zinn chapter 9

In Chapter 9, “Slavery without Submission, Emancipation without Freedom,” Zinn talks about accounts of former slaves and the emancipation proclamation from Abraham Lincoln.

Zinn starts on John Brown who was hanged for attempting the very thing Lincoln did in the upcoming years. Zinn goes on and tells us that the end of slavery actually was profitable, the plantations were able to expand from tobacco to cotton. However importing slaves became illegal in 1808, the law was never enforced. To one persons account about 250,000 slaves were imported before the Civil War. There are many statistics, and records kept from plantations but that’s all they are, not an actual account of anything. After Nat Turner’s revolt a militia was ensued, following Turner’s rebellion many slaves began to runaway. These mass runaways turned into the Underground Railroad, ran by Harriet Tubman. Whites and blacks were working together and the only way to stop that was to pay the whites to be overseers on plantations. Contrary to popular belief slavery did not destroy the black family; in fact it brought them closer together. Their culture was so rich in fact that they even had songs, to help along with their rebellion. Slaves in the south were making do but the blacks in the north really itched for, the soon to come, emancipation. President Fillmore had it coming when he signed the Fugitive Slave Act; the northern slaves denounced him and organized a resistance. Loguen, one person who was part of the resistance helped to free slaves with Tubman and Brown with the Underground Railroad. Zinn goes on to tell us about Frederick Douglass, the man who realized that slavery was the whole nations problem and not just the souths. Our government, even then, would never accept freedom for slaves by act of a rebellion; it had to be an official government act, President Lincoln put this act together. Slaves opposed all that Lincoln stood for and felt that he was making their lives just as hard. When Lincoln tried to repossess the seceded states, the Civil War began. Originally the Emancipation Proclamation only freed the slaves who were fighting the Union, but after copious signatures the thirteenth amendment came to place. Now that they were free, blacks could join the army, and they did. Afterwards though, the only way they could have any status, is to have land.

I want to know how anyone thought that birth and death records from plantations proved any accounts of how life was for the slaves. Yes, you could probably tell from the early deaths that the living conditions were awful. But, how on earth could anyone know how the slaves felt when their family was shipped halfway across the state. Birth and death records are just that and nothing more.

This reading was really boring for me, it was just facts and wasn’t intresting. After reading Kindred, this type of reading is just plain mind numbing. Most of this stuff I already knew, so it was really just a refresher.