For additional class partifcipation points, U.S. History I students can reflect on the rather powerful video depicting slavery in the American colonies from 1619 to 1739. Feel free to post as many comments as you wish, both reacting to the video, but also responding to each other. Please make your statements as clear and cogent as possible.
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The video precisely depicts the injustices that followed for hundreds of years of African enslavement. The purpose of this post is to notify the audience of important information the video described briefly. The Middle Passage which still remains to be the most horrible symbol of human traffic in history. Most slaves were captured in mass during battles, once captured the slaves would be chained, squished and stacked one another on a ship. The slaves would be herded into the ocean (Partial part of slave population never had seen the ocean). The travel was destined to the West hemisphere, on the travel disease was commonly spread and carcasses were tossed off the ship. Only a limited amount of food was given, enough to keep slaves alive until the arrival. Slaves arrived at an unknown location, confused and startled. Someone then picks the slave and takes them to a plantation. The slave is then put to work years to come.
Note: video reminder- Stanly Elkins wrote about slave experience (Book called Slavery 1959) He states that if an event in history is similar to slavery, it would be the holocaust. – He used proof and their situations.
This was a great summary and addition to the film. One thing I would like to add to your post when you discuss “The slave is then put to work years to come”. The male slaves did a lot of hard labor day in and day out. As for the African female slaves they had to do some hard labor as well, but also to replenish the African people (have babies) so the whites would always have more slaves.
This video caught my interest because I was surprised to find out how much “freedom” a slave really had before there was no defined legal laws on slavery. When slavery came to my mind I would usually think of a young person living with their owner, doing hard labor and never getting a chance to relax. The video stated that many of the indentured servants and slaves would go to the local taverns to talk and bond. Also the slaves had the right to earn and keep their wages. I had not even known that the slaves had gotten paid at all before slavery was deemed “legal”.
Another point in the film that interested me was if slaves (at this time slavery now had a legal definition) were to escape their owner and could make it down to Fort Mosé in Florida they were to be considered free. I wonder how many slaves actually made it to Fort Mosé because many slaves feared to escape their owners due to the harsh consequences when being caught. The Stono Rebellion is a great example because these slaves rebelled against their owners and only ended up getting decapitated. After the Stono Rebellion there were many new consequences in act for runaway slaves (whipping, branding & severing of body parts). Slavery started to affect all African people living in the new colonies. Even free Africans were not being treated the same compared to free whites. The laws under the “black codes” made freedom disappear almost entirely from the African people.
I really like how you pointed out the main points from the video and summarized it well with your thoughts, great write-up! I enjoyed reading it. I would have to agree as well in being surprised with the more freedom the slaves had. It was definitely interesting to find out how much of that freedom they had before it was legal. They had the freedom to go about and converse with each other including receiving some money and seeing how that quickly changed with the environment when it becomes legal was a fascinating turning point in the video.
I love the point that you make about how slaves were not defined at slaves at one point and they were free. I also found this interesting because I, too had the perseption that slaverly was consisting of only hard physical labor and punishment when in fact the first 11 slaves had much more freedom. I wonder if this was because slavery to the Dutch colony was new and the Dutch felt that in order to keep the slaves working they had to award them with some freedoms? I also found it extremely interesting that the first 11 slaves were in fact paid for their services. Would that not make them employees rather than slaves?
The video gave us a great insight into the mistreatment and abuse African slaves faced in the new world. This video clarified that slaves were not always treated unfairly and in fact the first 11 slaves brought over by the Dutch were given wages and were able to negotiate for better treatment. Some were even allowed “Half-freedom,” in which they were given small plots of land to farm, but they were still called upon if needed for labor. This surprised me because I always thought that from the beginning of the African slave arrival, they were treated unfairly and abused. It wasn’t until later, around the 1650’s when the demand for slavery increased, that African slaves lost their rights and the mistreatment of slaves, especially in the south on large plantations, began to happen.
I like how you pointed out that in the beginning not all slaves were treated poorly. I don’t think many people know that Africans that were brought to the colonies started off as either free or half-free.
This video expresses the interesting stories of African slavery from 1619-1739 and examines the history in how these slaves were treated. It shows the struggles slaves dealt with including the consequences when they would escape, splitting up African families and what freedom some slaves had compared to others. African American families would be split up which involved taking children away for tobacco profit. Men younger than 20 were the most valuable slaves and women 20 and younger were the second most valuable which showed the difference between men slaves and women slaves. A story that was brought up in this video that I found powerful was the story of John Punch. John Punch (a black man) and two other indentured servants, Victor and James (white men) included the same work as slaves. All three of these men wanted freedom which brought them to escape, but were captured soon after the escape and returned. While all three were punished with whippings, John Punch had his fate worse compared to Victor and James. Four years to indenture Victor and James, but John Punch being singled out with lifelong term. This point in the film was one that stuck in my mind the most because of how unfair this situation was during that time in slavery and the race involvement. Not only did these men try to escape, but many other slaves did as well with consequences including and R on their cheek and castration; depending on how many times they would try to escape.
