The Prophet

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Nat Turner was born into slavery in 1800 in Virgina and he grew 2 become a slave preacher. Within time he began to build a religious following that was ready to start a revolution against his white master under the belief that god chose him to lead the blacks to freedom. On August 13, 1831 Turner saw a halo around the sun and took that as a sign from God that it was time to start the revolt. Beginning on August 22 and lasting for two days, Turner and seventy recruits went on a rampage, killing Turners master and 58 men, women, and children. Many blacks didnt join Turner's group they feared the consiquences of his methods, but the rebellion only lasted two days and Nat Turner managed to escape. The first report of the Turner revolt was sent in the form of a letter from the Postmaster of Jerusalem to the Governor of Virginia, it was published in the Richmond Constitutional Whig of August 23, 1831, the letter pressed for the support of the military to help catch Turner and his followers who may have escaped.  The miltary decended on Jerusalem the next day, and a massacre of blacks began in Southhampton which was done by vigilante groups who wanted revenge.  Hundreds of blacks were killed, most of which were totally innocent of any involvement or knowledge of Nat Turner's rebellion. By August 31, 1831 almost all of Turner's followers were captured with the exception of him, despite a large-scale manhunt and a continuing stream of newspaper accounts of his escape or capture, he was able to hide in the woods of Southampton, not far from where the rebellion had began. On October 31, Benjamin Phipps, a local farmer, spotted and captured Nat Turner at gunpoint. On November 5, Turner was convicted of insurrection and sentenced to hang and on November 11 the sentence was carried out. Since the 1790's when slaves rebelled in Santo Domingo and slaughtered 60,000 people, Southerners realized that their own slaves might rise up against them a number of slave revolt conspiracies were uncovered in the South between 1820 and 1831 but none frightened Southerners as much as Nat Turner's rebellion.

http://www.historybuff.com/library/refslave.html

Trans-Altantic Slave Trade

   The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade started around the mid-fifteenth century when Portuguese became less interested in gold from Africa and became more interested in slaves. By the seventeenth century the slave trade was fully functional, it reached a peak towards the end of the eighteenth century.
   The trade started because Europe wanted to expand its empires in the New World and the major resouce that they were lacking was a work force.  At first they tried to use indigneous people but they weren't reliable because most of them were dying from diseases brought from and Europeans were use to the climate and were suffering from tropical diseases.  They began using Africans to do their work because they were great workers, they often had experience of agriculture and keeping cattel, they were used to a tropical climate, resistant to tropical diseases, and they could be "worked very hard" so they said.

http://home.moravian.edu/students/k/stdmk04/images/Trans-Atlantic1.jpg

   All three stages of the Triangular Trade proved great business for merchants.  The first stage of the Triangular Trade involoved taking manufactured goods from Europe to Africa:  cloth, spirit, tabacco, beads, cowrie shells, metal goods, and guns.  The guns were used to help expand empires and obtain more slaves, they used these goods to exchange for African slaves. The second stage of the triangular Trade which was the middle passage involved shipping the slaves to the Americas.  The third and last stage of the Triangular Trade involved the reuturn to Europe with the items from teh slave-labor planations such as cotton, sugar, tobacco, molasses and rum.

   Portugal was responsible for transporting over 4.5 million African slaves, for two hundred years Portugal had a monopoly on the export of slaves from Africa.  Between 1450 and the end of the nineteenth century, slaves were obtained from along the west coast of Africa.  During the eighteenth century, when the slave trade accounted for the transport of a staggering 6 million Africans Britian was the worst transgressor of them all, they were responsible for almost 2.5 million trade accounts.  This fact is often forgotten by those who regularly cite Britian's prime role in the abolition of the slave trade. 

http://africanhistory.about.com/od/slavery/tp/TransAtlantic001.htm

Life as a Slave

Living the life of a slave was no walk in the park, it was very difficult some of the things they got and went threw are:

• For clothing every year they would get two linen shirts, two pairs of pants, one jacket, one pair of socks, one pair of shoes, a overcoat, and a wool hat.  Today that would be like torcher to us but it was heaven to them.
• Slaves normally lived in wooden shacks with dirt floors, but sometimes the houses were made of boards nailed up with cacks stuffed with rags.  The beds were collected pieces of straw or grass, and old rags, and only one blanket for a cover. One room could have up to twelve people in it. In todays time we would call them homeless basically.
• As a slave when your 12 months old the mother could be sold and you would be left 2 grow and work on that plantation.  when a slave child turns 4 they would sometimes work as babysitters, at the age of 5 they would run errands and carry water tothe field slaves.  Around the age of 8 children would be expected to work on the planation.
• over 32% of marriages between slaves were canceled by masters as a result of slaves being sold away from thier family home.  a slave husband could be separated from his wife, and children would also be separated from their mothers.



