Slavery’s Evolution

 

 

Read Slavery's Evolution sponsored by Digital History. Link to site - https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3037
The Peculiar Institution
Europeans began selling Africans into slavery in the Americas during the 16th century. By the seventeenth century, an antislavery movement emerged in the Northern colonies. Antislavery advocates, known as abolitionists, argued that owning human beings was philosophically and morally wrong. They formed antislavery societies, whose members delivered antislavery sermons and speeches, held meetings and conferences, published abolitionist literature, sent petitions to Congress, boycotted products made with slave labor, and helped slaves escape to freedom. The American Anti-Slavery Society published a monthly periodical called, The Anti-Slavery Record, between 1835 and 1837. Each issue featured an image on the first page that dramatized the brutality and inhumanity of slavery. The illustration below, called “The Desperation of a Mother” was published in the magazine in 1835. The caption beneath the image reads "'Why do you narrate the extraordinary cases of cruelty? These stories will not convert the cruel, and they wound the feelings of masters who are not so.' REPLY: Cruelty is the fruit of the system."
Your answer should be well written and a minimum of 250 words. Please note I live in the US & am American kindly use our grammar/language. Thanks! Be specific in your posts; don’t generalize. Cite examples to support your analysis; explain your assertions; and support your opinions with evidence. Fully answer each discussion question.
Questions: How does the image below depict the evils of slavery? What made slavery in the United States, also known as the peculiar institution, so unique? 
  
Pick a current event that has national or international significance and that deal with issues of substance. (please do not pick anything political or controversial) You must include on the source of their current event. The first part of each summary will be a synopsis of the current event, and the second part will be the student’s thoughts/opinions regarding the current event. The essays will be a minimum of 100 – 150 words for the entire assignment. Use the template provided 
 

Sample Answer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The illustration "The Desperation of a Mother," published in The Anti-Slavery Record in 1835, powerfully depicts the profound evils of slavery by focusing on its most brutal and dehumanizing aspect: the systematic destruction of family bonds. The image portrays a desperate enslaved mother, axe in hand, contemplating the unthinkable act of taking the lives of her sleeping children, and then her own, rather than allowing them to be torn from her by the institution of slavery. This graphic scene highlights several core evils:

First, it exposes the inhumanity of forced separation. The very existence of slave traders, whose business it was to buy and sell human beings, meant that families could be, and often were, ripped apart without warning or recourse. The mother's extreme act is a chilling testament to the terror and despair induced by this constant threat. Second, the image reveals the absolute lack of agency for enslaved individuals. The mother sees death as the only way to protect her children from a life of unimaginable suffering and exploitation, and to spare herself the agony of their forced removal. This demonstrates the complete deprivation of personal autonomy and the brutal reality that enslaved people were treated as chattel, not human beings with inherent rights to family or self-determination. Finally, the accompanying caption, "'Cruelty is the fruit of the system,'" succinctly argues that such extreme acts were not isolated incidents of individua

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