In Drawing the Color Line I found it interesting how from the very first settlement in Jamestown there was a feeling of racial superiority. White servants were treated differently from the black servants. In order to fight the Indians, “A law passed in 1639 decreed that ‘all persons except Negroes’ were to get arms and ammunition.” Slavery wasn’t technically legalized yet, but it was evident how the white settlers felt a superiority to the slaves. Another example of the superiority is shown in punishments, “The court ruled ‘that the negro women shall be whipt at the whipping post and the said Sweat shall tomorrow in the forenoon do public penance for his offense at James citychurch…” While the white man barely gets any punishment the black servant is whipped. The power structure is made so that the white ruling class is able to keep its power.
The way that the slave trade is vividly described is deeply frightening. From capture to the boats to the plantations Zinn is able to show the life of a slave starting from Africa. The trans-Atlantic slave trade is horrifying, and I already knew that. However, the sheer amount of profit from the slave trade was crazy. For example James Madison, “Shortly after the American Revolution that he could make $257 on every Negro in a year, and spend only $12 or $13 on his keep.” That’s a crazy amount of money while adjusting for inflation. Also, only spending 12 or 13 dollars on keeping a human being is craziness. Meanwhile, James Madison, one of our founding fathers boasts about the terrible conditions in which he holds his slaves. Just a reminder of the horrifying reality of our history.
I completely agree that the profit that could have been made from the slave trade was astronomical. I had no idea that the upkeep for a slave was between $12 and $13 and then a little while later, the slave could be sold for $257. The rise of plantations and cash crops helped create a capitalistic and money-driven mindset within most people. The fact that a person could make that much money per slave is unfortunately an irresistible profit that plantation owners couldn’t help themselves from. Because of all the money that was being made, I believe that many plantation owners became corrupt and solely focused on making money. It is very unfortunate that people committed these horrible actions upon one another. Humans should not be sold nor traded. They are not a currency.
I also found the description of the slave trade to be disturbing and found it especially sad that families were almost always split up, leading this to be a reason why many people now can’t figure out their family history.
The different forms of punishment for the same crime between white and black servants is disgusting. An individual should receive the same punishment for the same crime, however this sadly wasn’t the case back then. I also was surprised as well to hear the amount of profit a slaveowner could gain by owning slaves. I never realized the amount of profit that could be earned by exploiting and abusing these individuals.
I find it frightening that I never even knew about James Madison as a notoriously poor treater of his slaves, and the fact that I didn’t know that only further emphasizes the talk that we have had in the classroom about the sheer lack of detail that is taught to us in our history classes. It makes sense though, why the American school system would neglect the points that reflect poorly on our past, because that is what we tend to do; overlook the past to instill national pride in our people.
While I had heard of the magnitude of profits off of the slave trade, I had no idea that James Madison was so directly tied to the industry. It is frightening to think that Madison is probably one of many historical figures that have been praised while Americans gloss over the injustices these “heroes” took part in.
I find the profit driven nature of it all to be particularly sick. Somehow, everything in the culture coalesced into creating a world where capitalism became perpetuated into the highest importance, so much that slavery became a supposed necessity.
I also agree that from the very beginning the slave trade was incredibly unethical and disturbing. It is scary and saddening that one of our founding fathers, James Madison was such a racist man.
The fact that James Madison sold slaves for profit of around $244 was very disturbing and crazy to me as well, and I was also amazed that this was the first time I learned of this statistic. It is very sad to me that whites created their own superiority over blacks because, as we learned in the podcast and readings, the concept of slavery did not originate due to ethnicity.