What was Thompson’s theory of the relationship between sanctions and slavery? First of all, I want to tell you who Thompson was. Thompson’s full name was John Thompson. He was born in 1812 on a plantation in Maryland as a slave. He grew up there with his family consisting of his mother, his father, and his six brothers and sisters. Also, even still at a young age, he experienced the very true act of slavery when his sister was sold and never seen again. Like his sister, it was not long after when he was separated from his family as well by being sold away.

Back then, slavery was very very wrong. According to Google, slavery means “the state of being a slave.” According to Google, a slave is “a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.” That means that somebody owns another person (that person is the other person’s property) and forces him to do his bidding (work for him). The slave people were Black people. People captured these black people for slaves. I do not know why, but I think that it was just that either the whites were just evil evil men, or the whites captured the blacks because they thought that the blacks were ‘animals’. I mean, just because blacks have different skin color or they have different religious beliefs does not mean that they are of any less importance than the whites. As it says in Acts 17:25-28, “25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring”. People capturing people and forcing them to work as slaves when they have done nothing wrong is just wrong. The black African people have been peaceful for years. But then, Americans came in and captured the blacks and forced them to work as slaves. All men are created equal, and yet, the Americans were treating the Africans like animals. It is a miracle that slavery is now abolished (no more) to this day.

“A sanction is a threatened penalty for disobeying a law or rule” According to Google. According to Dictionary.com, sanction means (as a noun because sanction can be a noun or a verb) “it is especially applied to situations in which one country’s government imposes economic sanctions on another to try to force it to comply with laws or certain expectations.” This means that if someone said “Do this or I will whip you.” That is a sanction. If you say something and threaten them that if they do not do it you will do something to harm them, that will motivate them to do it, right? That is how people made slaves work for them. Threaten them to do something or they will severely punish them. It worked for many slave owners, and some people still use it to this day, sadly.

So, back to the topic, what was Thompson’s theory of the relationship between sanctions and slavery? I believe that his theory was positive sanctions will receive a better result than negative sanctions.