Student Narrative Response
1850: My Letter to the Editor
Imagine that you are living in 1850. Slavery is l legal in the U.S. Write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper. Explain why you believe slavery should be abolished.
Dear Editor,
The United States has been a country for about sixty years yet we are still dealing with the same dead-end problems that we have started with. When we fought for this country we fought for the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Slavery is not the pursuit of happiness. Our own Founding Fathers wrote that all men were created equal yet no one, not even themselves could believe it. These slaves are people like us. They work like us, they think like us, they have fun like us yet they are made to suffer. The only barrier that we have between them and us is the moral teaching that ‘they are inferior, they are not like us, they can’t live like us.’ None of that is true. Greed has overtaken our culture and misleads us from knowing simple right and wrong situations. Where is our sense of resolve and knowledge of human rights that our very own God gave us individually, where has it gone? How to love and hate are both taught in families; it's time we teach our children where our love and pride should come from in society.
Joel Alcantara
Creative Writing
Ms. Lopez
Dear Fellow Brothers,
I am writing as a former slave owner now living in the north. Currently, I am an attorney who is working with many other attorneys. We are working on behalf of the one main reason that has caused our country to go different paths rather than as one united country.
Slavery is the reason and we need to come to an agreement in order to end it. Our dear country was once a slave but not of different people. We were slaves of one empire. For one person on a powerless race. Vengeance will not solve anything. For that reason, we need to come together and solve this problem. Our country represents unity. Not that of which oppresses another race. It is unfair for them and especially unfair for us. I’ve come to realize that as a former slave owner, it is wrong for people to work in the hot sun without food, without shelter, and without work breaks.
We should want to find a way to end slavery in our lifetime. Yet these slaves have hope that this will end the same day. We need to stop this oppression. Our forefathers have done this cruel act of inhumane treatment. We cannot walk into the future like this. Please consider and let me know if you have come to an agreement to end slavery.
Kamran Uddin
Creative Writing
Ms. Lopez