Read the following excerpt from an 1857 speech by abolitionist and poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper:
"Slavery is not a mere local institution, confined to a single section of the country; it is a national sin. The North has lent its influence, its wealth, and its political power to sustain the system, and is therefore accomplice to the crime. We cannot wash our hands of this guilt while our commerce is built upon the labor of the enslaved, and our laws protect the slaveholder."
Based on the excerpt, which of the following best describes the primary political argument Harper is making?
- AShe advises enslaved laborers to engage in covert everyday resistance and cultural preservation to directly sabotage Northern trade.
- She argues that slavery is a national system of exploitation supported by Northern complicity, rather than an isolated Southern issue.Cevap
- CShe demands that Northern states organize immediate armed insurrections modeled after Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion.
- DShe advocates for the creation of independent, self-governing maroon communities in Northern states to bypass federal authority.
Cevap
She argues that slavery is a national system of exploitation supported by Northern complicity, rather than an isolated Southern issue.
The correct option is correct because the speech explicitly highlights that slavery is a national sin and that Northern commerce and laws are complicit in sustaining it. This argument was a cornerstone of Black abolitionist rhetoric, designed to challenge the idea that slavery was purely a Southern concern.
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Northern complicity in the national system of chattel slavery