If slavery had been as bad as the abolitionists maintained that it was, and as we have been reminded countless times on supposedly good authority, then why were there not thousands of rabid abolitionists demanding an end to the evil? Or, even more to the point, why were there not hundreds of slave rebellions? These questions have not been asked often or loudly enough. The answer would shock and dismay the vast majority of our nation who have been carefully schooled in abolitionist propaganda. As we have already mentioned, the "peculiar institution" of slavery was not perfect or sinless, but the reality was a far cry from the horrific descriptions given to us in modern histories, which are often nothing more than a hackneyed Southern Slavery As It Was: A Monograph by Steve Wilkins & Douglas Wilson Page 9 of 22
Site Unavailable 11/25/2006 reworking of abolitionist propaganda. Judge George L. Christian observed, In the first place slavery, as it existed in the South, was patriarchal in its character; the slaves (servants, as we called them) were regarded and treated as members of the families to which they severally belonged; with rare exceptions, they were treated with kindness and consideration, and frequently the relations between the slave and his owner, were those of real affection and confidence.12 Prior to the War, the South was visited many times by journalists from the North, as well as from Europe. The purpose of their visits was to send back first-hand reports on the nature of the South in general, and of slavery in particular. In the 1840's the Englishman, Sir Charles Lyell, traveled through the nation and published the results of his observations in Travels in North America in the Years 1841-1842. Lyell's description of slavery as it operated in the South was widely publicized in the North and pointedly contradicted the abolitionist propaganda. Lyell noted the remarkable affection that existed between master and slave, and on the fact that he found the slaves "better fed than a large part of the laboring class of Europe." There were no whips, chains, or accounts of gross mistreatment in Lyell's picture. To Lyell, slavery was a mild, kindly, if inefficient and uneconomical, institution. This view was confirmed by others including fellow Britisher, the Earl of Carlisle, James Strictland, and prominently by the American northerner, Frederick Law Olmstead, who was staunchly against slavery. This sober testimony was ignored in favor of abolitionist rant. But the people of the North in the 19th century have not been the only ones to ignore facts. The same problem continues today. Whenever a people decide to overlook the facts, however, they sometimes discover that there is a great deal to overlook. The Old South was a caste society, but not a compartmentalized society. There were specific roles for blacks and whites, and each "knew their place" as it were, but what is often overlooked is the high level of interaction between the races which was a common and everyday experience. Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world. The credit for this must go to the predominance of Christianity. The gospel enabled men who were distinct in nearly every way, to live and work together, to be friends and often intimates. This happened to such an extent that moderns indoctrinated on "civil rights" propaganda would be thunderstruck to know the half of it. During the New Deal, President Roosevelt commissioned a number of journalists to interview former slaves, and record the results. The results of this project collected in the multi-volume Slave Narratives surprised everyone with preconceived notions of the slave institution. The reports did not fit with the established and reigning orthodoxy, and consequently the Slave Narratives have been largely ignored ever since. One would think that the verbal testimony of over 2,300 former slaves would be a fairly important piece of information when it comes to forming our views of the institution as it really functioned. After all, these were interviews with former slaves, not with former masters. But surprisingly (i.e., surprising to those who still think scholars are neutral and led by nothing more than an
objective desire to know the facts) the Slave Narratives have had little effect upon the modern historiography of this period. Why have these narratives been ignored? The answer is quite predictable. The Narratives consistently portray an amazingly benign picture of Southern plantation life. Affection for former masters and mistresses is expressed in terms of unmistakable devotion. Testimony to the good treatment, kindness, and gentleness of many so-called "heartless slave holders" abounds. Many of the old slaves express a wistful desire to be back at the plantation. Slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care. In the narratives taken as a whole, there is no pervasive cry of rage and anguish. We see no general expression of bitterness and outrage. instead we find, on page after page, expressions of affection for a condition which, in the words of one historian, "shames the civilized world." The overwhelmingly positive view of slavery is all the more striking when one considers that the period being remembered by these former slaves could arguably be called the most harsh years of the institution — those years when it was under fierce attack, and when slave owners had circled the wagons. Predictably, the modern heirs of the abolitionists have fallen over themselves in an effort to discredit this amazing testimony. "They were old and their memories were defective . . . They were suffering under the Great Depression, many would think of slavery in a warm way under the conditions they suffered... They were talking to white people and weren't about to say things that might get them 'in trouble.'" However these efforts to explain away the overall testimony of the Narratives fall to the ground. These explanations fall because the testimony is not unanimous. There are those, scattered here and there, who mention atrocities, and complain of the meanness and immorality of their owners. There are those whose voices drip with the bitterness brought on by years of unjust treatment and ungodly oppression. They were not too old to remember the outrage they felt then; nor had that outrage