HUMAN 1BS Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Fugitive Slave Laws
Document Summary
Contingency: history shaped by intersecting events but not part of ideological plan. Looking at different factors (ex: economic factors to expand) War caused by slavery in that the south wanted to expand into western states. Masters didn"t like lincoln; afraid of him. However, lincoln doesn"t state that he is a abolitionist. Slaves know that if union comes into southern territory, they must join the union in order to defeat their masters. Union comes into south and opens arms for fleeing people. Captured escaped slaves must be shipped back to masters. If you harbor a slave, you"re implicated in felony. Butler finds legal loophole; south is a foreign nation, it"s not the north"s responsibility to return the slaves (the property of south) Use of contraband is dehumanizing: north holds these contrabands. When they saw opportunity, they went for it. There was such a thing as slave politics.
