Cattle slavery was genius in its inception, but gross in its execution. It make me sick to my stomach but I also understand David Walker's words to be true . In relation to the history of the world there has never been a group of people so wretched. Abused, and hated as the enslaved Africans were. The hypocritical nature, using exaggerated notions of blackness as justification for the peculiar institution, but then having to resort to such violent unorthodox means to control other human beings.
Cattle slavery was the begging of dehumanizations. Which meant literally treating enslaved people as animals with whom they could do whatever they pleased. Their abuses were egregious both mentally and physically. They started the process of stripping the individuals of their inner humanity to encourage submissiveness. The White slave holders took their ancestral names, sold them on a whim at auctions in front of many. People but most importantly had to make fellow Americans numb to their conscious and moral codes. They started by using the divine word as justification, claiming this Is the will of god and that blacks were descendants of Cain and ham also that they were intellectually incapable of anything other than that. That led to the wide spread belief that blacks were inherently inferior, that a long with the interest of the south and the agricultural propelled economy were more than enough reason to go along with what was being said. The most interesting point was how intricate southern slave holders plans were. Once they got people to believe blacks were capable of nothing more than field work, they were able to put into place a institution that lasted for four centuries. Generations upon generations lost their freedom to a nation of hypocrites.
It really is unfathomable how such a horrific, gruesome and dehumanizing institution could have existed such a short period ago. In regards to the idea of commodification, I would like to point out that the slave-owners definitely transitioned from viewing the slaves as commodities to viewing them as something with more value than a commodity: a human. To me, this makes the practice of slavery even worse because the slave owners or slavery supporters could not use the idea that slaves were not really humans to justify the practice. I say that this transition occurred because suddenly, slave-owners became concerned with the emotions and "human capacity" the slaves had, which is why they would strictly forbid marriage or education of slaves. Thus, they had to begin to think of slaves as actual people and not animals because only people have that innate desire to learn or get married. This is why the slave owners started using the Bible to justify their actions. They needed something with high value to support their practice to others but especially to themselves. For instance, when someone gets very defensive about something, it is usually because, deep down, they know what they are doing is wrong. I have to question whether deep down, slave-owners thought what they were doing was wrong or whether they just blatantly thought enslaving other people was acceptable. Regardless, their brutal actions and skewed (to say the least) mentality lead to a disastrous history of the South.
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