please consider supporting us by clicking on the like And subscribe buttons your support will be greatly appreciated in the 19th century South 2 from slaveholder treatment and the nature of Labor to slave culture sex and religion and free blacks in theory the southern slaveholder possessed all the power of any owner of living chatt property such as Horses sheep cows or oxen we have seen that Aristotle referred to the ox as the poor man slave the chattle principle was probably best defined by the American fugitive slave James WC Pennington the being of slavery its soul and its body lives and moves in the chattle principle the property principle the bill of sale principle the cart whip starvation and nakedness are its inevitable consequences you cannot constitute slavery without the chatt principle and with the chatt principle you cannot save it from these results talk not about kind and Christian Masters they are not masters of the system the system is master of them the system did include state laws that were partly designed to limit the power of Masters but such laws were difficult to enforce especially in sparsely populated rural states where slave owners monopolized political power by the 19th century state laws were supposed to protect slaves from murder and mutilation they set minimal standards for food clothing and shelter they also prohibited masters from teaching slaves to read or from allowing slaves to carry firearms or roam about the countryside they increasingly restricted or in effect prohibited manumission these slave codes acknowledged that bondsmen were human beings who were capable of plotting stealing fleeing or rebelling and who were likely to be a less Troublesome property if well cared for under a program of strict discipline yet as in ancient Rome and even Babylonia the laws also insisted that the slave was a piece of property that could be sold traded rented mortgaged and inherited in contrast to some other slave societies the laws did not recognize the interests and institutions of the slave Community or the slave's right to marry to hold property or to testify in court in practice it proved impossible to treit human beings as no more than possessions or as the mere instruments of an owner's will though attempts to do so were often made as many former slaves were counted today following a long but revolutionary shift in moral perception that is stigmatized slavery as a crime it is extremely difficult to see the world through slaveholders eyes most Masters were primarily motivated by the desire for income and profit supplemented by a desire for personal power that could be mitigated by a desire to be thought of especially by fellow Planters as good Christians and decent fellows values that could change abruptly when there was an alarm or sudden Panic or a need to get really tough still one can neither Overlook nor exaggerate many instances when whites expressed genuine admiration and even affection for individual slaves in economic terms owners wanted to maximize their slaves productivity while protecting the value of their capital investment a value that kept RIS ING with the generally escalating Trend in slave prices accordingly it made sense to provide a material standard of living that would promote good health and a natural increase in the size of slave families and thus increase capital gains it also made sense to keep the slaves morale as high as possible and to encourage them to do willingly and even cheerfully the work they would be forced to do in The Last Resort convinced of the moral legitimacy of the system most slave owners sincerely believed that their own best interests were identical with their slaves best interests though most Masters admitted that the system like any institution was capable of being abused still like marriage slavery could supposedly be made to work to everyone's Advantage Planters therefore sought to convince the slaves of the essential justice of slavery like their Roman predecessors they also expected gratitude for their acts of kindness Indulgence and generosity and and even for their restraint in inflicting physical punishment the countless ads for runaway slaves reveal an almost pathetic faith that a given slave who was said at times to have been very friendly and wanting to please would accept an offer of forgiveness and come home like an errant son most Masters desperately sought a consensual element a sign of consent and gratitude on the part of at least some slaves this is what some historians have meant by paternalism which should never be understood as implying that slavery was less cruel or exploitive than the abolitionists claimed clearly most slaves were not passive agreeable puppets who could be manipulated at will though in every group such people probably exist as human beings most slaves had one overriding objective self-preservation at a minimal cost of degradation and loss of self-respect for most the goal of Freedom was simply unrealistic especially after the sharp decline in Manu missions except under highly unusual circumstances to avoid punishment and win rewards slaves carried out their owner's demands with varying degrees of thoroughness it is impossible for us to deny that they did work hard or that they were productive but black slaves became cunningly expert at testing their Master's will they learned how to mock while seeming to flatter how to lighten unending work with moments of spontaneity song intimacy and relaxation how to exploit the whites dependence on black field