Slavery Equals Power

Slavery equals cotton. Cotton equals money. Money equals power. Power to control an entire race and cause one of the bloodiest conflicts in American history, with death counts matching that of World War I and II combined. Slavery was fundamentally shaped through man’s desire for wealth and power. Despite this, man’s desire for human righteousness was too powerful for such a horrendous event to continue. In the beginning, the cause of slavery sprang from the Southern need to hire cheap labor in exchange for grueling cotton field work in the sizzling Southern sun. The cotton gin made slavery spread like wildfire and the mass production of the golden white fluff expand like never before. African Americans would be rounded up from their homes
In the end, it was unsuccessful, but it sparked debate around the country as the North viewed Brown’s act as worthy and equal to being a martyr and the South began talks of secession. The final straw came in 1860 when the Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln won presidency, causing the split of the South from the Union and guaranteeing the power to protect slavery in the newly formed sovereign nation. A monumental step in the right direction for slaves was Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation which abolished slavery in states “in rebellion”. This act was peculiar in that it didn’t actually free any slaves, but it gave the North incentive to break into the South and strive for Union victory. In the end, the North had this new proclamation, more soldiers, and better resources that pushed them over the edge in defeating the ill-equipped
The Reconstruction was kicked off when the 13th amendment merely gave African Americans freedom, but not citizenship or the right to vote. Even with this, the content President Andrew Johnson left the future of African Americans in the hands of Southern states, falling in line with the notion that: “History repeats itself.” The government did establish the Freedmen’s Bureau which was an agency sponsoring African American relief and education, but still, Southerners were giving unreasonable labor contracts and sharecropping to new workers. These, along with the Black Codes, which ruled blacks subordinate to whites, and White Supremacy groups like the Ku Klux Klan, slowly and meticulously pointed towards the reinvention of slavery. Fortunately, Congress instituted the 14th amendment giving African Americans citizenship and the 15th amendment giving them the right to vote. Struggles for former slaves and Africans would still continue for the next century and beyond, as some still live through and witness forms of racism to this day. Luckily, millennials seem to speak out against these discriminations and African American’s rights have never been greater in America then they are