The /I Peculiar I Nstitution /I: Slaves Tell Their Own Story

CHAPTER 8 was, blun slavE The /I Peculiar In Bren Institution /I: thrOl yean Slaves Tell Their Sout ana. Own Story rican wrot, but ~ and, the + hOWE The Problem With the establishment of its new gov ing southern white men to exploit fe ernment in 1789, the United States be male slaves sexually, a practice that of came a virtual magnet for foreign trav ten produced mulatto children born elers, perhaps never more so than into slavery. By tl during the three decades immediately The young Frenchman Alexis de tion, preceding the Civil War. Middle to up Tocqueville came to study the Ameri trick] per class, interested in everything from can penitentiary system and stayed to ment politics to prisOI~ reform to botanical investigate politics and society. In his vantE specimens to the position of women in book Democracy in America (1842), slave American society, these curious travel Tocqueville expressed his belief that 500,0 ers fanned out across the United American slaves had completely lost trate( States, and almost all of them wrote their African culture-their customs, plant about their observations in letters, languages, religions, and even the theA pamphlets, and books widely read on memories of their countries. An Eng what both sides of the ocean. Regardless of lish novelist who was enormously pop and u their special interests, however, few ular in the United States, the crusty allye travelers failed to notice-and com Charles Dickens, also visited in 1842. rigid, ment on-the "peculiar institution" of He spent very little time in the South slave) African American slavery. but collected (and published) advertise every As were many nineteenth-century ments for runaway slaves that con women writers, English author Harriet tained gruesome descriptions of their Martineau was especially interested in burns, brandings, scars, and iron cuffs 1. Ch~ tures I those aspects of American society that and collars. As Dickens departed for a Press, affected women and children. She steamboat trip to the West, he wrote 2. Freo was appalled by the slave system, be that he left "with a grateful heart that I Letters BensOI lieving it degraded marriage by allow- was not doomed to live where slavery Foundl [ 178] Background was, and had never had my senses slaves and her distrust of white south blunted to its wrongs and horrors in a erners' assertions that "slaves are the slave-rocked cradle."1 happiest people in the world."3 In fact, In the turbulent 1850s, Fredrika by the end of her stay, Bremer was Bremer, a Swedish novelist, traveled praising the slaves' morality, patience, throughout the United States for two talents, and religious practices. years and spent considerable time in These travelers-and many more- South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisi added their opinions to the growing lit ana. After her first encounters with Af erature about the nature of American rican Americans in Charleston, Bremer slavery and its effects. But the over wrote to her sister that "they are ugly, whelming majority of this literature but appear for the most part cheerful was written by white people. What did and well-fed."2 Her subsequent trips to the slaves themselves think? How did the plantations of the backcountry, they express their feelings about the however, increased her sympathy for peculiar institution of slavery? ploit fe that of Background ~n born By the time of the American Revolu 1775, African American slavery had be lexis de tion, what had begun in 1619 as a come a significant (some would have ! Ameri trickle of Africans intended to supple said indispensable) part of southern tayed to ment the farm labor of indentured ser life. y. In his vants from England had swelled to a The American Revolution did not re (1842), slave population of approximately verse those trends. Although northern lief that 500,000 people, the majority concen states in which African American slav ~ely lost trated on tobacco, rice, and cotton ery was not so deeply rooted began in ;ustoms, plantations in the South. Moreover, as stituting gradual emancipation, after ven the the African American population grew, the Revolution, the slave system-as A.n Eng what apparently had been a fairly loose well as its harshness-increased in the Isly pop and unregimented labor system gradu South. The invention of the cotton gin, e crusty ally evolved into an increasingly harsh, which enabled seeds to be removed in 1842. rigid, and complete system of chattel from the easily grown short staple cot 1e South slavery that tried to control nearly ton, permitted southerners to cultivate dvertise every aspect of the slaves' lives. By cotton on the uplands, thereby spur hat con- ring the westward movement of the of their plantation system and slavery. As a re ron cuffs 1. Charles Dickens, American Notes and Pic tures from Italy (London: Oxford University sult, slavery expanded along with set ted for a Press, 1957), p. 137. tlement into nearly every area of the 1e wrote 2. Fredrika Bremer, America of the Fifties: South: the Gulf region, Tennessee, 'l.rt that I Letters of Fredrika Bremer, ed. Adolph B. Benson (New York: American Scandinavian ~ slavery Foundation, 1924), p. 96. 