|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Slavery and the American Blacks... No issue dominates the history of early nineteenth century America like the problem of slavery. What was slavery really like? And how did slaves react to their peculiar situation? What makes this controversy doubly interesting is that the answers have varied through the years.
Ulrich B. Phillips (written 1920s-1930s) argued that the Southern plantation was a benevolent and paternal institution, wherein Southern slave-owners generally behaved with fatherly concern toward their slaves. It was Phillips in fact, who reinforced the "SAMBO" image of black people smiling, deceitful, irresponsible, happy and lazy - as grown-up children. Dealing with such people, argued Phillips, required a firm, but gentle, paternal hand. Phillips argued that slavery had reached its natural limits and the Civil War was unnecessary. Kezirian Page 75. The next major book on these aspects of slavery came out in 1956 and it was written by Kenneth M. Stampp. Stampp took issue with Phillips on almost every point. First of all, Stamp argued that slavery was a profit oriented system, a capitalistic institution which was flourishing, not dying at the time of the Civil War. For Stampp slavery was a systematic method of controlling and exploiting labor. Finally Stampp argued that black people were not smiling, child-like, docile creatures that Phillips described. Rather they were potential rebels - resistance fighter. Many Southerners lived in fear of a possible revolt.
In the 1960 another approach is offered by Stanley Elkins. Elkins argues that Stampp in his thesis was too preoccupied with countering Phillips that he had lost his objectivity. Elkins says, "Phillips is reasonably right about the SAMBO image, yet Phillips’ reasoning is wrong. (SAMBO = smiling, deceitful, irresponsible, happy lazy much like grownup-children) In Elkins eyes black slaves had become SAMBO-types as a result of the stressful conditions of slavery itself. Every master-slave relationships was one of utmost authority on one side and total dependence on the other. Therefor a childlike attachment to the master was nothing but the psychological adjustment on the part of the slave. About revolts Elkins states: "Revolts are caused only by free blacks. A slave does not organize a rebellion around an abstract such as freedom or freedom fighting simply for he had never experienced anything like it?
One of the best modern writers on slavery is John Blassingame (1979), P 76, Kezirian says. Blassingame argues that the white historians have to ask another question besides: "What was done to the slaves?" They have to ask: "What did the slaves do to themselves and how did they do it?" Blassingame offers the following thumbnail sketch of JACK. Jack worked faithfully as long as he was well treated. Sometimes sullen and uncooperative, he generally refused to be driven beyond the pace he had set for himself. Conscious of his identity with other slaves, he cooperated with them to resist the white man’s oppression.
Kezirian points out that Herbert Gutman, 1976, is possibly the best representative of current attitudes about slavery. Gutman argues that slaves were more influenced by their own culture and by their own very special kinship and family ties, than by their relationship with whites. He concludes that there were distinct slave feelings, beliefs and institutions which were passed from generation to generation that were more important than how the slaves were treated by their owners.
As food for thought. I did not find any information in Kezirian about the "Black Families and traditions" and question that families were brought to the American South? I think the slave traders transported slaves just like live-stock and sold such at auctions. In Against Our Will, Two Studies in American Histories, Susan Brownmiller, states about the mothers of today’s American Blacks, "Field laborer, house servant and breeder woman were the principal economic roles of the female slave... ...it mattered little to the slaveholder who did the actual impregnating, since the increase belonged to the him by law." I think the Black families which formed in America are simply American families, part of the melting pot and have nothing in common with Blacks in Africa.
President Abraham Lincoln said in his First Inaugural Speech about Slavery: One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, can not be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other. And President Abraham Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural Speech about Slavery: One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
Based on class notes from Tom Logan's History Class at Montery Peninsula College America Past and Present, Brief 4th Edition, by Divine, Breen Fredrickson, Williams, Roberts, American History Major Controversies Reviewed by Richard Kezirian, And notes gathered around the world.
02/19/07 |
|
|
|