diminished over the years. They did not look back on their experience with affection and nostalgia. They weren't afraid of what "Whitey" might think. In fact they were happy for the opportunity to make their bitterness known. Their testimony adds the clear note of authenticity to the Narratives. There was mistreatment, there were atrocities, there was a great deal of wickedness on the part of some — but, as the Narratives make plain, these abuses came from a distinct and very small minority. The Narratives have the ring of truth because they present the mixed picture which might be expected in an examination of any human institution. The surprise for moderns is that the mixture contains such an overwhelmingly positive view of master/slave relations before the War. R.L. Dabney, William S. White, Charles Colcock Jones, and many other defenders of the South had long acknowledged the existence of mistreatment and wickedness among some slave holders. But they nevertheless maintained that these instances were relatively rare and infrequent. Dabney is careful to note: "Now, while we freely admit that there were in the South, instances of criminal barbarity in corporal punishments, they were very infrequent, and were sternly reprobated by publick opinion." A Presbyterian pastor, William S. White observed: In all lands there are husbands and fathers who maltreat their wives and children. So there are masters among us who maltreat their slaves. But the prevailing spirit is one of great kindness, showing itself in innumerable ways. Their mutual dependence begets mutual attachment. I could fill volumes with incidents, occurring under my own eyes, illustrating this statement; but I write for my own people, especially my own children, and not for the abolitionists. This judgment is confirmed powerfully by the recent study done by professors Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman entitled Time on the Cross. They were proressors of Economics and History at the time of their writing of this book, and Professor Fogel later taught at Harvard University. The book sent shock waves through modern academia when it was published in the early 70's, and still provides a satisfactory shock whenever it is mentioned. They have done perhaps the most thorough examination of plantation records and first-hand accounts that has ever been done, and their results destroy the current but assumed view of slavery at point after point. Given this testimony, it is not surprising that most southern blacks (both free and slave) supported the Southern war effort. Some of course supported that effort from purely selfish motives. Fully 25% of the free blacks owned slaves.15 Most of these were quite wealthy, and knew that a Northern victory would bring economic and social ruin on them, which, of course, it did. But many Southern blacks supported the South because of long established bonds of affection and trust that had been forged over generations with their white masters and friends. They gladly supported the war effort with food, labor, and sometimes fighting. Their loyalty to the principles of the South rivaled and was sometimes even greater than that of some whites. For example, a slave named Robin was captured with his master during Morgan's raid into Ohio. He was separated from his master in prison, and was offered his liberty several times in exchange for taking an Oath of Loyalty to the Union. He refused saying, "I will never disgrace my family by such an oath."16 Remember, his "family" was his master's family. A number of servants captured at Vicksburg were offered their freedom with Federal protection but refused, choosing rather to be sent to Northern prisons to suffer with their fellow (white) soldiers.17 After their capture, a group of white Virginia slave owners and their slaves were asked if they would take the loyalty oath in exchange for their freedom. A free black among them stated indignantly, "I can't take no such oath. I'm a secesh Negro."18 A slave in the same group, when he learned that his master had refused to take the oath, proudly replied, "I can't take no oath dat Massa won't take."19 But lest anyone think this reflects a servile and cowed attitude, we should consider another occasion when a planter captured at Point Lookout did agree to take the oath of allegiance. His slave refused. When asked why he refused when his master had not refused, the slave replied with disgust, "Massa has no principles."20 These facts, and countless others, refuse to conform to modern abolitionists' myth of a harshly oppressed people who constantly seethed with resentment. The fact that there were very few slave uprisings in the South further confirms the fact that slaves were well-treated and often had a deep loyalty to, and affection for, their masters. Southern Slavery As It Was: A Monograph by Steve Wilkins & Douglas Wilson Page 12 of 22
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/slavery/southern_slavery_as_it_was.htm 11/25/2006 The Treatment of Slaves Whenever any human society is scrutinized, a biblical view of man would teach us to expect to find sin and evil. However, a partisan critic will seize upon any such problems and magnify it as though it were representative of the whole. We see this pattern today in feminist treatments of marriage, socialist treatments of the effects of free markets, and so forth. In the South, there were times when slaves were punished, and when this happened, they were commonly punished by means of whipping. But Engerman and Fogel place this practice in context for us. Some whippings were severe. In other instances, whipping was as mildly applied as the corporal punishment normally practiced within families today.21 Although some masters were brutal, even sadistic, most were not. The Slave Narratives are overwhelmingly favorable in the judgment of masters as "good men." In fact in the Narratives, out of 331 references to masters, 86% refer to their masters as "good" or "kind." Quite a few would not allow whipping at all, and many only allowed it in their presence. But it was far more in the master's interest to motivate his slaves by positive means. Far more important than whipping in managing the slaves was figuring out how to motivate. No plantation owner wanted slaves who were sullen, discontented, and