Conflicts in Slavery

Conflicts in slavery period

American history, as we know it today, is made up of many different chapters. Some of these chapters are noble, and some are regretful. Some remind us of the good in people, and some remind us of the evil. One of the dark chapters of American history is the period of slavery. Slavery was like a cancer that spread through the United States around 1619, and ended about 1865. This era was filled with many horror stories, stories of human triumph and pride. At that time society didn't view slavery as a problem, but few great people saw it as a disgrace to human beings and went against it.

Many conflicts in the slavery period were over the harsh treatment of the slaves. An act about the casual killing of slaves. Whereas the only law in force for the punishment overseer cannot be inflicted upon Negroes, nor the obstinacy of many of them by other the violent means suppress, be it enacted and declared by this grand assembly, if any slave resist his master (or other by his masters order correcting him) and by the extremity of the correction should chance to die, that his death shall not be accepted felony, but the master (or that other persons appointed by he master to punish him) be acquit from molestation, since it cannot be presumed that prepensed malice (which alone makes murther felony) should induce any man to destroy his own estate.( Virginia Slave Laws, October, 1669, Act 1). Another Negro man was half hanged, and then burnt, for attempting to poison a cruel overseer. Thus by repeated cruelties, are the wretched first urges to despair, and then murdered, because they still retain so much of human nature about them as to wish to put an end to their misery, and retaliate on their tyrants. These actions were writing by Olaudah Equiano in his autobiography. He also described when he was sent to the dwelling-house to fan his sick master, "when I came into t he room where he was I was very much affrighted at some things I saw, and the more so as I had seen a black woman slave as I came through the house, who was cooking the dinner, and the poor creature was cruelly loaded with various kinds of iron machines; she had one particularly on her head, which locked her mouth so fast that she could scarcely speak; and could not eat nor drink. I was much astonished and shocked at this contrivance, which I afterwards learned was called iron muzzle." These kinds of inhuman,