On the Nature of Slavery in the Plantation South:

A Question of Condition

Fotenos AF, United States slavery (1995) The Concord Review 6(4): 159-172

[The Civil War] is essentially a people's contest...It is a struggle for maintaining in

the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate
the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders--to clear the paths of
laudable pursuit for all--to afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race
of life.

--Abraham Lincoln
Message to Congress in Special Session [July 4, 1861]

It remains one of the most poignant testaments to the inferior status of blacks in American
history that before 1959 the historiography of their leaders and cultural achievements was

comparable in bulk to the historiography of horses and horse-raising.1 In that year, however,

Stanley Elkins quietly published Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life,

wherein he examined the impact of enslavement on black culture and personality. Motivated to

discredit racist arguments of biological black inferiority, Elkins used an array of interdisciplinary

social science models, including a comparison of antebellum plantations to Nazi concentration

camps, to argue that the harshness of slavery essentially dehumanized slaves, leaving the black

personality hollow and devastated.2 His approach was so radical that it succeeded in laying the

framework of what would later become a rich and dynamic field of study. In his controversial

examination of the slave family prepared for the Johnson administration in 1965, Daniel Patrick

1
George Fredrickson, On Herbert G. Gutman's "The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom,
1750-1925", ed. Allen Weinstein, Frank Gatell, and David Sarasohn (New York: Oxford UP, 1979)
p.274.
2
Fredrickson, On herbert Gutman p.274.

1
Moynihan utilized Elkins's theses to support his own view that slavery had uprooted the traditionally

paternal black family. "Slavery," he argued, "stripped [blacks] of their African heritage," put them

in "a completely dependent role," and "most important of all....vitiated family life."3 So too did

William Styron portray slaves as victimized and broken in his prize-winning novel, The Confessions

of Nat Turner.4

It is no coincidence that the advent of serious studies of slavery was contemporary to the

Civil Rights Movement. So influential were the ideologies of that Movement, that historians in the

Sixties found it increasingly necessary to refute Elkins' thesis. Three in particular, John Blassingame

in The Slave Community (1972), Eugene Genovese in Roll, Jordan, Roll (1974), and Herbert

Gutman in The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom (1976), all effectively did just that. Apart

from the enormous academic impact, their efforts provided the necessary intellectual groundwork

for proponents of black nationalism, who saw no source of pride in a heritage of dehumanization,

and for equal rights advocates, who feared that a subtler premise of "cultural deprivation" would

replace that of biological inferiority as a new source of racial discrimination.5

In devising their arguments, these historians had to build off the premise first assumed by

Elkins--that within the institution of slavery masters operated as a force against their slaves--and

then show that slaves somehow resisted. Although their theses differed in important nuances, all

three essentially drew on the significance of the slave community and its cultural resources--
folklore, music, superstition, and "significant others," like black preachers and conjurors--as

3
Fredrickson, On Herbert Gutman p.274.
4
Published by Random House. See also John Henrick Clarke, ed., William Styron's Nat Turner:
Ten Black Writers Respond (New York: Beacon Press, 1968) and George M. Fredrickson, The Black
Image in the White Mind: The Debate on the Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914
(New York, 1971).
5
Fredrickson, On Herbert Gutman p.275.

2
examples of shields slaves used to protect against the psychological persecution of their masters.

Blassingame advanced this theory first, although he left unresolved whether communal vitality

resulted from planter patronage or slave initiative. Genovese argued the former, that paternalistic

masters agreed to recognize certain of slaves' "customary rights" in exchange for their obedience,

whereas Gutman used his discovery of traditional kinship systems among slaves to deemphasize

white control.6 Regardless, the very notion of resistance that underlies each historian's arguments

required him to assume that the influence of the master was diametrically opposed to the interest of

the slave. He thus envisioned a parasitic master-slave relationship, in which, absent some form of

cultural refuge, Elkins's paradigm of black dehumanization necessarily follows.

