Читать книгу American Slavery: History in an Hour - Kat Smutz, Kat Smutz - Страница 5

Introduction

When the first African slaves arrived in North America, there were no states to unite, much less a United States. There was only Jamestown, and the only form of slavery was indenture. As more and more colonists arrived, and as the country grew and spread and evolved, so did the institution of slavery. Along with it came a division in America’s way of thinking. While some became more and more reliant upon what became known as ‘our peculiar institution’, others began to question the morality of slavery. By the time Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, slavery was a practice that was beginning to draw more and more attention. In the North, states would begin to outlaw slavery one by one, as the agrarian South would become more and more dependent upon it. And as the country expanded towards the west, American’s lawmakers would be faced with the task of determining how to go about adding new states, and how to determine if those states could or could not own slaves.

Meanwhile, the rights of slaveholders would overshadow the barbarity of slavery and those who opposed slavery would thumb their noses at the law in order to assist fugitive slaves along the famous Underground Railroad.

Controversy would turn to violence and resentment would smolder until the election of a president who openly opposed slavery fanned the embers into the flames of war. Less than one hundred years after fight for freedom from Great Britain, the enslavement of African-Americans would grow into a controversy that would divide the United States and threaten to tear the fledgling nation asunder.

This, in an hour, is American Slavery.