The Ante-Bellum South: Life on the Plantation
Henry J. Sage (2010)
“For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself
who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that
of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed
are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be
thought secure when we have removed their only firm
basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these
liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be
violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my
country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice
cannot sleep for ever . . . .”
Thomas Jefferson—Notes on the State of Virginia
The story of life on the slave plantation in the antebellum South has been
told, retold, and told yet again as historians have struggled to wrestle the
truth out of a reality that was difficult to understand even in its own
time. While a great deal has been written about the history of the
“peculiar institution,” uncovering the details of life among the slave
population has proved to be elusive, for various reasons.
First, the history of slavery in the American South was often portrayed
inaccurately both by those familiar with the institution and those
opposed to it. The strongest defenders of slavery saw it as a positive
good and in keeping with God’s order of things. Those who sought to
abolish slavery condemned it as an unmitigated evil. From both ends of
that spectrum, exaggerated descriptions of slavery were likely to
occur. In fact, there is no single description of slavery that suits every
situation or every region of the South. Slavery in the border states of
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Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky, for example, was not likely to be as
harsh as slavery in the deep South, farther from free territory, in areas
where larger plantations existed.
To complicate the matter further, interpretations and reinterpretations of
the history of slavery have been driven by scholarly and social trends,
with the result that descriptions of the institution have often been biased
in favor of the point of view of the writer. In addition, while voluminous
records of life in the South exist, those records are incomplete or under-
representative of certain aspects of slavery. For example, the large
majority of slave owners owned relatively small farms and few
slaves. The average number of slaves per plantation was about ten, but
that number must be reckoned against a substantial number of
plantations on which a hundred or more slave laborers existed. On
smaller plantations there was a high likelihood that the plantation owner
might been less than fully literate or too busy to keep detailed
records. The small slave-owner’s relationship with his slaves was likely
to be less harsh than on farms where larger numbers of slaves were
supervised by overseers responsible to the master. Furthermore, records
of mistreatment of slaves, beatings of slaves of both sexes, the rape of
slave women and other abuses were unlikely to be recorded in detail, if
at all.
In the years both before and after the Civil War, a mythology grew up
around the institution of slavery in the South. The image portrayed in the
famous 1939 film Gone with the Wind, with the kind “Massa” looking
after his “contented darkies,” surrounded by gallant young men and
radiant Southern belles, each attended by a loving black “Mammy,”
persisted for generations. A passive slave culture persisted in the minds
of many, but the reality was that slavery was almost always harsh and
cruel under the best of circumstances.
Another image of the antebellum South was of the poorest whites, often
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called “crackers” or “poor white trash,” who lived in ignorance and
degeneracy in a system that depended upon slavery. Many of those poor
whites lived in the hill country away from the cotton areas. Their
existence was affected by poor nutrition and resulting bad health.
Although they had no stake in the slave system, they nevertheless
supported racial division because despite their lowly status, they were
still able to look down on blacks.
A reasonably prosperous middle-class of white farmers and businessmen
also contented themselves with the labor system of the South, as many
of them hoped to move into the slave-owning planter class when they
became prosperous enough.
Because the bulk of Southern capital was invested in land, cotton and
slaves, the Southern economy had distinct features that centered around
life on the plantation. Both black and white women had considerable
responsibilities in running the plantation The image of a leisurely life for
wives of prosperous plantation owners belongs to the mythology of the
Southern culture. Because slaves were valuable property, the white
women on the plantation family were obliged to devote their time to the
care of their slaves, often administering basic medical treatment and
assisting with the births of slave children. The irony of the reality that
children born to slave women often had white fathers, who might be
husbands or sons of the plantation mistress, was generally suppressed;
such wives generally suffered in silence.
