Examples Of Capstone Who Deserves Credit For Ending Slavery

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Matthew Watson Watson

Steve Lazar

U.S History

1/10/22

Capstone: Who deserves credit for ending slavery?

Slavery is when someone is forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver and is treated by the enslaver as property. This is how African Americans were treated for over 150+ years. In 1863 the 16th president Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, announcing, "that all persons held as slaves within the rebellious areas henceforward shall be free." Some may argue that technically Mr. Lincoln ended slavery and some may say the slaves freed themselves in reality if it wasn’t for the abolitionists I believe the slaves wouldn’t have been freed sooner and

At first, it was only a few African Americans popping up in the union-held fortress, soon it was hundreds. This was a crucial situation for the white slave masters in the south because their property (the African Americans) kept escaping. When Lincoln met Douglass, he had acknowledged having read his criticisms of Lincoln’s slowness to act on emancipation. African Americans struggled to have their voices heard and had now gained the President’s ear At first(Sinha), Lincoln was not originally for the abolitionist movement. So When the enslaved began fleeing to the Union army it showed a new idea for the Lincoln administration. the federal government should enforce the Fugitive Slave Law and return runaways to the Confederacy,But Abolitionists answered with no. So during the war, the abolitionists pushed Lincoln's admiration that “slavery should be prohibited where it does not yet exist”. In August of 1862, Lincoln invited five African Americans to the White House, hoping to persuade them to support his plans for colonizing Black Americans outside of the United States. But the reaction among Black abolitionists was hostile. The failure of Lincoln’s colonization ideas, along with strong African American and abolitionist protests, finally convinced Lincoln to abandon colonization for Black Americans after emancipation when he finally issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1,

Even David Williams wrote in “I freed myself” ways the slaves played a part in freeing themselves with strategies they used to use. One significant strategy to them was to destroy equipment and pretend to not understand instructions to slow down the work pace. Another one of their strategies was to, unfortunately, kill themselves because they believe that being in heaven was better than living as a slave. David even shared a story on how some 3 Watson slaves killed themselves by saying “Slavery itself was the greatest cruelty of all, and, for some slaves, the ultimate resistance, the only escape, was death. One Georgia slave took her own life by swallowing strychnine. In Covington, Kentucky, two enslaved parents “sent the souls of their children to Heaven rather than have them descend to the hell of slavery”. After releasing their children’s souls, they released their own. Another enslaved mother killed all 13 of her children in infancy to spare them a life of suffering