drivers and household servants and especially how to play on the conflicts between their masters and white overseers even at slave markets they learned how body language feigned illness unruliness and saying what Traders or buyers wanted to hear could influence their sale in short they learn through constant experiment and struggle how to preserve a core of dignity and self-respect in certain personal situations a slave could also gain extraordinary power Sarah gaale the young wife of an Alabama Governor recorded in her diary the frustrations she felt over what she called the insubordination of a household slave named Hampton I never saw such a negro in all my life before he did not even pretend to regard a command of mine and treated me and what I said with the utmost contempt he has often laughed in my face and told me that I was the only mistress he ever failed to please on my saying he should try another soon a threat to sell Hampton he said he would not be worsted and was willing to go although slavery worked very well as an economic system its fundamental conflict of interests created a high unstable and violent Society the great sugar Planters in Southern Louisiana and cotton growers in the Delta country of Mississippi often employing more than than 100 slaves on a productive unit tried to merge Christian paternalism with a kind of welfare capitalism many provided Professional Medical Care offered monetary rewards for extra productivity and granted a week or more of Christmas Vacation several Travelers noted that American Masters wanted above all to be popular with their slaves a characteristically American need that was probably rare in Brazil or the Caribbean if slavery had persisted into the later 20th century as Abraham Lincoln predicted in 1858 one can only half factiously imagine large corporate Planters passing out overseer evaluation forms to the slaves the Master's sense of his own popularity was doubtless reinforced by the tendency of slaves to think that the greatness of their masters as Frederick Douglas put it was transferable to themselves hence according to Douglas many slaves think their own masters are better than the masters of other slaves indeed it is not uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quarrel among themselves about the relative goodness of their masters each contending for the superior goodness of his own over that of the others when Colonel Lloyd's slaves met the slaves of Jacob Jepson they seldom parted without a quarrel about their masters Colonel Lloyd slaves contending that he was the richest and Mr Jepson slaves that he was the smartest and most of a man to be a poor man's slave slave was deemed a disgrace indeed like all humans slaves were sensitive to privilege status and inequality as the historian Kenneth stamp wrote long ago $1,000 slave felt Superior to an $800 slave just as domestics flaunted their superiority over the less favored helit of the plow and some Virginia field hands could lavish their own contempt upon the coal pit [ __ ] who were hired to work in the mines more Universal perhaps was the disdain with which slaves regarded poor whites whom they scornfully called po buckra and white trash yet we must never forget that these same welfare capitalist plantations in the Deep South were essentially ruled by Terror even the most kindly and Humane Masters knew that only the threat of violence could force gangs of field hands to work from dawn to dusk with the discipline as one contemporary Observer put it of a regular trained Army frequent public floggings reminded every slave of the penalty for inefficient labor disorderly conduct or refusal to accept the authority of a superior Bennett H Barrow a particularly harsh Louisiana slave owner maintained discipline by ordering occasional Mass whippings of all his field hands Barrow also had offenders chained or were thrust underwater and on at least one occasion he shot a black who was about to run away but like other Planters Barrow mainly relied on more minor punishments such as solitary confinement withdrawing visiting Privileges and forbidding a Saturday night dance as it happened however Barrow also gave frequent holidays distributed generous monetary bonuses to his slaves and bought them much-desired Christmas presents in New Orleans the South could point to are gentler Masters who seldom have ever inflicted physical punishment and who relied for incentives on prizes of various sorts and even large cash rewards for Superior work slaves understood however that even the mildest of whites could become cruel despots when faced with the deception or ingratitude of a people who regardless of pretenses to the contrary were kept down by force Masters also uneasily sense that circumstances might transform a truly loyal and devoted slave into a veng F enemy it is true that white Southerners could congratulate themselves on the infrequency of serious slave uprisings especially when they compared the South with Brazil and most of the Caribbean as we will see in chapter 11 yet the French colony of sanding had enjoyed at least as secure a history as the American South before exploding with the greatest and most successful slave revolt in human history to the outside world Southerners presented a brave facade of self-confidence individual Masters reassured themselves that their own slaves were happy and loyal but rumors of arson poisoning and suppressed revolts continued to flourish alarmists frequently warned that outside agitators were secretly sewing