Is Black Beauty about Slavery?

The other night in section, Sophie posed this question to the class and I'm still pondering it today, so I wanted to make a post about it. Is Black Beauty about slavery? Is Black Beauty a slave? To address this question, I asked myself an even bigger question; are all animals slaves? If you asked a cat this question, I'm pretty sure it would insist that it's human was their slave and not the the way around. But I digress. According to Webster dictionary, a slave is "someone who is legally owned by another person and is forced to work for that person without pay."Are animals persons? If it's argued that animals are people, then shouldn't they all be let free, as it stated in the 13th amendment. I mean, slavery is illegal isn't it. By buying and selling living things, does that make you a slaver? But if we let free all animals, well, it would be bad! As it was talked about in lecture, you can't let domesticated animals free! They'll mess up the animal hierarchy. It'd be anarchy.My answer to this question? Black Beauty isn't a slave. Humans bred horses to aid them in work as well as other animals. To suddenly claim them slaves and let them be independent would have greater repercussions then just letting this way of life go on. The one clear instinct I see that could be an analogy to slavery is when Black Beauty was reprimanded for playing with the cart horses, who apparently weren't brought up with manners. This reminded me of house slaves and field slaves and the haughty way that house slaves would look down at field slaves, as if they both weren't slaves.