Slavery Documentary-Script
An Evil of Civilization | The American Fight For Freedom
I. Slavery
Slavery enters human history with civilization. Hunter-gatherers and primitive farmers have no use for a slave. There is no economic advantage in owning another human being. On a large farm or in a workshop there is real benefit in a reliable source of cheap labour. The history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient times to the present day. Every ancient civilization used slaves.
Slavery was known in the very first civilizations such as Sumer in Mesopotamia, which dates back as far as 3500 BC, as well as in almost every other civilization.
There are several ways in which slaves are acquired. Pirates offer their captives for sale. A criminal may be sentenced to slavery. An unpayable debt can bring the end of liberty. The impoverished sell their own children. And the children of slaves are themselves slaves.
Slaves and enslavers can come in any race; the Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe resulted in the taking of large numbers of Christian slaves, especially amongst the Slavic peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, and the first legal slave owner in American history was a black tobacco farmer named Anthony Johnson.
II. The Portuguese Slave Trade
The Portuguese expeditions of the 15th century bring European ships into regular contact with sub-Saharan Africa. This religion has long been the source of slaves for the route through the Sahara to the Mediterranean. On the coast of Guinea, the Portuguese are now setting up trading stations to buy captive Africans.
Some of these slaves are sent north for sale in Medeira, or in Portugal and Spain-where Seville now becomes an important market. Africans have been imported by this sea route into Europe since at least 1444, when one of Henry the Navigator’s expeditions return with slaves exchanged for Moorish prisoners.
Apologists for the African slave trade long argued that European traders did not enslaved anyone: they simply purchased Africans who already had been enslaved and who otherwise would have been put to death. Thus, apologists claimed, the slave trade actually saved lives.
The labour of the slaves in the Cape Verde Islands primes a profitable trade with the African region which becomes known as Portuguese Guinea or the Slave Coast. The slaves work in the Cape Verde plantations, growing cotton and indigo in the fertile valleys. They are also employed in weaving and dying factories, where these commodities are transformed into cloth. The cloth is exchanged in Guinea for slaves, and the slaves are sold for cash to the slaving ships which pay regular visits to the Cape Verde Islands.
Early in the seventeenth century, a Dutch ship loaded with African slaves introduced a solution-and a new problem-to the New World. Slaves were most economical on large farms where labor-intensive cash crops, such as tobacco could be grown. The Portuguese enforced a monopoly of the transport of African slaves to their own colony of Brazil.
By the 18th century, the majority of the ships carrying out this appalling commerce are British.
III. Triangular Trade-18th Century
The triangular trade was formed by each of the three separate journeys making up an expedition with only the “middle voyage” across the Atlantic involving slaves as cargo.
Ships depart from Liverpool or Bristol with items in demand in West Africa-these include firearms, alcohol (mainly rum), cotton goods, metal trinkets and beads. These traders have slaves on offer, captured in the African interior and now awaiting transport to America. The slaves are packed into the vessels in appalling conditions for the Atlantic crossing. It is estimated that as many as twelve million Africans are embarked on this journey during the course of the Atlantic slave trade, and that one in six dies before reaching the West Indies.
IV. The Abolitionist Movement
By 1688, the Quakers, a British religious organization, are already prominent in their condemnation of this inhuman trade, with the society’s founder, George Fox, speaking strongly against it. At the time of the American colonies’ fight for independence, the Quakers again give the lead. The clamour for freedom, expressed so powerfully in the Declaration of Independence, can be seen as inconsistent in a population with a large African-American minority which is not in any sense free.
In 1774, the Quakers in Britain decide to expel any member involved in the slave trade. In the same year, Quakers in Pennsylvania set up the first abolitionist society, and in 1776 the Pennsylvania Quakers free their own slaves. The first state to abolish slavery is Massachusetts, in its new constitution of 1780. Other northern states follow suit during the next few years.
But the southern states are determined to retain slavery, which is claimed to be an economic necessity.
