The enslaved people once lived freely, but this freedom was forcibly taken from them by the colonizers who took the opportunity to exploit them by virtue of the Europeans assumed superiority. For instance, the enslaved Africans were forced to work in the vast South Carolina plantations (Lockley, 1). The grips of slavery strengthened throughout the colonization era and the humanity of the enslaved people were too dishonored, to an extent as to be considered a property to be owned and sold. The query that comes to mind is that, where did the intelligent and civilized colonizers got the freedom to own the humanity of another? They sure saw how the enslaved and the freed slaved responded to their circumstances. An example of which were instances when the slaves resort to running away, as evidenced by advertisements to reward for those who can capture the slave runaways (Conrad, 362).
The lives of the enslaved were even more tarnished with contempt by the whites even after their freedom were granted. Thus, the onslaught of the ‘slave revolt’ has been just an appropriate recourse that was taken by the enslaved people, and they knew that their deliverance will not “be handed to them without effort of their own”(Genovese, 7). With the bravery of the enslave people to get out of the system of slavery and to overthrow it as a social system (Genove, 3), they were able to successfully achieve their goals, albeit, with too much blood loss in the process. The reader is left to think how different was the general conviction and faith of the colonizers during those days that they appear to have been pleased about having human beings as their slaves?
Works Cited
Conrad, Robert. Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil. University of Pennsylvania, 1984. Print.
Genovese, Eugene. From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World. LSU Press, 1992. Print.
Lockley, Timothy. Maroon Communities in South Carolina: A Documentary Record. University of South Carolina Press, 2009. Print.