discontent among the slaves this widespread fantasy which at times may not have been entirely fantasy at least hinted at the truth not only did slavery have diminishing approval in the outside world but the institution ultimately depended on the sheer weight of superior Force perhaps as the US Constitution even recognized on Northern and federal military aid in the event of a truly major crisis as we have already noted with respect to the Colonial period the difficulties in generalizing about the slaves world are compounded by the extensive Geographic climatic and cultural diversities of the South now in the preil war decades a region extending from Maryland to Texas but also a region in which mountain Highland Pine forests and swampy lowlands could all be encountered within a few hundred miles of one another unlike the small and isolated West Indian islands the sprawling South was in no way a United or uniform Society the sections most dependent on slave labor included the swampy low country of South Carolina and the adjoining sea Islands the remarkably fertile black belt named for the soil that extended from Georgia Westward through Mississippi the rich Delta counties of Mississippi and the sugar parishes counties of Louisiana in 1860 out of a white population of some 8 million roughly 10,000 families belong to the planter aristocracy fewer than 3,000 families could be counted as owners of over 100 slaves only one out of four white Southerners owned a slave or belonged to a family that did there were extensive regions of Eastern Tennessee and Western Virginia where blacks slave or free were a rarity by 1860 slavery had declined sharply in most of the upper South most dramatically of all in Delaware where fewer than 2,000 slaves remained yet as we will see in chapter 15 even Delaware's slave owners turned down President Lincoln's appeal for compensated gradual emancipation nor could most of the non-slaveholding majority be classed as Hillbillies or poor whites in addition to Artisans Factory workers and professionals there were millions of small farmers in the South who worked their own land or grazed herds of cattle pigs and horses in the forest and open range of the public domain during most of the antibellum years almost half of the Southern slaveholders own fewer than five slaves 72% own fewer than 10 the typical Master would thus know a great deal about each of his or her slaves a good many women especially widows did own slaves and could thus devote close personal attention to this so-called human property some small farmers work side by side with their slaves and Arrangement that might often have been far more uncomfortable and humiliating for the slaves than working in a field gang under black drivers then again there were clearly some sadistic black drivers as well as some genial and kindly white Farmers from the slaves Viewpoint much depended on the accidents of sale on an owner's character on the size and nature of the slave community on the Norms of a given locality and on the relative difficulty of harvesting cotton rice tobacco or sugar slave experiences thus covered an immensely wide range from a few cases of remarkable privilege and physical Comfort combined with a lack of restraint to the most Savage and unrelieved exploitation as an example of extraordinary privilege the Mississippi slave Simon gray became the captain of a Mississippi River flatboat and actually paid wages to a crew including white men but to dwell on contrasting examples of physical treatment is to risk losing sight of the central horror of human bondage as the Quaker John wolman pointed out in the mid 18th century No human is saintly enough to be entrusted with total power over another the slave was an inviting Target for the hidden anger passion frustration and Revenge from which no human is exempt a slave's work leisure movement and daily fate depended on the largely unrestrained will of another person moreover despite the numerical predominance of small slaveholders most southern slaves were concentrated on large farms and plantations in other words we find very different pictures if we look statistically at the typical Masters and then at typical slaves over half the slaves in the American South belong to owners who held 20 or more slaves one quarter belonged to productive units of more than 50 slaves throughout the South slave ownership was the primary road to wealth and the most successful Masters cornered an increasing share of the growing but limited supply of human capital let us consider then what life was like on a fairly large average Plantation soon after Sunrise black drivers herded gangs of men and women into the fields as described by Solomon norup a northern free black who was Kid napped in Washington and then worked for 12 years as a slave in Louisiana before being finally freed during all these hings the overseer or driver follows the slaves on Horseback with a whip the fastest hoer takes the lead row he is usually about a rod in advance of his companions if one of them passes him he is whipped if one falls behind or is a moment idle he is whipped in fact the Lash is flying from morning until night slave women including pregnant women and nursing mothers were also subjected to heavy field labor even small children served as water carriers or began to learn the lighter tasks of field work though many younger ones also played with the plantation's white children we even have descriptions of slave children pretending to be drivers or overseers whipping one