Zinn Chapter 9

1) The author is arguing that slavery occurred because the white males forced blacks to be slaves. He also argues that even though after the Civil War the slaves were emancipated, they could not succeed because they had to live their lives based on the white males.
2) Zinn starts out by talking about how slavery was occurring in the south. He also mentioned how slaves tried to escape, and talked about some of the greater and larger escapes. Zinn talks about Harriet Tubman and her work with the Underground Railroad. Zinn wrote “she made 19 dangerous trips back and forth, often disguise, and escorting more than three hundred slaves to freedom.” Zinn then begins to talk about conditions in the North for blacks. Zinn talks about Abraham Lincoln and the civil war. Zinn stated “He [Lincoln] opposed slavery, but could not see blacks as equals, so a constant theme in his approach was to free the slaves and to send them back to Africa.” The Emancipation Proclamation was created by Lincoln, and spurred antislavery forcers, which ended up leading to the creation of the thirteenth amendment. Zinn then begins to argue how blacks could fight in the Union Army because of this amendment, which led to the Union Army growing. Zinn mentions “Two hundred thousand blacks joined the army and navy, and thirty-eight thousand were killed…. Without their help, the North could not have won the war as soon as it did, and perhaps it could not have won at all.” This helps to show how the blacks helped the Union to win so that they could end slavery for all. Even though there were many blacks in the army they were used for the worst jobs, instead of doing more of the fighting. Zinn then mentions how even after the war was over “The Negro remained dependent on privileged whites for work, for the necessities of life, his vote could be bought or taken away by threat to force. Even though blacks were free, they did not have the same rights as their white counterparts. People were violent against the blacks. He also talks about how “The New South” was like the old south, but the blacks were treated better, even though their jobs were like the ones they had as slaves. This happened because many blacks could not afford land and they were not given land.
3) Was the government looking out for itself when it created the Emancipation Proclamation, or was the government actually doing something for its people?
Why did the government not do more to help the ex-slaves? Like why did the government not give the blacks land, or create price breaks on the lands so that they could afford it?
4) Zinn makes an excellent point about how even though the Africans were free from slavery; they were not actually free because they could not afford to do anything with their lives. Even with their freedom they were still viewed to be less than the whites and were still put down and if they were below the whites. They still had the worst jobs, and did the hardest work for less than what the white males did. Their freedom did not come with the end of the war, if anything it gave them the realization that they could not be free from the white mans oppression because the whites still knew how to control the blacks. The whites knew how to control them through jobs and money.