Antebellum Slavery

 Why did the institution of slavery command the

loyalty of the vast majority of ante-bellum whites,
despite the fact that only a small percentage of
them owned slaves? (73)
 Slavery was the dominating reality of all
southern life. Assess the validity of this
generalization for TWO of the following aspects
of southern life from about 1840 to 1860:
political, social, economic, and intellectual life.
(84)
 Analyze the ways in which supporters of slavery
in the nineteenth century used legal, religious,
and economic arguments to defend the
institution of slavery. (95)
 I. Historical Debate Over Slavery
 Extremely complex system, diff. to generalize: blind men + the
elephant
 What region, what product, scale of production, type of labor
(house or field)
 1 in 8 slaves not used in ag: towns + cities, hiring out, skilled
crafts, factories
 3 Main competing views
 1) civilizing force (slavery as
school): first held by slave
owners, but then picked up by
black leader (and former slave)
Booker T. Washington
 2) Concentration camp
(abolitionists): obliterated slave
identity Sambo (racist
implications)
 3) Site of oppression and Af-Am
identity: crucial to creation
distinctive black culture
 II. Slave Labor
 Issue of scale: 1850 typical slave exp. on large
farm w/10+ slaves (75%)
 50% on plantations 20+ (remember why?)
 Tricky point: opposite of white exp. of slavery
 Masters required hard labor (begin kids age 5 or
6)
 11 or 12: work fields (w/ parents): majority
remained in fields until too old
 Old women care for children (white + black), old
men care for livestock
 A. Field Slaves
 Work “from sun to sun”
 Often sex-segregated work gangs, but
women in fields as well
 Racism of slavery: white women not to work in
fields (even poorest tried to keep out)
 Masters thought slaves racially lazy
overseers/drivers to force labor physical
punishment
 Slaves had no incentive to work
 B. House Slaves
 1 or 2 slaves out of 10
 90% of those women: cook, clean, care
infants
 Fascinating: young whites intimate contact
w/blacks (as “authority” figure), then had to
learn racism and superiority
 Advantage of house: better rations,
lighter physical work, better
accommodations
 BUT: constant surveillance + bore brunt
white rage (esp. mistresses
fear/knowledge of interracial sex,
inability to control husbands)
 Some (many) openly wished to go into
fields live in slave quarters
 The Coon and the Dog
“Every time I think of slavery and if it done the race
any good, I think of the story of the coon and
dog who met. The coon said to the dog, ‘Why is
it you’re so fat and I am so poor, and we is both
animals?’ The dog said ‘I lay round Master’s
house and let him kick me and he gives me a
piece of bread right on.’ Said the coon to the
dog: ‘Better, then, that I stay poor.’ Them’s my
sentiment. I’m like the coon, I don’t believe in
‘buse.”
 III. Life in the Quarters
A. Space
 Only few hundred yards from Big House, but  privacy + separateness (whites
didn’t want to constantly survey)
 Crude buildings, but central/primary physical locale: slaves ceased to be
primarily slaves took on more natural roles (family, music, religion)
 Community + culture of their own enables survival in face of brutal +
degrading system
 Usually ½ day Sat and
full day Sun personal
chores, visiting, hunting,
hire selves out, etc.
 Some space, literal and
metaphorical, outside
slavery
 Irony: fed white
hegemony: system of
control w/less need for
violence give slaves
enough space so that
they control
themselves tolerate
system to protect what
little them have
 B. Expression of Self
 Most important: developed forms self-
expression psychological coping: songs,
stories, etc.
 Important source for slave perspective:
literacy illegal few written documents
 Accounts of oppression, slave anger, desire
for freedom + vengeance, slave heroes,
satirical songs
 By 1850s: the Blues +
circumlocution (talking
around things)
 Enabled free expression w/o
fear of reprisal: could appear
happy/compliant + still
express discontent
 Wearing a “mask” w/whites,
take off when w/blacks
 Pompey
Pompey, how do I look?
O, massa, mighty
What do you mean “mighty,” Pompey?
Why, massa, you look noble.
What do you mean by “noble”?
Why, sar, you just look like one lion.
Why, Pompey, where have you ever seen a lion?
I see one down in yonder field the other day, massa.
Pompey, you foolish fellow, that was a jackass.
Was it, massa? Well you look just like him.