Yet the parasite model ignores a host of historical evidence indicating that the relationship

between certain slaves and masters was salutary. Most notably, the only authentic source of insight

into the antebellum black experience--the narrative--again and again shows certain emancipated

slaves describing slavery in the most favorable of terms. The parasitic master-slave relationship--a

product of the sweeping ideologies of the Civil Rights Movement--consequently falls. For it

operated on the belief that slavery, by its very nature, was a duality of master versus slave. That is,

that the mark of oppression in slavery was slavery itself. However, the evidence will prove

otherwise. It will show that the mark of oppression in slavery need not have been absolute, but was,

rather, a more complex question of the condition and individual treatment of the slave.
The physical abuse that some slaves received at the hands of their masters is well-

documented and need not be treated here in any great depth. Stories like that of a thirteen-year-old

slave girl from Georgia, whose sadistic master put her on, "all fours `sometimes her head down, and

sometimes up' and [beat her] until froth ran from her mouth," offer testimony to slavery's blackest

6
Fredrickson, On Herbert Gutman pp.275-285.

3
horrors.7 As does the narrative of Frank Bell, a former slave from Louisiana. He worked in his

master's saloon, and in addition to being beaten and locked up regularly, was not fed and "had to eat

the old stuff those people [the customers] left, all scraps what was left."8 Any slaves that endured
physical abuse or deprivation would, and this is self-evident, look upon slavery as an oppressive and

abhorrent institution. Of course, it does not necessarily follow that these slaves disdained the

institution of slavery because of the physical mistreatment which they were forced to endure

(although that inference seems not unreasonable). However, to isolate the precise causes of their

aversion, amidst the physical, emotional, psychological, and intellectual persecution--in short, the

complete cruelty--of their masters would be like fishing for a rotten egg in a sewer--always

unpleasant, difficult, and often impossible.

Consequently, only those cases in which former slaves remembered their antebellum years

fondly and state their reasons for doing so are of interest here. Rosella Brown, a deeply religious

and philanthropic woman, serves as an archetypal example. She was over thirty years old when

emancipation came, and portrayed a markedly different view of slavery than that which has since

been popularized: "There ain't nuthing like slavery days...I sholy would like to go back to slavery

days," she said. "Foks didn't starve to death den. De marsters tuk care of em, and in good years

everybody had money and new clothes, and dey had fun too--barn dances and hay rides."9 Brown's

narrative demonstrates that certain plantations were not necessarily characterized by oppression at
all. Instead, material comfort, communal vitality, and a sense of security apparently made Rosella

Brown fond of her plantation, even as a slave.

7
Deborah Gray White, Ar'n't I A Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 1985) p.33.
8
Frank Bell, Life Under the "Peculiar Institution": Selections from the Slave Narrative
Collection, ed. Norman R. Yetman (New York: Robert Krieger Publishing Company, 1976) p.22.
9
Rosella Brown, The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography: Volume 3: Texas Narratives
Part 2, ed. George P. Rawick (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1979) p.486.

4
 John McCoy, another former slave from Texas, shared in Brown's sentiments, although for

slightly different reasons. Living in a small frame shack in Houston at the time of his interview,

McCoy felt disgruntled with the path blacks had taken since emancipation.

I tells you jes' like I tells everyone, folks had a heap more sense in slave times 'n
what dey had now, yes suh. Long as a nigger do right, old Marster 'd protect him. He
teach him how to keep a straight row in de field and learn him how to farm good.
Old Marster feed his niggers good, too, and we has plenty of clothes...No suh, slave
times was de best. Colored folks is ign'rant and ain't got no sense and in slave times
white folks show 'em de right way to do.10

Here, as in the former narrative, McCoy defends the security and favorable conditions of his slavery

experience. However, the tone of his arguments is especially tainted with self-directed racism;

consequently, he raises important questions as to the validity of the narratives.

In the 1930's, the Works Progress Administration began an ambitious Federal Writers'

Project (FWP) to interview surviving ex-slaves, and thus find, in the only words that mattered, what

it was like to be a slave. Although the narratives are almost all verbatim copies of those interviews,

the context in which they were taken leaves certain areas open to speculation.11 First off, the Great

Depression brought pessimism to a nadir. Moreover, all the respondents had lived through

Reconstruction. For many this period meant economic failure and terrorism, so even slavery may

have seemed favorable in comparison. As Eli Coleman, a Mississippi slave born in 1846, said of

emancipation, "I was a share cropper, and Mr. White Man, that was really when slavery begins for

when we got our crop made he [the former master] took every bit of it to pay our debts and had

nothing left to buy winter clothes or pay Dr. bills and Maser he never owned us anymore."12 Yet

10
John McCoy, The American Slave: Part 6 p.2483.
11
Norman R. Yetman, Life Under "Peculiar Institution" p.1.
12
Eli Coleman, The American Slave: Part 2 p.851.

