Wilentz

Slavery had existed for over 100 years and throughout these years, many thought the existence of slavery was okay. In other words, there was no immediate fight to abolish slavery for years but when it did, it became an inevitable fight. It came rather fast along with the opinions on who or whats to thank for abolishing slavery. Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of “The 1619 Project”, believes that African-Americans are the real reason why slavery was abolished and that they played a pivotal role in shaping the prosperous America. In this point of view, the slaves were the real reason that slavery ended due to their confidence in protesting as well as rioting and exhaustion caused by the cruel and unjust slave life. One important idea in Hannah-Jones point of view is that she believes that African Americans are solely to thank for slavery being abolished. Wilentz, author of “Relentless Slavery and the Relentless Unforeseen, believes that abolishing slavery was inevitable due to the western revolution that was taking place. Essentially, the fight for education and social status as well as human rights became Americas top priority. Although different viewpoints, there are common points that they share. For example, Hannah-Jones argues for the sake of African-Americans in that slavery is unfair, they needed rights, and they were the reason they got rights. Wilentz on the other hand believes that the desire for human rights, laws and principles being brought up by the revolution was the real cause of slavery being abolished. Similar between the two beliefs, Wilentz and Hannah-Jones, people began to be held accountable for their role in slavery whether they were slaves, slave owners, or a bystander. In other words, there was always going to be an inevitable fight to abolish slavery regardless of the events that happened. There was bound to be some sort of revolution or stance taken by people in order to abolish slavery. Wilentz may point was that no one expected it to come as abruptly as it did when the idea was first brought up. However, during the times of slavery this was hard to imagine. Free labor is one of the many reasons why the thought of abolishing slavery was such a huge no. In contrast, the enslaved has heard the stories of older generations being slaves their entire life and so a day where they wasn’t working for basically nothing was impossible to imagine.