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What evidence we have of life among slaves comes to us from reporters
both black and white who were articulate enough to make records of
slavery as they saw it. One of the most famous eyewitness records was
that of Frances Anne “Fanny” Kemble, an English Shakespearean
actress who met and married the wealthy Philadelphian, Pierce Butler,
while on tour. Butler's wealth derived from a large family slave
plantation in Georgia, and when Fanny Kemble first visited the
plantation with her husband, she was shocked and dismayed by what she
saw. She wrote voluminous letters to friends and kept a journal which
was suppressed for some years and finally published in 1863. Once in
print, Mrs. Butler’s journal provided a vivid and sympathetic picture of
slave life; her descriptions vary between horror at the treatment of
slaves, especially slave women who were often required to work long
hours even while pregnant or shortly after childbirth, and her frustration
with the miserable deportment of the slaves she encountered. Her
inability to accept her husband’s role in the practices of slave-owners
contributed to the reasons for their divorce.
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Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington have also provided well-
known accounts of their lives in slavery. Many slave narratives, often
transcribed by literate blacks or sympathetic whites, have also been
published.
As part of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, historians took a fresh
look at African-American history and at the institution of slavery. They
attempted to filter out the mythology and error in order to arrive at a
semblance of truth. Attempts to right past wrongs, either of
historiography or of actual historical situations, often caused the
pendulum to swing past center. That is not to say that deliberate
distortions were frequent, only that the most extreme conditions of
slavery were often described in the greatest detail. The result of what
some saw as excessive reinterpretation was that yet another round of
defenses of the institution of slavery made their appearance.
Perhaps the best way to arrive at a satisfactory understanding of the
institution of slavery is to acknowledge that it was for many slaves, in
the words of Fanny Kemble, a “huge misery.” Although slavery in some
form had been part of human societies from the earliest times, by the
mid-19th century the very idea of owning another human being as a
piece of property had lost legitimacy. Even a society as backward as that
of Russia had ended chattel slavery by 1861. And while it is
undoubtedly true that many human beings existed in horrible economic
straits, in conditions that were in certain ways just as cruel as those of
slavery, one’s permanent status in that condition was hardly
institutionalized.
It is also true that within the slave culture of the American South, the full
span of human relationships was undoubtedly present. There were slave
owners and families who treated their slaves, or “servants,” as they were
euphemistically called, with at least a modicum of decency. Slave
women often nursed white babies and lived in the master's house, where
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they enjoyed a comfortable existence. Although forced sexual relations
between white slave owners and female slaves occurred with
discomforting regularity, sometimes relations between blacks and whites
were in fact loving relationships. Such relationships, however, were
always condemned, and although the number of slave children with
white fathers formed a significant portion of each generation, the
treatment of those children of mixed heritage was uneven. Sometimes
they were banished, sold off to rid the owner of evidence of his
dalliance; sometimes those offspring were treated with kindness and
affection, educated, and set free.
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None of those factors, however, truly go to mitigate the reality of
slavery. On too many plantations regular beatings were routinely
administered to slaves who failed to toe the line. The sexual abuse of
slave women occurred not only by the forced intimacy of white men, but
also by the forced marriages with slave men. Slave women were often
required to accept husbands not of their own choosing for breeding
purposes. Although the brutal treatment of slaves occasionally reached
inhuman levels, barely any evidence exists whatsoever that those who
beat slaves unmercifully, even to the point of crippling or to death, were
ever punished for their crimes.
It is distressing to note that even in the early 21st century there are those
who would make the case that in its time slavery wasn't all that bad. And
while it is true that people of African descent in America were not the
only ones to suffer under the yoke of slavery, it must be said that in a
nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and on
Christian principles, the notion that slavery was a positive good is
unsustainable.
It is also important to note that defenses of slavery, just as criticisms of
slavery, were often determined by external factors that had little to do
with the institution itself. It cannot be claimed, for example, that
anything existed inherently in the Southern character that made slavery
acceptable to people of the South. Had the economics of slavery, which
drove plantation life in the slave states, existed in the northern parts of
the country, one must acknowledge that slavery could have taken root
there just as firmly. And as abolitionists often pointed out, Northern
economic interests were perfectly willing to profit from the institution in
various ways, just as Northern political interests were content to live
under a government that tolerated slavery and protected it in its
founding document.
No one put this dilemma better than Thomas Jefferson when he said,
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“We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely
let him go.”
