Journey Through Slavery part 3 - Brotherly Love

   The state of the situation that African Americans was inspiring due to their pushing and pushing of the promises made by white men in the Constitution, such as Thomas Jefferson's "all men are created equal", yet Jefferson himself owned slaves. There was no truth in his words, since he made excuses that blacks were naturally inferior to whites; the could not be seen as equal to the rest of the world. The saying "Practice what you preach" would not apply to him since he in fact could not turn away free labor; this free labor was also the source of he immense wealth that many southerners experienced. There was however, a small sliver of hope for the blacks when Richard Allen, a black man, gained his own freedom and started crusading for the equality of blacks.

   Allen was a Methodist preacher in 1786 and started the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the year 1794, the first denomination to be lead by blacks. At this church, there were many meetings held to discuss ways of gaining freedom for blacks; there were even spoken words by the ACS. The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, however, slashed that sliver of hope; the South needed laborers to work the machines which highlighted the importance of slavery. The cotton gin, although important to the industrialization of our nation, was in my opinion a downfall to the abolition movement since slaves were used to it. The revenue made by the machine was a plus to the South's economy. On the first of January in 1808, the transportation, importation and trade of slaves was made illegal and no longer allowed in America; this did not loosen the hold the south had on slaves, but made it stronger and tighter. 

http://www.history.com/topics/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney