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[icardenas23]

The Slavery System

One day, my brother Alfred come to visit and brought his son Henrique. Henrique is a very difficult person to work with and try to get along with, and he has a crush on my daughter, his cousin! My brother and his son had brought along their slave named Dodo who had gotten in trouble because the horse we were going to ride was dusty. Henrique totally overacted about it and all he responded with is that he thought that’s how slaves should be treated. We then started talking about the slavery system and Alfred admitted that the system encourages young slave owners to mistreat the slaves, but he also thought that it shows black slaves how not to act towards their white masters. He asked me my opinion on it and I said that the world is already too prejudiced against black people to make life totally equal. Looking back on it, I wish that I had reworded what I said, especially because it was infront of Eva. Eva is anti-slavery and I feel like me saying that infront of her might have made her lose more faith in me. My opinions on slavery have always fluctuated mainly because I base my opinions on the common idea of the people I surround myself in. For the majority of the time I catch myself worrying more about what other people think of me, rather than promoting my own morals.

[icardenas23]

My Past

 I have always been the type of person that can not always think for myself. I am like a vegetarian who despite self-loathing can not give up eating meat! I have always had a huge inner conflict, that from what I know, was caused by the traumatic events in my life from the past. In the past I have had my heard broken and I would have ended up living in the North and would have had to oppose slavery even if I didn’t want to. I come from a rich Louisiana family. My mother was a French Protestant, and his uncle a farmer in Vermont, where I often spent my time in the summers. At one point in my life I had fallen in love with a northern woman who broke of our engagement. I was heart broken, but it turned out that all the love letters that I would spend all my time on never reached her! That broke my heart and trying to regain my love again I foolishly married a beautiful southern woman named Marie. Marie, I think, is the stem of where my dilemma with slavery grew from. I know that my Eva is against it but Maire can barely breathe on her own without a slave and would never be caught seeing me trying to set them free. 

[icardenas23]

Eva kept asking me to promise to free Tom, so I finally made the deal with her. I promised her that I will now learn to devote my life to urging people against slavery. I now am on my way of becoming one of the major abolitionists! I always had a feeling that I would make it to be a powerful abolitionist one day, and be able to lead others into a social revolution! I am very happy with myself for coming as far as I did. Usually I would wait to see what everyone else was doing or sought out other people’s validation for the things I did or formed opinions on. Being honest, I was really nervous even thinking of letting all the slaves free for Eva. I know that I had already told her that I promised but I continued to think about what other people would have thought of me. Would they stop talking to me? Would they ruin my good name? I was too scared to find out, but day after day I was filled with more and more guilt knowing that if I did not do this my poor Eva would have been so disappointed in me. And that, is the last thing I want.