By worked to death, I mean that their deaths were a direct result of the intensive labor they were forced to perform. Like I stated earlier, when the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was at its peak (1700s) it was cheaper to import new Africans to a region and this was necessary. Alot of Africans arrived half-starved and sick. Combine this with exposure to new diseases and harsh labor and you get a low life expectancy. The rich slave owner might only get 3-5 years of labor out of his investment which was very expensive ( shipping cost, insurance etc. etc. ) Therefore it would be in his/her best interest to work that slave as hard as possible in an attempt to "break even". For men this meant field work, mine work..etc. For women this meant field work, mine work and children.
This is not my logic...this is the logic of those who owned the Africans. But I agree, there is nothing more to discuss. As ridiculous and unsavory as what I am saying is....it is still historical fact.
Seems to be your logic. Whatever conditions suffered on the journey has nothing to do with 3 years later.
Yea....I suggest you actually read about what these people went through. Then you would see why this statement doesn't make sense.
Believe what you will. But since you refuse to read about what actually happened (for whatever reason) then there is really nothing else to discuss. I bet you wouldn't even believe that some slaves that were purchased and transported were actually thrown overboard.
Lol...yea thats what I would do if I couldn't refute historical fact. I would try to minimize the importance of those facts. Good job sir.
Dude if I was a slave in the 1700s I would much rather go out by drowning than years of being hunched over picking cotton in 100 degree heat. I would dance off the ****ing plank.
Quite a few actually chose that fate. It happened on the African continent, on the ships and in the Americas.
I'm not meaning to be insulting at all. I'm just stating fact. Slaves were the least productive group of laborers in America. It makes it unlikely that slavery would have survived long into mechanized agriculture. I wish you would find this, because I don't think I've ever said or even thought that. My guess is that you're reading something totally unintended into this. No, I'm not. Please don't make me into your strawman.
As many here know, an enormous number of Africans died while packed like sardines on slave ships in their unwilling journey to the slave holding nations and colonies in the West. With the experience of the slave ship owners and their captains being that many would die due to sea sickness (they had never been to sea), the resulting vomiting being added to the fecal material surrounding them as they were chained below decks, that they chose to jam in as many as possible. They were pretty cheap to buy in Africa from their slave owning African masters, the voyage wasn't terribly expensive (what they fed them was slop), and the ones that made it were the slaves that were very, very valuable. On the voyage, they were a "gamble,'' but the ones who made it to port were a gamble won for the backers of the shipments. Those slaves sold for as much as a $1000 dollars, sometimes more. Look up what that is worth in today's dollars with inflation. It's a staggering sum. That was my point about the vast majority of Southerners not being about to afford them. Yet while on the voyage, dying like flies, the dead were tossed overboard. Some, perhaps, may have even been still living, but on their last gasps. It gave a bit more space for the more hardy ones, improving their chances of surviving and the owners making that huge profit. It was an inhuman practice. Yes, there were slaves since time out of mind, and from every race on the planet, but we're talking about "our" slaves, slaves that worked for their masters here long after most of the "civilized" world had outlawed the practice. That's why it is such a stain on our country. That's why we must never forget what happened, or who it happened to. All the arguments back and forth about "details" are pretty meaningless, in my opinion. There were kind slave owners, who were enlightened in their treatment of their slaves, by the lights of the times. Some even freed their slaves by putting it in their wills, to be carried out upon their death, thus avoiding the approbation of their neighbors for the act. Others, however, were brutal by every definition of the word. I suspect that most slave owners feel somewhere in the middle of both extremes. However they treated their slaves, I suspect that many secretly knew it was wrong. The practice was sure to continue as long as it was profitable enough to maintain the grand lifestyle of the plantation aristocracy. Technology would have eventually ended it, in my opinion, but with such an unspeakable thing happening in the midst of our nation, how could we allow it to continue?
please back up this facts and even if you can with numbers please note the use of the term work ethic in this case is callous at best and insulting. i'm sure there are all sorts of reasons slaves may have been less productive but to question the "work ethic" of a slave is a very cold thing to say.
I don't think it would have evolved. Perhaps . .. the evolution would have moved more to House slaves and sex Slaves A slaves may have become status symbols. . . . I think once you don't see the slave as a person They may have come to the point where a good slave was too important expensive to just put in the field but would have them in specialized Do you think . . if it were legal . . .that some corporations would not like to own a few slaves? Rocket River
Deckard; I don't think anyone here is discussing whether morally it should've continued. This is just a thought exercise about a what if of history.
I am kind of confused with what you are arguing for here. Are you saying that slaves actually were as productive as free Americans? I think most of historians would agree that slaves weren't and that goes to that they were slaves. That would make sense then that they wouldn't have a good work ethic since they received no personal benefit to their labor. You seem to be reading much more into Weslinder's statements based upon something previous that what may be there.
I was responding to the back and forth between amaru and CaseyH. It seemed appropriate to me to spell out just what was happening. One was saying that some of those slaves aboard the slave ships chose to leap into the water to their deaths, rather than continue. While I may have missed it, I've never read an account of that happening. The other was belittling (as I read it, my apologies if I misunderstood) the slave ship ordeal by implying that "it was two hundred years ago," as if that makes any difference, and that "I would dance off the ****ing plank" rather than spend a life picking cotton, when none of the Africans on those ships had the slightest clue as to what fate lay before them. The Africans who enslaved them, the middle men who purchased and transported them, and the buyers all knew, but the captured Africans did not. Had knowledge of these horrific conditions during the transport of captured and sold Africans become widely available to the general public, sentiment against the practice would have grown even more. And although most maritime nations outlawed the slave trade, if not slavery itself, the profits were so great that the trade continued. From openly conducting the trade, it turned to smuggling. Because of that, if a slave runner saw he might be captured by a nation's navy attempting to end the practice, like that of Great Britain, there were instances of the entire "cargo" being tossed overboard, along with the manifests and ship's log carried by the captain.
youi are the one expounding weslinder already responded and did not and no i think actual physical conditions played the largest part in produuction