5
even if the severity of Reconstruction and the Great Depression colored the ex-slaves' accounts--and

it is likely they did--the arguments presented herein would only be strengthened. For no one could

argue that an inherent master versus slave relationship acted as an opposing force against blacks

during these periods simple because during them ex-slaves were not legally slaves and could,

hypothetically, go and do whatever they wanted. Clearly then, the mark of oppression during

Reconstruction and the Great Depression was the individual treatment and condition of the Afro-

American. By logical analogy, then, the argument would be extended to the antebellum slave.

Others argue that the slave narratives are unreliable sources because many of the FWP

interviewers were themselves white, and blacks had been socialized to fear whites. Interviewers

may have unintentionally intimidated their respondents, who adapted their stories to fit what they

felt the questioners most wanted to hear. Moreover, most of those questioned were between 85 and

100 years of age; a penchant for glamorizing youth may have distorted the accuracy of their

accounts. Irrespective of the validity of these protests, investigators have little choice but to trust, to

some extent at least, their sources. If historians twist the words of John McCoy, for example, to

argue that he did not really mean what he said (but, more probably, whatever it is the historian is

trying to support), then are they not guilty of practicing the very same paternalism and

condescension--the seeds of racism--that they try to discourage in others? Besides, if the words of

the ex-slaves, themselves, are not believable, than whose words are?

Former slave Laura Cornish, for example, spoke of her master in endearing terms and her

story should be believed. Texas born in 1850, Cornish belonged to a Baptist Minister Isiah Day. On

his plantation in Dayton, no slave had ever been whipped or had called him master; moreover,

Cornish (like everyone on the plantation) worked five days a week except when it was too hot, had

the liberty of visiting neighboring plantations without a pass, and received sufficient shelter, food,

and health care so as to be comfortable. She remembered that Papa Day, as he was called, used to

tell the slaves that, "We is born 'jes as free as he is, only de other white folks won't tell us so, an' dat

6
our souls is jes' as white, an' de reason we is darker on the outside is 'cause we is sunburnt."13 True,

the words read today reek of racism. Beneath them, though, the sentiments of a benign relationship

smolder.

Whereas Saturday was a day for social gatherings and festivities, Sunday on Cornish's

plantation was reserved for rest and religious services. Then Day preached to his slaves, although he

emphasized that their allegiance was to God and not to white masters. Indeed, Cornish recalled that

on the day of emancipation, Papa Day instructed, "De Gov'ment don't need to tell you dat you is

free, 'cause you has been free all your days."14 Day's benevolent treatment earned him the eternal

respect of Cornish, who affirmed, "Dey ain't nobody can tell me dey has better white folks den papa

Day." The benevolent relationship between Cornish and Day makes any notion of mutual

antagonism appear, in this instance at least, silly.

Yet did masters really care for their slaves, or were all their attachments based solely upon

the monetary value of their chattel? Although the question is probably unanswerable, for many

slaves, the distinction was irrelevant. Massa Jezro apparently took a sincere liking to Jeptha Choice,

born 1835 in Alabama, and financed his education. Said Choice, "Yes, suh, my whitefolks was

pretty good to me and sort of picked me out. You see if a nigger was smart and showed promise, he

was taught how to read and write, and I went to school with the white children on the plantation."15

Even though Jezro died fighting in the Civil War, after emancipation, Colonel Jones, Jezro's son-in-
law, followed instructions outlined in his father-in-law's will, and spent the necessary twenty-five

cents per week to send Choice through school. "After I learned [fractions] I was rated a sure `nuff

13
Laura Cornish, The American Slave: Part 2 p.941.
14
Laura Cornish, The American Slave: Part 2 p.943.
15
Jeptha Choice, The American Slave: Part 2 p.707.

