Empathy: The Plight of the Slaves
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The Set:

(Note: This lesson is based upon resources that are readily available upon the Internet. If, however, access to the Internet for each student is problematic, then published resources may be easily substituted for Internet sources.)

Objective:

This lesson will cause the student to appreciate the hardships endured by slaves. The following objective will develop this appreciation:

1. The student will examine primary documents and first person narratives via the Internet.
2. The student will compile an electronic notebook of primary documents and resources. This notebook will also contain their reactions, reflections and commentary on these materials.

Relevance:

Approximately 8 to 10 million slaves were shipped to the new world between 1500 and 1820. These numbers are often hotly debated because of many factors, including the expanse of time, the sheer number of individuals involved, poor record keeping and most notable, simple indifference to human suffering and death. This lesson will demonstrate to the student a small sample of the enormous human misery that was a product of the slave trade.

Involvement of the Learner:

In 1619, the first slaves to arrive in North America were sold at Jamestown as indentured servants. By the middle of the 17th century, slavery was well established as the primary labor source in the British colonies. In the south, tobacco was the reason for the rise of the institution of slavery.

After a decade troubles, Jamestown had yet to produce a profit for its investors. Survival had become the primary goal of wave after wave of settlers who came to Virginia. All this changed after John Rolfe acquired a tobacco strain grown successfully by the Spanish in Central America. Jamestown quickly grew to be an economic success. By 1619, Jamestown had exported 10 tons of tobacco. This figure jumped to more than 750 tons of tobacco exported by 1639. Tobacco farming is heavily labor intensive, but also highly profitable. So much so that Jamestown colonists took to growing it in the streets. Legislation had to be passed in the Virginia Assembly in order to force farmers to grow food instead of tobacco. As tobacco plantations formed, the indenture labor system could not provide the number of laborers needed to sustain the economic growth of tobacco farming.

Slavery in North America was caused by the need for tobacco labor. In the drive for the profits from tobacco, very little attention was paid to the terrible effects of the institution of slavery. This lesson will highlight some of these effects by examining early first person accounts and documents by those who conducted the institution of slavery and those who it victimized.

The Lesson:

Purpose: This lesson uses the concept of ARC (anticipation, realization and consolidation) in the activity/practice portion of the lesson. Through this method, it will accomplish several goals.

1. It will allow students to begin to tap into the enormous wealth of historical documents available on the Internet.
2. It will permit them to retrieve this information directly into a personal journal.
3. It will provide the student with a means to critically analyze the information and record their observances, reactions and commentary.

Important points for clarification:

1. Technology allows information posted on the Internet to be highlighted on the particular web page, copied using the edit commands, and pasted into a word processing program.
   • Step 1: Point the mouse button to the text on the web page. Click and hold the left mouse button to highlight the text desired. Using the edit commands found on the tool bar at the top of programs such as Netscape and Microsoft Word, click copy.
   • Step 2: Open your word processing program. Move to the point in the document where you wish to paste the material from the Internet. Again, using the edit commands found on the tool bar at the top of programs such as Netscape and Microsoft Word, click paste.
   • Step 3: Repeat these procedures to copy information such as the address for the Web Page, the author's name, etc.. to document the creator or editor of this information.
2. Remember, this material was produced by the labor of another individual and therefore is protected by copyright law. This does not prevent the student from using this material since this lesson is for personal educational purposes only. Copying this material is allowed so long as the following provisions are observed:
   • It may only be used for personal and not commercial purposes.
   • It may not be used as part of a personal web page or other type of Internet posting.

Activity/Practice:

Using the above techniques, students will produce an electronic notebook using the following headings to organize the data and reactions they compile. This notebook will be produced by copying and pasting the information gathered from the Internet and produced by the student into a word processing program. Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect are two examples of these types of programs. The student will be able to utilize the word processor to modify their database and notate each entry easily. These notebooks can then be printed or examined on-line by the teacher.

Each notebook should contain:

Anticipation Phase: A section where the student lists:

• What they know about the institution of slavery (dates, numbers, locations where slaves came from and where they went).
• What they feel about the institution of slavery.

Realization Phase: A section where the student copies and pastes:

• Text from two primary documents that provide the following types of information:
• Names, ages and possibly skills/trades of slaves.
• Names and locations of owners.
• Any factual information regarding slaves, the trading of slaves or other useful data.
• Text from one or more narratives by individuals who experienced some aspect of the slave trade.

Consolidation Phase: A section where the student critically analyze the information and record their observances, reactions and commentary. These should be personal and private. Some critical thinking questions to be addressed:

• "How did the information you found challenge what you knew about the institution of slavery?"
• "How did it re-enforce what you knew about the institution of slavery?"
• "Why did you select these particular passages for you journal?
• "Did they challenge a presumption on your part or did you find them particularly moving for some reason?"

The next part of this phase is the preparation of a presentation. The presentation can take many formats, among these are:

• "This is what I found and why I thought it should be included." or "This is what I learned from this source."

Closure:

1. "What was the most profound document you examined?" "What was the most profound narrative?"
2. "What are some of the new vocabulary words you learned from this lesson?" Are there any that you still do not understand?"

Resources:

Internet links: This list is by no means exhaustive. It should serve as a starting point.

tobacco information: Tobacco and Slavery

slave narratives:

This link connects to a library of narratives from slaves and slavers: Slave Narratives

Of particular note are:

A European slave trader, John Barbot, describes the African slave trade

James Barbot, Jr., a sailor the slaver Don Carlos, describes a slave uprising aboard the vessel

A Muslim merchant recalls his capture and enslavement in Maryland

This link goes to primary documents and narratives about slaves in New England: New England Slaves

This link goes to a searchable database on Afro-American Sources in Virginia: A Guide to Manuscripts

Keywords such as auction and Jamestown bring up interesting documents.

This page was last updated on and is maintained by the UVA's Program in Social Studies Education.
URL for this page: http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu.