In class, we briefly discussed the history of slavery, and the stories of Mary Prince and Olaudah Equiano. These two wrote about their experiences of being slaves. Before I read Olaudah Equiano’s story, I always thought of how negative slavery was and never looked at what it taught America. I decided in this post I want to see if there was really any importance in slavery that still affects us today.

When looking into it, the outcomes of slavery can be put into two categories: ethical and economical. Stories like the ones of Mary Prince and Olaudah Equiano tells us how bad the ethics were that we enforced on slaves. When slavery ended, America looked back on how we treated people and decided to change laws and create policies to prevent slavery in any form from ever happening again. After slavery, people became more accepting of gender and religion.

The next important information to take away from slavery is how it affected our economy. At one point in time more than half of the exports here in America were cotton, and almost all of it was grown by slaves. The economy in the south was so prosperous due to slavery that it had a ripple effect throughout the entire U.S. Without slavery, we might not be as powerful of a country as we are today.

Furthermore, I’m glad that we as a country have come this far and learned from our mistakes, in order to make the world a more inclusive place. But there are still questions to ask. Was slavery really necessary or were there alternatives? Could we have done something sooner about slavery? Why did people do terrible things towards these people? Even though we can not change the past we can always look forward towards the future.