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Tom Sawyer

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Submitted By autigs3434
Words 2141
Pages 9
John Hammond
History 2010
Dr. Keith Krawczynski
November 14, 2012

During the 19th century America was becoming a rapidly fast growing country, industrially and economically. It seemed as though things were on the right track, but there was a growing concern, regarding slavery, that had people questioning the southern region’s integrity and moral values. After all the years of slavery propaganda from the large planters more people started to realize that slavery was not a good thing after all. The planters argued that slavery was good for the African Americans because it gave them a chance to become more civilized, but people were beginning to think differently. Many people did not know what was actually happening on slave plantations. Novelists began publishing articles and books that described what they were seeing so that other people could get a sense of how the African Americans were really being treated. After slavery ended former slaves began telling their stories, and evidence was collected to validate what actually happened. The slaves wanted to let people know that their lives were not as simple as some people perceived it to be because being physically punished, abused, and owned by another human is far short of living a trouble free life.
Some of the slaves did not mind being punished as long as they were given food, but others would have rather been poor than to be abused by their owners. Owners and non-slave owners wanted to instill fear in the eyes of slaves because they did not want them to rebel. They wanted them to be ignorant and dependent of whites, so they passed laws to eliminate any chance of slaves getting an education, which was important to becoming a free African American. Owners also put fear into female slaves by sexually exploiting them, and there was nothing that could be done because those kinds of things were kept

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