Economic historian Robert Fogel has written extensively about the
institution of slavery, including the economics of slavery. In Without
Consent or Contract, The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New
York: Norton, 1994) Fogel details in an “afterword” what he describes
as the moral problem of slavery. Acknowledging that attempts to
understand slavery has created “agonizing dilemmas and paradoxes,”
Fogel recounts that when he first became interested in the history of
slavery, he and a colleague produced a work on the economics of slavery
that was attacked on the grounds that it presented slavery in too
sympathetic a light. In response to his critics he wrote what he calls a
modern indictment of slavery.
In addressing the moral issue of slavery, Fogel believes an indictment
should turn on four counts. The first count is that “slavery permitted one
group of people to exercise unrestrained personal domination over
another group of people.” This charge calls to mind the often quoted
dictum of British historian Lord Acton that “Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In a country founded on the
principle that all men are created equal, and with religious overtones
suggesting that all people are equal in the eyes of God, such domination
had to be seen as a terrible offense on all grounds.
The second count of Fogel’s indictment of slavery is the denial of
economic opportunity. When Jefferson wrote that one inalienable right
was the pursuit of happiness, what he meant was the right to make a
decent living by any legal and ethical means. Economic rights of
individuals imply that every human being should have the right to make
his or her own best deal based on the talents with which he or she is born
and the industry with which that person hones those talents. Many slaves
constrained to working in the agricultural sector might well have
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prospered in other environments. In any case, the opportunity for
economic advancement for slaves was virtually nonexistent, even on
plantations or under conditions where slaves were allowed to earn
modest sums to be used for their own purposes.
Denial of citizenship for those bound in slavery is the third count of the
indictment. Fogel is referring here to more than just the right to vote and
other assumed privileges of citizens. What he really means is that the
slave was denied his day in court, that he or she had no legal recourse
for the redress of grievances arising from offenses against his or her
person. Even those who were denied the right to vote in other societies
at that time still had the right to organize, to form organizations and to
publicly plead for reform. Citizenship implies all of the rights
incorporated in the first ten amendments to our Constitution, and slaves
were denied all of those. As the court ruled in the Dred Scott decision of
1857, slaves and their dependents possessed no rights which white
people were bound to respect.
The last count of Fogel's indictment is the denial of cultural self
identification. Although slaves were able to retain some of the customs
brought by their ancestors from Africa, they dared not openly exhibit
full expression of their heritage. Slaves could not create a culture of their
own; family life for slaves was often fractured by the sale of family
members, especially children, and marriages between slaves were
generally permitted only with the indulgence of the slave owner. As
mentioned above, slave marriages were often forced upon slaves for the
purpose of producing slave children, which would accrue to the
economic benefit of the master.
In the 21st century, it should be unnecessary to argue that slavery was
wrong, even though there are people of apparent goodwill who believe
that in its time slavery was certainly an acceptable condition. Certainly it
is true that every human being on this planet probably has both slaves
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and slave owners somewhere in his or her ancestry. As historian John
Hope Franklin has said, slavery was old when Moses was young.
THE ECONOMY OF THE SOUTH
Although cotton was clearly king in the South, it was not the only
agricultural product cultivated. Tobacco, rice, indigo, and sugar were
also profitable crops which depended on an abundant supply of labor,
but the market for cotton produced as much wealth as all the other
products combined. The South also produced large quantities of corn,
wheat, and other consumables alongside forage for livestock, which the
South cultivated in abundance. Although agricultural reforms were
attempted in order to counter the depletion of soil brought by the
growing of tobacco and other staples, the abundance of virgin land in the
more western areas of the South kept many farmers and their slaves on
the move.
As the cotton culture spread westward, slavery strengthened its hold on
the South. The demand for slaves was greatest in the Deep South, and
the Upper South sold its slaves “down the river” at ever higher prices.
Slave trading was a lucrative business, but it sometimes led to the
breakup of slave families. As the price of slaves increased, only
wealthy Southerners could afford to buy them, so by 1860 only one-
quarter of Southern families owned slaves. Slavery was profitable, but it
kept Southern capital from being invested in trade and manufacturing.
Thus development of transportation systems and manufacturing in the
South lagged far behind the North by 1850. Furthermore, much of the
wealth generated by the cotton economy flowed northward as Northern
merchants, bankers, ship-owners and manufacturers derived substantial
income from crops produced by slaves that otherwise might have
remained in the South. Southern critics of the slave system repeatedly
emphasized that fact.