another that said many slave children like Frederick Douglas did not fully realize that they were slaves until surprisingly late but as Douglas and numerous other former slaves testified the shock of coming to terms with a slave identity was then devastating especially in a country that talked of Liberty and equality and took such pride in disavowing hereditary titles and aristocratic status slaves who were too old for field work took care of small children and also worked in the Stables Gardens and kitchens this full employment of all available hands was one of the economies of the system that increased the total output from a Planter's capital investment in Free Labor societies a significant percentage of the total population performs little or no work at all nevertheless slaves often succeeded in maintaining their own work Rhythm and in helping to define the amount of Labor a planter could reasonably expect bursts of intense effort required during cotton picking corn shucking or the 18-hour a day sugar Harvest were followed by periods of festivity and relaxation where the task system prevailed as in coastal South Carolina slaves were strongly motivated to complete specified tasks by working as hard as possible thus freeing much of an afternoon for their own gardening or other Pursuits elsewhere even in relatively slack Seasons there were cattle to be tended fences to be repaired forests to be cleared and food crops to be planted black slaves were saved from becoming mere robots in the field by the strength of their own communities and evolving culture there has long been bitter controversy over the degree to which various African cultural patterns were able to survive in North America to say nothing of the degree to which African-American culture challenged the slave system or actually aided Masters and slaves in negotiating a workable World in contrast to Cuba and Brazil where continuing slave importations sustained for blacks a living bond with African cultures the vast majority of blacks in the 19th century South were removed by several Generations from an African born ancestor in addition America's slaves had far more diverse African tribal and ethnic Origins than did the slaves in Brazil nevertheless some archaeological and other forms of research have uncovered striking examples of African influences in the southern slaves oral Traditions folklore songs dances language sculpture religion and kinship patterns the question at issue is not the Purity or even the Persistence of distinct African forms in the new world all imported cultures whether from Europe Asia or Africa have undergone blending adaptation and combination with other elements what matters is that southern slaves at least on the larger plantations created their own African-American culture which helped to preserve some of the more crucial areas of life and thought from White control or domination without significantly reducing the productivity and profitability of slave labor living within this African-American culture sustained by strong Community ties many slaves were able to maintain a certain sense of apartness of Pride and of independent identity yet the brilliant former slave Frederick Douglas and some other black leaders pointed out that such a part this posed the s Ive danger for freed blacks of perpetuating a slave likee subordination and of preventing blacks from mastering the skills and knowledge needed for eventual success and upward mobility in a nation like the United States every immigrant group faed this volatile question of acculturation of modernization and of acquiring the tools for a successful life in a competitive Society at the present moment when we see a global upsurge of nationalisms of all kinds many Americans seem more conscious of the costs of adaptation and of the need for discovering distinctive ethnic class and cultural Roots as a result some writers have exaggerated the autonomy and Independence of the cultural forms embraced by African-American slaves when in actuality this African Heritage not only intermixed with various European and Christian Traditions but exerted a profound influence on Southern white patterns of speech religion and behavior it is notable that plantations with more than 50 slaves contained on average 1.5 adult white males this fact dramatizes the relative weakness of white surveillance as well as the system's Reliance on a hierarchy of black drivers managers Artisans and mechanics and despite the hierarchies of power these statistics show why African-American culture could flourish in a largely black world a world that did not undermine the white owner's overall goal of production African kinship patterns seem to have been the main vehicle for the maintenance of cultural identity as in West Africa children were frequently named for grandparents who were revered even in memory kinship patterns survived even the breakup of families although mother-headed families and family fragmentation were far commoner on plantations with fewer than 15 slaves on smaller plantations and Farms slaves found it far more difficult to find a spouse or keep families intact on larger plantations non-relatives often took on the functions and responsibilities of grandparents uncles and aunts many younger slaves were cared for and protected by surrogate ants and uncles who were not blood-kin some of these older teachers and Guardians passed on knowledge of the time when their ancestors had not been slaves before the Fateful crossing of the sea although slave