Importance of the Emancipation of Slaves
Importance of the Emancipation of Slaves
No condition is worse than that of a slave. It is by far the worst social injustice ever endured by man. A slave is taken from his home by force, shipped off to a foreign land and made to obey another person who speaks a different language, practices a different religion and follows a dissimilar culture. The only reason a slave complies is to preserve his life, which is no longer truly his own. This is because another man controls every facet of the slaves life, another man determines whether the slave lives or dies and works or rests. No one else has lived in such menial conditions, or has been subjected to fewer rights, clearly this is why the emancipation of slavery is the most important emancipation effort in history, and furthermore it was simply a problem that could not be ignored or avoided.
From its inception, the slave found himself in a convoluted position. Others in troubled situations with minimal rights, such as the condition of women at the time, still enjoyed comparative independence to that of a slave, a quasi relatively stable position within society and semi functional skills which allowed women to participate within their society, whereas the slave enjoyed almost no advantages and was faced with myriad obstacles. The status of women paled in comparison to that of a slave. Women although somewhat socially oppressed and subjugated were not slaves and still had minimal control over their own lives. How can one emancipate the rights of women or anything similar to that when people in society are still oppressed far beyond that? Fixing the larger problem of emancipating slavery would lead to the wide spread emancipation of other efforts for it is a significantly larger problem. If society can give the lowest members of society emancipation, then it will easily emancipate those who are not as oppressed sooner than if the emancipation of smaller efforts occurred. This is because the departure between emancipating a slave compared to a woman is so great that if a slave is emancipated there should be nothing stopping the government from emancipating people, who in comparison are basically emancipated. Not only had slavery resulted in widespread death and near total physical devastation, but the departure of the slave from his homeland left him without any skills to survive outside of slavery within his new...