Plantation Slavery Essays (1516 words) - Slavery,

Plantation Slavery The institution of slavery was a dark time in our country's past history. The many family members who have been affected by this brutal institution will never forget the scar it marked on our past. Due to the institution of slavery, many people today still feel bitterness because of the harshness these people had to endure and the atrocious way they were treated by their masters. Two conflicting sides on whether or not to keep the institution of slavery was forever prominent since slavery started in the colonies. Due to these two conflicting sides and the many disagreements, it seemed a Civil War was inevitable. To begin with 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 sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and eventually reached the southern coasts of America. The Portuguese showed the English how to raise sugar and introduced them to slavery on a large scale and for a time dominated the exportation and marketing of the crop. The African natives were of all ages and sexes. Women usually worked in the homes cooking and cleaning, while 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. They were shipped from Africa by the Europeans, which quickly became known as The Triangular Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. This was an organized route where Europeans would travel to Africa bringing manufactured goods, capture Africans a nd take them to the Caribbean, and then take the crops and goods and bring them back to Europe. Planters were able to appropriate about 80 percent of their slave's labor for their own profit a rate exploitation that probably never been reached anywhere else, and because of these great profits slavery was able to continue. This was the beginning of the slave trade on a mass scale, which built the foundation of our country on unsteady terms. Slavery also had a profound impact on the drafts of two of our most famous documents in history ? the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the United States. In writing the draft for the Articles, the delegates had trouble figuring out how they wanted their states to be represented. Larger states favored representation according to population, but no census existed, and smaller states just wanted to be treated as equals. To raise money, Congress would have to print it or requisition specific amounts of money from the states. Northern states wanted slaves to be counted in computing the ratios because it would add to the population and the southern states wanted to apportion revenues on the basis of each state's free population. The Articles were finally ratified on March 1, 1781 and contained a firm commitment to state sovereignty, but it was given no power over Western claims and requisitions were based on each state's free population. The Constitution on the other hand was given a provision that free and slave states were able to agree on. The three-fifths Compromise was developed in order to apportion both representation and direct taxes. This was important because it was able to apportion money for the slave states, with being able to count some of their slaves towards it ? three out of every five. It was something both the south and the north were able to agree on, but all it did was postpone the war a few more years. Religion did not play a huge factor in the institution of plantation slavery. Slave owners worried that baptized slaves would declare their freedom, after learning the ways of Jesus Christ and the Lord. The owners forbade clergyman to converse their slaves to Christianity because of this reason. They thought the slaves would listen to the Christian stories and it would give them the idea to escape from their chains and shackles. Even though many slaves ignored what some missionaries taught, they embraced evangelical Christianity and transformed it into an independent African American faith. Some slaveowners encourages this and