in triumph by a modest trading expedition commanded by the young prot?g? of Prince Henry named Antam Goncalvez. They had not, however, been captured for sale, but simply to be shown to Prince Henry in the same way that rare plants, exotic butterflies or tropical birds might have been shown.
By 1444 one of several subsequent expeditions brought back a bumper harvest of two hundred and thirty-five African men, women and children, except by the fact that families were torn apart, these early captives were well treated, baptized, and absorb into Portuguese households where they were petted and educated.
In the later decades of the fifteenth century, the emphasis seems still have been upon the saving of black souls by the conversions to Christianity. Their enslavement was, moreover, justified by tags from the Bible, most notably the curse Noah laid upon Canaan after the flood: that his descendants should be eternally subject to all the other races of the world. But soon this lofty motive, as lofty motives will, became confused and obscured by others, until in 1518 Charles V granting to the Governor of Bresa the monopoly of shipping four thousand African slaves a year to the West Indies.
While the year 1441 to 1444 were marked, as the beginning of the slave trade the most significant year in history is the year 1492, when Christopher Columbus discovered the New World. For the next three and a half centuries, and at ever-increasing momentum, the developments of the new territories across the Atlantic demanded millions upon millions of African slaves.
Before bringing millions of African slaves to the New World, lets not forget ?the white cargo?. Indentured servants first arrived in America in the decade following the settlement of Jamestown by the Virginia Company in 1607.
The idea of indentured servitude was born of a need for cheap labor. The earliest settlers soon realized that they had lots of land to care for, but no one to care for it. With passage to the Colonies expensive for all but the wealthy, the Virginia Company developed the system of indentured servitude to attract workers. Indentured servants became vital to the colonial economy.
These indentured servants typically worked four to seven years in exchange for passage, room, board, and lodging and freedom dues. While the life of an indentured servant was harsh and restrictive, it wasn?t slavery. There were laws that protected some of their rights. But their life was not an easy one. An indentured servant?s contract could be extended as punishment for breaking the law, such as running away, or in the case of female servants, becoming pregnant.
Those who survived the work and received their freedom package, many historians argue that they were better off than those new immigrants who came freely to the country. Their contract may have included at least 25 acres of land, a year?s worth of corn, arms, a cow and new clothes. Some servants did rise to become part of the colonial elite, but for the majority of indentured servants that survived the treacherous journey by sea and the harsh conditions of life in the New World, satisfaction was a modest life as a freeman in a new land of opportunities.
In 1619 the first black Africans came to Virginia. With no slave laws in place, they were initially treated as indentured servants, and given the same opportunities from freedom dues as whites. However, slave laws were soon passed in Massachusetts in 1641 and Virginia in 1661, and any small freedoms that might have existed for blacks were taken away.
As demands for labor grew, so did the cost of indentured servants. Many landowners also felt threatened by newly freed servants demand for land. A solution to the colonial elite to the problems of indentured servitude turning to African slaves as a more profitable and ever- renewable source of labor and the shift from indentured servants to racial slavery had its beginning.
The transition from English indentured servants to African slaves in the in the southern English colonies. The economy of the early American Colonies was primarily agricultural. Particularly in the south were plantations were constructed to yield large amounts of tobacco, rice, and sugar all, which had a high demand in England. Initially these plantations were worked by English indentured servants, however toward the end of the 1600s there was a big push to use African slaves. This change was brought on by the combination of rebellious English workers, affordable African slaves, and African salves farming abilities.
First of all, the problem the plantation owners had with English indentured servants was they were not slaves. After a specified amount of time they were to be set free and given land.
Another major factor that contributed the growing slave trade with Africa was the Royal African Company losing its African slave monopoly in 1698. This allowed anyone to enter into the lucrative slave trading business. Slave prices were dramatically lowered do to this new competition. Also with the increase of slave traders came the increase in the number of African slaves brought to America. In the decade after 1700 over ten thousand African slaves were imported to the American colonies.
The English colonies were inexperienced in rice cultivations, however they found that West Africans had been growing rice in Africa for hundreds of years. Colonists in Carolina would pay a lot of money for an African slave with experience in growing rice. Not only did the Africans slaves knew how to grow rice, they also had the rare ability to work the rice fields, where rice was grown in large swampy fields prone mosquitos carrying malaria. Because the Africa slaves were native to similar climate they developed immunities to the disease.
In the history of the United States nothing has brought more shame to the face of America than the cold, premeditated method of buying and keeping African slaves in captivity. These methods were quite effective, so effective that these slaves were kept in captivity for over two hundred years in this country.
It was the rain of terror that kept black people in fear of their lives for so long. The invention of the gun back in the fifteenth century was the main reason that these people were able to go to another continent and enslave so many people.
These people from Africa were mistreated very inhumanely right from the start, both mentally and physically. They were packed very tightly on ships for months at a time, chained to each other with no place to go the bathroom, little water to drink, and hardly anything to eat.
