Slavery Before 1865
For this assignment, I choose to read the three documents based on the issue of slavery
before 1865 since we have learned many things about this issue. In addition, as we talked
about the slavery issue in class, we did not go a lot of the detail about what the slaves had
been through; therefore, I have the interest to read more about the life of slavery back in
the history.
The first document that I read was How He Was Punished After Trying to Run Away
written by Moses Roper and was written on 1837. The document was basically saying that
Moses Roper, who was a slave has been punished many times, and the document was
stated the punishments that Moses Roper got from his master as tried to escape but failed.
As mentioned on the reading, the most common method that master used on slaves to
prohibit them from running away was using heavy iron to chain on the legs. Other than the
punishment of whipping, there’s another punishment that the master used on Moses Roper,
“upon this he put the fingers of my hands into a vice, and squeezed all the nails off.”
(Roper, 1837), which I considered to be extremely brutal.
The second document that I read, Kidnapping and Banditry as Ways to Acquire Slaves
written on 1789 by Olaudah Equiano and Scott Glenn. The document has stated how
assailants or kidnappers kidnapped little kids when parents were not around and sell them
as slaves in order to get money. As stated in the document, when Olaudah Equiano and his
