he slaves started having children, the demand for slaves dropped while the market for selling slaves and their children went up. This was another way they kept slaves in slavery. If a person was born to a slave, he or she was automatically born into a life of slavery. The owners would also keep their slaves ignorant. They would not teach them how to read or write. If they could read, they would have been shocked to find that these colonists believed that every man is born with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They also would have known that these colonists left the last country that they were in for this same reason. Their ignorance to this fact is not what kept them in slavery for so though. What kept them obedient was the fact that they knew they would be made an example of if they tried to escape. Second of all, they had no where to escape to. It was not like they had a friend’s house to hide out in. They knew if they rebelled or acted up, they would be either beaten very badly with whips, punished by starving in the basement, or just shot. I am sure they all wanted to rebel, but they saw what happened to the ones who did rebel so most of them decided not to. As time went on, slaves were getting smarter and were learning how to read and write. They started learn that not all black people in the country were enslaved. By word of mouth or by reading, they started to learn that slavery did not exist up north. Then they started to learn that not every white person was out to get them if they knew that they were planning to escape. This was a very dangerous plan though. Some white people would actually help some slaves escape. This was called the Underground Railroad. Underground because it was kept a big secret from everyone because nobody could trust anybody back then because you would never know who would snitch and who wouldn’t. The railroad part was a string of houses of white people ...
