Definition of american democra

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Definition of american democra

Slavery in America stems well back to when the new world was first discovered and was led by the country to start the African Slave Trade- Portugal. The African Slave Trade was first exploited for plantations in that is now called the Caribbean, and eventually reached the southern coasts of America (Slavery Two; Milton Meltzer). The African natives were of all ages and sexes. Women usually worked in the homes, cooking and cleaning, whereas men were sent out into the plantations to farm. Young girls would usually help in the house also and young boys would help in the farm by bailing hay and loading wagons with crops. Since trying to capture the native Indians, the Arawaks and Caribs, failed (Small-Pox had killed them), the Europeans said out to capture African slaves. They were shipped from Africa by the Europeans in what was called The Triangular Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. This was an organized route where Europeans would travel to Africa bringing manufactured goods, capture Africans and take them to the Caribbean, and then take the crops and goods and bring them back to Europe. The African people, in order to communicate invented a language that was a mixture of all the African languages combined, called Creole. This language now varies from island to island. They also kept their culture which accounts for calypso music and the instruments used in these songs. Slavery was common all over the world until 1794 when France signed the Act of the National Convention abolishing slavery. It would take America about a hundred years to do the same (Slavery Two; Milton Meltzer). George Washington was America's hero. He was America's first president. He was a slave owner. He deplored slavery but did not release his slaves. His will stated that they would be released after the death of his wife (The Volume Library; 1988). Washington wasn't the only president to have slaves. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "All men are created equal" but died leaving his blacks in slavery. In 1775 black Americans were sent to fight in the revolutionary army. The British proposed that if a black man was to join their army, they would be set free afterwards. America originally planned not to let the blacks fight in the army, but when hearing this, let them enlist. Only Georgia and South Carolina refused to let them enlist, but paid for their racism when each lost 25,000 blacks to the British. The slaves returned on an honourable discharge after securing America's freedom, but not their own (Software Toolworks Encyclopedia; 1992). Slavery continued and so did the numbers of slaves trying to escape to the free states or into Canada. A runaway slave would be found by bloodhounds, trained to find black slaves. Then the slave, upon returning, would be executed or severely whipped. The "Underground Railroad" was a project that helped black slaves escape into Canada, especially Amherstburg. The system involved 3,000 white helpers and freed an estimated 75,000 people after the civil war. Slavery in the middle of the 1800's was abolished except for the rebellion states in the south. In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued which made slavery illegal in the states that had rebelled and allowed black slaves to serve in the army and get other jobs, or continue to work on the plantations, as employees making money. The nightmare of slavery was over but a new one was to begin. One that was worse for it was prevalent but was secret and silent. One that exists today. One that does not shrink but rather grows. Racism was and is upon us.