marriages and slave amilies had no legal standing or protection they were at least initially encouraged by most Planters and provided a refuge from the dehumanizing effects of being treated as chatt property the strength of family bonds is suggested by the thousands of slaves who ran away from their owners in search of family members separated through sale the notion that blacks had weak family attachments is also countered by the Swarms of freed men who roam the south at the end of the Civil War in search of their spouses parents or children and by the eager desire of freed people to legalize their marriages nevertheless the slave family was a highly vulnerable institution especially in Long settled regions like Virginia that became increasingly dependent on selling Surplus slaves especially young males to the booming Deep South and Southwest although some slave owners had moral Scruples against separating husbands from wives or small children from their mothers even the strongest Scruples frequently gave way in times of economic need the forced sale of individual slaves in order to pay a deceased owner debts further increased the chances of family breakups in many parts of the South it was common for a slave to be married to another slave on a neighboring or even distant Plantation a relationship called an abroad marriage even though such Arrangements left visitation to the discretion of the slaves two owners they resulted in high rates of fertility at best however slave marriage represented a precarious Bond according to the former slave George Washington Albright who at age 11 saw his father sold and shipped off plantation owners thought no more of selling a man away from his wife or a mother away from her children than of sending a cow or a horse out of the state sexual relations revealed a similar gap between moral Scruples and actual practice white planter Society offici condemned interracial sexual unions and tended to blame lower-class white males for fing mulat children yet there is abundant evidence that many slave owners sons of slave owners and overseers took black mistresses or in effect rape the wives and Daughters of slave families this abuse of power may not have been quite as universal as Northern abolitionists claimed but we now know that offenders included such prestigious figures as James Henry Hammond and even Thomas Jefferson the ubiquity of such sexual exploitation was sufficient to deeply Scar and humiliate black women to instill rage in black men and to arouse both shame and bitterness in white women when a young slave named Celia finally struck and killed her owner and Predator a prosperous Missouri farmer named Robert Nome her action led to a major trial that opened a rare window on the nature of this forbidden subject and as the historian Melton a mclen has put it Celia's trial its causes and consequences confront us with the hard daily realities of slavery rather than with the abstract theories about the workings of that institution mclen vividly shows that these daily realities involved personal Decisions by both blacks and whites of a fundamental moral nature in 1850 Robert Nome was a highly respected family man who lived with his two grown daughters and three grandchildren while his four male slaves helped him profit from growing livestock as well as wheat rye and corn but at age 60 Nome had been a widower for nearly a year and longed for a sexual partner instead of courting one of the available white women in his own Callaway County He Slipped over to Ain County and purchased Celia who was approximately 14 and raped her as he took her home while Celia was purportedly a housekeeper for nome's daughter Waters Nome built her a brick cabin of her own and used it as the site for his sexual exploits during the next 5 years Celia gave birth to two infants and exemplified as a concubine one of the less publicized uses of enslavement by 1855 Celia had become romantically attached to nuum slave George Who demanded that she cease all sexual contact with their Master Celia first appealed without success to nome's grown daughters who clearly felt no bond of Sisterhood when nuum refused to listen to Celia's pleas she killed him and then burned and buried his remains George fearful for his own safety then betrayed her and cooperated with those investigating the crime after being repeatedly threatened by whites Celia confessed most remarkable perhaps was the nature of the trial in which Celia received a defense team of three court-appointed lawyers one of them a respected three-term us Congressman even after conviction Celia was in some way enabled to break out of jail in order to avoid execution before the Missouri Supreme Court could consider an appeal still on December 21st 1855 Celia went to The Gallows following a series of decisions that underscored the ultimate powerlessness of slaves although nothing is said of Celia's religion the so-called Second Great Awakening beginning in the first years of the 19th century encour encouraged many Southern Planters to promote the religious conversions of their slaves in contrast to earlier planter hostility to missionaries especially in the Caribbean a growing number of Southern churchmen and Planters argued that religious instruction would make slaves more obedient industrious and faithful in Conformity with numerous passages in the New Testament the ideal Christian Master would treat his slaves with charity and understanding the ideal Christian slave would hum accept his assigned position in