My Observation During the Visit to the United States by: A Visiting English Journalist I have always been interested in hearing what the exact opinions of the two sides of the argument on slavery are. I finally had the chance to talk to both sides, as I remained neutral. Living in the south on a small plantation in England I was never really exposed to slavery. My family was quite content with living and working for our own benefit. I decided I was going to learn about it more to better educate my self on where I really stood on the issue when I visited the United States. In the north less than 1% of the population is black. Although they were free it was obvious that they were segregated in their daily lives. In fact some states such as Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa made law prohibiting them from entering. I did not run across many abolitionists and was told that there are only a few. I found that strange since they have such a loud voice in the south. I found out that most of the northerners did not even care about the difficulty the slaves were experiencing. Although they may not agree on the issue of slavery, they were no better with the idea of 4 million black to compete with if they were set free.

The northern states that depended on the Mississippi River and south ports felt close to the south's fight to maintain slavery. They benefited from the increase in crops as the slaves worked in the fields. Slavery had been around 168 years before the Constitution was written. It had existed all over America at one point, although many stopped using it when it proved unprofitable. The southern plantation owners relied more heavily on the slaves when the cotton gin was invented. As far as the issue of slavery being laid out clearly in the Constitution one will find that it has become a conflicting theory. The southerner found where Constitution sanctions slavery to support their argument. In Article I, Section 2 it says, apart from free persons "all other people," meaning the slaves, "are each to be counted as three-fifths of a free white man for the purpose of appointing Congressmen representatives on the basis of population." Article I, Section 9 states that the importation of such person as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit," meaning slaves, would not be prohibited until 1808. This clearly means that blacks are not equal to the white and the Constitution is sanctioning slavery in that aspect.

Article IV, Section 2 directs that persons, "held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another." So fugitive slaves, were to be returned to their masters, even if they were found in a free state. The actual word "slavery" or "slave" cannot be found in the written Constitution or Bill of Rights. In both of these documents the phrase, "no person shall be deprived of life liberty, or property, without due process of law." The slaves were considered property of the slave owner. Although it says that no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, the black people were not considered to be people so this did not apply to them. Visiting with the southern slave holders I found out that they are very cautious of their slaves. There have been revolts on other plantations and they do not want one to happen on theirs. The revolts they speak of were in the West Indies, Jamaica, Barbados, St. Dominique, and Martinique. In these revolts the slaves had risen up against their owners and murdered them and their family. Then they proceeded to burn the plantation.

Although there was a fear of such happening in the United States, the revolts that had taken place were not as fatal as the ones elsewhere. The main revolts had been in New York in 1712; the Stono rebellion in South Carolina in 1739; the Gabriel Plot in Richmond, Virginia in 1800; the Denmark Vesey conspiracy in Charleston, South Carolina in 1822, and the Nat Turner uprising in Virginia in 1831. The slave holders told me that the reason there had been so few was because most of the owners treated their slaves humanly. The South's slaves compared to other society's slaves were well treated. Another reason was that the revolts would have been repressed severely with strict codes that regulated the slave population. As with anything, there were some slave owners that did not treat their slaves right. The abolitionists tried to make the northerner see how wrong it was to treat someone that way. They attempted to create hate for the southerners. The northerners started to lump together anyone from the south with cruel slavery. In exchange the southerners attempted to defend the south, themselves, and slavery.

The southerners found ways to make slavery seem "not evil, but more national benefit." John C. Calhoun regarded it, as the most stable institution is the world. Some of the southern ministers even went as far as saying that the Bible told the southerners that all blacks must be slaves. There were even scientists that said they proved that the blacks were not like them, but from a separate creation that took place on the African continent. A Virginian thinker and writer, George Fitzhugh, claimed that by owning slaves the people were protecting the weak. He said that the northerners were persecuting the weak by not taking responsibility for them. Of course all these explanations seemed to be "astonishing nonsense" to many people. The sad thing is that these black people did not come to America with intentions of living a better life, but because they were forced. They were basically kidnapped using cages and whips. Before they were taken from their homes they had good lives with strong backgrounds. They had strong backgrounds in empires, complex cultures, and some were primitive tribes. Some of these cultures/societies practice slavery among themselves. The chiefs would take prisoners and sell them to the slave traders. Some of these people would rather die than go into slavery, so they often committed suicide.

The slaves were packed tightly onto the ship and many died. If they did manage to survive, I was told they were they were sold to slave owners in Brazil, the West Indian islands, the United States, or other buyers in America. This was of course after an intense auction. The slave trade was legally abolished in 1807, but there were still slaves smuggled in and sold in a prosperous trade. These people could so easily look past how inhuman what they were doing to focus on how much money it was making them. It was a mean of labor control for the south. The largest crops they grew were cotton, tobacco, rice, hemp, and sugar. The slaves were forced to work all day tending, planting, and harvesting the crops, as well as working around the house. They were often driven to exhaustion and still expected to do even more and if they could not. However, it was against the law to kill or maim the slaves. Some tried to get out of work by acting sick, running away, and working slowly. Those that did escape risked their freedom by coming back to help others. I find this very brave on their part because they were willing to go back to the horrible life if they were caught. I even found out that there white people helping the slaves escape. Laws were made later that made this more difficult and some people bought slaves to free them.

There was a great deal of dependency on both parts of the two. . Many of the plantations were isolated and kept everyone depending on the other for many things. Slaves depended on their owners for food and shelter, while the owners needed the slaves to keep their plantation running. The masters realized it was better if they kept their slaves happy and in good health. As I looked into this, I found out that most of the plantation owners owned about 20 slaves at a time while a few had other 50. Some of these slaves were treated like white hands and cared for. Some of the owners took care of their slaves when they were sick and kept them clothed and fed well. Although it was against the law some slaves were even taught to read. They even encouraged the slaves to become saved and go to church. So the slaves went to church with their owners, then to a service run by a black minister. In my opinion the Negroes whether they be slave or free, are a race a part, in both North and South. I hope that in the future years the United States finds a way to acknowledge these people as people, and quit persecuting them so severely.