Unit Reflections Blog 2

 

I thought I've learned all I needed from the last chapters but these chapters were even more eye opening. First we learned of  how people were in the past in Africa. Then we got an understanding of how life was like being transported through the middle passage. Lastly, a little bit of there life as slaves. Now we are learning of the fight for freedom and the aftermath of how life was after slavery. We get a closer look at how life was after slavery and how long it took to gain this semblance of freedom. This is the topic of  unit 2 and we will take a deeper dive into what life was like for African Americans before and after the civil war.

  

What I've learned from chapter 5 is about the three-fifths compromise, which states that every slave can now be counted as part of a person when it comes to voting. This was invented to appease both the North and the South to keep both sides happy in the debates. Though after time this mainly ends up benefitting slave owners giving them more representation in congress. With the South having additional  support through the three-fifths clause, gave slave owners more and more power to the point that the South could basically control the president election. I never thought that people in the South would use African Americans like this to force their own agenda's, the worst part is that chapter 5 doesn't mention anywhere that the slaves actually voted, it was only what their masters wanted and nothing else. This is what the three-fifths clause was and was just a puppetry to give the South more votes.

 

In Chapter 6 we learn that it wasn't just white people that owned slaves, we learn that some free blacks had slaves of there own. When some slaves were freed they were given land like William Johnson, who was once a slave was freed and then given his freedom by his master who was also his father. When he was freed he was given land and 16 slaves of his own, this shows us that in some cases we oppressed ourselves, but even so their was never any mention of people like William abusing their slaves, only that they were used to help on the farm. It is interesting to see this kind of dynamic from someone who was once a slave themselves to want to have slaves for himself, I believe it is because he was raised in a decent environment. Which is why I think William didn't have a problem with it, this is what I learned from chapter 6.

What I've learned in chapter 7 is that "freedom doesn't mean free", what I mean is even though African Americans in the North weren't slaves they were still oppressed and treated as a lower species. They were constantly harassed and beaten down by the white people in the North. Blacks in the North could not defend themselves nor rely on the police as not even the police was on their side. Even though they weren't slaves they were always handed the leftover scrapes of white people as even though they were free white people in the North did not want to get along with them. The whites in the North wanted to keep the distinguish between them and black people in the North. This is what I've learned from chapter 7 even though the blacks in the North were free that does not mean that everyone will accept them and treat them fairly. For something like that will take a lot more time and effort from both sides to come together.

In chapter 8 I learned about the gradual approach of abolitionists to push for blacks to go back to Africa. During this time according to the chapter the conservatives also wanted the divide between blacks and whites to be just everyone going their separate ways as they thought this was the best approach since slavery was coming to a drawn conclusion. This notion became popular enough to were the abolitionists created a group aiming towards this approach called "The American Colonization society", whose aim was to separate the blacks and the whites giving them their own communities and places separate from the whites. What I've learned from chapter 8 is that the abolitionists wanted to keep blacks and whites from mixing and creating problems or even finding some common ground they just wanted everyone to go their own paths and live separate

Lastly what I learned from chapter 9 is about the Missouri compromise where there was a huge debate on whether Missouri should be allowed to join the states as the 12th slave state which the North was highly against. As tensions were raising Henry Clay came in making a proposal that for every slave state a free state must also enter the union. This made it possible for Missouri and Maine to become states which is why it is called the Missouri compromise. I learned that the North and the South were both at a breaking point and that keeping the balance was the only reason the states didn't breakout into war sooner.

What I have learned from these chapters is about how much debate their was when it came to freeing slaves, like when we talked about the three-fifths compromise, and the Missouri compromise and  how we easily over look other facts of history, like William Johnson and the plan to send people back to Africa, and how mistreated blacks were in the North. Even so, we must understand all the trials these people went through so that we can carry it on to the future generation as they need to learn this as much as I do.
I am glad to know more about African American history, but what I am really excited about is that their is still more to learn, and I can not wait to find out more. After all, the is a whole world out there and way more on the horizon.