Racism as a Historical Phenomenon

World history is full of myths which evolve around real events and often interpret them in a completely different way than they actually were. From the lessons of world history, schoolchildren can learn that the American Civil War of 1861-1865 broke out due to the problem of slavery, and President Abraham Lincoln was an ardent supporter of the abolition of slavery in the United States. In reality, the causes of the conflict between the North and the South lay in the economic sphere. For example, the parties radically differently approached the issue of taxes on imported goods – the industrialized North advocated the imposition of high taxes, and the South sought freedom of trade with the rest of the world. The northerners pushed through laws that were beneficial to them and shifted the cost of industrialization onto the shoulders of the southerners, who were threatened with such a policy of ruin. The new US president, Abraham Lincoln, elected in 1860, announced that all new states within the country would be free from slavery. Such a prospect promised a stable preponderance of northerners in Congress and in power structures, which would allow them to pass any laws convenient for them without considering the opinion of the South. This is what prompted the southerners to take active steps to protect their own interests. Thus, the South-North War was not intended to improve the lives of African Americans; those were used as a tool and manpower to increase the number of South’s army.

How did the Africans get to become American slaves?

African slaves began to be imported into the territory of the modern United States of America in the 17th century. The first permanent settlement of the English colonists in America – James Town – was founded in 1607 (Baptist et al., 2006). And after twelve years, in 1619, a small group of Angolan-born Africans was acquired from the Portuguese by colonists. Although formally these blacks were not slaves but had long contracts without the right of termination, it is from this event that the history of slavery in America is taken to be counted. Soon the contracting system was officially replaced by a more profitable slavery system. In 1641, in Massachusetts, the life of slaves was turned into life, and the law of 1661 in Virginia made slavery of the mother hereditary for children. Similar laws enslaving slavery were passed in Maryland (1663), in New York (1665), in South (1682), and North Carolina (1715), and others (Baptist et al., 2006).

The importation of blacks and the introduction of slavery resulted from the need for labor in the south of North America, where large agricultural farms were established: tobacco, rice, and other plantations. In the North, where the plantation economy, due to special economic and climatic conditions, was less common, slavery was never used on such a scale as in the South (Baptist et al., 2006). Black slaves imported into America were mostly residents of the west coast of Africa, a much smaller part belonged to the tribes of Central and South Africa, as well as North Africa and Madagascar. Among them were the blacks of the Fulbe, Wolof, Yoruba tribes, Fanti, Hausa, Dahomey, Bantu, and so on.

Until the end of the 17th century, the slave trade in the English colonies in America was the monopoly of the Royal African Company, but in 1698 this monopoly was abolished, and the colonies received the right to engage in the slave trade independently (Armstead et al., 2016). The slave trade took on an even broader scale after 1713 when England achieved the exclusive right to trade in slave blacks.

In Africa, an agency was created for slave traders who drove the slaves and prepared them for sale. This organization has reached the farthest points of Africa, many people have worked for it, including the chiefs of the tribes and villages. The leaders either sold their fellow tribesmen, or organized attacks on the tribes hostile to them, took captives, and then they were sold into slavery. The captured blacks were tied up in twos and led through the woods to the coast.

The Reluctant Slave Fighter

The views of Abraham Lincoln, with which he went to the presidential election, were far from the views of the fighter against inequality. He opposed the provision of black voting rights, and also opposed interracial marriages, believing that “the superiority of the white race will always be obvious.” To raise the question of the abolition of slavery in the southern states, Lincoln made the war unsuccessful for the North. The US president told reporters: “If I could save the union, without freeing a single slave, I would do it” (McPherson 2018).

In 1862, Lincoln was convinced that he would have to go to extreme measures. On September 22, 1862, the first of the two decrees constituting the “Proclamation on the release of slaves” was issued (McPherson 2018). According to the decree, all slaves in any state that did not return to the United States before January 1, 1863, were declared free. The second decree, issued on January 1, 1863, named 10 separate states to which the abolition of slavery would apply (Northrup 2014). For this document, Lincoln criticized supporters of the abolition of slavery. The fact is that it extended to states where the federal authorities had no control. But the four slave states that fought on the side of the North — Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland – did not concern this measure (Northrup 2014). Nevertheless, the “Proclamation on the Liberation of Slaves” played a role in turning the tide of the war in favor of the Northerners.

The Thirteenth Amendment

On January 31, 1865, the US Congress voted to adopt the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibited slavery throughout the country. By December 6, 1865, it was ratified by a sufficient number of states for final approval and entered into force on December 18 (Northrup 2014). By that time, Abraham Lincoln was no longer alive – in April 1865, just a week after the final capitulation of the South, he was shot by a supporter of losers, John Booth.

The thirteenth amendment was not delighted in many states. Suffice it to say that Kentucky ratified the document only in 1976, and the last instrument of ratification was sent to the US Federal Register from Mississippi on January 30, 2013. Still, slavery was abolished, and yesterday’s slaves gained personal freedom. The reverse side of this freedom is said much less readily. The fate of tens of thousands of liberated blacks was tragic.

“Black Codes”: Slavery in a New Wrapper

The majority of American political figures of that time, including the fighters for the abolition of slavery, proceeded from the postulate of the superiority of the white race over blacks. Therefore, personal freedom for slaves did not mean their acquisition of civil rights. Immediately after the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment in the southern states, the so-called “Black Codes” were adopted, which determined the order of life of the black population (Goyal 2014). For example, in Mississippi, the African Americans, under the threat of life imprisonment, were denied the right to marry whites, it was forbidden to bear arms, their rights to own land were restricted. The “Law on Apprentices” stated that all African Americans – adolescents under 18 years of age who had no parents or children of poor parents were serving whites who could forcibly keep them in the service, return them in case of a court escape and subject to corporal punishment (Goyal 2014).