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Hinton R. Helper, one such Southern critic of slavery, recognizing the
realities of the slave system, wrote in 1857:
In one way or another we are more or less subservient to the North every
day of our lives. In infancy we are swaddled in Northern muslin; in
childhood we are humored with Northern gewgaws; in youth we are
instructed out of Northern books; at the age of maturity we sow our
"wild oats" on Northern soil; in middle-life we exhaust our wealth,
energies and talents ... giving aid and succor to every department of
Northern power; in the decline of life we remedy our eye-sight with
Northern spectacles, and support our infirmities with Northern canes; in
old age we are drugged with Northern physic; and, finally, when we die,
our inanimate bodies, shrouded in Northern cambric, are stretched upon
the bier, borne to the grave in a Northern carriage, entombed with a
Northern spade, and memorized with a Northern slab! (Hinton Rowan
Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, University
of North Carolina Press, 2001, 22,3.)
At bottom, slavery was a stagnant and inefficient labor system that
wasted talent and energy. Since there was no incentive for slaves to
work any harder than they had to, they required constant supervision.
Tools often broke “accidentally” and thus had to be stronger. Many
forms of passive resistance made slave labor far from free. Economic
historians have argued over the comparative economic benefits of the
Southern slave system and free labor systems. (See for example Stanley
L. Engerman and Robert William Fogel, Time on the Cross: The
Economics of American Slavery, New York: Norton, 1995.)
The Abolitionist Movement
Slaves have existed in almost every society known to man in one form
or another. Ancient Semitic tribes had slaves, the Egyptians had slaves,
as did the Romans, Greeks, Spartans and most Western European
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nations, well into and past the Middle Ages. Slavery was not invented in
modern times, but was inherited as a practice that had always existed.
The first African slaves who arrived in North America came to Virginia
in 1619, and they were treated more or less like indentured servants. It
was only when the enormous demand for labor, especially on the
Southern plantations, became apparent that the lucrative African slave
trade found its way to America's shores
By the late 1600s the practice of permanent, lifetime slavery was well
established by law in Virginia and elsewhere. Early colonial statutes
gave virtual life-and-death authority over their property to the owners of
slaves. Even though slavery is almost as old as civilization itself, by the
beginning of the modern age a number of forces had begun to mitigate
against continuation of the ancient practice. Although organized
resistance to slavery was slow in coming, modest steps were taken in
that direction. For example, in 1688 Quaker church took a stand against
the practice of human bondage, the first such declaration in colonial
America.
It had become apparent to many Americans by the time of the American
Revolution that slavery was inconsistent with the ideals that Jefferson
elucidated in the Declaration of Independence. Yet the winning of
freedom from Great Britain and solving the problem of slavery at the
same time were more than the founding fathers were prepared to tackle.
Slavery actually began to wane during and after the Revolution, and
many people quite honestly believed that it would gradually wither and
die. In any case, in most Northern states, the immediate or gradual
abolition of slavery started before 1800.
Slavery was a significant issue discussed during the Constitutional
Convention of 1787. The 3/5 Compromise, later seen by some as a pact
with the devil, was a temporary means of addressing the problem so as
to make ratification by a majority of the states possible. Few of the
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founding fathers admired the institution of slavery, and many of them
worried about its future impact in the United States. Some of those like
Washington and Jefferson were slave owners themselves; others, like
Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, had no use for slavery at all. The
clearest condemnation of slavery at the Constitutional Convention came
from George Mason, a slave owner. On August 22, 1787, he said:
Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment
of heaven on a Country. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in
the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes &
effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities.
The Civil War was indeed a calamity. Had it not been for the invention
of the cotton gin and the booming cotton economy that began to take
over the South around 1800, perhaps the desire to continue the practice
of slavery would have waned over time. But by 1820 the plantation
system and the production of cotton had come to dominate the broad
region of the South known as the cotton belt.
