Slavery in the United States

While it can be argued that the United States were founded on the principles of due process, representation, and universal rights, the concept of slavery remained as one of the most visible and persistent exceptions to these values and ideals. In the United States, the issue of slavery was legal from the colonial period to the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Most of the slaves in the United States were individuals who had been brought from Africa and their descendants.

Currently, the issue of slavery in the United States continues to create a racial dimension and more than often, slavery continues to elicit the United States civil rights debates.

By the year 1860, there were almost four million individuals in the United States who were living as slaves. Most of the slaves worked in the agricultural sector in the south. The development and the rise of the cotton industry in the southern part of the United States lead to an increase in slavery. This then became a catalyst for war between the north and the south in regard to the civil war.

The conditions that the slaves were kept in were harsh, and this started from what was then considered as the ‘middle passage’ whereby Africans were stuffed in ships like cargo. It is projected that around fifteen out of a hundred of the individuals who were captured or exchanged for barter trade as slaves died while still in transit to the united states.

After they had arrived in the United States, the conditions that the slaves were left to stay acted as a form of dehumanizing them since they were denied even the basic human rights.

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The slaves were not allowed to speak in their native language since it was banned. Additionally, the slaves were not allowed to have families or marry. In the event that the slaves had children, the children were taken away from them and then sold. At the time, it was a communal exercise to find the slave owners sexually assaulting the enslaved women. The working conditions that the slaves were forced to endure were hard and very long. Every day, the violence that they endured became part of their lives.