Narrative Of Escaped Slaves Analysis

During the growth of what is now the great United States of America, the integration of the African American population was one of the most crucial parts of the newly developing country. From the early stages of the thirteen colonies, all the way up until the end of the civil war in 1865, The use of African Americans as slaves could be seen as a cause for the great success of some aspects of the new country; However, there were times during this growth of a county that arguments and disputes arose, and the African American population responded quite differently depending on the time period or even the area in which they lived, mainly the north versus the south. During the early years of slavery, many slaves were resorting to acceptance in the fact that they could not escape slavery. It wasn 't until the 1850 's that many slaves started to see a light at the end of the tunnel which would ultimately lead to the outlaw of slavery, causing many slaves to begin uprisings and planning escapes to other parts of the country. Firstly, it is important to describe the subtle differences in the reactions of slaves in the revolutionary war versus the civil war. The time period is the factor that plays the biggest role in the decisions of the slaves to attempt escape. This is first seen in the time period of the revolutionary war, when the mindset of many of the slaves is to try and escape into the arms of the British. In the account of Boston King from DCE 1, we see that King will "throw myself into the hands of the English". This account shows that King, along with many other slaves living at the time saw hope in the British coming. it becomes even more compelling when the reader sees that "[The English] receive …show more content…
In the Narrative of Escaped Slaves (DCE 194), Mrs. James Steward tells of her story coming from the eastern shore of Maryland, a state in the north of the country, and how she escaped. She articulates her story of how "we eluded pursuit and reached Canada in safety". This story is similar for many slaves living in the north. They all wanted to reach Canada if they escaped, since the government had no control there. The situation is vastly different for the slaves in the south, which there were many more in that area of the country. They didn 't have much of anywhere to escape to, so while many of them longed for freedom and dreamt of escape, most resulted in accepting the fact that there was no escape. This is evident in the account of David George in the article used for DCE 1. He claims that he "had no serious thoughts about my soul". This exemplifies the fact that many slaves living in the south felt that there was no hope for them, and that they were doomed to slavery for the remainder of their …show more content…
Many of these opinions varied depending on firstly the time period, and secondly the geographical area of which they could be found. It wasn 't until the 1840s that the slaves really started to believe that slavery could be overcome, and because of this, the civil war was what it took to ultimately outlaw slavery in the United States for good. These subtle variations of slaves minds throughout history are what make history so interesting and challenging to