The slavery issue reared its head in 1819 over the admission of the state
of Missouri. Because there had been agitation in the North against
slavery for some time, Southern states were concerned that they might
lose their grip on Congress, and slavery might be jeopardized. The
Missouri Compromise was a way of keeping the number of slave states
and free states even, so that in the Senate the Southern states could block
any legislation interfering with what became known as the “peculiar
institution.” The Missouri Compromise lasted over 30 years, but it did
not resolve the issue of slavery.
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By 1830 the abolitionist movement had begun to take hold in the North,
especially in New England. William Lloyd Garrison, who became the
most outspoken opponent of slavery, gave his first famous speech
against the institution on July 4, 1829. As the movement grew and
spread, its advocates included many who sought reforms in other areas,
such as the treatment of the mentally ill, temperance in alcohol
consumption, and greater rights for women. Religious organizations
were at the forefront of the abolitionist movement, and the pulpit
became a place from which antislavery arguments frequently emanated.
The agitation over slavery was a contentious issue in Congress. The gag
orders (mentioned above) were put in place to prevent endless bickering
on the floor of the Senate and House. Congressmen such as John Quincy
Adams fought against the silencing of the debate over slavery. But since
slavery was protected by the Constitution, and since three quarters of the
states would have had to ratify any amendment ending slavery,
practically speaking, there was little hope of dealing with the institution
at the federal level. When the issue finally led to secession, in fact, it
was not over attempts to abolish slavery, but only over attempts on the
part of anti-slavery forces to prevent its spread. Abraham Lincoln's
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election on a platform to that effect led directly to the secession
movement.
Although one cannot fault the abolitionists for their desire to see slavery
ended, it has been claimed that their agitation did have a negative effect
on the overall circumstances of slavery. By declaring that slave owners
were unchristian sinners, if not downright devils, they placed the
Southern slave owners in a difficult position. They either had to agree
with the charges and give up their slaves, which a few did, or they had to
come to the defense of slavery in a way that had until then not been
necessary. In 1800 there were few Southerners who would have claimed
that slavery was a good thing. But by 1850, after decades of agitation,
the South had begun to argue that the institution as a positive good.
It has been widely claimed that the agitation on the part of the
abolitionists, well meant and morally unassailable, nevertheless in the
short term made the problem more acute. According to that logic, it is
not a stretch to say that the abolitionists helped create the Civil War.
Such claims have been refuted, however: “Despite such unanimity of
testimony, the assertion that the pro-slavery argument was an answer to
Abolitionism will not stand the light of examination.” (W. B. Hesseltine,
"Some New Aspects of the Pro-Slavery Argument." The Journal of
Negro History, Jan., 1936, 1-14. ) The full story of the abolitionist
movement is still being told, and their actions have been defended a
morally justifiable.
Slavery Divides the Nation. All the other issues that divided the North
and South, such as tariffs, land sales policy, internal improvements, and
even the Bank of the United States, were connected in certain ways with
the institution of slavery. For example, manufacturing in the South had
been approximately equal to manufacturing in the north in 1800. But by
1850, a vast majority of the manufacturing had moved to the North since
most Southern capital had been invested in plantations, slaves and
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cotton.. It must be said that the North also profited from slavery because
those who financed loans to Southern landowners and those who
marketed and traded in cotton were very often Northern merchants or
ship owners. Protests against protective tariffs in states like South
Carolina were rooted in the fact that the South was reliant on Northern
manufacturing for many products.
In 1850 with new land accessions from the Mexican War, the issue of
slavery was opened once again. The 1850 Compromise temporarily
resolved the issue. Almost immediately afterward, the new, tougher
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, brought the problems of slavery to the North
more vividly than ever. The Underground Railroad, which had enabled
slaves to escape to the northern states and often on to Canada, was seen
by Southerners as a conspiracy to rob them of their economic well-
being; thus the Fugitive Slave Act and its strong provisions led to many
slave catchers invading the North in search of what they deemed lost
property. Very often attempts to bring slaves back to the South were met
with resistance. Violence broke out in many Northern areas where freed
slaves were being apprehended. Abolitionists sometimes purchased
freedom for slaves rather than allowing them to be taken back South. In
some ways that fueled the fires more, as Southerners saw that as a means
of getting reimbursed for recalcitrant slaves who were known as runners
and were therefore undesirable in the first place.
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