this world knowing that his patience and faithfulness would be rewarded in heaven servitude in short could be softened humanized and perfected by Christianity the interests and behavior of Masters like Robert Nome were simply repressed obviously the reality of slavery fell far short of the ideal but even fervent Christians would expect such shortcomings in a fallen world permeated with sin even those historians and economists who have tended to give a more benign picture of slave living standards have had to recognize that planter self-interest did not prevent a Gastly slave infant mortality rate or the serious malnutrition of slave children religion May well have induced some Masters to take a sincere interest in their slaves Welfare by the 1850s at least Many religious leaders in the South were calling for the legalization and protection of slave marriages and for the repeal of of laws against teaching slaves to read especially reading the Bible but religion could never eliminate the cruelty and Injustice inherent in the system that said no white preachers could entirely Purge the judeo-christian tradition as embodied in the Bible of some messages and values that tended to challenge slavery one thinks for example of the frequently mentioned Hebrew day of jubile occurring every 50 years when according to many interpreters all slaves were supposed to be freed understandably black spirituals became saturated with references to and faith in a coming Jubilee then there was the passage from the prophet Isaiah which Jesus stood up to read in the synagogue at Nazareth regarding his mission to Proclaim Liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound above all much of the Hebrew Bible turns on the fact that God responded not to the Grandeur of Kings exuding wealth and power but to the ple and cries of lowly Hebrew slaves their deliverance from bondage in Egypt was clearly intended to teach the world some kind of lesson nor could whites prevent black preachers from converting Christianity into a source of self-respect dignity and faith in eventual Liberation the long for day of Jubilee in both the North and the South free blacks responded to Growing racial discrimination by forming what they called African churches usually Baptist or methodists and despite efforts by whites to control every aspect of their slaves religion the slaves created their own folk religion and shaped it to their needs and interests especially on the larger plantations one could find conjurers whose alleged magic powers were thought to ward off sickness soften a master's heart or hasten the success of a courtship many black preachers mixed Christianity with elements of West African religions and folklore including the famous ring shout a religious dance or Shuffle several slaves would beat time with their feet and sing in unison While others danced around a circle in single file keeping their bodily movements in perfect time with the music in the slave quarters particular Prestige was attached to those who excelled at the traditional memorizing of songs riddles folktales superstitions and Herb cures who were carriers in short of African-American culture which especially in the 20th century would be translated into forms that would thrill much of the world the slaves oral communication allowed free play to the imagination enabling African-Americans to interpret and comment on the pathos humor absurdity sorrow and warmth of the scenes they experienced together with the ceremonial rituals especially at slave weddings and funerals the oral Traditions preserved a sanctuary of human dignity that enabled most slaves to survive the humiliations debasement and self-contempt that were inseparable from Human bondage a final word should be said concerning the status of free blacks before the American Revolution this status had been ambiguous and the number of free blacks was insignificant by 1810 however as a result of the emancipations that had accompanied and followed the revolution there were approximately 100,000 free blacks and mulat in the southern states this group for a time that fastest growing element in the southern population was beginning to acquire property to found African churches and schools and to assert its independence especially in the upper South in response white legislators tightened restrictions on private acts of freeing slaves in an effort to curb the growth of an unwanted population a rash of new laws similar to the later Black Codes of reconstruction reduced free blacks almost to the status of slaves without master the new laws regulated their freedom of movement forbade them to associate with slaves subjected them to surveillance and discipline by whites denied them the legal right to testify in court against whites required them to work at approved jobs and threaten them with penal labor if not actual reins slavem paradoxically in parts of the Deep South free blacks continued to benefit from a more flexible status because there were fewer of them than than elsewhere in the South and they could serve as valued intermediaries between a white minority and a slave majority as in the West Indies racial discrimination became harsher in the upper South precisely because slavery was economically less secure in that region the intense and even worsening racism from Virginia to New England presented an ominous message with respect to a post-emancipation America please consider supporting us by clicking on the like And subscribe buttons your support will be greatly appreciated