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• In order to keep the slaves from trying to rebel their punishment for murder, burglary, arson, and assault on a white person was murder.  The plantation owners believed this severe discipline would make the slaves too scared to try anything. In South Caroline one slave owner would put nails on a barrel sticking out on the inside of the barrel, then put the slave in and roll him or her down a very long steep hill.  another punishment for slaves was to whip them.  owners in Virgina smoked their slaves which means whipping them and putting theim in a tabacco smokehouse. some other punishments included getting beaten with a chear, broom, tongs, shovel, shears, knife handles, the heavy end of a woman's shoe, and an oak club.
• Slave owners prevented their slaves from learning how to read and becoming Christians because they didnt want them to read the Bible. In the South black people were not usually allowed to attend church sevices, in the North black people were more likely to attend church though. Drums which were used in traditional religious ceremonies where banned because overseers worried that they would be used to send messages.

Slave life was no joke they could never slack off or lose their cool or else they could get punished or even worse be killed.

http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/00394/lifeslavelinks.htm

Slavery: North vs. South

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Slavery in the North.

In the 17th century slavery in the North wasn't absolute bondage, it was a nebulous condition similar to that of indentured servants.  Some slaves bought to America from Africa were bought to be servants who were eligible freedom a certain number of years.  The first official legal recognition  of chattel slavery as a legal institution in British North America was in Massachusetts, in 1641, with the “Body of Liberties.” Slavery was legalized in New Plymouth and Connecticut when it was incorporated into the Articles of the New England Confederation in 1643. New England was the center of the slave trade in the colonies, supplyin captive slave to the South and the Carribean islands.  Colonies in the North preferred to get their slaves from the new world colonies instead of directly from Africa because that seemed to difficult and dangerous.  Since they already survived climate changethey also adjusted better to Northern winters, which incapacitated or killed those direct from Africa.  By the late colonial period, the average slave-owning household in New England and Mid-Atlantic had about 2 slaves.

http://www.slavenorth.com/slavenorth.htm

Slavery in the South

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Close to 2 million slaves were brought from Africa to South America and the West Indies during the centuries of the Atlantic slave trade. Approximately 20% of the population of the American South over the years has been African American, and as late as 1900, 9 out of every 10 African Americans lived in the South.  There was a large number of black people mainting manual labor before slavery was legalized but the South wasnt permitted to threaten the region's character as a white man's country.  When slavery became legal white racism became the driving force of southern race relations. In the antebellum South, slavery provided the economic foundation that supported the dominant planter ruling class. Children during this period were often malnourished because they didnt know how to balance out nutrition properly and the slaves werent begin fed equally. The clothing and housing for slaves were bad but managable and they were forced to live in small wooden cabins, one per family. some wealthy slaveholders would call for physicians if their slaves became ill, but the treatments were mostly various concoctions that most of the time did as much harm as good.
   In conclusion slavery in the North wasn't as bad as slavery in the South.
 http://americanrevwar.homestead.com/files/civwar/slavery.html

Slavery During the Civil War



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   Slavery was one of the reasons for the start of the Civil War.  When Abraham Lincoln was elected president no one southern state voted for him because his goal was to stop the expansion of slavery not to abolish it.  White Southerners didnt believe that Lincoln would protect slavery where it already existed so South Carolina declared they would secede from the union of Lincoln was elected president and did just that in December 1861 and was later followed by the lower south states of  Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Florida. In Feburary 1862 a month before Lincoln's inaguration the states formed a new nation called "The Confederate States of America," Lincoln then called for volunteers to suppress the rebellion and firing on Fort Sumpter, right after the other slave states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas joined the Confederacy. The States of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri stayed in the Union.

   The North went to war to save the American union, their goal in the war was to fastly restore the union under the constitution and the laws during 1862 which recognized slavery as legitiment.  Going against slavery would make the reunion of the union difficult so union generals like George B. McClellan in Virgina and Henry W. Halleck in the west were ordered not defeat the southern armies but to prevent rebellion.  In the beginning of the war slaves who escaped to union lines were sent back to their owners in conformity of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. In the South they used their slaves to fight in the war, they used them to build  fortifications, dig latrines, and haul supplies.  Slave owners were reluctant to send their slaves to the front line for 2 reasons one because they risked the lost of their most valuable property so they watched them more closely than they did on their farms and the other reason is the men were overworked and mistreated, they returned back to the farms in bad physical condition so they sent there most unmanagable slaves. With the shortage of white manpower it left the South no choice but to put slaves to work in the factories and mines, with the use of the slaves in industry it prevented the south from fightin longer that they could've.  In the last days of the war the Confederacy even used black slaves to fight offering them freemdom as their reward. The slaves ran way in massive numbers during the spring and summer of 1862, abolitionists who insisted that the war should be one for the freedom of the slaves confronted Lincoln so he created the Emancipation Proclimation which didn't free one slave but silenced the abolitionist. Lincoln pressure and authorized the first all black army unit, aftican americans were offered a step towards emancipation because the North needed them badly. 180,000 African-Americans served in the Union army, and another 20,000 in the Union navy, they made up about 15 percent of all Northern forces in the war out of all the causes the african americans were fighting for their freedom which was the most significant of all the causes.  In September 1862 Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made ending slavery in the South a war goal, which complicated the Confederacy's manpower shortages. The slaves of the Confederacy were free because of the Emancipation Proclamation. When the thirteenth Amendment banned slavery in the United States. The Thirteenth Amendment said that neither slavery nor involuntary bondage should exist in the United States.

