If you lived back in slavery times.. would you--?

Question

buy a slave so that no other family could buy him/her, and you would treat him/her like any other person, etc... so that you would be protecting them? Or would you just stay out of the whole thing?

Answer 1

Buying a slave, regardless of your intentions, would still be a degradation to their humanity. Buying a human being is wrong. It would also perpetuate the buying and selling of slavery, aiding in the justification of slavery in the first place. In the short run you would be supposedly helping a person, but in the long run you would be jeopardizing their ability to be freed or to free their family. You would perhaps treat them better, but ultimately you would not be protecting them at all. They would still be a slave, and they would still resent the fact. It would be like if someone did your homework for you all the time. It would be nice, but they would be taking away your ability to improve yourself and gain the skills to make it on your own.

That said, I would not stay out of the whole thing, either. Buying slaves to "treat them nice" and ignoring the whole thing were not the only options. There was a whole abolition movement that you could join. Lobbying the government for bans on slavery, helping slaves escape, providing funding and volunteer time for anti-slave organizations, organizing revolts, and boycotting slave-produced products are among the many things you could do to help end slavery. This is what ultimately ended slavery.

Answer 2

Since I live in the south I don,t believe in mistreating people like that, So yes I would probably go broke by buying slaves and making sure the have their freedom up north with a trade so they would be able to survive on their own. You know back then freeing slaves was not their only worry they had to have some type of trade to do, An education and an Occupation. NO, I could not just ignore what was going on with slavery! By the way I,m White.

Answer 3

A very difficult question to answer.
Bearing in mind that back in the days of slavery people were not so educated & were more easily led.
I would like to think that I would have done something to help enslaved people but I honestly don't know what would have happened back then. We have to remember that people thought it was not only acceptable but necessary to have slaves so more than likely we would have thought just the same as everyone else.
It is only in these enlightened times that we can honestly say we know how we would react if it was still happening today.

Answer 4

There were people that did that. Town folk would tease the white owners and say "there goes so and so's free slaves." If I was white and had a plantation I wouldn't have slaves I would have it so they can work there if they wanted to. I'd pay them wages, provide them food, shelter, whatever. I would treat them right and they would be free to leave. I would protect them from abusive landowners. I think if they were treated better they wouldn't be so bitter today. Of course I probably wouldn't be a very profitable plantation owner.

Answer 5

Which time? Roman were known to treat their slave very well, some so well that when they tried to free the slave, the slaves want to stay a slave. Many freed slaves even voluntarily attend furneal of their former owner.

I assume you're talking about America. Personally I can pictures myself buy slaves but I'll make them work some. I wouldn't treat them like trash or make them work ridicilous long hours or whatever. I would try to treat them decently, provide them good foods, give them resting time, etc... because a happy worker tend to work WAY harder than those who are unhappy.

Go ahead and pulls out racist card or whatever on me if you want. But let be realistic if you spend about 20 to 50% of your annual income on someone, would you at least expect them to help you out a bit? Or would you bend over and become their slave?

Answer 6

I would buy all the slaves I can and get them to the north as fast as I could, and on the way I would treat them like any other person. also I would protect them from having to wory about them geting tooken away from there familiy. I would also let them rome free and treat them like normal people

Answer 7

buying a slave would encourage slavery. I would work for the Underground railroad. Or be an abolitionist in general. Either that or, because I'm black, I'd be on the run

Answer 8

well, slavery times go from 1864 back to the dawn of mankind. If i were a rich roman i might have a Spanish or German slave. if i were a German from the middle ages i might have a slave bought from the poorhouse because they couldn't pay their bills, during the viking age war captives were routinely enslaved. also slavery was used for a very long time as a substitute for prisons for petty criminals. all of these scenarios of course assume i am one of the upper class who can afford slaves. in my current financial situation i would more likely have been a slave than owned one. after all whites were enslaving whites and Africans were enslaving Africans for thousands of years before America even existed.

Answer 9

Um...I don't know. I would feel wrong even buying a slave at all, even to just help them out and treat them nice. One thing I probably would do, though, is maybe try to help them get across the Mason-Dixon line so they could be free in the North.

Answer 10

Let us assume that I "inherit" slaves from my father who died. If I was anti-slavery in those days, I would either free them or allow them to buy their freedom from me. Many slaves given half a chance did just that.