Posted: September 16th, 2017
The myth of American Outlaw
Reform associations proliferated in the United States of America in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. These reforms addressed various issues such as abolition of slavery, reform of vegetarianism, phonetic spelling and seamen. The social protests often seemed to be outbursts that were short lived which were mounted by loosely groups that were connected and regionally rooted while emphasizing on demands that were local (King and Haveman 497). However, after a period of time, social protests became sustained, organized formerly, transcended into the neighborhoods and based their target at a distant. Their existed several social movements in America such as the antislavery societies, women’s rights association and temperate unions whose initiative was to forge extensive unions that resulted to the development of nationwide network of reformers , thus resulting to establishment of routines that were flexible and helped in facilitating sustained protest and mobilization. The most influential social movement was the one titled anti-slavery movement which was triggered by the development of media.
Antislavery in America
In the years between 1740 to 1840, antislavery movement became modernized due to its spread among the young nations commencing from Maine to North Carolina to Massachusetts and finally to Ohio. It developed as a contentious repertoire of acts such as publications, protests and petitions that were used in different locations by reformers. This movement like any other needed some resources both tangible and intangible. This included resources such as, infrastructure funding, human resource, expertise, publicity and the organizing templates (King and Haveman 501) .In order to acquire these resources the movement had to rely on established social institutions and communication networks that were always viewed as powerful communication networks. The ant slavery movement was not viewed as an outlaw because it collaborated with various organizations such as educational institutions, churches, professional associations which helped via providing important resources to support this movement. For example, many of the churches were in support of the abolitionist movement. It was believed that the original abolitionists were the reformed Presbyterians where as the Quakers had united against slave trade despite their national organizations ruling. Some preachers of this church preached against slavery thus passing important information to a wider society.
According to Guasco, by the end of the 1814 summer, Edward Coles had already anticipated the termination of his term as a private secretary of President James Madison’s and had started contemplating about his future career (17). He committed himself by liberating the enslaved women and men that he had inherited six years earlier from his father and was ready to consider options that would enable him to pursue his convictions. In his life, he desired to be a resident of Virginia, a state that had discouraged slavery. He also pointed out that, by him promoting abolition of slave trade in Virginia, he would accomplish his goals and objectives though the limitations he had, was lack of adequate skills to enable him succeed on his own. In his letter to his mentor and friend Thomas Jefferson, he asked for support from him in order to overcome the slavery trade that was going on in America. However, Coles feared to appear arrogant via calling the retired president attention on the persisted slavery in his country, an institution that was well known by Jefferson to be repulsive to the revolution principles of having free institutions. Cole declared that, it’s only the father of freedom that would enable the mobilization of the support that was urgently needed to be put into practice with complete principles contained in the Declarations that were renowned. However, this antislavery movement was faced with violence as evidenced by the British operations in the region of Chesapeake in the summer of 1814, thus triggering a resurrection of assault reports though Coles remained unconcerned (Guasco 18). Even before Jefferson could respond to the letter he had received from Cole, the British had already stormed the nation’s capital thus forcing Madison to run away and hide himself in the country of Maryland as the enemies burned the president’s house and the capital.
The abolition of slavery legally, has often been viewed as a narrative endpoint. This lead to the impression that subsequently helped in the fundamental departure of status quo, which consisted of very complex and enduring issues. For example, in the colonial period, the legal elimination of slave trade led to coming up of various opportunities and options (Quirk 529). However, freedom remained surrounded by various things such as the vested interests, economic imperatives and social hierarchies. In particular, colonial Africa slavery was viewed as slow death over decades of years. Moves taken by various individuals to confront slavery by indigenous people were often compromised by the use of forced labor. These contests have resulted historically and have initiated the comparisons that exist to contemporary problems. On one side of the triangle, we have the ideological and legacies of enslavement patterns and servitude that can be linked to all the collective forms of intergenerational deprivation racism and discrimination. The other side of view is that, the tribulations that face millions of individual human beings can be as a result of contemporary form of slavery including bonded labor and human trafficking. Individuals, who have the privilege of escaping from slavery, always come across various challenges in their lives. Thus, these brings a divide between the effective emancipation of slavery and legal abolition. It is evident that, legal abolition of slavery was not only restricted to the American society or in the 19th century, but it was extended to majority of the parts in the globe including the millions of slaves in the middle East, Asia and Africa.
Importance of the slaves in America
European settlers especially those in the North America turned to the slaves in Africa as a cheaper and more sufficient source of labor than the indentured servants who were mainly the poor Europeans. Most of the slaves were shipped to the American colonies. The Negro slaves played a critical role during the colonization of the Europeans new world. For over three and half centuries, over twelve point five million slaves were estimated to have been received from Africa to America through the middle passage that was infamous (Miers 80). This trade was brutal as it helped supply the European settlers with cheap labor that they desperately needed for the purposes of developing their new conquered territories. The need for human labor to work in the sugar plantations and the ever increasing demand for sugar by the Europeans catalyzed the expansion of slave trade across the world. When the enslaved Indians became insufficient to meet their demands, the miners and planters turned to Africa where those African who were elite provided slaves to the European slave traders especially those who had been captured, condemned or conquered. This was carried out in exchange for currency and other needed commodities such as textiles and weapons (Klein 87). Before the organization of antislavery movements, this trade experienced sustained rapid growth. However this began to change in the 1780s due to the ongoing events in Britain. Britain being the transatlantic world premier slave trader and among the leading slave holder, it vested its interests in the continuation and foreseeing further expansion of slave trade in the transatlantic. These vested interests were later challenged domestically by the emergence of anti-slavery movement that was very vigorous and mobilized support from the wider section of the society (Brown 113). The break through against slave trade abolition was experienced during the Napoleonic wars of 1806 and 1807 though the campaign against slave trade and slavery began in 1823. The campaign focused on questions such as, terms and timing and the existing government policies that were in favor of amelioration that were eventually overshadowed by the push of the instant resolution. In 1833, the British parliament passed a legislation that abolished slavery in various jurisdictions which affected almost 800,000 slaves (Drescher 4).The slave owners were compensated by being paid and the parliament also ensured that there were provisions for the apprenticeship period. This move was particularly important as it served as a major taste case for those planters that were situated in Brazil, Southern USA, and French Caribbean which looked at the British experience to evaluate the likely significance of slave trade abolition in their own societies. The British Caribbean fortunes were also very important to the empires as it was extremely costly to campaign against the ongoing transatlantic slave trade which had gone on for decades after it was legally abolished by the protagonists in the west. The key primary factor that drove the Americans to fight against the transatlantic slavery was because of its morals and ideology. However, this could not stop other abolitionist from creating complementary arguments about the expected benefits of legal abolition.
According to my own perspective the abolition of slave trade was a good thing to be taken into considerations by the American colonies. Slave trade was about violating the civil rights of a person thus, the putting an end to slave trade and slavery by the initiative of antislavery movements was a responsibility that was moral. Slavery had to be eliminated completely because it was an immoral act and injustice treatment of people. Moreover, the keeping of slaves and engaging in slave trade would have probably ruined the United States economy if it was not terminated. This is because; it would have become costly after some time due to the influx of foreigners into the country leading to overuse of the limited resources. Also the keeping of slaves would have destroyed the American image as it would be looked down upon by other nations. However, slave trade was important as it played an important role in building the American’ s economy as a result of the cheap labor that was provided by the slaves who worked in various plantations such as sugar, coffee, cotton and tea plantations. This eventually resulted in the booming of agricultural trade. The cotton gin invention in 1793 solidified slavery central importance in building the South American economy. However, by the mid of nineteenth century, the American westward development together with the existing abolition movement in the northern part enhanced a debate that was great over slavery that would lead to tearing of the nation apart in the American civil war that was very bloody. Though the abolitionist union helped free the nation’s slaves, the slavery legacy continued to be of influence in the history of the Americans, from the chaotic years of reconstruction up to the civil rights movement that evolved after emancipation.
Conclusion
During the 17th and 18th centuries, black slaves provided cheap labor to the various European plantations such as the rice, tobacco and indigo plantations that belonged to the southern cost of America. However, after the American Revolution, majority of the colonists where slavery was unimportant in building their economy started linking the black slaves oppression to their own suppression by the British thus calling for the abolition of slave trade. Thus it’s reasonable to conclude that the antislavery movement was not an outlaw movement in America but a movement that focused its initiatives to fight for the slaves who were being oppressed by the British colonies. They were being overworked by providing cheap labor in a hardship environment.
Work Cited
. Joel, Quirk. “Ending slavery in its all forms: Legal Abolition and effective emancipation in historical perspective”. Human Rights12.4 (2008):529-544. Print.
Herbert, Klein.The Atlantic Slave Trade .Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ,1999.Print
Brown, C.L. Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.Print
Drescher, S. The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor Versus Slavery in British Emancipation .Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.Print
Miers, S. Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade. New York: Africana Publishing
Company, 1975.Print
Suzanne, Cooper, Guasco.”To put into complete practice those hallowed principles: Edward Coles and the grafting of antislavery Nationalism in early nineteenth century”.American nineteenth century11.1 (2010): 17-45. Print.
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