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/slavery-during-the-civil-war.html

Harriet Tubman

    Harriet Tubman was born at Edward Brodas plantation near Bucktown, Dorchester County, Maryland.  She was born into slavery because her ancestors were bought from Africa in Shackles in the early 18th century. She was the 11th child born to Benjamin Ross and Harriet Greene, her birth name was  Araminta but when she became an adult she started calling herself Harriet.

http://www.freewebs.com/birmingham-schools-kick-racism-out/Site%20Pictures/Harriet%20Tubman.jpg

     In the Biblical story of Exodus they tell you about how Moses freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt in similar events Harriet Tubman was called "Moses" for her work when she freed over 300 black slaves.

      In 1894 Harriet escaped the plantation she was working on, by herself she followed the guide of the North Star to free land in Pennsylvania.  Her escape came about after her master died and she heard rumors that her and her brother were going to be sold to a chain gang, her brother escaped with her but got scared and went back to the plantation.  Harriet only traveled at night until she knew she crossed the border from slaveholding to non-slaveholding states, she later made a  vow that she would go back and help free her family and friends.  She went to Philadelphia and started found work cooking, laudrying, and scrubbing so she could save her money to make rescue trips, she also joined the city's large and active  abolitionist which worked with the Underground Railroad. Using the home of quaker abolitionist Thomas Garrett as a checkpoint, Harriet took on 20 hazardous missions in which she went down south and led slaves up north and sometimes going as far as Canada. She used a rifle on her mission threatening to shoot anyone who wanted to turn back, fellow abolitionist John Brown dubbed her "General" Tubman. Her name quickly spread threw out the south and slaveholders had a $40,000 bounty on her head, but she didn't stop and always managed to evade slavecatchers even once when she fell asleep under her own wanted poster.  Harriet successfully rescued her sister in 1850, her brother in 1851, her other three brothers in 1854, and her parents in 1857, she got her parents a home in Auburn New York from Senate William H. Seward of New York who was a adovcate of hers.  Around 1858 Harriet teamed up with John Brown in a plan to raid Harper's Ferry, Virginia, the plan was to raid the armory, give the weapons to the slaves and start a rebellion, she helped with the fund raising and would've participated if she wasn't sick. In 1865, Harriet began caring for wounded black soldiers as the matron of the Colored Hospital at Fortress Monroe, Virginia and she also continued helping others after the war. She raised money for freedmen's schools, helped destitute children and continued caring for her parents. In 1868, she transformed her family's home into the "Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People" and also lobbied for educational opportunities for freedmen, she also started working on her autobiogragph with Sarah Hopkins Bradford a white school teacher in Auburn New York it was published later that year. In 1869 Harriet married Nelson Davis a Union veteran half her age who was boardered at her house, he died in 1888 from tuberculosis. In 1896, she was a delegate to the National Association of Colored Women's first annual convention, she believed their right to vote was vital to their freedom. Around the start of the 19th century Harriet bought 25 acres of land around her home with the money she raised through benefactors and speaking engagements and  made arrangements for the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church to take over the Home. In 1911 herself was welcomed into Home after they heard about her health statues. Harriet Tubman died on March 10, 1913 an was givin a full military style funeral, she was buried in Fort Hill Cemetery.

http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/tubm-har.htm

The Underground Railroad- Post 2

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What is the underground railroad?  The underground railroad is a system where people help runaway slaves get to the North and to Canada, this organized system started at the end of the 18th century. When the system was first created the people helped a slave owned by George Washington escape to the North and he referred to the situation by calling the organization a "society of Quakers, formed for such purposes," the system then grew and around 1831 was named the "Underground Railroad." They named it that after the steam railroads which had just come into play in that time period. The organization also used terms in railroading to represent certain things for example homes and businesses where slaves stayed and ate were called "Stations" and "Depots," these places were run by "Stationmasters," the people who helped out by bringing food and money were "Stockholders," and the people responsible for moving the slaves from one station to another were the "Conductors."  The system was very organized but was alot of hard work for the slaves, they had to escape from their owner and for those who had a conductor posing as a slave they would be guided in the right direction, the slaves could only move at night and travel 10 to 20 to each station where they stoped to rest and eat but they had to hide so they wouldn't get caught.  As the slaves rested they station would send a message to the next station alerting them that a slave would be coming to them.  For the less fortunate slaves who didnt have the luxury of having a conductor guide him they had rely on their own resources to find their way.  Also some slaves would travel by boat that the organization had to pay for.  They also paid to improve the appearance of the slaves so they wouldn't be recognized, the money form this was donated by individuals and various groups, including vigilance committees. Vigilance committes were held in the larger towns like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, also instead of soliciting the money for those purposes the committees helped slaves settle in communities and sent out letters of recommendation to help them find jobs. Their were many noble people who worked in the Underground Railroad like John Fairfeild a son of a slaveholding family who made many daring rescues, Levi Quaker who assisted more than 3,000 slaves, and of course Harriet Tubman who made 19 trips to the South and escorted over 300 slaves out to freedom.
   

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2944.html