Closer to Freedom, Essay Example

In Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South, Stephanie Camp clarifies the function of geography and movement in the slave structure and ways slaves defied it. That being understood, we explore why the book is called Closer to Freedom, and how it was possible for slaves people to approach freedom. It is interesting to note how the title communicates Camp’s clarification of how slaves confronted the system.

Slave struggle was a reality of existence. The public sale, shackles, marshes, and shacks were the surroundings that made certain unhappiness and opposition. Slave opposition existed in a lot of ways from little actions which harvested enormous penalties to simple rage. Stealing, escapes, and malingering were everyday behaviors seen to be expressions of defiance — silent methods of salvaging power over the materials and occasions of freedom. On agricultural estates, slaveholders had total authority, and it was a day-in-day-out effort over slaves and land that control and its premises were rivaled. Daily acts of resistance were the consequence and face of associations involving the possessor and the possessed.

Opposition to slavery did not just require imagination. It required a change of venue. So pervasive was the status of slaves as property that a bondwoman’s body was hardly her own at all. She could have been raped in a field or attacked in her own home and no one would have blinked. Transgressions against the most basic human dignities were underscored by control over nature as exerted by fences. Space was important everyone – as it still is. Controlled movement was essential to the slave system, and violations of these expectations were structured into opposition. Plantation owners tried to limit slave movement to explicit spaces, and slave women dodged that confinement as well as the continuous clashes that occurred as a consequence of conflicting thoughts regarding it. Geography gave a mode of considering novel ways of escaping them. It was also a method of control.

Plantation owners restricted the countryside and ordered the whereabouts of slaves from the ground to the shack. Every action or inaction was calculated to exert control over what was considered their property, and in breach of the owners’ commands and state government laws, slaves often left their residences during the hours of darkness. Repeatedly, slaves escaped to make places that provided space and moments for their relatives, for respite from labor and for fun. Occasionally, they moved illicit things into their lodgings to troublesome results. While they regarded people who could understand the resonances of nature as symbols of chance or danger, they did not intimidate the slave system. They did, however, make available room for personal and communal artistic appearance, breaks and leisure, unusual messages, and prominently, opposition to the authority of slave owners. Slaves hunted for breathing space and instances for private life, and they were prepared to hazard horrible chastisement for a measure of movement and privacy.

Breathing space and power over people were central to both slave owners and the slaves themselves. They were the foremost areas of difference. For the duration of the Civil War, multitudes of slaves ran away to Union lines. Slaves were wrapped in terror, anger, resentment, and anxiety during their captivity. The flights were not so soothing though, but they were worth it to them and unpleasant for slave owners. They were also part of enduring efforts toward self-determination that finished with their freedom when the Confederate Army capitulated in April 1865. The demise of the slave system was a progression over the entire period, and the liberation was reiterated in the bodies and minds of the free men and women who survived it.

In essence, the slave owner felt he had to control the bodies his slaves and the land upon which they tread.  As such, that impetus toward control of space, time, and bodies made such space, time, and bodies the primary source of resistance for the slave, and he or she found places and moments of respite. Little by little they were able to free not only their minds but also their bodies from the tragic affliction we call the American slave system. That is why the book is called Closer to Freedom and how it was possible for slaves to approach freedom.

It was noted how the title communicates Camp’s clarification of how slaves confronted the system in minute increments until they achieved emancipation. The function of place and movement were used by slaves to defy the institution of slavery, but similar controls were implemented by various power structures over the next hundred years to intimidate and limit the freedoms of freed slaves, their children, grand children, and great grand children. It was not until the 1960s that desegregation occurred, and it was not until recently that an African American president was elected. The shadow of resentment that emanated from the eyes of the decedents of these slaves has only just begun to vanish. Today, there is less anger and more joy in my brethren than many of us ever thought we would see, and we are glad to know the end of a long and treacherous road is near.

Work Cited

Camp, Stephanie. Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South. Sydney: Accessible, 2008. Print.