Slavery in the Eyes of the South It was during the 19th century that differences on the issue of slavery built to it's peak level in United States history. The people in the northern states who were opposed to slavery had a valid argument in that slavery went against the American sentiment that all men are created equal. There were also religious arguments that said to do unto others as you would have them do unto. Today, with all the events that have occurred in the 20th century to improve race relations, this is the side that the American people support. The arguments that the southern states made in the 1800's in defense of slavery are known to be wrong and inhumane today. But that fact wasn't so clear back in the 19th century. Slavery in American history is usually associated with the 1860's, because that was the decade of southern secession and the Civil War. But the Confederate States of America and the Civil War were really a dramatic climax to all the arguments and disagreements on slavery that had been building up in the preceding decades. The United States Declaration of Independence clearly states that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the men who wrote and supported this revolutionary declaration of separation from the British did not believe that this equality applied to the slaves. This statement is supported in the Dred Scott decision. This is something that the Southern states would argue, that the men who built this nation like George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and John Marshall all had slaves. They would argue that men like Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, defenders of American democracy, owned slaves. Even though it's not said in American history books, the rebelling American colonists were in some ways radicals for rebelling against England. It could be said that men like Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Alexander Hamilton Stephens were rebelling radicals just like Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry were 90 years earlier. But it was not the Confederates who were the radicals of the Civil War, instead it was the abolitionist northerners that were. In 1860, slavery was something that was prevalent in and, whether they wanted to admit it or not, very much a part of American culture. Why would the north want to abolish something that had been with America from the start? Slavery had been around a lot longer than the United States. In the years prior to the Civil War, the Southerners probably wished that men like Jefferson and Jackson could rise out of their graves to defend slavery and marvel at some of the radical new ideas of Abraham Lincoln and John Brown. Lincoln wasn't the total abolitionist that some other people were, but he was anti-slavery enough for the south that when he was elected president, the southern states left the Union. The northern criticism of slavery became sort of an annoyance to the Southern states who wondered why the north would oppose something that economically was to their benefit. In short, the southerners wanted the anti-slavery northerners to mind their own business. Like Jefferson Davis said, "All we want is to be left alone." There were slaveholders in the south who recognized that slavery was wrong, but it was seen by some southerners as a necessary evil. By the time the Civil War came, the South was too committed to slavery to turn back. Society in the south was different from the north. The entire economy of the south was dependent on slavery. Anyone who wonders how any human being could ever defend something as ugly as slavery has to know that for these Americans who lived in the South, the food that they ate and the clothes that they wore on their backs came from the plantation fields that were maintained by the slaves. By 1860, slavery was very much in the culture of the South. There was an entire generation of men who wore gray in the Civil War who as infants had been cared for by slave maids before they could even take care of themselves. A life with slavery was the only life that they had ever known. So the southerners would have said that the anti-slavery chants that came from the north came from people who had no idea what the South was like. To defend slavery, the South would have said that slavery cannot be outlawed because of the Dred Scott decision which basically said that a slave is property, something that you own. There aren't many cases where someone's property is outlawed. The Dred Scott decision ruled that the Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional, that slavery cannot be banned from a certain area. Southerners would have pointed to the 5th Amendment, which clearly forbade Congress to deprive people of their property. Slavery was also beneficial to the American economy of that timeperiod. Cotton was used for trade with the British and the north. Again, the southern economy was absolutely dependent on slavery. The abolition of slavery in the South would have been a major downgrade in the quality of life for the Southerners. A contemporary parallel is if there was a permanent loss of electricity. Another argument the southerners would have made was that the working conditions and unsanitary environments in some of the industrial factories of the north were inhumane and in many ways, worse than slavery. So how could they be pointing their fingers at the south? The Southerners would also have mentioned John Brown, the radical abolitionist. They would have said that John Brown was a mentally unstable fanatic and that him and his supporters should be confined instead of being able to commit atrocities and murder innocent people. The Bible Belt south would also have looked in the Bible to defend slavery. There isn't really a strong religious argument to justify slavery. But the southerners would have mentioned a few references to slavery in the Bible to justify it. They would have said that a lot of people from the Bible had servants and slaves. In conclusion, the South defended slavery by saying it was beneficial to the Southern economy and that the abolition of slavery would be detrimental to the quality of life in the South. The new radical anti-slavery feeling that was spreading in the north seemed revolutionary and unbelievable to the Southerners. Their southern arguments in defense of slavery would lead these Americans to take a revolutionary/rebellious stand to defend their homeland, culture, and the only life they had ever known, a stand similar to the one that their Founding Fathers had taken almost a century earlier.

During Ancient Roman history slaves played a huge role in society. They served as accountants, secretaries, doctors, architects, and even held positions in the government bureaucracy. A typical stereotype of slaves is a low-level, low-intelligence form of society, yet this is clearly not the case in ancient Rome. In ancient Rome society slaves didn't have to remain slaves forever. They had the opportunity to eventually become a part of free society and even attain the right to vote! Even in their "slave" state they were feared silently by their masters. Although slavery is evident throughout the ancient world, Romans possessed and depended on slaves more than any other culture. There were slaves for even the common farmer. They were dealt and traded like used cars, "and slaves were, it appears, sold, as cars of nowadays, with equivalent of a logbook, initiated at first sale and attesting successive changes of ownership" (Gardner 206). The Romans went as far as to sell "guaranteed" and "not guaranteed" slaves to the equivalent of buying a car "as is". Slaves were dealt in outrages numbers, "Delos, a major trade center, could handle 10,000 slaves a day in its market" (Spielvogal 118). The treatment of Roman slaves is hard to generalize. Stories of kind treatment and even times slaves would fight to defend their owners are numerous. Then there are those cases of horrendous Treatment towards slaves, torture, abuse, hard labor. These treatments drove several slaves to runaway and even revolt and kill their masters. "Slaves were branded, beaten, fed inadequately, worked in chains, and housed at night in underground prisons. It took three years to crush a revolt of 70,000 slaves, and took an army of 17,000 Roman men to suppress it" (Spievogal 152). Many masters lived in fear of their slaves. Revolts were not uncommon especially when dealing with extremely cruel owners. The treatment of slaves became a frequent discussion amongst the Romans. There was those such as Cat the Elder, who believed that it was cheaper to work slaves to death and then replace them by buying new ones. Then the argument of slaves being very cognitive beings and the abusive treatment being a catalyst for conspiracy to revolt and kill their owners. When once free slaves could attain citizenship from Rome, although not complete was their citizenship, it allowed them to go as far as vote. They could vote just like any other Roman and express their beliefs like any other Roman, but they could not run for office. Unlike most societies roman slaves held high positions in the Roman society. Most times teachers and artists were in high demand, and so many Greeks were made slaves and given full teaching rights. Slave were allowed in certain cases of ownership to even serve as a representative of the Roman Empire to other countries, they were skilled employers and quite intelligent, very contrary to more modern thinking on the intelligence of slaves throughout history. It would seem strange to see a whole empire run by slaves in most working levels and cultural ...

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Keywords: definition of american democracy, definition of american democratic republic, meaning of american democracy, definition of us democracy, definition of american representative democracy, definition of democracy us government, principles of american democracy definition, what does democracy in america mean

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