What is an author's claim?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.Knowing that their slaves were likely to die by the time they reached their thirties, Louisiana sugar planters were extremely selective—they bought only healthy-looking young men in their late teens. On average, the men purchased in Louisiana were an inch taller than the people bought in the other slave states. Those teenagers made up seven to eight out of every ten slaves brought to America's sugar Hell. The others were younger teenage girls, around fifteen to sixteen years old. Their job, for the rest of their short lives, was to have children. Elizabeth Ross Hite knew that, for sure, "all de master wanted was fo' dem wimmen to hav children." Enslaved children would be put to work or sold. The overseer S.B. Raby explained, "Rachel had a 'fine boy' last Sunday. Our crop of negroes will I think make up any deficiencies there may be in the cane crop." That is, a master could sell any slaves who managed to live, if he needed more money than he could make from sugar.Jazz was born in Louisiana. Could it be that a population of teenagers, almost all of them male, were inspired to develop their own music as a way to speak, to compete, to announce who they were to the world? Bomba in Puerto Rico, Maculelê in Brazil, jazz in Louisiana—all gave people a chance to be alive, to be human, to have ideas, and dreams, and passions when their owners claimed they were just cogs in machinery built to produce sugar.
Read the two passages from Sugar Changed the World.Slave owners fought back, arguing that owners should be able to list their slaves as property when they arrived in France and take them with them when they left. Though most parts of France agreed to this, law–makers in Paris hesitated. Pierre Lemerre the Younger made the case for the slaves. "All men are equal," he insisted in 1716—exactly sixty years before the Declaration of Independence.To say that "all men are equal" in 1716, when slavery was flourishing in every corner of the world and most eastern Europeans themselves were farmers who could be sold along with the land they worked, was like announcing that there was a new sun in the sky. In the Age of Sugar, when slavery was more brutal than ever before, the idea that all humans are equal began to spread—toppling kings, overturning governments, transforming the entire world.Sugar was the connection, the tie, between slavery and freedom.Clarkson and others who believed as he did, who in the coming decades would be called abolitionists, realized that while that link gave the English a stake in slavery, it also gave the antislavery forces an opportunity. If they could reverse the flow—make the horrors of slavery visible to those who benefited from it—they might be able to end the vile practice forever.The abolitionists were brilliant. They created the most effective public relations campaign in history, inventing techniques that we use to this day. When he spoke, Clarkson brandished whips and handcuffs used on slaves; he published testimonials from sailors and ship doctors who described the atrocities and punishments on slave ships. When Olaudah Equiano published his memoir, he educated his readers about the horrors of the slave trade. And then, when the English began to understand what slavery really was, Clarkson and others organized what we would call a boycott of "the blood-sweetened beverage."
Which details do the authors include to support the claim in this passage? Select three options.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.To say that "all men are equal" in 1716, when slavery was flourishing in every corner of the world and most eastern Europeans themselves were farmers who could be sold along with the land they worked, was like announcing that there was a new sun in the sky. In the Age of Sugar, when slavery was more brutal than ever before, the idea that all humans are equal began to spread—toppling kings, overturning governments, transforming the entire world.Sugar was the connection, the tie, between slavery and freedom. In order to create sugar, Europeans and colonists in the Americas destroyed Africans, turned them into objects. Just at that very same moment, Europeans—at home and across the Atlantic—decided that they could no longer stand being objects themselves. They each needed to vote, to speak out, to challenge the rules of crowned kings and royal princes. How could that be? Why did people keep speaking of equality while profiting from slaves? In fact, the global hunger for slave-grown sugar led directly to the end of slavery. Following the strand of sugar and slavery leads directly into the tumult of the Age of Revolutions. For in North America, then England, France, Haiti, and once again North America, the Age of Sugar brought about the great, final clash between freedom and slavery.
In this passage, how do the authors use historical details to support the claim that US political leaders’ positions on slavery impacted the relations between the United States and Haiti? Select three options.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.By the late 1700s, Saint Domingue (what is now Haiti) was the world center of sugar. So many sugar plantations dotted the landscape that slaves called commanders managed other slaves. On the night of August 14, 1791, commanders from the richest sugar plantations in Saint Domingue gathered in a place called Alligator Woods and swore a solemn oath. They would rise up against their white owners, "and listen to the voice of liberty which speaks in the hearts of all of us." That voice told them to destroy everything related to sugar. Sugar made the Africans slaves, so sugar must be wiped off the island, now a vast sugar factory to the world.By the end of August, the French colony was in flames. So many cane fields were on fire that the air was filled with "a rain of fire composed of burning bits of cane-straw which whirled like thick snow." Smashing mills, destroying warehouses, setting fields on fire, the freedom fighters demolished some one thousand plantations—and that was just in the first two months of their revolution. The fight against sugar and chains soon had a leader, Toussaint, who called himself "L’Ouverture"—the opening. Toussaint was making a space, an opening, for people to be free.
