American Slavery: Immoral and Profitable
American Slavery: Immoral and Profitable
American slavery became a profitable but controversial institution. Slavery in my opinion was never a good thing regardless of time, place or race. I’ve always felt American slavery was wrong because it held human beings in bondage under inhumane conditions for free labor. Slavery prevented human beings from basic civil rights enjoyed by us today. Slavery was an immoral institution and was motivated primarily for profit along with other factors.
The enslavement of Africans and African descendants was a crime against humanity. It was a crime against humanity because of its offensive barbarism, its magnitude, long duration, and number of people it brutalized and murdered. It’s the largest forced migration in history and caused the deaths of millions.
The African Slave Trade by Basil Davidson showed us slavery coming from Africa and into the Americas. Davidson showed how slavery in Africa and the brutal form of slavery that would develop in the Americas were surpassingly different. African slavery was more affiliated with European servitude which was the condition of most Europeans in the 15th century. In West Africa, for example, slaves could marry, own property and even own slaves. And slavery ended after a certain number of years of servitude. That idea came to the Americas but down the line there was a shift in thought. Most importantly, African slavery was never passed from one generation to another, and it lacked the racist concept that whites were masters and blacks were slaves. Before slavery began Northern Europeans would even entertain African royalty. Europeans spoke of barbaric and cannibals in the Southern part of African but there was no idea of inferiority. “They supposed no natural inferiority in Africans, no inherent failure to develop and mature. That was to be the great myth of later years…” So the idea of racial inequality seemed to not exist initially according to Davidson.
The African slave trade was
American slavery became a profitable but controversial institution. Slavery in my opinion was never a good thing regardless of time, place or race. I’ve always felt American slavery was wrong because it held human beings in bondage under inhumane conditions for free labor. Slavery prevented human beings from basic civil rights enjoyed by us today. Slavery was an immoral institution and was motivated primarily for profit along with other factors.
The enslavement of Africans and African descendants was a crime against humanity. It was a crime against humanity because of its offensive barbarism, its magnitude, long duration, and number of people it brutalized and murdered. It’s the largest forced migration in history and caused the deaths of millions.
The African Slave Trade by Basil Davidson showed us slavery coming from Africa and into the Americas. Davidson showed how slavery in Africa and the brutal form of slavery that would develop in the Americas were surpassingly different. African slavery was more affiliated with European servitude which was the condition of most Europeans in the 15th century. In West Africa, for example, slaves could marry, own property and even own slaves. And slavery ended after a certain number of years of servitude. That idea came to the Americas but down the line there was a shift in thought. Most importantly, African slavery was never passed from one generation to another, and it lacked the racist concept that whites were masters and blacks were slaves. Before slavery began Northern Europeans would even entertain African royalty. Europeans spoke of barbaric and cannibals in the Southern part of African but there was no idea of inferiority. “They supposed no natural inferiority in Africans, no inherent failure to develop and mature. That was to be the great myth of later years…” So the idea of racial inequality seemed to not exist initially according to Davidson.
The African slave trade was