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Slaves and Rebellion

Before the civil war, life for slaves was becoming increasingly frustrating. The evidence of such events as Nat Turner's Rebellion as early as 1831 is that the slaves were quite conscious of their status as quasi-animals, in the view of their masters, and that they were so desperate and miserable about their lives that they were willing to go to murderous lengths to change those lives. According to Oates, the slaves who followed "General Nat" came upon the relatively small farms that they attacked, taking them all by surprise (224-5). The surprise was all on the part of the whites, of course, since their view of their local "niggers" was that the slaves were well treated and that there was no particular need of freeing them. Further, Turner himself appears to have been riding "chaotically around the countryside . . . almost always reaching the farms after his scattered troops had done the killing" (Oates 225).

What the slave owners did not realize was that a deep anger, however inchoate, fed the 1831 rebellion, irrespective of Garrison's much publicized call for abolition in early 1831, months before Turner made his move. When Turner and others were executed, some slaves might have been deterred from future rebellion, but Oates emphasizes that the white power structure retrenched and "increased the severity of their slave codes" during the "Great Reaction" (230), instituting all manner of disciplinary measures. Even without such measures, the slaves were not subject to any regulation, and the idea of a "system" of slavery is overstating the point, since conditions for slaves varied from owner to owner. Blassingame says the masters also used mind games, "continually [telling] the slave he was unfit for freedom" (329), and insisting on a comportment of contentment; any deviation could result in flogging or other punishment. Meanwhile, the myth of contentment fed such features of slave life as the black mammy for white children and occ...

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Slaves and Rebellion. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 19:10, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1689340.html