7
College nigger,'" boasted Choice, who went on to teach school and eventually opened up a

successful barber shop in Houston, Texas.16

Still, even slaves like Calvin Moye, whose masters only interest in them was financial,

appreciated the attention and caring they received. Born in Georgia in 1842, Moye belonged to one

Master Ingram--a single man who refused to sell or trade any of his slaves. Moye understood that

Master Ingram viewed his slaves more as assets than anything else: "Maser Ingram would hates to

see one of de slaves die worse den one of de slaves dat was'nt no kin to de dead person, cause he had

lots of money invested in dem and every time one died he lost money and he lost lots of work

around de plantation too."17 Nonetheless, a zealous devotion toward Ingram suffuses all 57 pages of

Moye's narrative. It might best be summarized in one of his many accolades toward the man, "we all

sho' loves our Maser, he was so good to us."18 In particular, Moye remembered his own expertise as

a blacksmith, Saturday dances, game hunting, excellent food, clothing, housing, and, again, a sense

of security on the plantation--in short, his condition and treatment--with special fondness.

Vina Moore, born in 1845 close to Vicksburg, Mississippi, offers an unusually poignant

testament to the merits of good-treatment. Her mother and father died when she was young, and her

master and missus Smiley raised her in their own home. Although she worked herself "near ter

death," to earn extra nickels and dimes from them for candy, Moore underscored that the material

amenities supplied by the Smileys in addition to the support of the black community made her slave
experience singularly happy. "When de slaves was workin," she said, "you could hear dem fer

miles, each one singin a different song. We was all happy den, we had a good place ter sleep, plenty

16
Jeptha Choice, The American Slave: Part 2 p.709.
17
Calvin Moye, The American Slave: Part 6 p.2835.
18
Calvin Moye, The American Slave: Part 6 p.2833.

8
to eat, and we allus was singin...I wish it was back slavery time now."19 To Moore, life as a slave

was not only comparable to that of her white masters, it was preferred.

Heretofore, only blacks who explicitly stated their wish to live again as slaves in the

antebellum south have been documented--they most clearly confirm that a parasitic master-slave

relationship was not an intrinsic property of slavery, and that, instead, slaves' favorable condition

and treatment directly accounted for their favorable outlook. Yet the number of slaves who imply

that good treatment resulted in their agreeable, although, in their cases, not preferable perspective of

slavery is on an order of magnitude higher.20 Regardless, such approximations rely on superficial

criteria and are therefore unreliable. It is impossible to determine whether most masters provided for

the physical comfort and well-being of their slaves or mistreated and abused them. Certainly, the

preponderance of evidence indicates that the cases presented here fall into the minority; that is, most

slaves were barely provided for and/or outrightly abused.

And yet, the importance of such salutary master-slave relationships cannot be neglected. In

them, lies clear contradiction to the pervading assumption that slavery, in and of itself, is necessarily

evil. So the evidence discredits one presumption, but what does it support instead?

* * *

Slavery provides fodder for the deepest of philosophical discussions. In asking whether the

mark of oppression in slavery was slavery, itself, or the condition of the slave, we have essentially
asked a much more profound question: Does human happiness require liberty? Much more

disturbing, still, is the answer that the evidence suggests--No. In reading the following excerpt from

Calvin Moye's narrative, consider what freedom meant to this former slave:

19
Calvin Moye, The American Slave: Part 6 p.2761.
20
Based on my rough approximation of 1400 narratives in which the word "good" was used in
hundred different narratives to describe masters and their treatment of slaves, as in, "'cause marster
was good and de niggers all loved him." (Clara Chappel, American Slave: Part 2, p.687.)

9
 People den had a better time dan dey does now. Nobody goes hungry like we does
now and going half naked, trying to save enough money to pay de rent, dar was'nt
any rent den.
Dey can talks about slavery times being a bad time if dey wants to, but lots of de
things dat was told was lies. Most all de slaves had place to live, clothes to wear and
plenty to eats and dat is more dan we has now. About half de niggers in dis town
goes cold and hungry in de winter.21

Or ask what it meant for Laura Moore, an ex-Texas slave whose age is unknown, and said about

slavery times that, "Sure, we had to work and we had to work hard, but we had no worry to trouble

wid. I'm tellin' de truth. We got everythin' give to us. If you get anythin' out of it from people

nowdays, you got to slave worse than we did."22 For Moye and Moore, liberty alone meant nothing.

They needed more.

