The voices of freedom that I chose was on the topic of slavery and what the word “freedom” meant. The Union and Confederacy used the same words but different meaning. In a letter, written on April 17, 1861, from Thomas F. Drayton to his brother Percival, an officer in the U.S. Navy, defends his support to the confederacy cause. He was a South Carolina plantation owner and ally for the confederacy succession. He explains that the confederacy is not fighting to defend slavery, instead, it is fighting for their own freedom. Abraham Lincoln was an United States president from the spring of 1861 to spring of 1865 when he was assassinated. He made an address to Sanitary Fair, Baltimore that discussed the different meanings of freedom on April 18,1864. …show more content…
From the civilizations of ancient Greece, 1754 BC. (Wikipedia, 2016) to American slavery in the 17th century. American slavery overtime grew to be one of the major forces that divided the United States, especially in the American Civil war in the 1860s. Prior to the United State’s independence in 1776 , slavery was not really thought about if it was right or wrong. It was done in order to keep up with the economic necessities that the rise in tobacco cultivation had made. Once the Declaration of Independence in 1776 stated that “all men are created equal, [and] that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”, the conversation started about who is equal. All men? Or just white men, excluding women and people of color? Although the Declaration of Independence was to cut the ties with the royal crown of Britain and to have liberty, it imposed a new rule and enslavement over another group of …show more content…
Since the Natives had no immunity, most of them died due to the new contact. The settlers saw the declining numbers and decided that they needed a new workforce. Prior to having slaves, the colonies would rely on indentured servants, people who “voluntarily surrendered their freedom for a specified time (usually five to seven years) in exchange for passage to America”. These servants would be too poor to buy their own passage. Once completing their time, they would “receive payment known as “freedom dues” and become free members of society” (Foner, p. 53). By being poor englishmen who wanted a new opportunity, becoming an indentured servant seemed like a good idea, unfortunately this proved to be the complete opposite. Many would not enjoy the freedom dues due to a high mortality rate. The servants would also run away because coming to the New World was not as good as they had envisioned it to be. This lead to the use of importing slaves from Africa. The increase of the need for labor in the tobacco to the sugar and later on the cotton industries made slavery a crucial aspect of economic wealth and status. Along with the use of slaves, a new term was developed; race. The darker skin of the Africans made the distinction much easier to notice and also deemed them as “unworthy of incorporation as equals into free society”(p. 98). This inequality