You and many other boys are lined up getting called to go up on stage. Not knowing exactly what is going on you lean over to ask a young man standing next to you but as you turn to talk you are pushed back in line by a man walking down the row.
“Number 16 please comes up. 16 get up here now,” you hear what you think to be and auctioneer scream!
A very young looking boy steps forward and walks up onto the stage. The man you hear is talking really fast and it sounds like he is take numbers and yelling them out loud.
After what feels like a half hour has gone by you hear the man yell “number 37 please come up." A man grabs your shirt and says that’s you. As you start walking up the steps to the stage someone shoves you and you stumble to the auctioneer’s feet.
“This is a strong young man that can handle doing work like blacksmithing, farming, or working with animals. Let’s start the bidding at eleven pounds,” says the man.
People in the crowd in front of the stage start standing up and yell out their bids. Finally one man yells out 17 pounds and the rest of the crowd goes silent.
“Going once, going twice, sold to number 243.”
He slams down a mallet and pushes you off the stage. This is what some slaves had to go through when their “masters” needed money and had to sell them. Slavery was a very bad thing and should not have ever been allowed.
Men, women and children were used and sold as property until 1865 when slavery was banned because of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Slaves were unpaid employees that had to do whatever they were asked when they were asked because otherwise they would be whipped or beaten. (Slavery in the United States) Give Me Liberty, by L.M. Elliot, is a perfect example of how slaves used to be treated, though this slave is much luckier than most slaves were. “He’s my property,” shouted Owen. “I’m going to beat the trouble out of him.” Nathanial was a slave that was being sold to a man, Owen, the thought that the way to get Nathanial to respect him was to beat him but was saved by a man, named Basil, while he was being beaten. The young slave was very lucky that a man as kind as Basil had come and saved him because if he hadn’t, Nathanial would have been beaten much worse but got away with minor injuries. Most slaves were treated as if they weren’t even human. They would have to do many had jobs everyday whether it was 100 degrees or 20 degrees. Also the slaves you’d be hit whipped or at times killed, which would now get you arrested, for doing things wrong
Many of the people fighting in the Revolutionary War were slaves that either volunteered or were forced to serve. The reason that the colonist started the war was because they basically didn’t want to be “owned” by the British, but what many don’t think about is that the colonist had slaves themselves. The worst part of the colonist having slave was that they were forcing their slaves to join the army and fight the redcoats. “Yes, that’s it. I am going to join up,” is what Basil said to Nathanial when he finally decides that he was going into the army. Although in this story the slave had volunteered to join it wasn’t normally like that. Nathanial and Basil had a special relationship because Basil treated him as if he were his son not his property and once Nathanial learned that he could trust Basil was when their bond became its strongest.
Being able to own a person and tell them what to do and them having no choice but to do it is a very wrong thing to do and thankfully it isn’t allowed to day. It should never been allowed because it was a very bad way to treat others, even if they do look different.
Bibliography
Slavery in the United States. 25 January 2011. 25 January 2011
