A Single Nation

Ever since the United States was declared a single nation, there was a dispute between the north and the south on whether owning slaves should be aloud. The north, not gaining any benefits of slaves because of the climate and production of different goods, didn't gain any benefit from salve owning. The south on the other hand, with prime climate for agriculture, made a living by using slaves as a work force. These two essays show the hardships that African Americans had to go through during everyday life and could have shifted more northerners' minds towards emancipation.

The case of Northrup is about a free-born African American man, forced into slavery just because he looked the part. Although legally he was his own man, the slave traders didn't see him like that. Northrup's story also shows that some slaves weren't kept by a single owner; they would be sold multiple times throughout their lives. When this story hit the papers in 1853, northerners could have been outraged by the fact that a free-born, New York citizen was being sold and bought like an automobile (or a chariot back in their day).

In "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", Harreit wrote about how she was abused and taken advantage of by her owner, Dr. Flint. She describes that he started when she was 12 and never was able to experience the innocence a little girl should. She longed for the freedom of the north soil, but couldn't find a way out. When she was finally able to escape, her dream of equality is abruptly halted by a ticket-master denying her passage onto the first class train, even though she had enough money. This was common even up until the mid-20th century, so the thought of being a sex slave to her owner may have repulsed the northerners, but being denied passage onto first-class, even with the right amount of currency, was a common thing in the whole United States.

All-in-all, these two stories, show the hard-ships that African Americans had to face in the "ever-so-equal" United States, but these are things that the northerners knew about, they knew this was going on. With all of the "new country" objectives afoot, no one had time to emancipate, or like today's politics, didn't want to touch the subjects that were too controversial in fear that they wouldn't be re-elected. It wasn't until 1860, when a brave man named Abraham Lincoln said enough was enough,