Separately, it should be said about the laws on vagrancy that were included in the “Black Codes.” Since the liberation of former slaves took place without allotment of land, yesterday’s masters threw free people onto the street, leaving them without a piece of bread and a roof over their heads. Here they were subject to the “Vagrancy Act.” According to which, African Americans, who did not have a permanent job, were declared vagrants, imprisoned and sent to convict brigades, or they found themselves on the plantations of the previous owners (Washington 2012). The alternative was to pay a vagrancy fine, but the unfortunate simply did not have money. At the same time, the exploitation of “vagrants” was sometimes even crueler than before the abolition of slavery.

Reconstruction of the South

Blacks thrown into the street, having no means for living, began to commit thefts and robberies. This, in turn, was the reason for the creation of various associations of the white population to fight blacks. The most famous organization was the Ku Klux Klan, which members launched terror against blacks and white supporters of racial equality. The federal government categorically disliked such trends. In the period from 1865 to 1877, the so-called South Reconstruction took place (Washington 2012). In the territories of the southern states, a military administration was introduced, which was supposed to bring the laws of the South to federal standards.

In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was adopted, which granted citizenship to any person born in the United States, regardless of the color of his skin. In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was adopted, prohibiting authorities at the state or individual states from restricting citizens to the active electoral law on the basis of “race, color or due to being in slavery in the past.” Thanks to those documents, the first black parliamentarians appeared in the legislative bodies of the southern states. The federal government, concerned about the growing popularity of the Ku Klux Klan, in 1871 issued a special law that gave the president the power to act against the activists of the organization (Wiecek 1977). After the arrests of hundreds of activists, the Ku Klux Klan was formally dissolved. However, in fact, on the ground, acts of terror continued.

Segregation as a norm of life

The so-called “Lynch Courts” – the murder of a person suspected of a crime or violation of social customs, without trial or investigation — became especially popular. After the American Civil War, African Americans became the primary victims of the Lynch Courts. The favorite method of murderers on such vessels was hanging the unfortunates or even burning them. There is no exact statistics on the “Lynch ships.” The University of Missouri specialists, studying this question, concluded that between 1882 and 1920 about 3,500 African Americans were subject to lynching (Baptist et al., 2006). Critics believe that in this case they are talking only about the loudest public cases, and the total number of blacks killed by racists is measured in tens of thousands of people.

Reconstruction of the South ended in 1877, but it could not solve the issues of equality in the rights of people with different skin color. The era of the so-called “Jim Crow Laws” began, which established racial segregation in American society. Formally, the Fifteenth Amendment endowed black states in the southern states with voting rights, but local legislation was structured in such a way that the vast majority of African Americans remained powerless. For example, in the 1900 election in Alabama, out of 181,500 black people allowed only 3,000 to vote (Baptist et al., 2006). Segregation concerned not only voting rights, but also all spheres of life. The separation of white and color was legalized in schools, hotels, shops, restaurants, hospitals, transport, toilets. At the bus stations, whites and blacks had to wait for their flight in different waiting rooms, and on the bus itself to sit in different places. Even the Bible for taking the oath in court was different for them.

Conclusion

The outcomes of the South-North War brightly prove that their primary aims were not the development of equal society for people of different nationalities and races. The South’s army rudely used the former slaves as a workforce who can fight on their side. That was naïve to believe that someone who got used to getting free labor would easily agree to share rights and possibilities with their slaves. Even though the amendments to the US constitution are commonly accepted as valuable contributions to the development of social equality in the country; many specialists would claim that those were just the documents which helped them stop the possible rebels harming the lives and freedoms of Whites. Moreover, race discrimination and stereotyping have become a critical problem after 1877. The history knows various proves of the negative impact of the Civil War on the lives and freedoms of the black population of the United States which proves that in reality no intention of equality establishment existed in the targets of the South-North War.

References

Armstead, S., Sutter, B., Walker, P. & Wiesner, C. (2016). “’And I poor slave yet’: The precarity of black life in New Brunswick, 1766-1835” in Scarlet and black, ed. By Marisa J. Fuentes, Deborah Gray White. Rutgers University Press. Retrieved from the JSTOR database.

Baptist, E., Camp, E., Krauthamer, B., Brown, C., Penningroth, D. Bennett, H.L. (2006). New Studies in the History of American Slavery. University of Georgia Press. ISBN-13: 978-0820325637

Goyal, Y. (2014). African atrocity, American humanity: Slavery and its traditional afterlives. Research in African Literatures, 45(3), pp. 48-71.

McPherson, J. (2018). A Defining Time in Our Nation’s History. BattleFields. Retrieved from the JSTOR database.

Northrup, S. (2014). Twelve years a slave. Courier Corporation. Retrieved from the JSTOR database.

Washington, B.T. (2012). Up from slavery. Courier Corporation. Retrieved from the JSTOR database.

Wiecek, W.M. (1977). “Antislavery during and after the American Revolution,” in the sources. Retrieved from JSTOR database.

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

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"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016.

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freeessays.club (2016) The terms offer and acceptance [Online].
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"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

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"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]
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