Slavery Entrenched in America

The essential three questions from class were, How did slavery become economically entrenched in American society in 19th century? How did a system of slavery based race affect human dignity? and  What human characteristics does such a system tend to ignore? To answer these question we read multiple articles and sources on each topic and answered each question.


First, How did slavery become economically entrenched in American society by the early 19th century. During the early 19th century cotton was not very significant because the south only produced 1.5 million pounds. In 1790 the slave population of the United States was about 690,000 and was only in the areas of Chesapeake and Carolina areas. Demand  of cotton grew and so did the number of slaves. If you look ahead to the year 1830 the amount of slaves in the United States was approximately over 2 million and the United was also producing about 331 million pounds of cotton, More than double the amount of cotton the produced 10 years. By around the early 19th century the South was producing an amazing 2.21 billion pounds of cotton annually and the amount of slaves were around 4 million. It seems that the amount of slaves seems to relate to the amount of cotton being produced, the cotton was constantly increasing as well as the amount of slaves. At this point the American economy was built on slavery and could not run without it.


Second, How does a system of slavery based on race affect human dignity? To learn about this in class we read about multiple people including Frederick Douglas who gave speech the day after 4th of July calling the United States hypocrites for celebrating freedom and liberty for all when the blacks of the United States were all enslaved. Another person we read about was George Fitzhugh, he believed that slaves were in a "better position"than non slaves. Fitzhugh believed they were in a better position because they didn't have to worry about food, clothing or water because they were all provided. I think this system tends to ignore the rights of slaves and also their intelligence, Most Americans thought the blacks were inferior and less intelligent than themselves so they should be slaves. We watched a movie in class about a enslaved prince who nobody was believed was a Prince until he was much older. After they realized that they have enslaved a Prince they let him go home. He movie just proves the point that some Americans thought that all blacks were inferior to them even though that was false. All of these resources that we used just showed that blacks were not treated the way they were supposed to be, like everyone else. 

Links: http://mappinghistory.uoregon.edu/english/US/US18-02.html 
http://princeamongslaves.org/module/comparing.html