1. Evaluate the extent to which revolutionary ideologies and legal frameworks transformed the experiences and status of African Americans in colonial and early national America from 1724 to 1789.
In your response you should do the following:
- Respond to the prompt with a defensible thesis or claim that establishes a line of reasoning.
- Describe a broader historical or disciplinary context relevant to the topic of the prompt.
- Support an argument in response to the prompt using at least three of the sources.
- Use at least one additional piece of specific evidence (beyond that found in the sources) relevant to your argument.
- For at least two sources, explain how or why the perspective, purpose, context, and/or audience for each source is relevant to your argument.
- Reference or cite the sources you use in your argument. You can reference or cite the source letter, title, or author.
Document 1
Source: Articles 1-10 from the Louisiana Slave Code (Code Noir, or Black Code), 1724
VI. We forbid our white subjects, of both sexes, to marry with the blacks, under the penalty of being fined and subjected to some other arbitrary punishment. We forbid all curates, priests, or missionaries of our secular or regular clergy, and even our chaplains in our navy to sanction such marriages. We also forbid all our white subjects, and even the manumitted or free-born blacks, to live in a state of concubinage with blacks. Should there be any issue from this kind of intercourse, it is our will that the person so offending, and the master of the slave, should pay each a fine of three hundred livres...
Article IX. Children, issued from the marriage of slaves, shall follow the condition of their parents, and shall belong to the master of the wife and not of the husband, if the husband and wife have different masters.
Article X. If the husband be a slave, and the wife a free woman, it is our will that their children, of whatever sex they may be, shall share the condition of their mother, and be as free as she, notwithstanding the servitude of their father; and if the father be free and the mother a slave, the children shall all be slaves.
Document 2
Source: William Cushing, chief justice of the Massachusetts state supreme court, notes on the court case and decision in Quock Walker v. Nathaniel Jennison, 1783
[The] justification [is made] that Quock is a Slave and to prove it tis said that Quock when a child [of] about 9 months old with his father and mother were sold by [a] bill of sale in 1754. . . . As to the doctrine of Slavery and the right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude, . . . a different idea has taken place with the people of America more favorable to the natural rights of Mankind, . . . with which Heaven (without regard to Colors, complexion, . . . [or] features) has inspired all the human Race. And upon this Ground our [state] Constitution of Government, . . . Sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal and that Every subject is entitled to Liberty, and to have it guarded by the Laws. . . . This being the Case, I think the Idea of Slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and [state] Constitution and there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational Creature.
Document 3
Source: Benjamin Rush, revolutionary leader and physician, letter to Richard Price, 1787
The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government; and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens, for these forms of government, after they are established and brought to perfection.
Document 4
Source: "On Being Brought from Africa to America" by Phillis Wheatley, 1773
'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Document 5
Source: Excerpt from Chapter 2 of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself, 1789
The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocating us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable; and the filth of the necessary tubs [large buckets for human waste], into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.