One thing that I found interesting was the title of the video, “The Downward Spiral”.This title is extremely fitting for the summary of slavery from 1619 to 1739. When the first 11 slaves were brought to the new Dutch colony, they were paid for their services and actually given many freedoms. There was also no legal definition of slavery, so there were some instances where there were free black men. I did find it interesting how in the “half-freedom” agreement, the original slaves that were brought over were “half-free” but their children were not, they were full slaves. I wonder if this was to ensure that there would always be slaves in the colony even long after the original ones had passed on? The “Downward Spiral” starts to take effect in 1640 when after three indentured servants had tried to escape. The two white men were only given more time onto their servant sentences when the black man was sentenced to be a servant for life. The emphasis on race starts to take affect here and it only gets worse as the years progress. By 1691, slavery had become racially based and had replaced all the forms of indentured slavery. And by 1669, South Carolina became the “Slave Colony” where only black men and women were enslaved.
Another point I would like to make is the fact that the slaves only tried to rebel once and that wasn’t until 1739. Could this have been because the conditions for slaves were getting worse? One can’t help but question what it would have been like if slaves weren’t legally defined as property but rather they said “half-free” and were given wages for their labor. The history as we know it would have been written a lot differently.
A main reason slaves did not attempt to escape their masters in the United States was due to the mindset white slave owners inserted onto both whites and blacks at the time until centuries after. A Mindset of black inferiority in which the whites believed, that slaves required the supremacy of the whites to survive which was ironic since whites required slave labor to prosper in the New World. White slave owners passed on the belief that slaves were happy doing what they did and century after whites attempted to justify their doing an example would be Song of the South a movie (Included in Youtube) by Walt Disney (Year 1946), which was a story about a slave owning family and the slave community. The movie attempted to show the slave community and their happiness, a “media look of the south at the time.” Which the class distinguishes it is false by seeing the video “The Downward Spiral” in which accurately identified slave experience was harsher. Thereby slaves were prevented physically like the comment above stated, and mentally by the slaves mindset brought upon by the white slave owners.
The point you’ve made is true. The white slave owners did create a mind set for the black slaves to where they did not think of themselves as slaves. There was also no legal definition of slavery at the time, so the relationship among the slaves and the slave owners was much like that of a relationship between an employer and an employee. They probably didn’t try to rebel or escape because conditions, for the first 11 slaves, were not as harsh until the late 1600s. I also think that in having both black and white indentured servants didn’t lead the black servants to believe that they were there simply because of the color of their skin. There had not yet been a “race line” drawn and although black servants and slaves were working for white men, the distinction of race within slavery did not come until much later.
I found it interesting that the first African slaves were all male and were owned by the Dutch West India Company and not individuals. They were called “Atlantic Creoles”, and some had European fathers and African mothers. Since these slaves lived in Dutch New Amsterdam and the Dutch did not want interracial marriage, African women were brought over for them.
I also found it interesting and horrible that early slave owners would break up African slave families for their own economic gain. It begs the question of whether or not slave owners thought of them as families or just savage workers that lived together.
Finally, it was a strange concept to take in when the video said that in Carolina, a person would get 50 acres of land for every slave they brought over from Africa. It is kind of a sick and cruel way to promote oneself economically.
The reason that the first African slaves were all male was because they were able to do physical labor for long periods of time. They were all young men who were strong and able to perform the grueling hard labor that was demanded of them. They did later bring the African women in so there were no interracial relationships. One thing that I found interesting about that was that the Dutch actually let them get married. In 1641, the first marriage among slaves took place. I feel this shows that the Dutch did not see their slaves as actual slaves, in fact they were being treated like people, (which is much unlike the treatment of later slave owners).
One of the main things i found interesting was how when the first 11 slaves actually came to the dutch colonies they were not slaves at all, in fact they even worked with white men, a bit ironic but to see how slavery shifted from not blacks and whites, or poors or immigrants being “worlers” to just the African population was interesting, I would just like to know what made them switch from both blacks and whites to simply just blacks. what made the white people back then who were just as poor as the black population above slavery. Another part i found interesting was how if you were a free slave, that you had done your 10 or 20 years that even though you were now as they called you a “free” person you were worse off in most cases then when you were a slave. Atleast when they were enslaved they knew they had food and a place to live, but when they were not they had to fight and try and make it on their own, but because they were of african decent they were still treated unfairly. THe movie was all around a good movie and was very informing and i really liked how they depicted the scened to help show how the timeline actually worked and to try adn show the hardships some had to go through.
One thing I learned from the video that I found extremely interesting was that slaves did not have to work on Sundays. I had never before heard of a slave getting a day off. I had always imagined they were working from sun up to sun down, all day, everyday. This shows how important religion was to the Dutch. I also found it interesting that the white men would carry guns to church with them in case of the chance of a rebellion taking place. They were trying to be prepared, but when the Stono Rebellion took place, it was only short lived because a white man accidently stumbled onto them running through the woods. One can’t help but imagine how much differently history would have been affected if that man never saw them.
I also found it interesting on the punishments for repeat run away slaves. If a slave ran away once they were to be whipped, the second time an R was burned onto their cheek, the third time an ear was severed and an R was burned on the other cheek, and the fourth time if the offender was a male, he was castrated. This goes to show how cruely the slaves were treated and punished for trying to get in the way of the colonies’ economic gain. The “R” was interesting because it reminded me of the “A” the Puritans would use to mark women who engaged in adulterous affairs. This shows that the Puritan traditions were vividly living outside of the Puritan society.
I feel this video showed stories of slaves that were exceptions to the average slaves. The slave who fought within the legal systgem, the slave male with the white female these are not your typical slave stories and I feel it should have given people more of a sense of that