Anyone who reads into my arguments a defense of slavery has misinterpreted them. I do not

feature those rare cases in which masters, ostensibly at least, cared for their slaves in order to claim

that slavery was a beneficent institution. On the contrary, masters in the vast majority of

relationships treated equal human beings--their slaves--with utter contempt for every idea that

civilization holds dear and boasts as progress. I write this because I believe that it is more important

for a person to eat food, sleep under a roof, receive necessary medical treatment, work, and enjoy the

company of others, than to be free.

For liberty, in this sense, is little more than a convenience and certainly not a necessity. John

McAdams, an ex-slave from Tennessee, was twenty when Emancipation came, and described

freedom's banality in succinct terms: "For a long time after freedom we got to go where we pleased,

that was all the slave negroes got except a good cursing or whipping."23 By the implications of this
narrow definition, how many of us are really free? I am required to tell my parents where I am

21
Calvin Moye, The American Slave: Part 6 p.2831.
22
Laura Moore, The American Slave: Part 6 p.2744.
23
John McAdams, The American Slave: Part 6 p.2474.

10
going and when I will return when I leave the house: Am I free? We need to work: Are employees

free? We are thrown in jail if we evade taxes: Are citizens free? Such rhetorical questions should

raise doubts as to the importance of freedom in this limited sense.

For far too long, however, the elite have protected an exaggerated image of freedom that has

enabled them to run roughshod over the lower classes. By artificially divorcing the condition of the

citizenry from some mystical, omnipotent right, they have turned a deaf ear on all those whose

material wealth is insufficient. This neglect must not continue. Any freedom founded on economic

exploitation is no freedom at all. Ask the men and women holding "Will Work for Food" signs--

people begging for a fraction of antebellum slaves' privileges--whether they are really free; or the

homeless men and women shivering in the rain; or slum-dwellers afraid to step outside--to these

people, what is freedom but the bastardization of a sacred idea? Rightly viewed, then, liberty

demands that everyone have what even certain slaves had--the material necessities of a physically

comfortable condition. Anything less is oppression reminiscent of slavery's worst kinds.

Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, manumitting all slaves in

states wholly or partly in rebellion.24 He assumed that the mark of oppression in slavery was

slavery, itself, and thus that freedom would vaporize the mists of slaves' hard times. His assumption

was wrong. Although its legacy has lived to this day, for many slaves, slaves' children, slaves'

children' children, and all those who suffer under a common weight of poor circumstance,
emancipation has not yet come and freed them from the oppressive marks of their condition.

24
James Henretta, Elliot Brownlee, David Brody, and Susan Ware, America's History: Volume 1
(New York: Worth, 1993) p.462.

11
 Bibliography
Breeden, James O., ed. Advice Among Masters: The Ideal in SlaveManagement in the Old South. Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Brown Sterling A., Arthur P. Davis, and Ulysses Lee, eds. The Negro Caravan. New York: Arno Press and The
New York Times, 1969.

Cary, John H., and Julius Weinberg, eds. The Social Fabric:American Life from 1607 to 1877. New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.

Katz, William Loren. Eyewitness: The Negro in American History. New York: Pitman Publishing Corporation,
1967.

McGary, Howard and Bill E. Lawson. Between Slavery and Freedom: Philosophy and American Slavery.
Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1992.

McIntyre, Holland N., C.F. Sturgis and A. T. Holmes. Duties of Masters to Servants. Freeport, New York: Books
for Libraries Press, 1971.

Rawick, George P., ed. The American Slave: A Composite Narrative. Volume 3. Westport, Connecticut:
Greenwood Press, 1979.

Rawick, George P., ed., The American Slave: A CompositeNarrative. Volume 7. Westport, Connecticut:
Greenwood Press, 1979.

Sellers, James Benson. Slavery in Alabama. Birmingham, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1950.

Starobin, Robert S. Letters of American Slaves. New York: New Viewpoints, 1974.

Wade, Richard C. Slavery in the Cities: The South 1820-1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Weinstein, Allen, Frank Otto Gateli, and David Sarasohn, eds. American Negro Slavery: A Modern Reader. 3rd
ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

White, Deborah Gray. Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 1985.

Yetman, Norman R. Life Under the "Peculiar Institution": Selections from the Slave Narrative Collection.
Huntington, New York: 1976.

Drawing on title page comes from Microsoft Bookshelf.

12