A book of 1786 by Thomas Clarkson, “Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species,” is followed by the foundation in London in 1787 of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, with Quaker again predominant.
In America, the constitutional congress has agreed in 1787, under pressure from the southern states that no law on slavery will be passed for twenty years, outlawing the slave trade from January 1st, 1808. (Denmark-Norway was the first European country to ban the slave trade in 1802.) Meanwhile in London in 1807, parliament prohibits the carrying of slaves in any British ship and the import of slaves into any British colony.
Enough children are now being born into slavery to work on the plantations. The new cause must be the abolition of slavery itself.
V. The Political Issue of Slavery-1819-1850
Slavery has been a major area of disagreement between the northern and southern states ever since the first compromise is achieved on the issue at the constitutional convention of 1787. It becomes a particularly hot political issue in 1819 during congressional debates on the application of Missouri for statehood.
In 1819, a New York congressman, James Tallmadge, proposes an amendment to the Missouri bill to the effect that no further slaves shall be brought into the state and that children of existing slaves shall be freed at the age of twenty-five.
The house of representatives, with a preponderance of congressmen from the more populous north, passes the Tallmadge amendment.
It is agreed in 1820 that the district of Maine will be separated from Massachusetts to become an independent free state, the 23rd in the union. Missouri, with its slaves, follows in 1821 as the 24th. The balance is kept in the senate.
The Missouri Compromise includes one other clause passed separately by congress. This legislates in advance for the territory beyond Missouri, stating that no more slaves shall be admitted to the union north of latitude 36.30 (the continuation of the southern boundary of Missouri).
In 1849 the issue returns. California applies to join the union as a free state. For the first time since 1820 the southern states are in danger of being outvoted in the senate.
The Fugitive Slave Laws, passed in 1793, have been a continuing cause of local friction. They allow southern slave owners to reclaim escaped slaves found in northern states.
VI. Civil War-Emancipation Proclamation
President Lincoln has undertaken the Civil War intending only to preserve the Union. His purpose, and that of the Republican Party, has never been to end slavery in the southern states. But two costly and inconclusive years of war begin to alter his opinion.
The abolitionist lobby in the north is passionate and vocal. Increasing resentment at the southern states lessens any inclination to protect their supposed rights as slave-owners. And a new moral dimension added to the Union war aims is likely to bring its own diplomatic and political benefits.
Liberal opinion in Britain, where the government often seems inclined to support the south, will be impressed by an anti-slavery crusade. Flagging domestic acceptance of the war will be refreshed by an injection of idealism, particularly in the cause with which Americans identify most powerfully-that of liberty.
Lincoln decides, in the summer of 1862, to make the emancipation of the slaves a central plank of his policy, but this summer seems not the right moment. The president is finally given his opportunity when the engagement at Antietam, in September 1862, can be presented as a Union success on the battlefield. He issues a preliminary proclamation. He states that if the Confederate states have not laid down their arms by the end of the year, he will declare their slaves to be free.
Naturally, the states fail to respond, so on January 1st, 1863, Lincoln issues his Emancipation Proclamation. It declares that all people held in slavery in rebel states are now free; it urges them to refrain from violence; and it announces that freed slaves will be welcome to serve in the US army and navy.
No slaves are formally freed anywhere, since the proclamation does not apply to slave states fighting on the Union side. Nevertheless, many southern slaves take the opportunity to flee to the north. By the end of the war, about 180, 000 African-Americans have joined the armed forces, greatly boosting Union military strength.
The symbolic effect is enormous. The struggle now has a high moral purpose. The attitude of the slaves is transformed, whether the Union or Confederate states, by the knowledge that a Union victory will be followed by freedom.
On December 6th, 1865, eight months after the end of the Civil War, the United States adopts the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed the practice of slavery.
Although slavery is no longer legal anywhere in the world (except by the use of penal labour) human trafficking remains as an international problem and an estimated 25-40 million people are enslaved today, the majority in Asia.
Countries are still fighting in order to achieve universal freedom, and we can all hope for the problem of slavery to be gradually reduced in the future.
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.
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