Essay One Draft: Peer Review BEFORE

The Moral Personality of Slavery in the Americas

            During and well after slavery in the Americas, Frank Tannenbaum claims in Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas that no matter how significant a role played in building the New World Africans were not viewed as equal to the Anglo-Europeans, during and after the abolishment of slavery. He suggests the concept of a “moral personality” that was denied of African slaves under the British Empire that was the premise of the ability for African slaves to obtain their freedom in Latin America _{(Tannenbaum 88)}. Africans were perceived to be incapable of morals and were not given the opportunity to prove otherwise. He argues how this was largely because in Latin America, under Spanish and Portuguese rule, Africans had “an access to the culture and a role in social life” that would have otherwise been preposterous in the United States and the British West Indies _{(Tannenbaum 4)}.  He relates the treatment and opportunities available to African slaves in Latin America towards the familiarity with slavery from the Spanish and Portuguese empires, where, as opposed to the rest of Europe, slavery had still existed and there were a number of Spanish, Jewish, and Moorish slaves before there were Africans; there, slavery was somewhat tentative based largely in part of their religious, legal, and social structure. Whereas under the British Empire, as stated by Cobb, slavery, “having no existence in Great Britain there could be necessarily no provision of the law in reference to it, and consequently the power of the master, until limited by legislation was absolute” _{(Tannenbaum 101)}. In summation, in Latin America the opportunity for slaves to assimilate into society was there; in America and the British West Indies, however, a slave was always a slave unless their legal system chose to acknowledge them as otherwise. Tannenbaum supports this argument throughout the text by comparing the different religious standings of the church, the legal system already in place on the Iberian Peninsula as opposed to the one developed under the British Empire, and by noting social standings of slaves of either location. I agree with Tannenbaum’s stigma of a moral personality as religion during the 16^th and 17^th centuries played a very large role in state and society and was the general basis for a moral code.

To better grasp the concept of this moral personality, the reader should understand the different roles the church actually played in Europe as in Spain and Portugal the separation of church and state didn’t occur until well after the abolition of slavery, while in England the separation of state from papal authority had begun and spread through the British Empire in the 16^th century. As a result when the church expressed its disapproval towards the institution of slavery “where the domestic law accepted it…..and prohibited Catholics from taking part in it” it was not very influential _{(Tannenbaum 62)}.