Middle Passage

The Middle Passage was a passage taken which was part of the triangular trade, which went from Africa to the USA. Slaves who were taken from Africa due to wars which were lost would be taken on a boat which on the ground floor would have a sleeping area. The sleeping area was split into two areas- men would be in one section and women would be in the other. The conditions were horrible, with no hygiene kept in place and diseases constantly being spread. As well as that, they would have to sleep in cramped beds, which would barely be enough to lie in, and would be extremely uncomfortable. Women would constantly get sexually abused by the crew as well and would end up giving birth to a child at the end of the journey.

Plantation Life

Plantation life was hard for slaves since they would have to do back breaking work from extremely early in the morning to very late at night. They would do jobs such as picking cotton from the cotton fields and chopping sugar cane. If they did something wrong, they would get whipped, and if they tried to escape, they would usually get branded (burned) with a letter on their head to show they are a disobedient slave, and to show that they are bad. When working, they would wear barely and clothes, near naked and would constantly get burnt by the sun and all ages had to work.

How slavery was abolished

Slavery was abolished due to several reasons. One reason could be due to the slaves themselves, causing many issues for the plantation owners. For example, many slaves would keep on escaping and doing rebellions which caused the owners a lot of money to stop by calling the NAVY. As well as this, cheaper sugar began to start being produced by machines, and the market began to increase for the cheap sugar, causing the plantation sugar to decrease in sales. Finally, Abolitionists did a lot to stop slavery. For example, William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson presented a case in parliament to stop slavery as powerful figures and the law got passed to stop slavery as because of them.

The most important factor for the abolition of slavery for me was probably Key individuals because they were extremely powerful figures in the countries they lived in, meaning there was a higher chance that their way of stopping slavery would have a higher success rate. As well as this, they spent ages in court trying to prove their case against other powerful figures which owned plantations. This I think proved a strong determination.