Slavery Dbq
Slavery was a very controversial subject in the 1800’s. While some people did not see anything wrong with slavery and saw it as a part of the economic and social structure, other people felt that it was morally wrong and completely unethical. Even in the North, where slavery was nonexistent, there were people, like Lydia M. Child, who disapproved of the way African Americans were treated like second-class citizens. She believed that although the actual physical institution of slavery was not present, that was just because of climatic factors that did not really call for slaves, and the essence of slavery was still present. Another slavery-opposer, a poet named John Leaf Whittier, wrote a poem as a reaction to the attempted recapturing of an escapee expressing his disdain for these actions taken by the government. However, Thomas R. Dew clearly articulated that there are no moral complications with slavery because there is absolutely nothing in the bible that suggests that slavery is an immoral institution, while Whittier viewed it as immoral and unacceptable, and Child viewed just the differentiation made between African Americans and whites as unethical. Lydia M. Child expressed her disapproval of the African American situation as a Northern novelist who was fed up with the racial prejudice that was evident and abundant even in the slave-free states. She even goes as far to say that the prejudice in the Northern states was more deeply implanted in the North than in the South. Lydia would say to Thomas Dew, who argues that because significant, holy characters of the bible owned slaves and that Jesus never even mentioned slavery, let alone classified it as a bad thing even in a world with a much higher degree of servitude, there is no reason for slavery to be immoral, she would get frustrated with his impracticality and his inability to see the drastic measures society has taken to make sure African Americans were outcast and not included. Obviously, a world