Slave Culture the family: Because of constant sales, the slave community had a significantly higher number of female-headed households than among whites (Foner 415). “cult of domesticity”: Men could not protect their wives from physical or sexual abuse by owners and overseers (Foner 417). religion: slaves and the Bible (90% illiteracy) The Books of Exodus, Jonah, Samuel, and Daniel Resistance To Slavery “day-to-day resistance” and “silent sabotage” (Foner 420) fugitive slaves: Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad 1822 (South Carolina): Denmark Vesey 1831 (Virginia): Nat Turner / Southampton Uprising Abolition in the Americas: 1804: Haitian Revolution 1829: abolished in Mexico 1833-38: Slavery abolished in British colonies 1848: abolished in French and Danish colonies
The Peculiar Institution: the Antebellum South 1793: cotton gin invented (700,000 slaves) 1808: international slave trade abolished 1.2 million slaves 1860: 4 million slaves Cotton is King: “New York City’s rise to commercial prominence depended as much on the establishment of shipping lines that gathered the South’s cotton and transported it to Europe, as on the Erie Canal” (Foner 396).
“slaveocracy”: planter class (20+ slaves) - less than 5% small slaveholders (1 to 20 slaves) - 20% yeoman/poor whites - owned no slaves
“paternalism”: race and gender (Ibid., 400-411) Gender and the Proslavery Argument
Sex between white women and black men became a highly charged political issue, spurring whites to a level of public violence unknown under slavery. It was then that the Democratic party coined the pejorative term "miscegenation" (from the Latin miscere, "to mix"; and genus, race)...
...The Democrats] also wrote about the desire of black men for white women, contending: "Our police courts give painful evidence that the passion of the colored race for the white is often so uncontrollable as to overcome the terror of the law.” Catherine Clinton. Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War. (Foner A-12) The following are a list of some of the conditions which give rise to mental and/or emotional traumas that justify the diagnosis of PTSD:
- A serious threat or harm to one’s life or physical integrity.
- A threat or harm to one’s children, spouse, or close relative.
- Sudden destruction of one’s home or community. - Seeing another person injured or killed as a result of accident or physical violence. - Learning about a serious threat to a relative or a close friend being kidnapped, tortured, or killed. - Stressor is experienced with intense fear, terror and helplessness. - Stressor and disorder is considered to be more serious and will last longer when the stressor is of human design.
Leary, Joy Degruy. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Milwaukie, OR: Uptone Press, 2005. Print.