History of the United States and slavery

History of the United States

Author

Institution

Introduction

The history of the United States is deeply rooted in slavery especially pitting the whites as the masters and the blacks as the slaves. Indeed, slavery was rife and legal in the United States for a number of centuries until 1865, when the 13th amendment to the United States Constitution was enacted abolishing slave trade or any involuntary servitude. The Mississippi Black Code essentially exposed the manner in which the southern states made efforts to retain the old order and restrict the rights that the African Americans had just acquired. After the civil war, the African Americans gained a number of privileges.

First, they gained the capacity to sue other individuals, whether white men or freed negroes, as well as acquire or dispose property in the same manner as white men could do provided it was in incorporated towns or cities where corporate authorities would control such property (Boezi, 2006). On the same note, the African Americans could now be considered competent witnesses in both criminal and civil cases even in instances where the defendants were white people and the plaintiffs as Negroes (Boezi, 2006). Indeed, it was considered lawful for any free Negro, mulatto or freedman to charge, by affidavit, a mulatto, Negro, freedman or white person with any criminal offense against himself or his property, after which the proper process would be issued and done as if a white person had made the affidavit.

In addition, the African Americans were granted the right to intermarry amongst themselves with individuals who had lived and cohabited together as husband and wife being considered as legally married (Boezi, 2006).

The differential awarding of rights was aimed at giving the former slaves a semblance of freedom while not allowing them to be in a level that would allow them to compete with their white counterparts. There were fears that freedom would make the black slaves too strong and powerful to the extent of challenging white supremacy and even carrying out revenge on their white masters. This is essentially why they could only be given limited rights.

However, African Americans also lost some of the privileges with the enactment of the Mississippi Black Codes. First, they could be arrested and carried back to their employers in instances where they had left their jobs without a good cause. This means that they could only leave their jobs with the sole authority of their owners as only them could determine what amounted to a good reason (Boezi, 2006).

These restrictions were complemented by sharecropper contacts that ensured that the sharecropper, who was mainly an African American, would not only remain indebted to the landowner and poor but also he never became an autonomous farmer. In this regard, sharecroppers would not be allowed to cater for their own fields in instances where there was work to be done in the landowners field (Boezi, 2006). Indeed, a typical sharecropper agreement prohibited croppers to work off the plantation in instances where the land he has rented had work or in instances where the landowner or even other landowners required him to work for them. On the same note, landowners would require specific amounts of produce, failure to which they could recover the remaining amount from the croppers’ share so as to fill up the amount. In addition, sharecroppers seemed to remain subordinate to the landowners as he could call any of them to carry out repairs on any part of the fence destroyed (Boezi, 2006). Underlining the cruelty outlined in the sharecroppers’ contracts is the fact that the croppers could not claim stock of any kind in the plantation after the gathering of the crops. This means that they ultimately had no ownership rights at the end of the day. Lastly, it is evident that they did not have the freedom to claim even the money earned from selling their share of the produce. Indeed, only the landowner could sell such produce and, after deducting the amounts that the croppers owed him, he could “decide” to give them half of the net proceeds.

References

Boezi, M. (2006). America through the eyes of its people: [primary sources in American history]. New York: Pearson/Longman.