3. Ibid., p. 100. [ 179] • CHAPTER 8 The "Peculiar Institution": Slaves Tell Their Kentucky, and ultimately Texas. Si white southern families who did own mark~ Own Story multaneously, the slave population slaves was actually declining in the argurr burgeoned, roughly doubling every nineteenth century, from one-third in wasae thirty years (from approximately 1830 to roughly one-fourth by 1860. than 700,000 in 1790 to 1.5 million in 1820 Moreover, nearly three-fourths of these slaves to more than 3.2 million in 1850, for in slaveholders owned fewer than ten cared stance). Because importation of slaves slaves. Slaveholders, then, were a dis ported from Mrica was banned in 1808 (al tinct minority of the white southern ern fae though there was some illegal slave population, and those slaveholders low w smuggling), most further gains in the with large plantations and hundreds of when ' slave population were from natural in slaves were an exceedingly small therm, crease. group. maint~ But as the slave population grew, the How, then, did the peculiar institu good 1 fears and anxieties of southern whites tion of slavery, as one southerner called "barba grew correspondingly. In 1793, a slave it, become so embedded in the Old Ameri( rebellion in the Caribbean caused tre South? First, even though only a mi to Chr mendous consternation in the white nority of southern whites owned stresse South. Rumors of uprisings plotted by slaves, nearly all southern whites were childlil slaves were numerous. And the actual somehow touched by the institution Amerie rebellion of Nat Turner in Virginia in of slavery. Fear of black uprisings never ( 1831 (in which fifty-five whites were prompted many nonslaveholders to nalistie killed, many of them while asleep) only support an increasingly rigid slave sys slavery increased white insecurities and dread. tem that included night patrols, writ which In response, southern states passed a ten passes for slaves away from planta tellectt: series of laws that made the system of tions, supervised religious services for of slm slavery even more restrictive. Toward slaves, laws prohibiting teaching slaves though the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson to read or write, and other measures to those \\ (who did not live to see Nat Turner's keep slaves ignorant, dependent, and and mil uprising) agonized: always under the eyes of whites. Many depend nonslaveholders also were afraid that were hl But as it is, we have the wolf by the emancipation would bring them into region. ears, and we can neither hold him, nor direct economic competition with slavemc safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, blacks, who, it was assumed, would rested ( and self-preservation in the other. drive down wages. Finally, although freedorr By this time, however, Jefferson was large planters represented only a frac But 1 nearly alone among white southerners. tion of the white population, they vir econom Most did not question the assertions tually controlled the economic, social, that ne that slavery was a necessity, that it was and political institutions and were not would E good for both the slave and the owner, about to injure either themselves or white se and that it must be preserved at any their status by eliminating the slave wereha cost. system that essentially supported litionist It often has been pointed out that the them. lation) 1 majority of white southerners did not To defend their peculiar institution, yearned own slaves. In fact, the proportion of white southerners constructed a re- oceans [ 180 1 Background lid own markably complete and diverse set of their claims. But evidence of how the in the arguments. Slavery, they maintained, slaves felt and thought is woefully ;hird in was actually a far more humane system sparse. Given the restrictive nature of y 1860. than northern capitalism. After all, the slave system (which included en of these slaves were fed, clothed, sheltered, forced illiteracy among slaves), this an ten cared for when they were ill, and sup pitiful lack of evidence is hardly sur e a dis ported in their old age, whereas north prising. mthern ern factory workers were paid pitifully How, then, can we learn how slaves ·holders low wages, used, and then discarded felt and thought about the peculiar in :ireds of when they were no longer useful. Fur stitution? Slave uprisings were few, but small thermore, many white southerners does that mean most slaves were happy maintained that slavery was a positive with their lot? Runaways were com institu good because it had introduced the mon, and some, such as Frederick ~r called "barbarous" Africans to civilized Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, actually ,he Old American ways and, more importantly, reached the North and wrote about y a mi- to Christianity.

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