Slavery in the 19th Century

Over the course of a few classes, we began our discussion of slavery leading up to the civil war. In class, we examined slave and cotton data from the 19th century, watched the docudrama "Prince Among Slaves", read about slavery in other parts of the world, specifically Futa Jallon, and read primary source documents concerning the morality of slavery. We had several essential questions: How did slavery become economically entrenched in American society by the early 19th century? How does a system of slavery based on race affect human dignity? What human characteristics does such a system tend to ignore? These three questions cover a lot of difficult issues and time in history.

So how did slavery become economically entrenched in American society by the early nineteenth century? The simple answer is: Cotton, This website provided interesting data comparing the trends of cotton and slavery in 19th century America. Before the invention of the cotton gin, cotton was a insignificant crop, producing only 1.5 million pounds a year in 1790. In 1790, there were 690,00 slaves in the united states, mostly concentrated in the Chesapeake and Carolina areas. With the invention of the cotton gin, cotton production skyrocketed, and in turn, so did slave population. By 1810, cotton production was up to 85 million pounds per year, and the slave population had grown to 1,190,000. Fifty years later, 2.2 billion pounds of cotton were being produced each year, and  3.954.00 people were enslaved in the US. An examination of these two sets of data show a very distinct correlations between cotton production and slavery. Slavery had become entrenched in the American economy through a need for labor to meet increasing demand.

A system of slavery based on race affects human dignity by altogether eliminating it from those who are enslaved. In the informational film "Prince Among Slaves", we see a former prince's status turned into a mockery as he is enslaved and reduced from a powerful man to the lowest of the low. All his dignity is lost when he becomes a slave. Regardless of their position before they were enslaved, all slaves lost their human dignity. Even people who were enslaved in their homeland lost respect when they became American slaves. In Africa, slaves had a much easier job, and had many benefits. In the US, slaves had virtually no rights.


The enslaved Prince as portrayed in "Prince Among Slaves"

What human characteristics does a system of slavery tend to ignore? The very concept of slavery demotes the enslaved to a subhuman level. It ignores the fact that they are human too. By ignoring the humanity of slaves, people could romanticize slavery to forget about the awful thing that it is. In his book Cannibals All", pro-slavery activist George Fitzhugh dared to say "The negro slaves of the south are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in world". Fitzhugh had an idealized view of slavery in which slaves were treated with respect and did light work., In reality this was not the case. Slaves were probably the most unfortunate people in the world. The system of slavery ignores all characteristics of people that make us human.