The Peculiar Institution Essay

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Manny Rodriguez

4/30/15
The Peculiar Institution

Chapter 1 (The Setting) The author takes this chapter to set the scene and talk about the history of slavery. In
Section 1, Stampp talks about how people say that slavery came about in the south. People say that slavery is natural to have in an agricultural society and that plantations needed slaves to survive. Although there were plantations before slavery started and after it was abolished. Next in Section 2, Stampp explains some myths about slavery and how they are untrue. One of the myths were that black people were needed because white people couldn't stand to work in the hot climate. This is completely untrue because white people have worked in the climate both before and after slavery. Another myth is that black people were genetically built to be slaves. This is false because black people were almost the same as white people with just personality were a little simpler than the white people.
In Section 3, the author explains how the south defends themselves saying that they didn't invent slavery, they just inherited it. Slavery dates back to Ancient Egypt, and a lot of old societies such as the Greek and Romans, depended on slavery. Also, even in the colonies before they had their independence from Britain, the indentured servants, although we're working for their freedom, were basically slaves. In Section 4, Stampp describes the similarities between black slaves and white servants. Up until 1660, white and black servants worked together and hung out after work and sometimes has kids together. But after that laws were passed making black slaves completely property and made it illegal for whites to marry the black slaves. In

Section 5, the author talks about some statistics of slavery in the south such as how many slave owners there were compared to the total population. In 1860, there were 385,000 slave owners among 1,516,000 free families. Throughout this Chapter I learned about a good deal of information about slavery. I never knew that slavery existed back in Ancient Egypt. I also didn’t know that the slaves and white servants would get so close to each other before the laws were passed not allowing them to do so. I used to be under the assumption that almost everybody who lived in the south was a slave owner but now i know that that is not true. I learned that the slaves from back then were extremely misunderstood and were nothing like they were believed to be.
Facts
­Slaves were so common and necessary for the south because they were huge on agriculture
­Africans could have adapted to American culture and been apart of the society in a generation or two if they were given the chance
­Slavery dates all the way back to Ancient Egypt
­Ancient Roman and Greek Cultures were based on slavery
­Africans becoming slaves had a lot to do with the fact that they had much different religious beliefs than the Europeans.
­The first cargo of slaves were brought to Virginia all the way back in 1619 by the Dutch.
­By the 1860s, the South was basically the only place in the world that still had slavery.
­Black slaves and white servants were very much alike back before 1660
­Slavery continued long after it was illegal to import them into America.

­88% of slave owners owned less than 20 slaves, 72% less than 10, 50% had less than 5.
Chapter 2 (From Day Clean to First Dark) This chapter details the system of labor completed by the slaves. In Section 1, the author explains the amount of slaves and the type of things the master and his/her’s family would do based on the amount of slaves. For example, if a farm had a very small amount of slaves, the master and his kids would probably do work along side the slaves whereas if a farm had a large amount of slaves the master would probably just organize the work for the slaves to do. In
Section 2, Stampp tells about what slaves would do at different
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