Essays 2
Essay 2:
For this essay I read “ Map: The British Colonies”, “Religion and Slavery”, “Philadelphia”, “The African Slave Trade and the Middle Passage”, and “Abolitionism”. For the short sections (the ones highlighted in blue) I read “Slave with Iron Muzzle” and “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”.
My understanding of the slave trade and the middle passage has greatened since reading these articles. Some things I knew, other things astonished me. While reading the short but frightening article “Slave with Iron Muzzle” I was confronted with a new method of torture I had never heard of being used before during that time period. You always hear about beatings and whips and chains and even rape of women and children, but a muzzle? I guess it does make since, although highly disapproved by me personally, I’m sure it served its purpose back then and taught the slaves not to steal food or talk back or whatever they did that cause their owner to put it on them. My personal opinion is that slavery is bad, but reading about this kind of torture to a human being interests me because it blows my mind. Kind of like reading stuff about the holocaust, you hate that it happened but you want to learn more because you want to try and makes sense of it. Something that popped out at me was the time line when I was reading “Map: The British Colonies”. It says that Massachusetts was the first colony to legalize slavery. Now to me that’s kind of odd considering that when the Civil War took place, that colony fought with the north opposing slavery, but they were the first colonies in North America to have slaves legally. But, nothing blew me away quite like what I read in “The African Slave Trade and the Middle Passage” about what the Africans were put through in the process of being brought to America. Although it was not mentioned in the article, I know that as well as being chained to dead people and packed into a hot and miserable ship, if you had to use the rest room or
For this essay I read “ Map: The British Colonies”, “Religion and Slavery”, “Philadelphia”, “The African Slave Trade and the Middle Passage”, and “Abolitionism”. For the short sections (the ones highlighted in blue) I read “Slave with Iron Muzzle” and “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”.
My understanding of the slave trade and the middle passage has greatened since reading these articles. Some things I knew, other things astonished me. While reading the short but frightening article “Slave with Iron Muzzle” I was confronted with a new method of torture I had never heard of being used before during that time period. You always hear about beatings and whips and chains and even rape of women and children, but a muzzle? I guess it does make since, although highly disapproved by me personally, I’m sure it served its purpose back then and taught the slaves not to steal food or talk back or whatever they did that cause their owner to put it on them. My personal opinion is that slavery is bad, but reading about this kind of torture to a human being interests me because it blows my mind. Kind of like reading stuff about the holocaust, you hate that it happened but you want to learn more because you want to try and makes sense of it. Something that popped out at me was the time line when I was reading “Map: The British Colonies”. It says that Massachusetts was the first colony to legalize slavery. Now to me that’s kind of odd considering that when the Civil War took place, that colony fought with the north opposing slavery, but they were the first colonies in North America to have slaves legally. But, nothing blew me away quite like what I read in “The African Slave Trade and the Middle Passage” about what the Africans were put through in the process of being brought to America. Although it was not mentioned in the article, I know that as well as being chained to dead people and packed into a hot and miserable ship, if you had to use the rest room or