Text Analysis: Religion and Slavery

The words chosen for this analysis are as follows: god, christian, slaves, slave, and slavery. They have been chosen for the purpose of studying the correlation between the use of religious terminology with both the mention of the enslaved and the institution of slavery within the documents assigned.

Using Bubblelines to analyze the terms within the documents yields an interesting trend of categories from one time period to the next. The categories are as follows:

1.) Early 1700’s: there is a relatively even amount of mention of religious terminology and slave terminology, but they are discussed separately within the document.

2.) Mid 1700’s: slave and religious terminology are not discussed together

3.) Late 1700’s – Early 1810: there is a relatively even dispersement of religious and slave terminology throughout the documents

4.) 1810-1843: there is more emphasis on one topic over the other, but both are mentioned

5.) Mid 1800’s-1880’s: there is a return to a more even dispersement of the terms

6.) 1890’s: there is more emphasis on slavery, but religious terminology is still used

7.) 1900’s: there is a return to a more even dispersement of the terms

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