1.0 Introduction
Slavery started way back in 1513 in the United States (U.S) when Spanish and French brought slaves. Under President Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe who slavery was at its peak with slaves mainly being brought in from Africa. Slavery was instituted through passage of laws in different states. These laws were mainly passed to regulate the treatment, ownership, trade and duties of slaves in the respective sate so that the institution was regulated differently in different states. The emancipation acts of 1780 and 1804 temporarily stopped slave trade in most of the northern parts of America amidst protest from the southern states which largely depended on slaves for labor in the plantations . It is worth now to note that slave trade and enslavement occurred more in the south than the North and therefore the institution of slavery persisted longer in the southern states. Slavery played such a vital role in the southern states that deep sectionalism coupled with the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 triggered secession by the southern slave states. Abraham Lincoln who did not get a single electoral vote from the southern states insisted on abolition of slavery which angered the southern states triggering their secession from the U.S . The southern states advanced elaborate arguments to justify slavery, an institution that historically influenced the culture, values and culture of the southerners. This paper will evaluate the arguments advanced by the southerners to justify slavery and how the institution influenced the culture, values and culture of the southerners.
2.0 Arguments advanced by southerners to justify the institution of slavery
Despite the fact that slave trade had been going on for years world over, the popularity of the slave –slaveholder culture grew in the southern states of America towards the close of the seventeenth century. There was a shift from the use of indentured servants as well as Native Americans to the use of enslaved Africans. The indentured servants, being white, demanded better rations, time off and differential treatment. They could also lay claim to lands promised to them at the end of their indenture of six years. Native American workers on the other hand commonly ran away and tended to be prone to some diseases such as malaria. The southern planters required a constant source of cheap labor for their plantations to enable them to maximize their profits and thus the appeal of having enslaved Africans to do the back breaking plantation work increased. Thus the southerners advocated for slavery on the premise of consistency, availability and the low cost of labor.
The institution of slavery was very beneficial to the south economically because in meant they had cheap or rather free labor after their initial investment to provide labor in the rice, tobacco and cotton plantations. The southern economy was founded on the growth and exportation of these crops. The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitley led to an increase in the economic benefits of farming cotton and thereby increasing the need for slave labor. An end to slave labor as was being advocated for by abolitionists would have meant the economic collapse of the south.
Another argument held by the slaveholding south was that the Africans were biologically inferior to their masters. An argument supported by the existing scientific communities at the time as well. The slave-owners therefore believed that because slaves were inferior it was okay to treat them inhumanely and abuse their human rights. In deed the proponents of this ideology argued that, like donkeys, Africans were beasts of burden. The Dred Scott Decision of 1857 further gave slaveholders an argument to defend their keeping of slaves. The United States Supreme Court ruled that all people of African ancestry, both slaves and the free, could never be become citizens and therefore could not sue in federal court. They also ruled that the federal government had no power to prohibit slavery in its territories. Virginia law at the time stated that slaves were chattel property whose status as such was lifelong and hereditary. This meant that all blacks had no legal standing within the court systems and as they were property, the constitution protected their owner’s rights and not theirs.
Slave holders of religious persuasions presented several scripture based arguments to defend their right to own slaves by. They argued that Abraham, the father of the faith, had slaves. The Tenth Commandment “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, or his man-servant, or his maid-servant...” showed the existence of the servants/slaves. Paul of the New Testament convinced Philemon, a slave to return to his master. Christ the Messiah lived during the times of the Roman Empire in which slavery was common but never spoke out against it.
In the south the slaves reproduced at a birthrate similar to that of the whites meaning that their population was quite high. Defenders of the institution of slavery argued that a sudden abolition and freeing of slaves would lead to anarchy. They argued that there would be high unemployment rates, uprisings and general chaos, citing the French Revolution as an example of the probable path of the resulting abolition. They maintained that upholding the status quo at the time was the best possible choice to ensure stability of the South and possibly the Northern states as well. Another argument postulated by the defenders of the slave culture of the South was that slaves were considered a capital investment and thus planters(slave owners) offered them medical care and tolerable work conditions that made their lives much better in comparison to Europe’s poor and the workers in Northern states. They further argued that they had done the enslaved Africans a service by giving them conditions far more civilized and improved than what they would have had as free men in Africa.
3.0 The impact of slavery on southern values, customs and laws
Slavery greatly impacted the Southern States. The first and most prominent impact was economic prosperity. Without the sweat and back breaking labor of the enslaved Africans in the cotton, rice and tobacco plantations the prosperity enjoyed by the South; which was mainly from the proceeds of exportation of these products to regions where the demand was high, would have been significantly less. The American Civil War of 1861 is another notable occurrence that resulted from slavery in Southern states. The push for abolition of slavery by the North and the resistance of antislavery political forces to the spreading of the same slave culture to Western states angered the South. The South claimed that by doing this the North was infringing on their States’ rights which were protected by the constitution. The conflict upon reaching critical point eventually sparked off the beginning of the Civil War.
The end of the Civil War saw the passing of laws referred to as the Black Codes by the Southern states. These laws limited and controlled the migration, labor and activities of newly freed slaves. The codes showed the unwillingness of the white Southerners to treat the blacks as equals. It also reflected their fears that freedmen would not work without coercion. Thus it can be said that slavery contributed to the culture of racial discrimination among the southern states and particularly discrimination of the southern blacks. The institution of Jim Crow Laws that stated that people of African descent were ‘separate but equal’ was another result of slavery. The laws created de jure segregation between the races from the years 1876 to 1965. Despite being called equal, African Americans had separate public schools, public places, transportation, restrooms, restaurants and drinking places from the whites. This segregation also extended to the military. The inferior treatment and accommodation as compared to that extended to white Americans resulted in the people of African descent being disadvantaged economically, socially as well as in the educational field.
As a result of their enslavement, Southern blacks developed a unique culture, new art forms and language. When their white masters denied them drums in fear they would communicate with each other they responded by creating new styles of music full of rhythms and cadences to entertain themselves. It is during this period that many negro spirituals were composed. After centuries of enslavement most of them lost their native African tongues and so instead developed a new language form, Creole English to communicate with each other without their masters understanding them. They also developed a strong family culture as way of coping with separation from their people back in Africa and eventually amongst themselves when they got sold off or moved around.
Most Southern blacks embraced Evangelical Protestantism form of Christianity which is still greatly reflected today as it appealed to their emotions with its fervor as well as singing and the promise of deliverance and spiritual rebirth. This sense of religious empowerment led to the civil right movement that led to many laws that help abolish discrimination and embraced the equality of all. Great civil leaders of history, such as Martin Luther, were born out of the racial segregation. The civil leaders imparted the values of equality of all, social justice and non-violent fight for social justice. Due to the rise of civil rights movement the southern states became the battleground for laws that supported equality of all races and as result the southern states have traditionally become more tolerant thus accommodating more immigrants. As a result the southerners, not wanting to go back to the dark days of racial segregation, embrace racial diversity and equality of all.
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