Dbq Essay On Slavery

Words: 876
Pages: 4

The time period of Africans being owned was called slavery. This time period from early colonial times to 1865, the owning African humans was one of North America's worst, but prominent part of history. Slaves were never given rights and treated as property, often leaving them with no hope to carry on.
Often slaves were often looked at as property with no feelings or use other than what the owners wanted them for. For example in document 1, Frederick Douglass states that "The law gives the master absolute power over the slave...The slave is a person without any rights...the slave has no wife, children, and no home. He can own nothing, possess nothing, acquire nothing, but what must belong to another." Everything that Douglass stated describing slaves, also describes property. Property owns nothing, acquires for nothing, and has no wife, child, or home. Slaveholders in a way might've felt threatened by the slaves.
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In document 3, it describes the slaves use as "property". Slaves are described to plant all crops to be exported and manufactured. Slaves are looked at as cheap labor. Document 5 is an illustration of a mask and collar used to keep the slaves from escaping and eating the crops they were planting. This shows that slaves were looked at as property that can't enjoy any benefits of their surrounding and is chained to power of the master. Document 6 is a speech opposing the freedom of slaves and that nothing can change it. These are all points of evidence that slaveholders want to make themselves powerful. Often the slaveholders are from other countries with a dictator or king in place. Citizens of those areas were often angry with not having power over their lives, so to them, owning slaves was a great powerful feeling for them. What they might not have realized is that they were downing other people the same or worse than they felt, making it a cycle of