hostile, who did just enough to get by. They wanted devoted, hard-working, responsible men who identified their fortunes with the fortunes of their masters. Such attitudes cannot be beaten into slaves. They had to be elicited.22 To achieve the desired response the planters developed a wide-ranging system of rewards. Some rewards were directed toward improving short-run performance (prizes for the individual or the gang with the best picking record on a given day or week). The prizes were such items as clothing, tobacco, whiskey, and very often cash. When slaves worked during times normally set aside for rest, they received extra pay — usually in cash.23 Occasionally planters even devised elaborate schemes for profit sharing with their slaves. All this evidence points to the fact that slaves lived at various levels of income. The average pecuniary income received by a prime field hand was roughly fifteen percent greater than the income he would have received for his labor as a free agricultural worker. Some slaves saved their money and were quite wealthy after the war. Simon Phillips, a slave from Alabama says, "People has the wrong idea of slave days. We was treated good. My Massa never laid a hand on me the whole time I was wid him... Sometime we loaned the Massa money when he was hard pushed."24 Data in the 1850 census suggest that the economic condition of the average free northern Negro may have been worse than that of the average free Negro in the South. A comparison between New York and New Orleans reveals that New York Negroes lived in more crowded housing, had a lower proportion of craftsmen, and less wealth per capita than free Negroes in New Orleans.25 Nearly every slave in the South enjoyed a higher standard of living than the poor whites of the South — and, had a much easier existence. Most slaves worked under the "task system" Southern Slavery As It Was: A Monograph by Steve Wilkins & Douglas Wilson Page 13 of 22
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/slavery/southern_slavery_as_it_was.htm 11/25/2006 which allowed for a great deal of flexibility as work was adapted to the abilities of the individual slave. Forest McDonald comments in regard to this "task system": Normally these [tasks] were light enough so that a worker could complete them in three or four hours. His time was his own when his task was done, and it was not uncommon for slaves, in their free time, to work the acres that were uniformly allotted to them by their masters and thereby to accumulate personal property. It was more common for slaves to double up on their work — to do two or even three tasks in a day — and then to take several days off, during which they might travel many miles by horse or boat to visit friends, family, or lovers on other plantations.26 The Stability of the Slave Family On average, only one slave holder out of every twenty-two sold a slave in any given year, and roughly one third of these were estates of deceased persons.27 With the trading that did occur, some of the families of slaves were broken up. The question is how widespread was this? Data contained in the sales records in New Orleans, by far the largest market.....to be continued
in the interregional trade, sharply contradict the popular view that the destruction of slave marriages was at least a frequent, if not a universal, consequence of the slave trade. These records, which cover thousands of transactions during the years from 1804 to 1862, indicate that about 2% of the marriages of slaves involved in the westward trek were destroyed in the process of migration. Nor is it by any means clear that the destabilizing effects of the westward migration on marriages was significantly greater among blacks than it was among whites.28 There is no reason to believe that the age and sex structure of interstate sales at New Orleans were markedly different from those of other south-central cities. Moreover, New Orleans, more than any other city, dominated the interregional slave trade, receiving annually about one third of the slaves sold between states.29 The Myth of Slave Breeding The thesis that systematic breeding of slaves for sale in the market accounted for a major share of the net income or profit of slave holders, is often espoused. This thesis involves two interrelated concepts. First, it is assumed that the slave owners interfered in the normal sexual habits of slaves to maximize female fertility through such devices as mating women with especially potent men. Second, it is assumed that this raising of slaves occurred with sale as the main motive. Unfortunately for the thesis, the many thousands of hours of research by professional historians into plantation records have failed to produce a single authenticated case of the "stud" plantations alleged in abolitionist literature. Nor was the sale of slaves all that profitable. The sweet potato crop brought more income to slave owners than the interregional sale of their bondsmen.30 Southern Slavery As It Was: A Monograph by Steve Wilkins & Douglas Wilson Page 14 of 22
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/slavery/southern_slavery_as_it_was.htm 11/25/2006 Furthermore, the proponents of the breeding thesis have been misled by their failure to recognize the difference between human beings and animals. What increases fertility among animals actually reduces fertility among men. Promiscuity increases venereal disease and reduces fertility. Emotional factors are of considerable significance in successful human conception. To imply that these factors would not be present in black people is inherently racist. Clearly, had there been widespread sexual misconduct, the effects on slave morale would have been disastrous. Distraught and disgruntled slaves did not make good field hands. Consequently, most planters shunned direct interference in the sexual practices of slaves, and attempted to influence fertility patterns through a system of positive economic incentives — incentives that are akin to those practiced by various governments today. Instructions from slave owners to their overseers frequently contain caveats against "undue familiarity" which might undermine slave morale and discipline. No set of instructions to overseers has been uncovered which explicitly or implicitly encouraged selective breeding