Read the two passages from Sugar Changed the World.England had begun talking about ending slavery, but then it saw the chaos in France and sent an army to try to defeat the Haitians. Now Napoleon's France followed in the footsteps of the English.Napoleon's 35,000-man army was led by his brother-in-law and soon scored an amazing success: They captured Toussaint in 1802 and brought him to France, where he died in prison in 1803. But the former slaves fought on. In two years of fighting, nearly 50,000 French soldiers died. And on January 1, 1804, the victorious Republic of Haiti was born. Fighting for freedom, the former slaves defeated the armies of first England, then France: Europe's two most powerful nations.Haiti was born free; human rights won over property rights.In 1807 a bill to ban all English involvement in slave trading passed the House of Commons, then the House of Lords. At precisely noon on March 25, King George III signed the law. We should mark that date, honor it, to this day. For while no slaves were freed by the bill, it marked a great change in the world. More slaves from Africa had been shipped by the British than by any other nation. That part of the grim history of sugar and slavery was over. Indeed, that very same year Congress passed a law forbidding Americans from being involved in importing slaves. In the great contest over whether a human, any human, could ever be property; the tide was turning.
Read the two passages from Sugar Changed the World.By the late 1700s, Saint Domingue (what is now Haiti) was the world center of sugar. So many sugar plantations dotted the landscape that slaves called commanders managed other slaves. On the night of August 14, 1791, commanders from the richest sugar plantations in Saint Domingue gathered in a place called Alligator Woods and swore a solemn oath. They would rise up against their white owners, "and listen to the voice of liberty which speaks in the hearts of all of us." That voice told them to destroy everything related to sugar. Sugar made the Africans slaves, so sugar must be wiped off the island, now a vast sugar factory to the world.By the end of August, the French colony was in flames. So many cane fields were on fire that the air was filled with "a rain of fire composed of burning bits of cane-straw which whirled like thick snow." Smashing mills, destroying warehouses, setting fields on fire, the freedom fighters demolished some one thousand plantations—and that was just in the first two months of their revolution. The fight against sugar and chains soon had a leader, Toussaint, who called himself "L’Ouverture”—the opening. Toussaint was making a space, an opening, for people to be free.When the Haitians defeated the French armies, Napoleon lost control of the world's most productive sugar islands and with it his dream of great sugar profits. As a result, Napoleon had no use for the land in North America he had so recently obtained from Spain. Napoleon did, though, need money to pay for his wars. That is why he sold the vast Louisiana Territory to Jefferson for the bargain price of just fifteen million dollars. What textbooks call the Louisiana Purchase should really be named the Sugar Purchase. Americans obtained the middle part of what would become their nation because the Haitians achieved their freedom.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.The English public, now consuming some eighteen pounds of sugar a year, knew little about the lives of the enslaved Africans whose labor sweetened their meals. Worse yet, every Englishman who hammered the wood, sewed the sails, manufactured the rope for slave ships, or built the barrels to hold slave-harvested sugar made his money from the slave trade. The English were getting richer because Africans were being turned into property. Clarkson and others who believed as he did, who in the coming decades would be called abolitionists, realized that while that link gave the English a stake in slavery, it also gave the antislavery forces an opportunity. If they could reverse the flow—make the horrors of slavery visible to those who benefited from it—they might be able to end the vile practice forever.The abolitionists were brilliant. They created the most effective public relations campaign in history, inventing techniques that we use to this day. When he spoke, Clarkson brandished whips and handcuffs used on slaves; he published testimonials from sailors and ship doctors who described the atrocities and punishments on slave ships. When Olaudah Equiano published his memoir, he educated his readers about the horrors of the slave trade. And then, when the English began to understand what slavery really was, Clarkson and others organized what we would call a boycott of "the blood-sweetened beverage."
Did you find these answers helpful?