Debate:
The institution of slavery caused a lot of suffering to the enslaved people. They lived in
poor conditions, were overworked and severely punished for small mistakes. The fact that they
entered the United States as property left them with no choice than to allow themselves be
treated like properties, thus they did not have any rights to resist. However, not all blacks were
slaves, the same way that not all whites where masters. The abolition of slavery was the only
way to set free the enslaved people and the free blacks were in better positions to make it
happen. The best choice for free blacks in the early 1800s was to support The American
Colonization Society, an abolitionist organization founded in 1816 that favored immediate
abolition of slavery.
The American Colonization Society supported the migration of blacks back to Africa,
where they were valued and treated like human beings. The whites were so powerful as they
formed the dominant race in the United States and there was no way the blacks would succeed in
fighting them. They owned the government machinery and were in better positions to influence
policies to prevent the abolition of slavery. The migration of the blacks back to Africa would
have shown the whites the seriousness of the matter forcing them to abolish slavery. The whites
depended on the slaves so much as they helped them to build their economy. They could not
afford to lose them, for they ran all the activities in their plantations. If all blacks had cooperated
in migrating to Africa, the slave masters would have been left with no choice than to abolish
slavery lest they followed the others back to Africa where they were needed.
Payment of reparations was not an option for the whites as the blacks who opted to stay
and fight from America suggested. The whites could not spend on the payments of reparations as
a way to free the slaves because they never treated them like human beings in the first place.