 Malitis
“They was seven hogs, fat and ready for fall hog-killing time.
Just the day before Old master told off they was to be killed,
something happened to all them porkers…
The masters asks: ‘What’s the illness with ‘em?’
‘Malitis,’ [the slaves] tells him, and they acts like they don’t
want to touch the hogs… He says to keep all the meat for
the slave families, but that’s because he’s afraid to eat it
hisself account of the hogs’ got malitis.
‘Don’t you all know what is malitis?’ Mammy would ask the
children when she was telling of the seven fat hogs and
seventy lean slaves…
[A strong slave w/ a mallet] tapped Mister Hog ‘tween the eyes
with the mallet, ‘malitis’ set in mighty quick, but it was a
uncommon ‘disease,’ even with hungry Negroes around all
the time.”
 IV. Family Life
 1965: The Negro Family: The Case for National
Action (Moynihan Report): black
“matriarchy”/broken families historical effect of
slavery harming modern black society and
culture
 Historians now think black family v. important
institution despite restrictions/odds
 How? 1) white masters encouraged “marriage” +
families: a) morality, b) encouraged
reproduction, c) stabilized quarters
 Most runaways young, single men
 Far more: 2) blacks committed to
institution: long lasting relationships (most
often broken by death)
 Although also broken by sale: 1820-1860:
300,000 marriages broken by sale
 “Weeping Time”: March 1857, Savannah, GA:
436 slaves sold in single racetrack auction
 After CW slaves sought each other out across
great distances (T. Morrison, Beloved)
 Majority children raised 2 parent house in
home w/single family
 Some fathers on diff. plantations, but
surprising degree in residence
 Indirect evidence of importance of father:
naming patterns
 Fathers did what they could to provide:
hunting, farm on side, build furniture, etc.
 BUT: father could not protect from white
sexual predators, threat of sale, physical
violence by white
 1.7 whippings/year: some argue shows little
physical violence
 But meant a family member beaten once a
month
 V. Slave Religion
A. Religion of the Masters
 New in 19th: 17th + 18th masters didn’t care about
religious life of slaves allowed African religion
to persist
 2nd Great Awakening: 2 new denominations:
Methodists + Baptists
 White M + B preached to slaves emphasizing
meeker virtues, biblical basis of racial seg. +
slavery
 Marx: religion “opiate of the masses”
 Blacks didn’t buy it for the most part even when
appeared to
 Some whites encouraged black ministers to
preach to slaves
 “I jined the church ‘most 83 years ago when I
was Major Gaud’s slave, and they baptizes
me…When I starts preaching I couldn’t read
or write and had to preach what Master told
me, and he say tell them niggers iffen they
obeys the master they goes to Heaven; but I
knowed there’s something better for them, but
daren’t tell them ‘cept on the sly. That I done
lots. I tells ‘em iffen they keeps praying, the
Lord will set ‘em free.”
 B. Religion of the Slaves
 Slave response white Ch’y: largely secret
black religion (woods, quarters)
 “My master used to ask us children, ‘Do
your folks pray at night?’ We said ‘No,’
‘cause our folks had told us what to say.
But Lord have mercy, there was plenty of
that going on. They’d pray, ‘Lord, deliver
us from under bondage.”
 Emphasized justice,
masters doomed to hell,
freedom, racial equality
 A) God the Father:
vengeance
 B) Christ: died for all
humans, redemption for all
 C) Moses (most central,
almost conflated w/Jesus):
spirituals constant motif of
escape into Canaan
 “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”
 Slave Songs
He delivered Daniel When I get to heaven,
from the Lion’s den, gwine be at ease
Jonah from de belly ob Me and my God gonna
de whale, do as we please.
And de Hebrew children Gonna chatter with the
from de fiery furnace Father, argue with the
And why not every Son,
man? Tell um ‘bout the world I
just come from.
 Syncretism (mixture)
w/certain aspects African
religion: magic, spirits,
conjuring
 “Hoodoo Doctors” (voodoo)
 Huck Finn: Jim’s fear of
ghosts
 VI. African-American Culture
 Middle Passage literally stripped of all
material culture
 But since 1960s consensus that some
survived: music, folk tales, magic,
language + linguistic patterns (southern
drawl: whites picked up African rhythms)
 Whites tried to stamp out African culture,
but survived in quarters and in evasions