Journey slaves were brought into the U.S by harrowing overseas route mariners called ?the middle passage,? a triangle of trade involving three primary commodities: manufactured goods from Europe, slaves from Africa and crops and raw material goods from the Americas. Aboard the ships, as many as 400 to 700 slaves were shacked together below decks, under the worst conditions a human beings could ever go through, in the unsanitary conditions, disease, hunger and depression claimed the lives of an estimated 50% of those who began the journey. Once in the U.S. and put up for sale at auction houses.
Slaves had absolutely no rights, and most times families were separated during the auctions.
As the Northern states increasingly came to see slavery as moral evil, the importation of slaves into the U.S. was outlawed in 1808, when some 1 million slaves lived in America.
At the beginning of the Civil war, the slave population had risen to 4 million. While slavery was founded on racism, sexual relations between white owners and black slave women were widespread.
With five simple words in the Declaration of Independence ?all men are created equal?, Thomas Jefferson undid Aristotle?s ancient formula, which had governed human affairs until 1776: ?From the hour of their birth, some men are marked out for subjection, others for rule.? In Jefferson?s original draft of the declaration, in soaring, damning fiery prose, Jefferson denounced the slave trade as an ?execrable commerce?this assemblage of horrors,? a ?cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberties.?
The best evidence that Jefferson and the other members if the committee meant to include people of African ancestry within the ranks of ?all the men? lies within the ?lost language ? condemning the slave trade as ?cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty.? Thought this portion of the draft did not survived into the final version.
But, we cannot forget something very important our founding fathers did, several things that effected slavery. These effects were stemmed from both the good and the bad sides of the issue. On the good side of the spectrum happened during the drafting of the Constitution, only a few of the founding fathers felt that slavery was necessary for the survival of the colonies.
On the opposite side Jefferson knew that free blacks and whites could live together and he himself felt that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites. These thought made it seem logical for the abolition of slavery to be slower process a better idea even if the non-Christian like to slave other people.
The Founding fathers wished to bring the colonies together even though the issue of slavery was controversial among the colonies. Even though the Constitution was drawn up and signed. This period allotted for more slaves and black descendants to suffer under the rules of slavery. Even after the Constitution was ratified, slavery found a place and ways to grow.
It wasn?t until the Northwest Ordinance that slavery was finally found illegal in the upper western territories. This was until three years after Jefferson drafted the congressional ordinance making slavery illegal.
After this point, slavery became an issue with the states and territories themselves. For instance in Indiana, part of the territory split off due to its strong favor on slavery. This action began to put the issue of statehood in jeopardy. After statehood was secured a great supported of the anti-slavery movement became governor of Indiana by a small amount of votes, and began the abolition of slavery in that state.
One very important thing the founding fathers did with the Constitution was to stop the slave trade. By doing this, they were able to hurt the states that depended on slavery the most. This abolition of the slave trade began in the Declaration of Independence. Even though this didn?t stop slavery it did help southern states to begin to free their slaves.
Looking at the facts, the founding fathers clearly let their own prejudices get in the way of them truly attempting to abolish slavery. Even Jefferson, who had good intentions at heart, let his own beliefs about blacks stop him from freeing his own slaves.
The freedom of slaves would have to be done by others after a twenty -year period. It is clear that in an attempted to help the country and abolish slavery the founding fathers truly hurt the colonies and started what would soon become the civil war, the bloodiest war in the history of the United States.
References
Herbert S. Klein. ?Slavery in the Americas.? Chicago (1963)
Christine Bolt & Seymour Drescher. ?Anti-Slavery, Religion and Reform.?
Connecticut (1980).
James Pope-Hennessy. ?Sins of The Fathers.? New York (1968).
Roger G. Kennedy. ?Mr. Jefferson?s Lost Cause.? Oxford (2003).
Time Magazine ?an illustrated early History? (The bondsman?s Toil)
Smithsonian Magazine, Henry Wiencek, unmasking Thomas Jefferson
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NOTE FROM TEACHER ON THIS ROUGH DRAFT:
GOOD TOPIC YOU CLEARLY KNOW YOUR SUBJECT BUT YOUR WRITING NEEDS A LOT OF WORK, MAKE SURE THE PAPER IS IN YOUR OWN WORDS!!!!!!!!!
NOTE FROM ME TO WHOM IS GOING TO BRE DOING MY PAPER, THIS PROFESSOR IS WHITE, AND HE IS ASKING ME TO DO THIS PAPER ON MY OWN WORDS, WELL I DON?T THINK HE WOULD UNDERSTAND ME SINCE MY OWN WORDS WOULD BE SPANISH, ME AS AN IMMIGRANT I SEE THIS HISTORY DIFFERENT, TO ME PRETTY MUCH: WHITE PEOPLE CAME TO THIS COUNTRY, TOOK OVER THE LAND, SLAVED AFRICANS, AND DESTROYED THE INDIANS,BUT IF YOU PUT WRITE THIS PAPER PLEASE DON?T MAKE IT SOUND LIKE IF THIS ARE THE WORDS FROM A WHITE PERSON BECAUSE I AM LATINO!!!!!!!!
ABOUT THE PAPER THAT NEEDS TO BE WRITEN:
