THE

*eeuliar
IInstitution
Marygrove College Library
Paperback Collection
The Peculiar Institution
 THE jPECULIAR
Institution
Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South

by Kenneth M* Stampp

VINTAGE BOOKS
A Division of Random House
New York
 Vintage Books
are published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
and Random House, Inc.

© Copyright, 1956, by Kenneth M. Stampp

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copy¬
right Conventions. Distributed in Canada by Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto.

REPRINTED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For my father and mother
 [vii]

PREFACE

P rior to the Civil War southern slavery was America’s

most profound and vexatious social problem. More
than any other problem, slavery nagged at the public con¬
science; offering no easy solution, it demanded statesman¬
ship of uncommon vision, wisdom, and boldness. This in¬
stitution deserves close study if only because its impact
upon the whole country was so disastrous. But, in addition,
such a study has a peculiar urgency, because American Ne¬
groes still await the full fruition of their emancipation—
still strive to break what remains of the caste barriers first
imposed upon them in slavery days. With the historian it is
an article of faith that knowledge of the past is a key to
understanding the present. In this instance I firmly believe
that one must know what slavery meant to the Negro and
how he reacted to it before one can comprehend his more
recent tribulations.
Yet there is a strange paradox in the historian’s involve¬
ment with both present and past, for his knowledge of the
present is clearly a key to his understanding of the past.
Today we are learning much from the natural and social
sciences about the Negro’s potentialities and about the
basic irrelevance of race, and we are slowly discovering the
roots and meaning of human behavior. All this is of im¬
mense value to the historian when, for example, he tries to
grasp the significance of the Old South’s “peculiar institu¬
tion.” I have assumed that the slaves were merely ordinary
human beings, that innately Negroes are, after all, only
white men with black skins, nothing more, nothing less.
 Preface
This gives quite a new and different meaning to the bond¬
age of black men; it gives their story a relevance to men of
all races which it never seemed to have before.
What I have written about slavery is built, as all books
about history are built, upon what others have already writ¬
ten. Those who have made major contributions to this
subject are cited in my footnotes. Ulrich B. Phillips’s Amer¬
ican Negro Slavery (1918) is the pioneer work of scholar¬
ship in this field; and though he approached the subject
with different assumptions and from a different perspective,
I learned much from his methods, his sources, and his find¬
ings. Since 1918 many others have written more specialized
books and articles about slavery, and the best of them have
pointed toward revisions of some of Phillips’s conclusions.
Without these recent studies an attempt at a new synthesis
would have been infinitely more difficult, if not impos¬
sible.
Among the more outrageous forms of human exploita¬
tion is the kind to which an author subjects his friends. To
acknowledge their patience and pains afterward is a feeble
gesture, but I can at least absolve them from responsibility
for the stylistic gaucheries and interpretive errors that sur¬
vive their labors. My entire manuscript was read and criti¬
cized by Carl Bridenbaugh, Richard N. Current, Frank
Freidel, Richard Hofstadter, Henry F. May, and Paul S.
Taylor. In addition, I have received valuable advice at dif¬
ferent times from Reinhard Bendix, John Hope Franklin,
R. A. Gordon, Fred H. Harrington, William B. Hesseltine,
John D. Hicks, and James F. King.
I am grateful to the staffs of the various libraries I visited
for the numerous courtesies they extended to me. A John
Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship en¬
abled me to devote a year to research; and the Institute of
Social Sciences of the University of California provided
funds for typists and travel.

viii
Preface

For her assistance during the research, her criticism of

the manuscript, and her aid in the proofreading, my wife,
Katherine Mitchell Stampp, has my deepest appreciation.

Kenneth M. Stampp

ix
 [xi]
CONTENTS

\ The Setting
3
II • From Day Clean to First Dark
34
III • A Troublesome Property
86
IV • To Make Them Stand in Fear
141
V • Chattels Personal
192
VI ■ Slavemongering
237
VII Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality
279
VIII ■ Between Two Cultures
322
IX • Profit and Loss
383
X • He Who Has Endured
419
MANUSCRIPTS CONSULTED

43 1
INDEX

follows 436
The Peculiar Institution
 [3]
CHAPTER ONE

The Setting

T o understand the South is to feel the pathos in its

history. This aura of pathos is more than a delusion
of historians, more than the vague sensation one gets when
looking down an avenue of somber, moss-draped live oaks
leading to stately ruins or to nothing at all. For Southerners
live in the shadow of a real tragedy; they know, better than
most other Americans, that little ironies fill the history of
mankind and that large disasters from time to time unex¬
pectedly help to shape its course.
Their tragedy did not begin with the ordeal of Recon¬
struction, or with the agony of civil war, but with the
growth of a “peculiar institution” (as they called it) in
ante-bellum days. It began, in short, with chattel slavery
whose spiritual stresses and unremitting social tensions be¬
came an inescapable part of life in the Old South.
What caused the growth of this institutional affliction
which had so severe an impact upon the lives of so many
Southerners? Some historians have traced the origin of
southern slavery to a morbific quality in the southern cli¬
mate. Though admitting great climatic variations within
the South and the normal mildness of the winter season,
they have emphasized the weather’s fiercer moods—the tor¬
rential rains, the searing droughts, above all, the humid
heat of subtropical summers. Since Southerners were un-
 The Peculiar Institution

able to control the weather, they had to come to terms

with it. So it was the climate that determined the nature
of their institutions and the structure of their society. “Let
us begin by discussing the weather,” wrote one historian
who saw here “the chief agency in making the South dis¬
tinctive.” 1 To such climatic determinists the social signifi¬
cance of “ninety degrees in the shade” was too real to be
ignored.
If climate alone could not explain everything, then per¬
haps certain additional factors, such as soil, topography,
and watercourses, contributed to a broader geographical
determinism. Combine the hot summers and long growing
seasons with the rich southern soils—the alluvial river bot¬
toms, the sandy loams of the coastal plains, the silt loams
of the Black Belt, and the red clays of the piedmont—and
an agricultural economy was the logical result. Add the
many navigable rivers which facilitated the movement of
bulky staples from considerable distances inland to coastal
ports, and all the requirements for a commercial form of
agriculture were at hand. Commercial agriculture induced
a trend toward large landholdings which in turn created a
demand for labor. Thus some have argued that Southern¬
ers, in permitting slavery to grow, had merely submitted to
compelling natural forces.
Human institutions, however, have not been formed by
forces as rigidly deterministic as this. To be sure, men must
inevitably make certain adjustments to fixed environ¬
mental conditions. But, within limits, these adjustments
may take a variety of forms. At different times and in dif¬
ferent places roughly similar environmental conditions
have produced vastly different human responses. Some hu¬
man adaptations have been far more successful than others.
For this reason one must examine the forms of southern

Ulrich B. Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston, 1929)
p. 1.

4
I: The Setting
institutions as closely as the facts of the southern envi¬
ronment.
It may be that unfree labor alone made possible the
early rise of the plantation system, but this proves neither
the necessity nor the inevitability of slavery. Actually, the
southern plantation was older than slavery and survived
its abolition. More important, there was nothing inevitable
about the plantation. Without a continuing supply of
bondsmen southern agriculture, in its early development
at least, would probably have depended more upon small-
farm units and given less emphasis to the production of
staple crops. Under these circumstances the South might
have developed more slowly, but it would not have re¬
mained a wilderness. There was no crop cultivated by
slaves that could not have been cultivated by other forms
of labor, no area fit for human habitation that would have
been passed by for want of a slave force. The slave-planta¬
tion system answered no “specific need’’ that could not
have been answered in some other way.2
Slavery, then, cannot be attributed to some deadly at¬
mospheric miasma or some irresistible force in the South’s
economic evolution. The use of slaves in southern agricul¬
ture was a deliberate choice (among several alternatives)
made by men who sought greater returns than they could
obtain from their own labor alone, and who found other
types of labor more expensive. “For what purpose does the
master hold the servant?” asked an ante-bellum Southerner.
“Is it not that by his labor he, the master, may accumulate
wealth?” 3 The rise of slavery in the South was inevitable
only in the sense that every event in history seems inevi¬
table after it has occurred.
Southerners who chose to develop and to preserve slavery

2 For such a defense of the system see Ulrich B. Phillips (ed.), Planta¬
tion and Frontier: 1649-186) (Cleveland, 1910), I, p. 71.
s Farmer's Journal, II (1853), p. 52.

5
 The Peculiar Institution

could no more escape responsibility for their action than

they could escape its consequences. But to judge them
without compassion is to lack both the insight and the
sensitivity needed to understand the nature of their trag¬
edy. For the South began with good human material; its
tragedy did not spring from the inherent depravity of its
people. Southerners did not create the slave system all at
once in 1619; rather, they built it little by little, step by
step, choice by choice, over a period of many years; and all
the while most of them were more or less blind to the ulti¬
mate consequences of the choices they were making. Some¬
how, at crucial times, their vision failed them; somehow it
was their misfortune to have built a social structure want¬
ing in flexibility. Ultimately Southerners became the vic¬
tims of their own peculiar institution; they were unwilling
to adjust it, or themselves, to the ideological and cultural
realities of the nineteenth century.
Not that slavery failed as a practical labor system. In that
narrow sense it was a success, and it was still flourishing as
late as i860. In terms of its broad social consequences for
the South as a whole, however, slavery must be adjudged a
failure. Few slaves ever really adapted successfully to their
servitude, and few whites could defend the system without
betraying the emotional stresses to which slavery subjected
them. Eventually the omnipresent slave became the symbol
of the South and the cornerstone of its culture. When that
happened, disaster was close at hand—in fact, that in itself
was a disaster.

2
An essential point about the South’s peculiar institution
was this: its slaves were Negroes (that is, they possessed one
or more Negro ancestors). The presence of Negroes in the
South was indeed significant, but the significance of their

6
I: The Setting

presence must be neither exaggerated nor misunderstood.

The folklore regarding the Negro and his role in southern
history must not be mistaken for fact.
According to tradition, Negroes had to be brought to the
South for labor that Europeans themselves could not per¬
form. “The white man will never raise—can never raise a
cotton or a sugar crop in the United States. In our swamps
and under our suns the negro thrives, but the white man
dies.” Without the productive power of the African whom
an “all-wise Creator” had perfectly adapted to the labor
needs of the South, its lands would have remained “a howl¬
ing wilderness.” *
Such is the myth. The fact is that, ever since the found¬
ing of Jamestown, white men have performed much of the
South’s heavy agricultural labor. For a century and a half
white farmers have tended their own cotton fields in every
part of the Deep South. In the 1850’s Frederick Law Olm¬
sted saw many white women in Mississippi and Alabama
“at work in the hottest sunshine ... in the regular culti¬
vation of cotton.” * * 5 In 1855, even a South Carolinian vigor¬
ously disputed “the opinion frequently put forth, that
white labor is unsuited to the agriculture of this State.” All
that such laborers required was to be properly acclima¬
tized. “The white man—born, raised and habituated to ex¬
posure and labor in the field in our climate—will be found
equal to the task in any part of this State free from the in¬
fluence of the excessive malaria of stagnant waters.” Then
this Carolinian observed an important fact: in the swamp¬
lands Negroes did not thrive any better than white men.6
But Negro slaves, unlike free whites, could be forced to toil

* DeBow’s Review, XXI (1856), p. 467; XXIV (1858), p. 63; Southern

Cultivator, XVI (1858), pp. 233-36.
5 Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Back Country (New York,
i860), pp. 298, 349-50.
® Columbian Carolinian, quoted in Charleston Courier, September 6,
1855.

7
 The Peculiar Institution

in the rice swamps regardless of the effect upon their

health. That was the difference.
An equally durable myth is that Negroes, in contrast to
peoples of other races, possess certain racial traits which
uniquely fitted them for bondage, and which created in the
South a lasting “race problem.” As other defenses of slavery
became increasingly untenable, nineteenth-century South¬
erners gave special emphasis to this racist argument. Doc¬
tors, scientists, and pseudo-scientists—phrenologists had a
substantial following—found a physiological basis for al¬
leged temperamental and intellectual differences. Dr. Sam¬
uel W. Cartwright, of Louisiana, argued that the visible
difference in skin pigmentation also extended to “the mem¬
branes, the muscles, the tendons, and . . . [to] all the flu¬
ids and secretions. Even the negro’s brain and nerves, the
chyle and all the humors, are tinctured with a shade of the
pervading darkness.” Dr. Josiah C. Nott, of Mobile, was
the leader of a small group who carried racism to the ex¬
treme position of denying that Negroes and whites be¬
longed to the same species.7
Racist doctrines did not die with slavery. Around the
time of the Spanish-American War the imperialist concept
of the “white man’s burden” and the writings of such schol¬
ars as John Fiske and John W. Burgess gave added strength
to the belief in white superiority in general and Anglo-
Saxon superiority in particular. As late as 1918, Professor
Ulrich B. Phillips premised his study of slavery upon the
assumption that Negroes “by racial quality” are “submis¬
sive,” “light-hearted,” “amiable,” “ingratiating,” and “imi¬
tative.” The removal of the Negro from Africa to America
had “had little more effect upon his temperament than
upon his complexion.” Hence the progress of the “gener-

7 DeBow's Review, IX (1850), p. 231; X (1851) , pp. 113-32; XI (1851),

p. 65; James B. Sellers, Slavery in Alabama (University, Alabama,
>95°). PP- 344-45-

8
I: The Setting

ality” of slaves “was restricted by the fact of their being

negroes.” More than a decade later an agricultural econo¬
mist expressed serious doubts whether it was really slavery
that made many ante-bellum Negroes inefficient and irre¬
sponsible laborers. As late as 1953, a distinguished biochem¬
ist suggested that races of men, like breeds of dogs, may
possess distinctive emotional characteristics, and that the
Negro’s “inborn temperament” may have made his en¬
slavement feasible.8
These ideas continue to have wide currency despite the
impossibility of generalizing, without extreme caution,
even about the external physical traits of American Ne¬
groes. While most of their ancestors were “true Negroes”
from the coastal areas of West Africa, some came from Cen¬
tral Africa, South Africa, East Africa, and Madagascar.
These Bantus, Bushmen, and Hottentots, though dark-
skinned, frizzly-haired peoples, deviate significantly from
some of the physical characteristics that are regarded as
typically Negroid. In skin coloration the yellowish-browns
found among the Bantus distinguish them from the darker
shaded “true Negroes.” This kind of physical diversity is
as common among members of the Negro race as it is
among members of other races.9
In so far as the southern “race problem” grew out of
such external differences as skin pigmentation, it has al¬
ways been an artificial problem created by white men who
by the nineteenth century had made an obsession of these
racial superficialities. Few would argue seriously that the
Negro’s physical make-up accounted in any way for his al-

8 Ulrich B. Phillips, American Negro Slavery (New York, 1918), pp.

291-92, 339, 341-42; Lewis C. Gray, History of Agriculture in the
Southern United States to i860 (Washington, D.C., 1933), I, pp. 464-
66; Roger J. Williams, Free and Unequal: The Biological Basis of In¬
dividual Liberty (Austin, Texas, 1953), pp. 121-28.
* Julian H. Lewis, The Biology of the Negro (Chicago, 1942), pp.
19-22.

9
 The Peculiar Institution

leged special fitness for servitude. If this belief has a more

substantial foundation in his innate emotional traits or in¬
tellectual inferiority, no one has yet turned up any con¬
vincing evidence to demonstrate it—though many have
tried. Instead, modern biologists, psychologists, sociolo¬
gists, and anthropologists offer an impressive accumulation
of evidence that Negroes and whites have approximately
the same intellectual potentialities. The seemingly una¬
voidable subjective element in testing devices may make it
impossible ever to settle this point conclusively through
exact measurements of intelligence. But as the tests have
been refined in an effort to eliminate environmental fac¬
tors, their results have become increasingly embarrassing to
the racists.
One fact is established beyond any reasonable doubt.
This is the fact that variations in the capacities and person¬
alities of individuals within each race are as great as the
variations in their physical traits. Therefore it is impos¬
sible to make valid generalizations about races as such. Ne¬
groes as a race were no more psychically fitted for slavery
than were white men as a race.1 Either slavery was a desir¬
able status for some whites as well as for some Negroes, or
it was not a desirable status for anyone. Finally, in view of
the fact that certain groups of Caucasians at different times
have also been forced to submit to various forms of bond¬
age, it would appear to be a little preposterous to general¬
ize about the peculiarities of Negroes in this respect.
But perhaps it is not enough merely to reject the first
i For a summary of the evidence and literature on this subject see Gun-
nar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern
Democracy (New York, 1944) , esp. Vol. I, Chap. VI, and the footnotes
to this chapter, Vol. II, pp. 1212-18. Two recent additions to the lit¬
erature are Otto Klineberg (ed.), Characteristics of the American Ne¬
gro (New York, 1944) ; Theodosius Dobzhansky, "The Genetic Nature
of Differences Among Men," in Stow Persons (ed.), Evolutionary
Thought in America (New Haven, 1950), pp. 85-155.

IO
I: The Setting
myth that an “all-wise Creator” had designed the Negro
for labor in the South, and the second myth that by intel¬
lect and temperament he was the natural slave of the white
man. For there is a third myth which offers still another
reason why Negroes were kept in bondage for two centu¬
ries. The substance of this tradition is that Africans were
barbarians who therefore needed to be subjected to rigid
discipline and severe controls. Their enslavement was es¬
sential for their own good and for the preservation of white
civilization. The Negroes, declared the preamble to South
Carolina’s code of 1712, were "of barbarous, wild, savage
natures, and . . . wholly unqualified to be governed by
the laws, customs, and practices of this province.” They
had to be governed by such special laws “as may restrain
the disorders, rapines, and inhumanity to which they are
naturally prone and inclined, and [as] may also tend to the
safety and security of the people of this province and their
estates.” 2
Whether colonial South Carolinians regarded this as
more than an immediate and temporary problem they did
not make entirely clear. But it is quite evident that many
others since then have viewed it as a persistent problem
which has perplexed each generation of Southerners. Ac¬
cording to their belief, the primitive Negroes who were
brought to America could only learn the ways of the civi¬
lized white man in the course of many generations of grad¬
ual cultural growth. One historian described the southern
plantation as “a school constantly training and controlling
pupils who were in a backward state of civilization. . . .
On the whole the plantations were the best schools yet in¬
vented for the mass training of that sort of inert and back¬
ward people which the bulk of the American negroes rep-
2 John C. Hurd, The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United
States (Boston, 1858-62) , I, p. 299.

11
 The Peculiar Institution

resented.” 8 This belief is implicit in some other historical

treatises on southern slavery.
Unquestionably when adult Negroes were imported
from Africa they had trouble learning to live in a strange
environment and to understand unfamiliar social institu¬
tions. But the idea that Negroes needed to be civilized by
a slow evolutionary process, during which they would
gradually acquire and transmit to their descendants the
white man’s patterns of social behavior, contains two fal¬
lacies. One of them results from a misconception of the
problem. Actually, the first generation of Negroes born in
America in the seventeenth century was just as well pre¬
pared for freedom as the generation that was emancipated
in the 1860’s. The adaptation to the white man’s culture
involved a process of education, not one of biological evo¬
lution. The only way that Negroes ever learned how to
live in America as responsible free men was by experi¬
ence—by starting to live as free men. The plantation school
never accomplished this: its aim was merely to train them
to be slaves.
The second fallacy results from a total misapprehension
of the Negro’s African background. There may be objec¬
tive standards by which one can designate as “primitive”
the cultures of the Ashantis and Fantis of the Gold Coast,
the Yorubas and Binis of Nigeria, the Mandingos and
Hausas of the western Sudan, the people of Dahomey, and
the various tribes of the Congo. But to describe these peo¬
ple as savages who led an animal-like existence is a serious
distortion. Long before the seventeenth century they had
evolved their own intricate cultures. It is always wise to be
cautious about making subjective comparisons of cultures
in terms of the superiority of one over the other. It is easy,
and perhaps natural, for one people to regard the strange

Phillips, American Negro Slavery, pp. 342-43. For a somewhat similar

view see Gray, History of Agriculture, I, pp. 464-66.

12
I: The Setting
customs of another people as inferior to their own familiar
customs. And it is easy to forget that white men were
scarcely in a position to judge Africans severely for sanc¬
tioning slavery, indulging in inter-tribal warfare, and cher¬
ishing superstitions.
The African ancestors of American Negroes had devel¬
oped an economy based upon agriculture which in some
places approached the complex organization of a planta¬
tion system. The cultivation of their crops required hard
work which both men and women performed in accordance
with a division of tasks fixed by custom. Skilled craftsmen—
potters, basketmakers, wood carvers, weavers, and iron¬
workers—played important roles in African society. Pro¬
fessional traders negotiated exchanges of goods with the
aid of monetary systems. Social and political institutions
matched the complexity of the economy. To dismiss Afri¬
can religion as mere superstition or fetishism is to over¬
simplify a highly involved system of thought about the
supernatural. In the aesthetic sphere Africans expressed
themselves through music, the dance, and the graphic and
plastic arts. A rich folklore was the surrogate for literature
among these nonliterate peoples.4 Indeed, it was because
of the relative complexity of their cultures, their familiar¬
ity with a sedentary, agricultural way of life, that white
men found it profitable to use native Africans as slaves.
Nomadic peoples from relatively simpler cultures were en¬
slaved with less success.
When Negroes and whites first mingled with each other
in colonial America their cultural differences obstructed a
process of quick and easy assimilation. But their striking
similarities as human beings could have made this the prob¬
lem of a generation or two and not of centuries. That Ne-

* Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (New York,

1941), pp. 54-85; John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom
(New York, 1948), pp. 11-41.
 The Peculiar Institution

groes and whites originally spoke different languages was

less important than that each used speech as a means of
communication. Their mutual understanding of the value
of labor, of the social importance of the family, and of the
need for political authority gave them a body of common
experience however much it may have differed in detail.
Both used music and art to express their love of beauty,
their fears and anxieties, and their hopes and dreams. Their
ethical codes were different, but they shared a desire to dis¬
tinguish between moral and immoral, good and evil, right
and wrong. Above all, they both had the resilience and
adaptability of rational, educable creatures who depended
upon their brains rather than their instincts for survival.
These human qualities, in all of which Negroes and whites
were so much alike, indicate that the third myth—the cul¬
tural justification of slavery-—was made from the same
flimsy material as the others.
The Negro, then, was deeply involved in the southern
tragedy, but through no peculiar fault of his own. His pres¬
ence in the South did not of itself create an unhealthy so¬
cial condition. His involvement in the southern tragedy
was not as a Negro but as the embodiment of the South’s
peculiar institution—as a type of labor and as a species of
property. Not the Negro but slavery was the Old South’s
great affliction—the root of its tragedy.

3
Ante-bellum Southerners attached considerable signifi¬
cance to, and found considerable solace in, the fact that
they had not invented human bondage. Apologists for slav¬
ery traced the history of servitude back to the dawn of
civilization and showed that it had always existed in some
form until their own day. They were not willingly isolated
from the traditions of western culture.

14
I: The Setting

If all men are somehow naturally endowed with such

“unalienable rights” as life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap¬
piness, this principle was discovered relatively late in hu¬
man history. Many centuries earlier some men learned that
they could gain practical advantages from an unequal dis¬
tribution of rights and from transgressions upon the liber¬
ties of others. The application of this concept to prisoners
of war was doubtless an improvement over the more primi¬
tive practice of putting them to death. The extermination
of prisoners became less fashionable whenever a group of
people abandoned nomadic pursuits for the more sedentary
life of townsmen and agriculturists. Then it seemed desir¬
able to spare the lives of at least some captives in order to
exploit their labor.
Thus the ancient Egyptians reached out among their
Semitic and Ethiopian neighbors for slave laborers. The
Athenians, as Americans of the ante-bellum South were
fond of recalling, attained unprecedented heights of intel¬
lectual and artistic achievement in a society built upon a
foundation of servitude. The Romans made chattel slaves
of captives taken in Gaul, Spain, Sardinia, North Africa,
and western Asia. Some of these bondsmen worked on the
country estates of Roman squires; others were consigned to
frightful toil in the mines and on merchant ships; still oth¬
ers were converted into fawning domestics; and the most
robust among them amused the multitude in the role of
gladiators. Slavery was clearly one of the legacies of an¬
tiquity.
In the Middle Ages bondage was still flourishing in vari¬
ous forms. The lands of European nobles were cultivated
by serfs whose status was above that of chattel slaves but
who were nevertheless bound to the soil in a condition of
hereditary servitude. The ultimate decline of villeinage in
England did not mean that all Englishmen were at last
free, for in the seventeenth century they were still familiar

15
 The Peculiar Institution

with other types of bondage. Debtors, rogues, vagabonds,

and paupers were legally deprived of their freedom and en¬
dured the indignity of the lash. Economic necessity reduced
other poor men to the same condition when they inden¬
tured themselves for a term of years.
These forms of white servitude were introduced into the
English colonies almost as soon as they were founded. Re-
demptioners paid their passage to America by binding
themselves as servants for terms of from two to seven years.
In the seventeenth century most of the servants were Eng¬
lish; in the eighteenth century most of them were Ger¬
mans, Swiss, Scots, Scotch-Irish, and Irish. Victims of kid¬
nappers and convicts sentenced to transportation by
English courts supplemented this flow of unfree labor.
Probably more than half of the immigrants to the thirteen
English colonies in North America came as bondsmen.
After the horrors of the passage they often endured the
cruelty of masters determined to extract from them the
maximum of labor at a minimum of expense. Though
they ultimately gained their freedom, they nevertheless
made servitude an established labor system in all the col¬
onies.5
Meanwhile, the religious zeal of Christians and Moslems
had helped to revive and spread a form of servitude once
justified primarily by the ancient laws of war. Members of
each faith looked upon the other as infidels, and hence each
felt doubly entitled to make slaves of the other when taken
as captives. Moors captured in North Africa and in the
Spanish peninsula were held in bondage in Italy, Spain,
Portugal, and France. Christian prisoners suffered the same
fate in the lands of Islam.
Christians and Moslems alike believed it just to hold
6 Oscar and Mary F. Handlin, "Origins of the Southern Labor System,”
William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., VII (1950), pp. 200-204; Rich¬
ard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America (New York,
1946), pp. 315 ff.

l6
I: The Setting

heathens in servitude, and both found victims among the

Negroes of Africa. Their operations were facilitated by the
fact that slavery already existed among the Negro tribes
and that native dealers were often willing participants in
this trade in human flesh. The Christian purchasers liked
to think of themselves as the agents of civilization and of
the true religion. The native traders were less philosophi¬
cal about their business.6
During the fifteenth century Spaniards and Portuguese
brought cargoes of Negro servants to Europe from their
trading centers on the west coast of Africa south of the Sa¬
hara. In the early sixteenth century the Portuguese in Brazil
and the Spanish in other parts of the New World found
more heathens eligible for bondage. In the West Indies the
Christianizing and civilizing influence of the encomen-
deros was costly to the Indians who first lost their freedom
and then their lives through disease and heavy labor in
mines and sugar cane fields. As the supply of Indians dwin¬
dled, Negroes were imported in increasing numbers. Be¬
fore 1600, Negro labor was being utilized in nearly every
part of the sprawling Spanish and Portuguese empires.
By the seventeenth century, the Dutch, French, and Eng¬
lish had entered the profitable slave trade and had seized
colonies of their own in the Caribbean. The Dutch in Cur¬
asao, St. Eustatius, and Tobago, the French in Guadeloupe
and Martinique, and the English in Jamaica and Barbados
helped to develop Negro slavery and the plantation system
in the New World. For many years the English esteemed
their sugar islands more highly than any of their other pos¬
sessions in America. In these islands planters, merchants,
and Negro traders shared in the profits extracted from the
labor of black bondsmen.T
« Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, I, pp. 159-62; Franklin, From
Slavery to Freedom, pp. 42-45; Phillips, American Negro Slavery,
pp. 1-13.
1 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, I, pp. 205-206; Franklin, From
 The Peculiar Institution
When a “Dutch man of warre” brought the first cargo of
twenty “negars” to Virginia in 1619, John Rolfe and his
neighbors sanctioned a trade and tapped a source of labor
that had been familiar to some Europeans for nearly two
centuries. Virginia landholders received a small trickle of
Negro servants during the next fifty years and worked them
on tobacco plantations along with their infinitely more
numerous white servants. As early as the 1630’s, Maryland
planters began to use black labor; in 1669, Carolina’s Lords
Proprietors promulgated John Locke’s “Fundamental
Constitutions” which gave every freeman “absolute power
and authority over his negro slaves”; by 1750, Georgia colo¬
nists had persuaded the trustees to rescind their original
policy of prohibiting slavery.* * * 8
The middle colonies also purchased a substantial num¬
ber of Negroes. If only a few New Englanders became slave¬
holders, some merchants of Newport, Providence, Boston,
and Salem were vigorous and eminently successful partici¬
pants in the slave trade.9 Later generations of Southerners
did not forget that the ancestors of the abolitionists had
helped to keep them well supplied with slaves.
Ante-bellum Southerners understood this world of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries better than they un¬
derstood their own. The quest for enlarged opportunities
which brought their colonial forebears to America was a
personal objective which did not necessarily mean that they
believed in the equality of all men. If southern colonists
did little to improve the lot of propertyless laborers, their
neighbors were hardly in a position to criticize them for it.
To the north and to the south of them Englishmen, Dutch-

Slavery to Freedom, pp. 46-49, 59-69, 111-24; Phillips, American Ne¬

gro Slavery, pp. 13-19, 46-66.
s Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, pp. 70-84; Phillips, American Ne-
gro Slavery, pp. 74-75, 85-86, 93-95.
9 Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, pp. 88-110; Phillips, American
Negro Slavery, pp. 98-114.
I: The Setting

men, Spaniards, and Portuguese held Indians, Negroes, and

whites in bondage. This being the case, their use of unfree
labor demanded of them a minimum of soul searching.
Since their social institutions were not peculiar in any
fundamental way, they lived comfortably in their world.
But ante-bellum Southerners lived less comfortably in
the world of the nineteenth century. They found them¬
selves increasingly isolated, increasingly on the defensive,
increasingly compelled to improvise, as the code by which
their fathers had justified the holding of slaves became less
and less intelligible. The heathens they had imported from
Africa had now become Christians. The theory that it was
proper to enslave prisoners taken in “just wars” belonged
to the dead past. The fact that many of the ancestors of
southern Negroes had been slaves in their own lands now
seemed strangely irrelevant. Above all, the ideals of the
Enlightenment, especially the doctrine of natural rights
and the belief in the inherent goodness and dignity of man,
had found one of their most eloquent champions in the
South’s greatest statesman. An impressive number of South¬
erners never would agree that Jefferson’s philosophy was
wrong.
The facts were no less disturbing than the theories. Out¬
side the South reformers everywhere made the destruction
of legal servitude one of their major goals. By i860, eco¬
nomic liberals, who linked social progress with the concept
of free labor in a competitive society, had won a series of
decisive victories. In the northern states slavery did not
long survive the social upheaval which was part of the
American Revolution. Not because slave labor was un¬
profitable, but because they were given no choice, northern
slaveholders accepted a domestic application of the prin¬
ciples which had justified resistance to British authority.
During the 1780’s, these states put slavery “in the course of
ultimate extinction,” usually through a system of gradual

19
 The Peculiar Institution
emancipation which took a generation to complete.
The new spirit was contagious. In Haiti, when the
French seemed inclined to restrict the benefits of their own
revolution to the white race, the Negro slaves helped them¬
selves to freedom by a rebellion which all but destroyed the
old master class. In 1833, the British government made pro¬
vision for the abolition of slavery in its possessions. Slavery
entered a period of decline in the new Spanish-American
republics, until the last of them abolished it during the
1850’s.
But in spite of these cataclysmic events, most Southerners
clung to slavery. It survived the ordeal of the Revolution
and the assaults of the South’s own revolutionary radi¬
cals. It survived the French Revolution, though Southern¬
ers shuddered at the price Toussaint L’Ouverture and his
Negro followers exacted from Haitian masters. Slavery sur¬
vived the liberalism of Jeffersonian Democracy and the
egalitarianism of Jacksonian Democracy. It survived the
persistent criticism and the emancipation schemes of native
Southerners, especially in the Upper South, and a month of
antislavery debate carried on during January, 1832, in the
Virginia legislature. It survived a thirty-year crusade
against it conducted by northern abolitionists. Southern
slavery more than survived: the slaveholders enlarged their
domain, tightened the slave’s shackles, and defiantly told
outsiders to mind their own affairs. The South of i860, big
and prosperous, still boldly defended its peculiar insti¬
tution.
Its trouble, however, was manifest in the term itself. For
by i860 chattel slavery had become in literal truth a pe¬
culiar institution, and Southerners knew it. The fact that
they had inherited slavery and not invented it was now
quite beside the point, and many Southerners knew this
too. The one supremely relevant fact was that Southerners
were among slavery’s last apologists—that theirs was a

20
I: The Setting

"Lost Cause” even before they took up arms to defend it.

Being culturally isolated, living in an unfriendly world, was
a frightening experience which made many of them angry
and aggressive. Outside of Africa itself, they now could look
only to Brazil, Cuba, Porto Rico, and Dutch Guiana for
societies which, like their own, contained masters and
slaves. The rest of the world was inhabited by strangers.

4
In its early stages the South’s peculiar institution grew
slowly and uncertainly. The specific form it took in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was unknown to Eng¬
lish law, and in some respects unlike the forms of servitude
which had developed in other places. During most of the
seventeenth century the Negro’s status was so vague and
amorphous that his ultimate position might conceivably
have been defined in several different ways. In any case,
the Negro’s presence in the South antedated by many years
the legal existence of chattel slavery. That some early co¬
lonial statutes used the term “slave” had no decisive signifi¬
cance, because the term had sometimes been applied
loosely to white servants.
In the main, Maryland and Virginia masters first sub¬
jected their Negroes to the customary forms of servitude.
Like white servants, some of them gained their freedom
after serving a term of years, or after conversion to Christi¬
anity. If their bondage tended to be more severe, their
terms of service longer or even of indefinite duration, this
merely indicated that attractive inducements did not have
to be held out to servants whose coming to America was
not a matter of free choice.
Moreover, the Negro and white servants of the seven¬
teenth century seemed to be remarkably unconcerned

*i
 The Peculiar Institution
about their visible physical differences. They toiled to¬
gether in the fields, fraternized during leisure hours, and,
in and out of wedlock, collaborated in siring a numerous
progeny. Though the first southern white settlers were
quite familiar with rigid class lines, they were as unfamiliar
with a caste system as they were with chattel slavery.
The statutes which made clear distinctions between
white and Negro bondsmen evolved piecemeal. No specific
date marked the legal establishment of chattel slavery in the
South; but there were few obstacles in the way of its de¬
velopment. Neither the provisions of their charters nor the
policy of the English government limited the power of co¬
lonial legislatures to control Negro labor as they saw fit.
Negroes did not have the benefit of written indentures
which defined their rights and limited their terms of serv¬
ice. Their unprotected condition encouraged the trend
toward special treatment, and their physical and cultural
differences provided handy excuses to justify it. More than
anything else, however, the landholders’ growing apprecia¬
tion of the advantages of slavery over the older forms of
servitude gave a powerful impetus to the growth of the new
labor system. Southern masters developed much—though
not all—of the system by custom before it was recognized
in law.
Not until the 1660’s did Maryland and Virginia make
the first important legal distinctions between white and
Negro servants. During this decade various statutes pro¬
vided that Negroes were to be slaves for life, that the child
was to inherit the condition of the mother, and that Chris¬
tian baptism did not change the slave’s status. Even then it
took many more years and many additional statutes to de¬
fine clearly the nature of slaves as property, to confer upon
the masters the required disciplinary power, to enact the
codes by which the slaves’ movements were subjected to
public control, and to give them a peculiar position in
I: The Setting
courts of law. Other statutes prohibited interracial mar¬
riages, in order to prevent “that abominable mixture and
spurious issue.” By the eighteenth century color had be¬
come not only the evidence of slavery but also a badge of
degradation. Thus the master class, for its own purposes,
wrote chattel slavery, the caste system, and color prejudice
into American custom and law.1
The general trend of colonial policy toward American
Indians was against their enslavement. It is not necessary
to search for innate psychic qualities in the Indians to ex¬
plain why most of them were not reduced to the status of
the Negroes. In the West Indies it was not so much the hu¬
miliation of bondage as its rigors that caused Indian slaves
to perish so rapidly. In the English colonies, especially in
the Carolinas, at various times some Indian captives were
held as servants or slaves. Whenever Negroes and Indians
were thus brought in contact with each other they inter¬
married, with the result that a considerable number of
southern slaves were of mixed Negro and Indian ancestry.2
But Indian servitude was never an adequate or satis¬
factory answer to the labor needs of southern landholders.
Cultural factors made it difficult for Indians to adapt to the
plantation regime. Unlike the Negroes, Indian slaves found
it relatively easy to escape along familiar forest trails to the
protection of their own people. The weakness of the early
white settlements ordinarily caused them to value the
friendship of neighboring Indians more than their poten¬
tial labor. As early as 1656 the Virginia Assembly passed

1 Handlin, "Origins of the Southern Labor System,” loc. cit., pp. 199-
222; Gray, History of Agriculture, I, pp. 351-71; James C. Ballagh, A
History of Slavery in Virginia (Baltimore, 1902), pp. 27 ft.; Hurd,
Law of Freedom and Bondage, I, pp. 225-54, 291 —311; Wilbert E.
Moore, "Slave Law and the Social Structure,” Journal of Negro His¬
tory, XXVI (1941), pp. 171-84.
2 Kenneth W. Porter, "Relations between Negroes and Indians within
the Present Limits of the United States," Journal of Negro History,
XVII (1932) , pp, 287-367.

23
 The Peculiar Institution
the first of a series of statutes prohibiting the enslavement
of Indians. By the eighteenth century Virginia’s courts dis¬
tinguished between descent from Africans and from native
American Indians and accepted proof of the latter as evi¬
dence of freedom.3 Here and elsewhere in the South only a
predominantly Negro ancestry created the presumption of
slavery.
During the seventeenth century the South’s Negro popu¬
lation increased very slowly. In 1649, thirty years after the
arrival of the first Africans, Virginia counted only three
hundred black laborers in its population. Until the end of
this century southern landholders relied chiefly upon the
labor of white servants. Then, when English and colonial
merchants entered the slave trade on a large scale, and
when the advantages of slavery were fully understood, Ne¬
groes began to arrive in substantial numbers. In the eight¬
eenth century thousands of them were imported annually,
some from the West Indies but most directly from Africa.
By the eve of the American Revolution Virginia’s popula¬
tion was nearly evenly divided between Negroes and
whites; in South Carolina the Negroes outnumbered the
whites by two to one.4
It was the common lot of poor emigrants from Europe to
suffer great hardship in making the passage to America.
Not only in the colonial period but also in the nineteenth
century, the ordeal of leaving familiar places, breaking old
ties, making the journey on overcrowded vessels, and ad¬
justing to a strange environment was a dreadful experi¬
ence. But none of the European immigrant groups felt the
s Almon W. Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times within the Pres¬
ent Limits of the United States (New York, 1913) ; Gray, History of
Agriculture, I, pp. 360-61; Wesley F. Craven, The Southern Colonies
in the Seventeenth Century, i6oy-i6S<) (Baton Rouge, 1949), pp. 366-
68; Helen T. Catterall, Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery
and the Negro (Washington, D.C., 1926-37), I, pp. 112-13.
* Morris, Government and Labor in Early America, pp. 36-37; Phil¬
lips, American Negro Slavery, pp. 74-75, 87.

24
I: The Setting

shock of these experiences quite as severely as did the Afri¬

cans. The inhumanity of the traders, the terrors of the Mid¬
dle Passage, and the “breaking in” process in America gave
these involuntary immigrants a vivid impression of the
white man and his culture which they did not soon forget.
Estimates of the total number of Negroes torn from their
African homes and carried to the New World range up¬
ward from live million. Of these, perhaps a half million
were brought to the South legally before 1808, and thou¬
sands more illegally thereafter."
Eighteenth-century Southerners, their humanitarianism
fortified by practical considerations, made the first attempts
to control or abolish the African slave trade. These meas¬
ures were motivated by the desire of established planters to
keep prices up and restrict competition, by the fear of too
high a proportion of slaves in the total population, and by
the danger of receiving rebellious slaves from the West In¬
dies. Hut before the Revolution all restrictions on the trade
were disallowed by the English government in the interest
of the traders. Delaware finally prohibited importations of
Africans in 177b, Virginia in 1778, Maryland in 1783,
South Carolina in 1787, North Carolina in 1794, and Geor¬
gia in 1798. South Carolina reopened the trade in 1803 and
imported 39,000 additional black laborers before it was
closed by Federal action five years later." After that the
natural increase of the existing stock had to be the main re¬
liance for an increased supply. By 1810 the southern slave
population had grown to more than a million.
The closing of the African slave trade did not prove to

“ For the African slave trade see Elizabeth Dorman (cd.), Documents
Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (Washing¬
ton, D.C., 1930-35) ; W. E. Burghardt DuBois, The Suppression of
the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, /6)S-iSyo
(New York, 1896) ; Franklin, from Slavery to Freedom, pp. 42-58;
Phillips, American Negro Slavery, pp. 20-45.
i Phillips, American Negro Slavery, pp. 121, 132-49.

25
 The Peculiar Institution
be the first step toward the abolition of slavery itself. For
at the very time that the foreign supply was being cut off,
another fateful development was taking place: slavery was
spreading beyond the limits of the original southern states.
The Federal Constitution had placed no obstacles in the
way of its expansion, for it accepted slavery as a local insti¬
tution to be protected, or prohibited according to the
wishes of individual states. The exclusion of slavery from
the territory north of the Ohio River, written into the Or¬
dinance of 1787, was not applied to the territory south of
it. Accordingly, one by one, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missis¬
sippi, and Alabama entered the Union as slave states. Slav¬
ery already existed in the regions acquired from France and
Spain by the Louisiana and Florida purchases. Four more
slave states—Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, and Florida—
were carved out of these lands. Before the annexation of
Texas in 1845, Americans had firmly planted slavery in its
soil. By then slavery’s empire included fifteen states rang¬
ing southward and westward from the Delaware River to
the Rio Grande.
Was this the end? Had slavery now reached the “natural
limits” of its expansion? If it had, there were many Ameri¬
cans who still hoped—or feared—that it had not. New
Mexico and Utah were opened to slavery by the Compro¬
mise of 1850, the territory north of the Missouri Compro¬
mise line by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Manifest Destiny
held the glittering promise of more land for slavery in
Mexico, Central America, and Cuba. In the Dred Scott case
the Supreme Court gave judicial sanction to the proslavery
doctrine that the peculiar institution could not be excluded
from any of the territories of the United States. In i860 the
expansion of slavery still remained a lively issue.
“Somehow this must end,” said Northerners as they cast
their votes for Abraham Lincoln.
“But it cannot end, for that would destroy us,” replied

26
I: The Setting

secessionists as they launched the Confederate States of

America.
So came the harvest. Planted experimentally in the sev¬
enteenth century, cultivated systematically in the eight¬
eenth, sheltered from the storms of the Revolution, then
transplanted to new lands in the West, chattel slavery
reached maturity in the ante-bellum period. The nature of
its fruit was determined not by the climate, not by the soil,
but by the kinds of seeds sown by men. But how could the
first Southerners have known that they had sown a crop of
weeds? How long should it have taken their descendants to
realize that this rank crop was choking every other grow¬
ing thing? Only this can be said: All along a few southern
skeptics had been predicting that at harvest time it would
be this way.

5
By the i83o’s southern agriculture had regained much of
the vitality it had possessed in colonial days. Virginians
were beginning to recover from an agricultural depression
which had plagued them for half a century. They were im¬
proving their methods, reclaiming their worn-out lands,
and finding new crops to free them from the tyranny of to¬
bacco. Carolinians and Georgians were busy feeding cot¬
ton to the mills of Manchester and Lowell. Many emigrants
from these older states were finding opportunities to grow
one of the great southern staples on the virgin lands of the
Southwest. If a Virginian or Carolinian did not get the
“Alabama fever” himself, he at least knew that in these new
regions there were ready markets for as many Negroes as
he could spare. Everywhere—in Virginia as well as in
Georgia or Mississippi or Louisiana—slaves were a more
or less vital part of the economy, an important source of
labor, and a valuable type of property. Southerners meas¬
ured their rank in society by counting their slaves.

27
 The Peculiar Institution
By the 1830’s the fateful decision had been made. Slav¬
ery, now an integral part of the southern way of life, was
to be preserved, not as a transitory evil, an unfortunate
legacy of the past, but as a permanent institution—a posi¬
tive good. To think of abolition was an idle dream. Now
even native Southerners criticized the peculiar institution
at their peril.
Finally, by the 1830’s slavery had assumed the rigidity of
an entrenched institution. It no longer had the plasticity—■
the capacity to modify its shape—that it had in the colonial
period. Slavery had crystallized; its form was fixed. In i860
the peculiar institution was almost precisely what it had
been thirty years before. If anything, the chains of bond¬
age were strengthened, not weakened, in this ante-bellum
period. In the hardened pattern of southern law and cus¬
tom the twin functions of the slaves were now clearly de¬
fined: they were to labor diligently and breed prolifically
for the comfort of their white masters.
The rigid and static nature of ante-bellum slavery, 1830-
1860, makes it possible to examine it institutionally with
only slight regard for chronology. The important variations
in detail that were apparent in the three decades before
i860 were not evidences of progressive changes in the na¬
ture of southern bondage. Rather, they were evidences of
regional variations within the South itself and of natural
variations among individual masters and slaves. For, of
course, the inflexibility of the status of slaves did not mean
that they all did the same kind of work or lived under ex¬
actly the same conditions, or that they or their masters were
all alike.
Nor did it mean that slavery was of equal importance in
the lives of all southern whites or in the economies of all
the South’s many regions. Far from it. Two of the persistent
characteristics of the South’s peculiar institution were the
unequal size of individual slaveholdings and the uneven

28
I: The Setting
geographic distribution of the slave population. It is essen¬
tial to understand these characteristics if the nature of slav¬
ery in the ante-bellum South is to be fully comprehended.
The pattern of slave ownership and distribution was part
of the larger pattern of southern society.
At the end of each decade the Federal census takers as¬
sembled facts and figures which refuted the plantation
legend of the Old South. The data showed that the South
was not simply—or even chiefly—a land of planters, slaves,
and degraded “poor whites." Together these three groups
constituted less than half of the total southern population.
Most of the remaining Southerners (and the largest single
group) were independent yeoman farmers of varying de¬
grees of affluence. If there were such a thing as a “typical”
ante-bellum Southerner, lie belonged to the class of land¬
owning small farmers who tilled their own fields, usually
without any help except from their wives and children. He
might have devoted a few acres to one of the staples for a
“cash crop," but he devoted most of his land and time to
food crops for the subsistence of his own family.7 Other
smaller groups of Southerners included businessmen, pro¬
fessional men, skilled artisans, overseers, tenant farmers,
and unskilled urban and farm laborers.
The South of i860 was still overwhelmingly rural. Five
southern states—North Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Ar¬
kansas, and Texas—did not have a single city with a popu¬
lation of 10,000. New Orleans was the only big American
city that was truly southern. The peculiar institution, then,
was part of an agrarian civilization.
If the direct ownership of slave property had been the
only way in which Southerners had become personally in¬
volved in the slave system, relatively few of them would
have had an interest in preserving it. In i860, there were

1 The yeoman farmers receive full and sympathetic treatment in

Frank L. Owsley, Plain Folk of the Old South (Baton Rouge, 1949).

*9
 The Peculiar Institution
in the South 385,000 owners of slaves distributed among
1,516,000 free families.8 Nearly three-fourths of all free
Southerners had no connection with slavery through either
family ties or direct ownership. The “typical” Southerner
was not only a small farmer but also a nonslaveholder.
The proportions of slaveholding and nonslaveholding
families varied considerably in different parts of the South.
In South Carolina and Mississippi, approximately half of
the families owned slaves; in Georgia, two-fifths; in Ala¬
bama, Louisiana, and Florida, one-third; in Virginia,
North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas, one-
fourth; in Arkansas, one-fifth; in Maryland and Missouri,
one-eighth; and in Delaware, one-thirtieth. These same
striking variations occurred regionally within each state.9
If membership in the planter class required the owner¬
ship of at least twenty slaves, the “typical” slaveholder of
i860 certainly did not belong to it. For 88% of the owners
held less than that number, 72% held less than ten, and
almost 50% held less than five. Not only was the “typical"
slaveholder not a planter, but the “typical” planter worked
only a moderate-sized gang of from twenty to fifty slaves.
The planter aristocracy was limited to some ten thousand
families who lived off the labor of gangs of more than fifty
slaves. The extremely wealthy families who owned more

8 The slave states (including the District of Columbia) had a total

population of 12,302,000, of which 8,og8,ooo were whites, 3,954,000
were slaves, and 250,000 were free colored.
Unless otherwise indicated, these and subsequent statistics were
compiled from the printed decennial returns of the United States Bu¬
reau of the Census, and from two other Bureau publications: A Cen¬
tury of Population Growth from the First Census of the United States
to the Twelfth, 1790-1900 (Washington, D.C., 1909) ; Negro Popula¬
tion in the United States, 1790-191; (Washington, D.C., 1918).
» See, for example. Chase C. Mooney, "Some Institutional and Statisti¬
cal Aspects of Slavery in Tennessee,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly,
I (1942), pp. 211-12; Harry L. Coles, Jr., "Some Notes on Slaveowner-
ship and Landownership in Louisiana," Journal of Southern History,
IX (1943), pp. 382-85.

30
I: The Setting
than a hundred slaves numbered less than three thousand,
a tiny fraction of the southern population.
However, it does not follow that most of the slaves there¬
fore lived on small agricultural units, for by i860 slaves
were heavily concentrated in the hands of a few owners.
Only one-fourth of them belonged to masters who owned
less than ten. Considerably more than half of them lived
on plantation units of more than twenty slaves, and one-
fourth lived on units of more than fifty. That the majority
of slaves belonged to members of the planter class, and not
to those who operated small farms with a single slave fam¬
ily, is a fact of crucial importance concerning the nature of
bondage in the ante-bellum South.
Large slaveholdings were proportionally more numerous
in the Deep South than in the Upper South.1 Thus in
Louisiana about one-sixth of the slaves lived on units of
less than ten, while in Kentucky almost half lived on such
units. In all of the southern states the bulk of the big
slaveholdings were clustered together in restricted areas.
These were always the areas best suited for the production
of staple crops; for example, the alluvial river bottoms
where the soil was rich and markets were easily accessible.
Concentrations of the southern plantation aristocracy could
be found in the sugar parishes of Louisiana, in the Yazoo
Basin and around Natchez in Mississippi, in the Black Belt
of Alabama, and in the rice swamps and sea islands of
South Carolina and Georgia. In marked contrast, every
southern state had counties containing not a single large
plantation.
The South’s nearly four million slaves were as unevenly
distributed geographically as were the big slaveholders.
Few of them—probably not many more than ten per cent—
lived in cities and towns. Though Virginia had more
1 There were 12.7 slaves per slaveholder in the Deep South and 7.7
slaves per slaveholder in the Upper South.
 The Peculiar Institution
bondsmen than any other state, most of the slaves—
2,312,000—lived in the seven states of the Deep South. The
proportions of slaves in total state populations ranged from
57% in South Carolina to 1.5% in Delaware.2
The heavy concentrations of slaves were naturally in the
same regions in which there were heavy concentrations of
big slaveholders. In many counties in the Deep South the
slaves exceeded the free population by more than two to
one. In Issaquena and Washington counties in Mississippi
they outnumbered the whites by more than ten to one.
Even in the Upper South most of the bondsmen lived in a
limited number of staple-producing regions. Some coun¬
ties in western Virginia had just a few score slaves, while
some in southeastern Virginia counted more slaves than
whites. In Kentucky, though the whites outnumbered the
slaves by four to one, the two groups were nearly equal in
the Bluegrass counties of Fayette, Bourbon, and Woodford.
This complex pattern of slave distribution and owner¬
ship had an important bearing upon the lives of all South¬
erners and upon their relationship to the peculiar institu¬
tion. Most of the slaves lived in a rural environment, on
plantation-sized units, where they cultivated the great sta¬
ple crops, on the richest lands of the South. Most of them
lived in the cotton states, and only a few hundred thousand
of them in border states such as Delaware, Maryland, Ken¬
tucky, and Missouri.
For a small percentage of southern whites the pattern
provided the economic rewards and social prestige of the
plantation. For the great majority of slaveholders it pro¬
vided the more modest advantages of moderate-sized agri¬
cultural units. For the nearly three-fourths of the southern

2 The proportions in other states were 55% in Mississippi, 47% in Lou¬

isiana, 45% in Alabama and Florida, 44% in Georgia, 33% in North
Carolina, 31% in Virginia, 30% in Texas, 26% in Arkansas, 25% in
Tennessee, 20% in Kentucky, 13% in Maryland, and 10% in Missouri.

32
I: The Setting

whites who owned no slaves it provided less tangible

things: a means of controlling the social and economic
competition of Negroes, concrete evidence of membership
in a superior caste, a chance perhaps to rise into the
planter class. Whatever the reason, most of the nonslave¬
holders seemed to feel that their interest required them to
defend the peculiar institution.
So the slaves labored on the plantations and the white
yeomen on their farms, but seldom with that mutual sym¬
pathy which is befitting to fellow tillers of the soil.

S3
 [34]
CHAPTER TWO

From Day Clean to First Dark

O ne summer afternoon in 1854, a traveler in Missis¬

sippi caught a vivid picture of a gang of field-hands
returning to their toil after a thundershower. “First came,
led by an old driver carrying a whip, forty of the largest
and strongest women I ever saw together; they were all in
a simple uniform dress of a bluish check stuff, the skirts
reaching little below the knee; their legs and feet were
bare; they carried themselves loftily, each having a hoe
over the shoulder, and walking with a free, powerful swing,
like chasseurs on the march.” Then came the plow-hands
with their mules, “the cavalry, thirty strong, mostly men,
but a few of them women. ... A lean and vigilant white
overseer, on a brisk pony, brought up the rear.” 1 In this
procession were the chief components of the plantation’s
production machinery—the regimented laborers whom
slavery was expected to provide.
Slavery was above all a labor system. Wherever in the
South the master lived, however many slaves he owned, it
was his bondsmen’s productive capacity that he generally
valued most. And to the problem of organizing and ex¬
ploiting their labor with maximum efficiency he devoted
much of his attention.
On small agricultural units—and the great majority of

Olmsted, Back Country, pp. 14-15.

II: From Day Clean to First Dark

them were small—the organization was simple: the masters

usually gave close personal supervision to the unspecialized
labor of a few slaves. Most of these masters could not afford
merely to act as managers; and many of them were obliged
to enter the fields with their bondsmen and drive a plow
or wield a hoe. Farmers who worked alongside their slaves
could be found throughout the South. The son of a small
slaveholder in the South Carolina Low Country remem¬
bered that his mother ran a spinning wheel, wove cloth,
did her own cooking, and milked the cows, while his father
plowed, drove the wagon, and made shoes.2 In the Upper
South, as a contemporary student of southern society ob¬
served, it was not unusual to see “the sturdy yeoman and
his sons working in company of their negroes.” One could
hear “the axe of master and man falling with alternate
strokes” and watch “the negroes and their masters plough¬
ing side by side.” 3
Masters who had at their command as few as a half
dozen field-hands, however, were tempted to improve their
social status by withdrawing from the fields and devoting
most of their time to managerial functions. Lacking skilled
craftsmen in their small slave forces, they still found it nec¬
essary to perform certain specialized tasks such as carpenter¬
ing and repairing tools; and in an emergency (a crop rarely
went from spring planting to fall harvesting without a cri¬
sis of some kind) they temporarily forgot their pride. If
some of the land needed to be replanted, if a crop was “in
the grass”—i.e., overgrown with weeds—after a long spell
of wet weather, or if illness created a shortage of plow-
hands, a master often had to choose between losing his crop
and pitching in with his slaves.4 Cotton farmers who did
2 David Gavin Ms. Diary, entry for May 31, 1856.
s Daniel R. Hundley, Social Relations in Our Southern States (New
York, i860) , pp. 195-97.
* John W. Brown Ms. Diary, entry for June 9, 1853; Henry Marston
Ms. Diary, entries for May 3, 13, 1825; April 11, May 1, 1826.

35
 The Peculiar Institution
not do ordinary field work helped with the picking in the
fall, for that was a time when the labor force was seldom
adequate.
But most slaves never saw their masters toiling in the
fields, because most did not live on farms of the size where
such intimate relationships and unspecialized economic
functions existed. The great majority of bondsmen be¬
longed to those whose holdings were large enough to en¬
able them to escape routine farm labor. Even the slaves in
the more modest holdings did not always work with their
masters on small farms. Some of them worked in the cities.
Others belonged to overseers and hence labored on the
plantations. Still others belonged to the children or grand¬
children of large planters and were used on the family es¬
tates. Hence the normal relationship between field-hands
and their masters was not that of fellow workers but of la¬
bor and management.
Occasionally a small slaveholder, either temporarily or
for a long period of time, left farm operations entirely in
the hands of his slaves. Thus the head of an academy in
Hillsboro, North Carolina, owned a farm nearby which his
two bondsmen managed and worked for him. Another
master in Harford County, Maryland, put his wheat farm
under the control of three male slaves and gave them vir¬
tually no supervision.5 But these informal managerial ar¬
rangements were exceptional; slaves rarely enjoyed such
relative autonomy.
The substantial farmers and small planters who owned
from ten to thirty slaves had at their disposal enough field-
hands to make the problems of organization and super¬
vision more complex. Members of this class usually handled
these problems themselves without the aid of an overseer—
6 W. J. Bingham to Ebenezer Pettigrew, January 10, 1842, Pettigrew
Family Papers; James W. Williams Ms. Farm Books, in Neilson Rec¬
ord Books.

36
II: From Day Clean to First Dark

unless they operated more than one farm or combined

farming with some other business or profession. In such
cases the owner often required his overseer to work in the
field as well as to manage the slaves. James M. Torbert, of
Macon County, Alabama, who ran a shop in town, hired a
young man “to work as a hand and oversee’’ his dozen
bondsmen. A visitor to the Great Valley of Virginia noticed
that where overseers were employed they almost always
“participate[d] in the labors of the field.” 6
But everywhere in the South the normal pattern for a
master in this class was to live on his own land and devote
his full time to the supervision of his slaves and the general
management of his agricultural enterprise. If he had as¬
sistance it came from his own sons or from a slave foreman,
or driver. If the foreman knew his business the master did
not have to be in constant attendance in the fields and even
found it possible to be absent from home for short periods
of time. Some of the foremen were able farmers; one ob¬
server suggested that many masters would have learned a
great deal by consulting them.7
On these units of ten to thirty slaves there was customa¬
rily a limited amount of labor specialization. In addition to
the field-hands and slave foreman, a slave or two might
have been trained in any number of different manual skills
useful in agriculture. Almost always at least one of them
performed domestic work. But these slaves were not neces¬
sarily full-time specialists: they often had to divide their
time between carpentry or cooking and field labor. For ex¬
ample, a small Virginia planter owned a slave woman
whom he expected “to be a good deal occupied about the
house in cooking etc. But she works in the field about half
« James M. Torbert Ms. Plantation Diary, entry at end of the year
1852; Edward S. Abdy, Journal of a Residence and Tour in the United
States (London, 1835), P- 291.
t Columbia South Carolinian, quoted in Southern Cultivator, II (1844),
p. 108.

37
 The Peculiar Institution

of every day.” * When the crops required it, every able-

bodied hand was called upon for help. In the cotton dis¬
tricts at picking time the domestics, skilled workers, and
small children were mobilized along with the regular field-
hands.
The planters who owned more than thirty slaves were
the ones who achieved maximum efficiency, the most com¬
plex economic organization, and the highest degree of
specialization within their labor forces. Slightly less than
half of the slaves belonged to the approximately twenty-
five thousand masters operating plantations of these dimen¬
sions. Planters in this group who did not use overseers were
as rare as the smaller slaveholders who did. In i860 the
number of Southerners who were employed as overseers
about equalled the number of plantations with more than
thirty slaves.8 9
The planter who hired a full-time overseer limited his
direction of routine crop cultivation to periodic inspections
of the fields and concentrated upon problems of market¬
ing, finance, and general plantation administration. Being
free from the need to give constant attention to his labor
force, he enjoyed greater leisure and was able to absent
himself from the plantation more or less at his discretion.
He employed his overseer on a year-to-year basis, usually by
a written contract which could be terminated at the will of
either party. The planter paid his overseer an annual salary
ranging all the way from $100 to $1200, in addition to fur¬
nishing a house, an allowance of corn and pork, and a slave
servant.
A prudent planter defined the overseer’s duties in a de¬
tailed set of written instructions. Each planter had his own

8 Edmund Ruffin, Jr., Ms. Farm Journal, entry for March 6, 1843.
® For a detailed analysis of these ratios in Mississippi, see Charles S.
Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi (New York, 1933), pp. 67-69.

38
II: From Day Clean to First Dark

peculiar notions about the proper way to manage an estate,

but his instructions tended to follow a somewhat standard¬
ized pattern. A Mississippian generalized about the over¬
seer’s responsibilities in a way that almost any planter
would have endorsed: “The Overseer will never be ex¬
pected to work in the field, but he must always be with the
hands when not otherwise engaged in the Employers busi¬
ness and must do every thing that is required of him, pro¬
vided it is directly or indirectly connected with the plant¬
ing or other pecuniary interest of the Employer.” 1 Specific
instructions related to the care and control of the slaves,
the amount and kinds of labor to be performed, the care of
plantation tools and livestock, and the behavior and activi¬
ties of the overseer himself. The owner often required his
overseer to keep a daily record of general plantation activi¬
ties and to make regular oral or written reports. In short,
he expected the overseer to be an efficient general manager
and a careful guardian of his employer’s property.
The overseer’s performance rarely satisfied the planter.
To find an overseer with the skill to operate a large estate,
the self-discipline and understanding of human psychology
needed to control a body of slaves, and the physical energy
to perform the countless duties assigned to him, was the
dream of every planter but the realization of few. Since the
social prestige and monetary rewards were seldom commen¬
surate with the responsibilities, the profession did not at¬
tract many of the South’s most talented men. The countless
essays on the shortcomings of overseers in southern peri¬
odicals and the rapid turnover on most plantations gave
evidence that this was one of the planter’s major problems.
Only in exceptional cases did he retain the same overseer
for more than a year or two. The record of a Louisiana
sugar planter who employed fourteen different overseers

i "Plantation Rules" in Andrew Flinn Ms. Plantation Book.

39
 The Peculiar Institution

in a period of seventeen years was in no respect unusual.

“They are as a class a worthless set of vagabonds,” com¬
plained a Mississippian who recalled his own unhappy ex¬
periences.2
Now and then a planter, despairing of finding a satis¬
factory overseer, tried to do without one. For many years
Ebenezer Pettigrew and two of his sons ran their three Tyr¬
rell County, North Carolina, plantations with the assist¬
ance of trusted slave foremen only. An Alabama cotton
planter pursued a more familiar course when he tried the
same experiment for two years and then abandoned it.3
Others periodically resolved to dispense with an overseer
but never found it convenient to do so. Most planters sim¬
ply did not wish to give up so much of their freedom; they
looked upon the overseer, with all his faults, as an indis¬
pensable cog in the plantation machinery. Hence, although
the conscientious master kept a close check on him, the us¬
ual arrangement was to delegate direct responsibility for
routine operations to a white overseer.
In working the slave force the overseer generally made
use of one or more slave drivers. If there were several of
them one was designated head driver and acted almost as a
sub-overseer. Sometimes the drivers were required to work
and thus to set the pace for the rest of the slaves; sometimes
they were exempted from labor and urged the gangs on by
word or whip. A South Carolina rice planter defined their
duties in his plantation rules: “Drivers are, under the
Overseer, to maintain discipline and order on the place.
They are to be responsible for the quiet of the negro-
houses, for the proper performance of tasks, for bringing

2 Plantation Ledger in Thomas W. Butler Papers; Everard Green Baker

Ms. Diary, entry for July t, 1858.
a William S. Pettigrew to James C. Johnston, December 31, 1845; De¬
cember 7, 1848; October 3, 1850, Pettigrew Family Papers; Wey¬
mouth T. Jordan, Hugh Davis and His Alabama Plantation (Univer¬
sity, Alabama, 1948), pp. 62-63.

40
II: From Day Clean to First Dark

out the people early in the morning, and generally for the
immediate inspection of such things as the Overseer only
generally superintends.” 4 Planters thus called upon trusted
slaves to become part of the plantation’s command hier¬
archy. A Georgia planter described the efficient managerial
system that existed on his estate:

Every evening the drivers . . . make a report to the

overseer in my presence of the employment of their re¬
spective hands. The drivers report . . . the quantity and
kind of work they have done, and the field in which it is
done. . . . These reports . . . are copied into the ‘‘Jour¬
nal of Plantation Work,” which forms a minute and daily
record of the occupation and quantity of work done by
the different gangs. After the reports are received, the
work for the following day is arranged, and the head
driver is directed what is to be done, and the manner in
which it is to be executed. He distributes the orders to
the sub-drivers and others:—the sub-drivers to the hands
composing the gangs.
As the quantity of land in each field is accurately
known, a constant check is had on the fidelity of the re¬
ports as to the quantity of work done. It only remains, by
a daily inspection, to see that all operations have been
well performed.0

On a plantation containing more than thirty slaves there

was always considerable labor specialization, the amount
depending upon its size. The minimum was a clear dis¬
tinction between household servants and field-hands, the
latter in turn being divided into plow and hoe gangs. On
the larger plantations some slaves devoted their full time
to such occupations as ditching, tending livestock, driving
wagons, and cultivating vegetable gardens. Here, too, there
were substantial numbers of skilled slave artisans, and a

* De Bow’s Review, XXI (1857) , pp. 38-44.

6 Southern Agriculturist, VI (1833), pp. 571-73.

41
 The Peculiar Institution
high degree of specialization among household servants. In
addition, each of the southern staples demanded its own
kinds of specialists. These agricultural enterprises, with
their business directors, production managers, labor fore¬
men, and skilled and unskilled workers, approached the or¬
ganizational complexity of modern factories. Though agri¬
culture was not yet mechanized, the large plantations were
to a considerable extent “factories in the fields.”
Planters differed about how many slaves could be di¬
rected efficiently by one overseer on a single agricultural
unit. Some divided their plantations when they owned less
than a hundred slaves; others worked many more than that
on undivided estates. But usually a large landowner whose
slave force had grown to more than a hundred observed a
decline in efficiency, because of the long distances the hands
had to walk from their quarters to the fields, and because
of the inability of an overseer to give close supervision to
so many laborers. Such a large planter might split his estate
into two or more separate enterprises. James H. Ham¬
mond, of South Carolina, noted in his diary that his over¬
seer had proved himself to be “wholly incompetent” to
manage his slave force. “Begin to believe no overseer ca¬
pable of handling 125 hands and that they must be di¬
vided,” he concluded.6
A division of this kind increased the complexity of the
planter’s economic operations. Though he sometimes elec¬
ted to manage one plantation himself or depended on one
overseer to run several, he normally employed an overseer
for each plantation. On a very large establishment a gen¬
eral manager, or steward, helped the owner run his estate.
The holdings of Colonel J. A. S. Acklen, of West Feliciana
Parish, Louisiana, illustrate the magnitude of some of
these enterprises. Acklen owmed seven hundred slaves and

• James H. Hammond Ms. Diary, entry for July 8, 1846.

4*
II: From Day Clean to First Dark

twenty thousand acres of land organized into six planta¬

tions. A visitor to his estate reported that he employed six
overseers, a general agent, a bookkeeper, two physicians, a
head carpenter, a tinner, a ditcher, and a preacher. “Every
thing moves on systematically, and with the discipline of a
regular trained army.” 7
Plantation magnates such as Acklen, most of whom were
located in the sugar, rice, and cotton regions of the Lower
South, were central figures in the ante-bellum plantation
legend. A fact that was somehow lost in this legend was
that these entrepreneurs operated their estates and made
their fortunes in a competitive society in which success was
the reward of careful financing, shrewd management, and
a constant search for the most efficient methods of utilizing
slave labor. The traits ascribed to the legendary genteel
planter might even have been a handicap in the struggle
for success.
Though the number of absentee owners among southern
planters was relatively small, they were found most fre¬
quently among the owners of large estates. Those who di¬
vided their holdings into several plantations often main¬
tained their residences on one of them—the “home plan¬
tation’^—and made only periodic visits to the others. A few
owned plantations long distances from their homes. They
made annual visits to them and the rest of the time kept in
touch through correspondence with their overseers. A small
number of Virginians and Carolinians preferred to live in
the states of their birth while depending upon incomes
from sugar or cotton plantations in the Southwest. Some
Alabamians and Mississippians in turn operated planta¬
tions in Texas and Arkansas.
Other slaveholders resided upon their estates only part
of the year. Planters who were also lawyers, politicians, or

r Southern Cultivator, X (1851), p. 3*7.

43
 The Peculiar Institution

merchants were necessarily absent much of the time and

maintained residences in the towns. In summer, those who
could afford it escaped to mountain or seashore. Few South
Carolina and Georgia rice planters remained on their lands
during the “sickly season.” They fled from this malaria-
infested region in May and did not return until after the
first frost in the fall. The overseers of these temporary or
permanent absentees were the only white men who made a
direct impact upon the daily lives of the slaves.
The agricultural organizations of southern slaveholders,
then, ranged from the simple systems of small farmers who
toiled in the fields with their slaves, to the intricate systems
of opulent planters whose lands stretched beyond the hori¬
zon and whose slaves were too numerous to be more than
names in their plantation records. But, in either case, the
primary function of slavery was to provide labor which,
when utilized efficiently, could bring rich harvests from
the land.

2
The day’s toil began just before sunrise. A visitor on a
Mississippi plantation was regularly awakened by a bell
which was rung to call the slaves up. “I soon hear the tramp
of the laborers passing along the avenue. . . . All is soon
again still as midnight. ... I believe that I am the only
one in the house that the bell disturbs; yet I do not be¬
grudge the few minutes’ loss of sleep it causes me, it sounds
so pleasantly in the half dreamy morning” 8 On James H.
Hammond’s South Carolina plantation a horn was blown
an hour before daylight. “All work-hands are [then] re¬
quired to rise and prepare their cooking, etc. for the day.
The second horn is blown just at good day-light, when it is
the duty of the driver to visit every house and see that all

8 Joseph H. Ingraham (ed.), The Sunny South; or, The Southerner at

Home (Philadelphia, i860) , pp. 51-52.

44
II: From Day Clean to First Dark

have left for the field.” 9 At dusk the slaves put away their
tools and returned to their quarters.
The working day was shorter in winter than in summer,
but chiefly because there was less daylight, not because
there was much less to do. Seldom at any time of the year
was the master at a loss to find essential work to keep his
hands busy. Those who planned the routine carefully saved
indoor tasks for rainy days. An Alabama planter told his fa¬
ther in Connecticut that cotton picking continued until
January, “and after that [we] gathered our corn which rip¬
ened last August. We then went to work with the waggons
ha[u]ling rails and repairing and rebuilding fences, say two
weeks, we then knocked down cotton stalks and pulled up
corn stalks and commenced plowing. There is no lying by,
no leisure, no long sleeping season such as you have in New
England.” * 1 The terse plantation records of the year-round
routine of slaves whose principal work was growing cotton
usually ran something like this:
January-February: Finished picking, ginning, and press¬
ing cotton and hauling it in wagons to the point of ship¬
ment; killed hogs and cut and salted the meat; cut and
hauled wood; cut and mauled fence rails; repaired build¬
ings and tools; spread manure; cleaned and repaired
ditches; cleared new ground by rolling and burning logs
and grubbing stumps; knocked down corn and cotton
stalks and burned trash; plowed and “bedded up” corn and
cotton fields; planted vegetables.
March-April: Opened “drills,” or light furrows, in the
corn and cotton beds; sowed corn and cotton seeds in the
drills and covered them by hand or with a harrow; re¬
planted where necessary; cultivated the vegetable garden;
plowed and hoed in the corn fields.

* Plantation Manual in James H. Hammond Papers,

i Henry Watson, Jr., to his father, February 24, 1843 (copy), Henry
Watson, Jr., Papers.

45
 The Peculiar Institution
May-August: “Barred” cotton by scraping dirt away
from it with plows; "chopped” cotton with hoes to kill
weeds and grass and to thin it to a “stand”; “molded” cot¬
ton by “throwing dirt” to it with plows; cultivated corn
and cotton until it was large enough to be “laid by”; made
repairs; cleared new ground; “pulled fodder,” i.e., stripped
the blades from corn stalks; cleaned the gin house.
September-December: Picked, ginned, pressed, and
shipped cotton; gathered peas; hauled corn and fodder;
dug potatoes; shucked corn; cleaned and repaired ditches;
repaired fences; cut and hauled wood; cleared new ground.2
Thus the operations of one growing cycle overlapped
those of the next. There were, of course, variations from
planter to planter and differences in the time of planting
crops in the upper and lower parts of the cotton belt. Slaves
who grew long-staple, or sea-island, cotton in the coastal
areas of South Carolina and Georgia had to exercise greater
care in picking, ginning, and packing this finer and more
expensive variety. But these were differences only in detail.
The routine work of cotton growers was essentially the
same everywhere, and their basic tools were always the hoe
and the plow.
Slaves who cultivated sugar, rice, tobacco, or hemp were
involved in a similar year-round routine. They used the
same basic tools and much of the time performed the same
kinds of supplementary tasks. But each of the staples re¬
quired special techniques in planting, cultivating, harvest¬
ing, and preparing for market.
Some slaves in Texas, Florida, Georgia, and other scat¬
tered places in the Deep South produced a little sugar, but
those who worked on plantations lining the rivers and bay¬
ous of southern Louisiana produced ninety-five per cent of

2 This is a generalized description obtained from the records of many

slaveholders who grew cotton in widely scattered parts of the cotton
belt.

46
II: From Day Clean to First Dark

this crop. Most of them were attached to large estates whose

owners had heavy investments in land, labor, and machin¬
ery. On sugar plantations in the late fall and winter the
slaves prepared the land with plows and harrows; before
the end of February they planted the seed cane in deep fur¬
rows. The shoots grew from eyes at the joints of the seed
cane, or ratooned from the stubble of the previous crop.
Then came months of cultivation with hoes and plows un¬
til the crop was laid by in July. Meanwhile, other slaves cut
huge quantities of wood and hauled it to the sugar house,
and coopers made sugar hogsheads and molasses barrels.
Much heavy labor also went into ditching to provide drain¬
age for these lands which sloped gently from the rivers to¬
ward the swamps.
The first cane cut in October was “matalayed” (laid on
the ground and covered with a little dirt) to be used as the
next year’s seed cane. During the frantic weeks from then
until December most of the slaves worked at cutting the
cane and stripping the leaves from the stalks, loading it
into carts, and hauling it to the sugar house. At the mill
other slaves fed the cane through the rollers, tended the
open kettles or vacuum pans, kept the fires burning, hauled
wood, and packed the unrefined sugar into hogsheads.
When the last juice was boiled, usually around Christmas,
it was almost time to begin planting the next crop.3
Soon after the Revolution South Carolina planters
abandoned the cultivation of one of their staples—indigo.4
But to the end of the ante-bellum period rice continued to
be the favorite crop of the great planters along the rivers of
the South Carolina and Georgia Low Country. Slaves had
turned the tidal swamps into fertile rice fields by construct-
3 J. Carlyle Sitterson, Sugar Country: The Cane Sugar Industry in the
South, 1753-1950 (Lexington, Kentucky, 1953), pp. 112-56.
* Michael Gramling, a small planter in the Orangeburg District, who
was still producing indigo as late as 1845 was a rare exception. Mi¬
chael Gramling Ms. Record Book.

47
 The Peculiar Institution
ing an intricate system of banks, “trunks” (sluices), and
ditches which made possible periodic flooding and drain¬
ing with the rising and falling tides. Throughout the year
slaves on rice plantations devoted much of their time to
cleaning the ditches, repairing the banks and trunks, and
keeping the tide-flow irrigation system in efficient opera¬
tion.
In winter the slaves raked the rice fields and burned the
stubble. After the ground was broken and “trenched” into
drills, the seeds were planted in March and early April.
During the first flooding (the “sprout flow”) other crops on
higher ground were cultivated. When the rice fields were
drained and dried they were hoed to loosen the ground and
to kill grass and weeds. The next flooding (the “stretch
flow”) was followed by a long period of “dry growth” dur¬
ing which hoeing went on constantly. Then came the final
flooding (the “harvest flow”) which lasted until Septem¬
ber when the rice was ready to be cut. The slaves cut the
rice with sickles, tied it into sheaves, and stacked it to dry.
After it had dried they carried the rice to the plantation
mill to be threshed, “pounded” to remove the husks from
the kernels, winnowed, screened, and packed in barrels.5
The other crops grown on lands above the swamps were
gathered in time to begin preparations for the next year’s
planting.
The Tobacco Kingdom stretched into the border states
of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, but in the ante¬
bellum period its heart was still the “Virginia District.”
This district embraced the piedmont south of Fredericks¬
burg, including the northern tier of counties in North
Carolina. Here the plantations were smaller than in the

6 Duncan Clinch Heyward, Seed from Madagascar (Chapel Hill, 1937),

pp. 27-44; J. H. Easterby (ed.) , The South Carolina Rice Plantation
as Revealed in the Papers of Robert F. W. Allston (Chicago, 1945),
pp. 31-32; Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South, pp. 115-18.

48
II: From Day Clean to First Dark

Lower South, because each hand could cultivate fewer

acres and because the crop had to be handled with great
care. The unique aspects of tobacco culture included the
preparing of beds in which the tiny seeds were sown dur¬
ing the winter, the transplanting of the shoots in May, and
the worming, topping, and suckering of the plants during
the summer months. In the late summer the tobacco stalks
were split, cut, and left in the fields to wilt. Then they were
carried to the tobacco houses to be hung and cured during
the fall and winter. The following year, when work had al¬
ready begun on the next crop, the leaves were stripped
from the stalks, sorted, tied into bundles, and “prized” into
hogsheads.9
The Bluegrass counties of Kentucky and the Missouri
River Valley were the chief hemp producing regions of the
Old South. Slaves were almost always the working force
on hemp farms, because free labor avoided the strenuous,
disagreeable labor required to prepare a crop for market.
After the ground was prepared, the seeds were sown broad¬
cast in April and May and covered lightly with a harrow or
shovel plow. Unlike the other staples, hemp required no
cultivation during the growing season, and slaves were free
to tend other crops. In late summer the hemp was cut, laid
on the ground to dry, and then tied in sheaves and stacked.
In November or December it was again spread out in the
fields for “dew rotting” to loosen the fiber. A month or so
later the hemp was stacked once more, and the lint was la¬
boriously separated from the wood with a hand “brake.”
The fiber was taken to the hemp house where it was
hackled or sold immediately to manufacturers.7
In 1850, the Superintendent of the Census estimated that
« Joseph Clarke Robert, The Tobacco Kingdom (Durham, 1938), pp.
32-5°-
2 James F. Hopkins, A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky (Lex¬
ington, Kentucky, 1951), pp. 24-30, 39-64; Harrison A. Trexler, Slav¬
ery in Missouri, 1804-1865 (Baltimore, 1914), pp. 23-25.

49
 The Peculiar Institution
2,500,000 slaves of all ages were directly employed in agri¬
culture. Of these, he guessed that 60,000 were engaged in
the production of hemp, 125,000 in the production of rice,
150,000 in the production of sugar, 350,000 in the produc¬
tion of tobacco, and 1,815,000 in the production of cotton.
Somewhat casually he observed that these slaves also pro¬
duced “large quantities of breadstuffs.” 8 This was scarcely
adequate recognition of the amount of time they devoted
to such crops, even on many of the plantations which gave
chief attention to one of the five staples.
To be sure, some planters in the Lower South were so
preoccupied with staple production that they grew almost
nothing else—not even enough corn and pork to feed their
slaves. This pattern was common in the Louisiana sugar
district. One planter explained that when sugar sold for
fifty dollars a hogshead, “it is cheaper to buy pork[,]
for it is utterly impossible to raise hogs here without green
pastures and plenty of corn[,] and all lands here fit for
pasturage will make a hogshead [of] sugar pr acre—The
great curse of this country is that we are all planters and no
farmers.”9 An Alabama cotton planter was alarmed when
pork failed to arrive from Tennessee: “All of our towns
and most of our large Planters are dependent on Drovers
for their meat.” Even some of the cotton and tobacco
planters in North Carolina bought food supplies for their
slaves.* 1 Such planters were convinced that it was most
profitable to concentrate on the production of a single cash
crop.
Most planters, however, did not share this point of view.
Almost all of the hemp and tobacco growers of the Upper

8 Compendium of the Seventh Census (Washington, 1854), p. 94.

s Kenneth M. Clark to Lewis Thompson, June 20, 1853, Lewis Thomp¬
son Papers.
1 Columbus Morrison Ms. Diary, entry for November 27, 1845; Rosser H.
Taylor, Slaveholding in North Carolina: An Economic View (Chapel
Hill, 1926), pp. 36-37.

50
II: From Day Clean to First Dark

South planted many acres of food crops to supply their own

needs—and frequently additional acres to produce sur¬
pluses for sale. A major feature of the agricultural revival
in ante-bellum Virginia was an improved system of crop
rotation with increased emphasis upon corn, wheat, and
clover.2 Many of the tobacco planters gave enough atten¬
tion to these and other crops to approximate a system of
diversified farming. Their field-hands often devoted less
than half of their time to tobacco.
Few planters in the Deep South approached such levels
of diversification, but most of them produced sizeable food
crops for their families and slaves. In southern agricultural
periodicals they constantly admonished each other to strive
for self-sufficiency. They instructed their overseers to pro¬
duce adequate supplies of corn, sweet potatoes, peas, and
beans, and to give proper attention to the poultry, hogs,
and cattle. A Mississippi planter warned his overseer “that
a failure to make a bountiful supply of corn and meat for
the use of the plantation, will be considered as notice that
his services will not be required for the succeeding year." 3
The average planter, however, was tempted to forgive a
great deal if his overseer managed to make enough cotton.
Interest in other crops tended to vary with fluctuations in
cotton prices. Even so, most of the field-hands on cotton
plantations were at least familiar with the routine of corn
cultivation.
Though southern planters showed that slaves could grow
other crops besides the five great staples, there was a wide¬
spread belief that it was impractical to devote plantations
to them exclusively. But here and there in the Lower South
a planter disproved this assumption. In Richmond County,

2 Avery O. Craven, Soil Exhaustion as a Factor in the Agricultural His¬

tory of Virginia and Maryland (Urbana, Illinois, 1926),, pp. 122-61;
Robert, Tobacco Kingdom, pp. 18-19.
3 De Bow's Review, X (1851) , pp. 625-27.

51
 The Peculiar Institution

Georgia, an owner of more than a hundred slaves success¬

fully used his labor force to raise grain and meat for sale
in Augusta.4
In the Upper South many large slaveholders grew neither,
tobacco nor hemp but engaged in diversified farming. In
Talbot County, Maryland, Colonel Edward Lloyd worked
his two hundred and seventy-five slaves on profitable farms
which produced wheat, corn, hams, wool, and hides.5 On
Shirley Plantation on the James River, Hill Carter, like
many of his Virginia neighbors, made wheat his major cash
crop. An incomplete list of the products of a plantation in
King and Queen County included wheat, corn, oats, rye,
vegetables, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, wool, hogs, ap¬
ples, and strawberries.6
In North Carolina, corn was the chief crop on a number
of Roanoke River plantations. In Tyrrell County, Eben-
ezer Pettigrew annually shipped thousands of bushels of
wheat and corn to Norfolk and Charleston.7 Clearly, the
slave-plantation system had greater flexibility and was less
dependent upon the production of a few staples than some
have thought.
There is a different tradition about the agricultural op¬
erations of farmers who owned less than ten slaves. Here a
high degree of diversification is assumed—presumably the
smaller farms were better adapted to this type of farming
than to the cultivation of the staples. Thousands of slave¬
holders in this group did engage in what was almost sub¬
sistence farming with cash incomes well below five hundred

* Ralph B. Flanders, Plantation Slavery in Georgia (Chapel Hill, 1933),

p. 158.
s Records of sales in Lloyd Family Papers. See also Frederick Law Olm¬
sted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (New York, 1856), p. 10.
« Shirley Plantation Ms. Farm Journal; John Walker Ms. Diary.
1 Pettigrew Family Papers; Bennett H. Wall, "Ebenezer Pettigrew, An
Economic Study of an Ante-Bellum Planter” (unpublished doctoral
dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1946), passim; Farmer's
Journal, I (185s), p. 147.

5*
II: From Day Clean to First Dark

dollars a year. Others, especially in the Upper South, mar¬

keted large surpluses of pork, corn, and wheat. The amount
of commercialization in the operations of non-staple pro¬
ducing small slaveholders depended upon the quality of
their lands, their proximity to markets and transportation,
and their managerial skill.
But a large proportion of these slaveholding farmers de¬
pended upon one of the five southern staples fot* a cash
crop. In Kentucky and Missouri many of them produced a
few tons of hemp; there and in Virginia and North Caro¬
lina they often gave tobacco their chief attention. A few
small slaveholders in the Deep South even planted rice and
sugar—sometimes surprisingly large amounts—in spite of
the handicaps they faced in trying to compete with the
planters. In St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, for example, an
owner of seven slaves in 1859 produced forty hogsheads of
sugar. These small operators depended upon their neigh¬
bors’ sugar making facilities or ran their own crude horse-
driven mills.8
In cotton production those with modest slaveholdings
faced no overwhelming competitive disadvantage. Some of
the smaller cotton growers were as preoccupied with this
staple as were their neighbors on the large plantations.
Some even depended upon outside supplies of food. Many
of them reported astonishing cotton-production records to
the census takers, the number of bales per hand easily
matching the records of the planters.9
Nevertheless, the majority of small slaveholders did en¬
gage in a more diversified type of agriculture than most of
the large planters. Slavery could be, and was, adapted to
diversified agriculture and to the labor needs of small

8 Sitterson, Sugar Country, pp. 50—51.

9 This information about small slaveholders was derived from a study
of their production records in representative counties throughout the
South as reported in the manuscript census returns for t86o.

53
 The Peculiar Institution

farms. It did not necessarily depend upon large plantations

or staple crops for its survival.

3
For the owner of a few slaves, labor management was a
problem of direct personal relationships between indi¬
viduals. For the owner of many, the problem was more diffi¬
cult and required greater ingenuity. Both classes of masters
desired a steady and efficient performance of the work as¬
signed each day. They could not expect much cooperation
from their slaves, who had little reason to care how much
was produced. Masters measured the success of their meth¬
ods by the extent to which their interest in a maximum of
work of good quality prevailed over the slaves’ predilection
for a minimum of work of indifferent quality. Often nei¬
ther side won a clear victory.
Slaveowners developed numerous variations of two basic
methods of managing their laborers: the “gang system”
and the “task system.” Under the first of these systems,
which was the one most commonly used, the field-hands
were divided into gangs commanded by drivers who were
to work them at a brisk pace. Competent masters gave some
thought to the capacities of individual slaves and to the
amount of labor that a gang could reasonably be expected
to perform in one day. But the purpose of the gang system
was to force every hand to continue his labor until all were
discharged from the field in the evening.
Under the task system, each hand was given a specific
daily work assignment. He could then set his own pace and
quit when his task was completed. The driver’s job was to
inspect the work and to see that it was performed satisfac¬
torily before the slave left the field. “The advantages of this
system,” according to a Georgia rice planter, “are encour¬
agement to the laborers, by equalizing the work of each

54
II: From Day Clean to First Dark

agreeable to strength, and the avoidance of watchful su¬

perintendence and incessant driving. As . . . the task of
each [slave] is separate, imperfect work can readily be
traced to the neglectful worker.” 1
The task system was best adapted to the rice plantation,
with its fields divided into small segments by the network
of drainage ditches. Outside the Low Country of South
Carolina and Georgia planters occasionally used this sys¬
tem or at least experimented with it, but many of them
found it to be unsatisfactory. For one thing, they could get
no more work out of their stronger slaves than out of their
weaker ones, since the tasks were usually standardized. The
planters also found that the eagerness of slaves to finish
their tasks as early as possible led to careless work. After
using the task system for twenty years, an Alabama planter
abandoned it because of evils “too numerous to mention.”
A South Carolina cotton planter, who also gave it up, noted
with satisfaction that under the gang system his slaves did
“much more” and were “not so apt to strain themselves.” 2
Actually, most planters used a combination of the two
systems. Cotton planters often worked plow-hands in gangs
but gave hoe-hands specific tasks of a certain number of cot¬
ton rows to hoe each day. Each hand was expected to pick
as much cotton as he could, but he might be given a mini¬
mum quota that had to be met. Sugar, rice, and tobacco
planters applied the task system to their coopers, and hemp
growers used it with hands engaged in breaking or hackling
hemp. Masters generally tasked their hands for digging
ditches, cutting wood, or mauling rails.
Thus most slaves probably had some experience with
both systems. From their point of view each system doubt¬
less had its advantages and drawbacks. A strong hand might

1 Southern Agriculturist, VI (1833) , p. 576.

2 Sellers, Slavery in Alabama, p. 67; Hammond Diary, entry for May 16,
1838.

55
 The Peculiar Institution

have preferred to be tasked if he was given an opportunity

to finish early. But many slaves must have been appalled at
the ease with which they could be held responsible for the
quality of their work. The gang system had the disad¬
vantages of severe regimentation and of hard driving
which was especially onerous for the weaker hands. But
there was less chance that a slave would be detected and
held individually responsible for indifferent work. In the
long run, however, the rigors of either system were deter¬
mined by the demands of masters and overseers.
The number of acres a slaveholder expected each of his
field-hands to cultivate depended in part upon how hard he
wished to work them. It also depended upon the nature of
the soil, the quality of the tools, and the general efficiency
of the agricultural enterprise. Finally, it depended upon
the crop. Cotton growers on flat prairies and river bottoms
planted as many as ten acres per hand but rarely more than
that. Those on hilly or rolling lands planted from three to
eight acres per hand. Since a slave could ordinarily culti¬
vate more cotton than he could pick, acreage was limited
by the size of the available picking force. By the 1850’s each
hand was expected to work from nine to ten acres of sugar
but seldom more than five acres of rice or three of tobacco,
plus six or more of corn and other food crops.3 The yield
per acre and per hand varied with the fertility of the soil,
the care in cultivation, the damage of insects, and the
whims of the weather.
When calculating his yield per field-hand a slaveholder
was not calculating his yield per slave, for he almost always
owned fewer field-hands than slaves. Some of his slaves per¬
formed other types of work, and the very young and the
s These are generalized figures from a survey of many plantation rec¬
ords. See also De Bow's Review, II (1846), pp. 134, 138; X (1851),
p. 625; Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, pp. 13-14; Gray, History of Agri¬
culture, II, pp. 707-708; Sitterson, Sugar Country, pp. 127-28; Robert,
Tobacco Kingdom, p. 18.

56
II: From Day Clean to First Dark

very old could not be used in the fields. The master’s dis¬
eased, convalescing, and partially disabled slaves, his
“breeding women” and “sucklers,” his children just be¬
ginning to work in the fields, and his slaves of advanced
years were incapable of laboring as long and as hard as full¬
time hands.
Most masters had systems of rating such slaves as frac¬
tional hands. Children often began as “quarter hands” and
advanced to “half hands,” “three-quarter hands,” and then
“full hands.” As mature slaves grew older they started down
this scale. “Breeding women” and “sucklers” were rated as
“half hands.” Some planters organized these slaves into
separate gangs, for example, into a “sucklers gang.” Chil¬
dren sometimes received their training in a “trash gang,”
or “children’s squad,” which pulled weeds, cleaned the
yard, hoed, wormed tobacco, or picked cotton. Seldom
were many more than half of a master’s slaves listed in his
records as field-hands, and always some of the hands were
classified as fractional. Olmsted described a typical situa¬
tion on a Mississippi cotton plantation: “There were 135
slaves, big and little, of which 67 went to the field regu¬
larly—equal, the overseer thought, to 60 able-bodied
hands.” 4
The master, not the parents, decided at what age slave
children should be put to work in the fields. Until they
were five or six years old children were “useless articles on
a plantation.” Then many received “their first lessons in
the elementary part of their education” through serving as
“water-toters” or going into the fields alongside their moth¬
ers.6 Between the ages of ten and twelve the children be-

* Olmsted, Back Country, p. 47; id., Seaboard, p. 433; Southern Agri¬

culturist, VI (1833), pp. 571-73; Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, pp.
18-20: Sellers, Slavery in Alabama, p. 66.
# [Joseph H. Ingraham], The South-West. By a Yankee (New York,
1835), II, p. 126; Charles S. Davis, The Cotton Kingdom in Alabama
(Montgomery, 1939) , p. 58.

57
 The Peculiar Institution

came fractional hands, with a regular routine of field labor.

By the time they were eighteen they had reached the age
when they could be classified as “prime field-hands.”
Mature slaves who did not work in the fields (unless they
were totally disabled or extremely old) performed other
kinds of valuable and productive labor. Old women cooked
for the rest of the slaves, cared for small children, fed the
poultry, mended and washed clothes, and nursed the sick.
Old men gardened, minded stock, and cleaned the stable
and the yard.
Old or partially disabled slaves might also be put to spin¬
ning and weaving in the loom houses of the more efficient
planters. The printed instructions in a popular plantation
record book advised overseers to adopt this policy: “Few
instances of good management will better please an em¬
ployer, than that of having all the winter clothing spun and
woven on the place. By having a room devoted to that pur¬
pose . . . where those who may be complaining a little,
or convalescent after sickness, may be employed in some
light work, and where all of the women may be sent in wet
weather, more than enough of both cotton and woolen yarn
can be spun for the supply of the place.” 6 One planter re¬
ported that he had his spinning jenny “going at a round
rate[.] Old Charles [is] Spinning and Esther reeling the
thread. . . . Charles will in this way be one of my most
productive laborers and so will several of the women[.]” 7
Thus a master’s productive slaves were by no means limited
to those listed as field-hands.
The bondsmen who were valued most highly were those
who had acquired special skills which usually exempted
them from field work entirely. This select group of slave
« Thomas Affleck, The Cotton Plantation Record and Account Book
(Louisville and New Orleans, 1847—) .
r Gustavus A. Henry to his wife, December 3, 1846, Gustavus A. Henry
Papers; Herbert A. Kellar (ed.), Solon Robinson, Pioneer and Agri¬
culturist (Indianapolis, 1936), II, p. 203.

58
II: From Day Clean to First Dark

craftsmen included engineers, coopers, carpenters, black¬

smiths, brickmakers, stone masons, mechanics, shoemakers,
weavers, millers, and landscapers. The excellence of the
work performed by some of them caused slaveowners to
make invidious comparisons between them and the free
artisans they sometimes employed. An Englishman recalled
an interview with the overseer on a Louisiana sugar planta¬
tion: “It would have been amusing, had not the subject
been so grave, to hear the overseer’s praises of the intelli¬
gence and skill of these workmen, and his boast that they
did all the work of skilled laborers on the estate, and then
to listen to him, in a few minutes, expatiating on the utter
helplessness and ignorance of the black race, their inca¬
pacity to do any good, or even to take care of themselves.” *
Domestic servants were prized almost as much as crafts¬
men. The number and variety of domestics in a household
depended upon the size of the establishment and the wealth
of the master. They served as hostlers, coachmen, laun¬
dresses, seamstresses, cooks, footmen, butlers, housemaids,
chambermaids, children’s nurses, and personal servants.
On, a large plantation specialization was complete: “The
cook never enters the house, and the nurse is never seen in
the kitchen; the wash-woman is never put to ironing, nor
the woman who has charge of the ironing-room ever put to
washing. Each one rules supreme in her wash-house, her
ironing-room, her kitchen, her nursery, her house-keeper’s
room; and thus ... a complete system of domesticdom is
established to the amazing comfort and luxury of all who
enjoy its advantages." 9
But the field-hands remained fundamental in the slave
economy. Though their work was classified as unskilled
labor, this of course was a relative term. Some visitors de¬
scribed the “rude” or “slovenly” manner in which slaves
* William H. Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston, 1863) , p. 273.
» Ingraham (ed.), Sunny South, pp. 179-81.

59
 The Peculiar Institution

cultivated the crops, how “awkwardly, slowly, and unde¬

cidedly” they moved through the fields.1 But other observ¬
ers were impressed with the success of many masters in
training field-hands to be efficient workers, impressed also
by the skill these workers showed in certain crucial opera¬
tions in the production of staple crops. Inexperienced
hands had their troubles in sugar houses and rice fields, in
breaking and hackling hemp, and in topping, suckering,
sorting, and prizing tobacco. Even the neophyte cotton
picker soon wondered whether this was unskilled labor, as
one former slave testified: “While others used both hands,
snatching the cotton and depositing it in the mouth of the
sack, with a precision and dexterity that was incomprehen¬
sible to me, I had to seize the boll with one hand, and de¬
liberately draw out the white, gushing blossom with the
other.” On his first day he managed to gather “not half the
quantity required of the poorest picker.”2
Field workers kept up a ceaseless struggle to make the
lands fruitful, against the contrary efforts of the insects and
the elements. The battle seemed at times to be of absorb¬
ing interest to some of the slaves, conscripts though they
were. In a strange and uneasy kind of alliance, they and
their masters combatted the foes that could have destroyed
them both.

4
In i860, probably a half million bondsmen lived in
southern cities and towns, or were engaged in work not di¬
rectly or indirectly connected with agriculture. Some farm¬
ers and planters found it profitable, either temporarily or
permanently, to employ part of their hands in non-agricul-
tural occupations. Along the rivers slaves cut wood to pro-

1 Henry Watson, Jr., to Theodore Watson, March 3, 1831, Watson Pa¬

pers; Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 18-19.
2 Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave (Buffalo, 1853), pp. 178-79.

60
II: From Day Clean to First Dark
vide fuel for steamboats and for sale in neighboring towns.
In swamplands filled with juniper, oak, and cypress trees
they produced shingles, barrel and hogshead staves, pickets,
posts, and rails. In North Carolina’s Dismal Swamp slave
gangs labored as lumberjacks.3 In the eastern Carolina pine
belt several thousand slaves worked in the turpentine in¬
dustry. An owner of one hundred and fifty slaves in Bruns¬
wick County, North Carolina, raised just enough food to
supply his force; he made his profits from the annual sale
of thousands of barrels of turpentine. Many smaller opera¬
tors also combined turpentine production with subsistence
farming.4
Elsewhere in the South bondsmen worked in sawmills,
gristmills, quarries, and fisheries. They mined gold in
North Carolina, coal and salt in Virginia, iron in Kentucky
and Tennessee, and lead in Missouri. On river boats they
were used as deck hands and firemen. Slave stokers on a
Mississippi River steamer bound for New Orleans, who
sang as they fed wood to the boiler fires, intrigued a Euro¬
pean traveler: “It was a fantastic and grand sight to see
these energetic black athletes lit up by the wildly flashing
flames . . . while they, amid their equally fantastic song,
keeping time most exquisitely, hurled one piece of fire¬
wood after another into the yawning fiery gulf.” 5
Other slaves were employed in the construction and
maintenance of internal improvements. They worked on
the public roads several days each year in states which re¬
quired owners to put them to such use. For many years

3 Gustavus A. Henry to his wife, December 12, 1848, Henry Papers;

John Nevitt Ms. Plantation Journal; William S. Pettigrew to James C.
Johnston, January 24, 1856, Pettigrew Family Papers; Olmsted, Sea¬
board, pp. 153-55.
* Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 339-42; Guion G. Johnson, Ante-Bellum North
Carolina (Chapel Hill, 1937), pp. 487-88.
5 Fredrika Bremer, The Homes of the New World (New York, 1853),
II, p. 174.

6l
 The Peculiar Institution

slaves owned by the state of Louisiana built roads and

cleared obstructions from the bayous. Slaves also worked
for private internal improvements companies, such as the
builders of the Brunswick and Altamaha Canal in Georgia
and the Cape Fear and Deep River Navigation Company in
North Carolina. In Mississippi a hundred were owned by a
firm of bridge contractors, the Weldon brothers.6
Railroad companies employed bondsmen in both con¬
struction and maintenance work. As early as 1836 the Rich¬
mond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad Company
advertised for “a large number” of slave laborers. In the
same year the Alabama, Florida, and Georgia Railroad
Company announced a need for five hundred “able-bodied
negro men ... to be employed in felling, cutting, and
hewing timber, and in forming the excavations and em¬
bankments upon the route of said Rail Road.” During the
i85o’s southern newspapers carried the constant pleas of
railroad builders for slaves. Almost every railroad in the
ante-bellum South was built at least in part by bondsmen;
in Georgia they constructed more than a thousand miles of
roadbed. In 1858, a Louisiana newspaper concluded: “Ne¬
gro labor is fast taking the place of white labor in the con¬
struction of southern railroads.” 7
Bondsmen in southern cities and towns, in spite of the
protests of free laborers, worked in virtually every skilled
and unskilled occupation. They nearly monopolized the
domestic services, for most free whites shunned them to
avoid being degraded to the level of slaves. Many of the
Southerners who owned just one or two slaves were urban
« Joe Gray Taylor, “Negro Slavery in Louisiana" (unpublished doc¬
toral dissertation, Louisiana State University, 1951), pp. 43-44, x 15—
17; Raleigh North Carolina Standard, June 6, 1855; August 13, 1859;
Horace S. Fulkerson, Random Recollections of Early Days in Missis¬
sippi (Vicksburg, 1885), pp. 130-31.
* Richmond Enquirer, August 2, 1836; Sellers, Slavery in Alabama, pp.
200-201; Flanders, Plantation Slavery in Georgia, pp. 197-98; Taylor,
"Negro Slavery in Louisiana," pp. 112-13.

62
II: From Day Clean to First Dark
dwellers who used them as cooks, housekeepers, and gar-
deners. The wealthier townspeople often had staffs of do¬
mestic servants as large as those of rural planters. Other
domestics found employment in hotels and at watering
places.
Town slaves worked in cotton presses, tanneries, ship¬
yards, bakehouses, and laundries, as dock laborers and
stevedores, and as clerks in stores. Masters who owned
skilled artisans such as barbers, blacksmiths, cabinet mak¬
ers, and shoemakers often provided them with shops to
make their services available to all who might wish to em¬
ploy them. Many white mechanics used slave assistants. In
short, as a visitor to Natchez observed, town slaves included
“mechanics, draymen, hostlers, labourers, hucksters, and
washwomen, and the heterogeneous multitude of every
other occupation, who fill the streets of a busy city—for
slaves are trained to every kind of manual labour. The
blacksmith, cabinet-maker, carpenter, builder, wheel¬
wright,—all have one or more slaves labouring at their
trades. The negro is a third arm to every working man,
who can possibly save money enough to purchase one. He
is emphatically the ‘right-hand man’ of every man.” * 8 The
quality of the work of slave artisans had won favorable
comment as early as the eighteenth century. Among them
were “many ingenious Mechanicks,” wrote a colonial
Georgian, “and as far as they have had opportunity of be¬
ing instructed, have discovered as good abilities, as are usu¬
ally found among people of our Colony.” 9
Some Southerners were enthusiastic crusaders for the de¬
velopment of factories which would employ slaves. They
were convinced that bondsmen could be trained in all the

8 [Ingraham], South-West, II, p. 249.

8 Quoted in Flanders, Plantation Slavery in Georgia, p. 47. See also
Leonard P. Slavisky, "Negro Craftsmanship in Early America," Ameri¬
can Historical Review, IV (1949) , 315-25.

63
 The Peculiar Institution

necessary skills and would provide a cheaper and more

manageable form of labor than free whites. “When the
channels of agriculture are choked,” predicted an indus¬
trial promoter, “the manufacturing of our own productions
will open new channels of profitable employment for our
slaves.” Others thought that slavery was one of the South’s
“natural advantages” in its effort to build industries to free
it from “the incessant and vexatious attacks of the North.” 1
They believed that industrialization and slavery could pro¬
ceed hand in hand.
Southern factory owners gave evidence that this was
more than idle speculation. Every slave state had industrial
establishments which made some use of slave labor. In Ken¬
tucky, the “ropewalks” which manufactured cordage and
the hemp factories which produced cotton bagging and
“Kentucky jeans” employed slaves extensively.2 Almost all
of the thirteen thousand workers in the tobacco factories of
the Virginia District were bondsmen. The majority of them
were employed in the three leading tobacco manufacturing
cities—Richmond, Petersburg, and Lynchburg. These slave
workers were not only a vital part of this industry but also
a curiously paradoxical element in the society of the to¬
bacco towns.3
From its earliest beginnings the southern iron industry
depended upon skilled and unskilled slaves. Negro iron
workers were employed in Bath County, Kentucky, and
along the Cumberland River in Tennessee. In the Cumber¬
land country the majority of laborers at the iron furnaces
were slaves. Montgomery Bell, owner of the Cumberland
Iron Works, engaged his own three hundred slaves and

1 De Bow’s Review, VIII (1850), p. 76; IX (1850), pp. 432-33.

2 Hopkins, Hemp Industry, pp. 135-37; J- Winston Coleman, Jr., Slavery
Times in Kentucky (Chapel Hill, 1940), pp. 81-82.
3 Robert, Tobacco Kingdom, pp. 197-203; Alexander MacKay, The
Western World; or Travels in the United States in 1846-41 (London,
1849), II, p. 74.

64
II: From Day Clean to First Dark
many others in every task connected with the operation of
forge and furnace.* In the Great Valley of Virginia, where
the southern industry was centered during the early nine¬
teenth century, slaves constituted the chief labor supply.
Until the 1840’s, the famed Tredegar Iron Company in
Richmond used free labor almost exclusively. But in 1842,
Joseph R. Anderson, then commercial agent of the com¬
pany, proposed to employ slaves as a means of cutting labor
costs. The board of directors approved of his plan, and
within two years Anderson was satisfied with “the practica¬
bility of the scheme.’’ In 1847, the increasing use of slaves
caused the remaining free laborers to go out on strike, until
they were threatened with prosecution for forming an il¬
legal combination. After this protest failed, Anderson
vowed that he would show his workers that they could not
dictate his labor policies: he refused to re-employ any of
the strikers. Thereafter, as Anderson noted, Tredegar used
“almost exclusively slave labor except as the Boss men. This
enables me, of course, to compete with other manufac¬
turers.” * * * 5
But it was upon the idea of bringing textile mills to the
cotton fields that southern advocates of industrialization
with slave labor pinned most of their hopes. In cotton fac¬
tories women and children were needed most, and hence
it was often argued that they would provide profitable em¬
ployment for the least productive workers in agriculture.
Though the majority of southern textile workers were free
whites, and though some believed that this work ought to
be reserved for them, a small number of slaves were never¬
theless employed in southern mills.
Occasionally mill owners managed to work slaves and
* Coleman, Slavery Times in Kentucky, p. 64; Robert E. Corlew, “Some
Aspects of Slavery in Dickson County,” Tennessee Historical Quar¬
terly, X (1951) , pp. 226-29.
5 Kathleen Bruce, Virginia Iron Manufacture in the Slave Era (New
York, 1931), pp. 231-38.

65
 The Peculiar Institution

free whites together with a minimum of friction. A visitor

found equal numbers of the two groups employed in a cot¬
ton factory near Athens, Georgia: “There is no difficulty
among them on account of colour, the white girls working
in the same room and at the same loom with the black girls;
and boys of each colour, as well as men and women, work¬
ing together without apparent repugnance or objection.” 6
But even if some white workers would tolerate this, slave¬
owners ordinarily looked upon it as a dangerous practice.
The southern press gave full reports of cotton mills
which used slave labor and ecstatic accounts of their suc¬
cess. A Pensacola newspaper cited the local Arcadia Cotton
Factory, which employed only slaves, to prove that “with
the native skill and ingenuity of mere labor—the labor of
the hands—the negro is just as richly endowed as the
white.” The Saluda mill, near Columbia, South Carolina,
operated on the “slave-labor, or anti free-soil system.” The
white managers testified to the “equal efficiency, and great
superiority in many respects” of slaves over free workers.7
During the 1830’s and 1840’s, a half dozen other cotton
mills in South Carolina’s Middle and Low Country em¬
ployed bondsmen. Most other southern states could point
to one or more mills which used this type of labor. To
many observers the enterprises of Daniel Pratt at Pratts-
ville, near Montgomery, Alabama, provided models for
other Southerners to copy. Pratt worked slaves not only in
his cotton mill but also in his cotton gin factory, iron
foundry, sash and door factory, machine shop, and car¬
riage and wagon shop.8

• James S. Buckingham, The Slave States of America (London, [1842]),

II, p. 112.
1 Pensacola Gazette, April 8, 1848; De Bow's Review, IX (1850), pp.
432-33-
a E. M. Lander, Jr., "Slave Labor in South Carolina Cotton Mills,”
Journal of Negro History, XXXVIII (1953), pp. 161-73; Charles H.
Wesley, Negro Labor in the United States, 1850-192; (New York,

66
II: From Day Clean to First Dark
Actually, the ante-bellum South had relatively few cot¬
ton mills, and most of them were small enterprises manu¬
facturing only the coarser grades of cloth. In i860, the fif¬
teen slave states together had only 198 mills each employ¬
ing an average of 71 workers, whereas Massachusetts alone
had 217 mills each employing an average of 177 workers.
Many of the southern factories resembled the one owned
by a small manufacturer in East Tennessee which con¬
tained only three hundred spindles operated by fourteen
slave hands.9
Still, in these textile mills and in what little other indus¬
try existed in the Old South there was abundant evidence
that slaves could be trained to be competent factory work¬
ers. The evidence was sufficient to raise serious doubts that
slavery was tied to agriculture, as some defenders and some
critics of the institution believed.

5
Each year, around the first of January, at southern cross¬
road stores, on the steps of county courthouses, and in ev¬
ery village and city, large crowds of participants and spec¬
tators gathered for “hiring day.” At this time masters with
bondsmen to spare and employers in search of labor bar¬
gained for the rental of slave property. Thus thousands of
nonslaveholders managed temporarily to obtain the serv¬
ices of slaves and to enjoy the prestige of tenuous member¬
ship in the master class. Thus, too, many bondsmen found
it their lot to labor for persons other than their owners.
Hired slaves were most numerous in the Upper South; dur-

1927) , pp. 15-20; American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, I
(l857). PP- 156-57-
» William B. Lenoir to William Lenoir, May 18, 1833, Lenoir Family
Papers.

67
 The Peculiar Institution

ing the 1850’s perhaps as many as fifteen thousand were

hired out annually in Virginia alone. But slave-hiring was
a common practice everywhere.1
In December and January southern newspapers were
filled with the advertisements of those offering or seeking
slaves to hire. Some of the transactions were negotiated
privately, some by auctioneers who bid slaves off at public
outcry, and some by “general agents” who handled this
business for a commission. In Richmond, P. M. Tabb &
Son, among many others, advertised that they attended “to
the hiring out of negroes and collecting the hires” and
promised to give “particular attention . . . through the
year to negroes placed under their charge.” 2
Though slaves were occasionally hired for short terms, it
was customary to hire them from January until the follow¬
ing Christmas. Written contracts specified the period of the
hire, the kind of work in which the slaves were to be en¬
gaged, and the hirer’s obligation to keep them well clothed.
Usually an owner could spare only a few, but occasionally
a single master offered as many as fifty and, rarely, as many
as a hundred. Though most slaves were hired in the vicinity
of their masters’ residences, many were sent long distances
from home. Hamilton Brown, of Wilkes County, North
Carolina, hired out slaves in Virginia, Tennessee, and
Georgia; and Jeremiah Morton, of Orange County, Vir¬
ginia, hired out fifty-two of his Negroes through an agent
in Mobile.3
A variety of circumstances contributed to this practice.
If for some reason the owner was unable to use his slaves
profitably, if he was in debt, or if he had a surplus of la-

1 Frederic Bancroft, Slave-Trading in the Old South (Baltimore, 1931) ,

pp. 404-405.
2 Richmond Enquirer, January 1, 1850; Bancroft, Slave-Trading, p. 149.
a Hamilton Brown Papers; Memorandum dated December 15, i860, in
Morton-Halsey Papers.

68
II: From Day Clean to First Dark

borers, he might prefer hiring to selling them. Executors

hired out slave property while estates were being settled.
Sometimes lands and slaves together were rented to tenants.
Heirs who inherited bondsmen for whom they had no em¬
ployment put them up for hire. Many spinsters, widows,
and orphans lived off the income of hired slaves who were
handled for them by administrators. Masters often directed
in their wills that slaves be hired out for the benefit of their
heirs, or that cash be invested in slave property for this pur¬
pose. A widow in Missouri hired out most of her slaves, be¬
cause she found it to be “a better business” than working
them on her farm.4 Occasionally a slaveowner endowed a
church or a benevolent institution with slaves whose hire
was to aid in its support.
In addition, urban masters often hired out the husbands
or children of their female domestics. Both they and plant¬
ers who had more domestics than they could use or afford
disposed of them in this manner. It was also very common
for urban and rural owners of skilled slaves to hire them to
others at least part of the time. Planters hired their car¬
penters and blacksmiths to neighbors when they had no
work for them and thus substantially augmented their in¬
comes. A master sometimes hired a slave to a white artisan
with the understanding that the slave was to be taught his
skill. For example, a contract between a North Carolina
master and a white blacksmith provided that the hirer was
to work a slave “at the Forge during the whole time and
learn him or cause him to be learned the arts and mysteries
of the Black Smith’s trade.” 5
A few Southerners bought slaves as business ventures
with the intention of realizing profits solely through hiring

* S. E. Lenoir to her sisters, November 18, 1851, Lenoir Family Papers;

Bancroft, Slave-Trading, pp. 145-47.
& Contract between William Frew and R. S. Young, dated December 30,
1853, in Burton-Young Papers.

69
 The Peculiar Institution

them to others. Between 1846 and 1852, Bickerton Lyle

Winston, of Hanover County, Virginia, purchased at least
fifteen slaves for this purpose. Winston kept careful records
of these investments, noting the purchase prices, the annual
income from and expenses of each slave, and the net profit.
The slaves Randal and Garland were his first speculations.
Randal’s record ended abruptly in 1853 with the terse no¬
tation: “Deduct medical and funeral expenses: $20.” Four
years later Winston recorded the fact that “Garland came
to his end ... by an explosion in the Black Heath Pits.’’6 * 8
Some overseers pursued a similar course by investing in
slaves whom they hired to their employers. A resident in
Mississippi knew families “who possess not an acre of land,
but own many slaves, [and] hire them out to different indi¬
viduals; the wages constituting their only income, which is
often very large.” 7
Farmers and planters frequently hired field-hands to
neighbors for short periods of time. Cotton growers who
finished their picking early contracted to help others pick
their cotton for a fee. When a planter’s crop was “in the
grass” he tried to borrow hands from neighbors with the
understanding that the labor would be repaid in the fu¬
ture. Small slaveholders sometimes made less formal agree¬
ments to help each other. A Virginia farmer lent his neigh¬
bor two mules and received in return “the labor of one
man for the same time.”8 Many masters were generous in
lending the labor of their slaves to friends.
The demand for hired slaves came from numerous
groups. The shortage of free agricultural labor caused
planters to look to this practice as a means of meeting their
seasonal needs for additional workers. During the grinding
season sugar growers hired hands from Creole farmers or

6 Bickerton Lyle Winston Ms. Slave Account Book.

? [Ingraham], South-West, II, pp. 251-52.
a Edmund Ruffin, Jr., Farm Journal, entry for September 7, 1843.

70
II: From Day Clean to First Dark
from cotton planters after their crops were picked.9 Small
farmers who could not afford to buy slaves were well repre¬
sented in the “hiring-day” crowds. Some landowners em¬
ployed free Negroes, Indians, or poor whites, but they gen¬
erally preferred to hire slaves when they were available.
The great majority of hired slaves, however, were em¬
ployed by those who sought a supply of nonagricultural
labor. Many urban families hired rather than owned their
domestic servants. Advertisements such as these appeared in
every southern newspaper: “Wanted immediately, a boy,
from 14 to 19 years of age, to do house work. One that can
be well recommended from his owner.” “Wanted a Black
or Colored Servant, to attend on a Gentleman and take
care of a Horse.” * 1 Hotels and watering places hired most
of their domestics; laundries, warehouses, shipyards, steam¬
ships, cotton presses, turpentine producers, mine operators,
lumberers, and drayage companies all made considerable
use of hired slaves. Free artisans seldom could afford to own
bondsmen and therefore hired them instead. Even a free
Negro cooper in Richmond for many years hired a slave
assistant.2
In most cases southern railroad companies did not own
the slaves they employed; rather, they recruited them by
promising their owners generous compensation. Railroad
builders obtained most of their hands in the neighborhood
of their construction work, but they often bid for them in
distant places. In 1836, the Alabama, Florida, and Georgia
Railroad Company advertised for a hundred slaves in
Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. The Florida Rail¬
road Company, in 1857, announced that for the past two
years it had been employing slaves from Virginia and the

» Sitterson, Sugar Country, pp. 61-62; Taylor, “Negro Slavery in Louisi¬

ana,” p. 94.
1 Charleston Courier, August 16, 1852.
2 Copies of letters to “James Sims a Colored man,” in Walker Diary.
 The Peculiar Institution

Carolinas and offered to give masters evidence “of the

health, climate, and other points of interest connected with
the country and work.” 3
An advertisement in a Kentucky newspaper for “twenty-
five Negro Boys, from thirteen to fifteen years old, to work
in a woolen factory” pointed to another source of the de¬
mand for hired slaves. Gristmills, sawmills, cotton facto¬
ries, hemp factories, iron foundries, and tobacco factories
used them extensively, especially the smaller enterprises
with limited capital. In i860, about half of the slave la¬
borers in Virginia tobacco factories were hired.4
A small group of slaves obtained from their masters the
privilege of “hiring their own time.” These bondsmen en¬
joyed considerable freedom of movement and were per¬
mitted to find work for themselves. They were required to
pay their masters a stipulated sum of money each year, but
whatever they could earn above that amount was theirs to
do with as they wished. Almost all of the slaves who hired
their own time were skilled artisans; most of them were
concentrated in the cities of the Upper South. Though this
practice was illegal nearly everywhere and often denounced
as dangerous, there were always a few slaves who somehow
managed to work in this manner under the most nominal
control of their owners.
By permitting a trusted slave artisan to hire his own time
the master escaped the burden of feeding and clothing him
and of finding employment for him. Then, as long as his
slave kept out of trouble, the master’s sole concern was get¬
ting his payments (which were almost the equivalent
of a quitrent) at regular intervals. Frederick Douglass de¬
scribed the terms by which he hired his own time to work

3 Richmond Enquirer, August 8, 1836; Wilmington (N.C.) Journal,

December 28, 1857.
* Lexington Kentucky Statesman, December 26, 1854; Robert, Tobacco
Kingdom, p. 198.

72
II: From Day Clean to First Dark
as a calker in the Baltimore shipyards: “I was to be allowed
all my time; to make all bargains for work; to find my own
employment, and to collect my own wages; and, in return
for this liberty, I was required, or obliged, to pay . . .
three dollars at the end of each week, and to board and
clothe myself, and buy my own calking tools. A failure in
any of these particulars would put an end to my privilege.
This was a hard bargain.” 0
But whatever the terms, most slave artisans eagerly ac¬
cepted this arrangement when it was offered to them. A
Negro blacksmith in Virginia pleaded with his master for
the privilege of hiring his own time: “I would ... be
much obliged to you if you would authorize me to open a
shop in this county and carry it on. ... I am satisfied that
I can do well and that my profits will amount to a great
deal more than any one would be willing to pay for my
hire.” 0
This slave had his wish granted, but few others shared
his good fortune. It was the lot of the ordinary bondsman
to work under the close supervision of his master or of
some employer who hired his services. For him bondage
was not nominal. It was what it was intended to be: a sys¬
tematic method of controlling and exploiting labor.

6
Mammy Harriet had nostalgic memories of slavery days:
‘‘Oh, no, we was nebber hurried. Marster nebber once said,
‘Get up an’ go to work,’ an’ no oberseer ebber said it, nei¬
ther. Ef some on ’em did not git up when de odders went
out to work, marster nebber said a word. Oh, no, we was

5 Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (New York, 1855) ,

p. 328.
« Charles White to Hamilton Brown, December 20, 1832, Hamilton
Brown Papers.

73
 The Peculiar Institution

nebber hurried.” 7 Mammy Harriet had been a domestic

at “Burleigh,” the Hinds County, Mississippi, estate of
Thomas S. Dabney. She related her story of slave life there
to one of Dabney’s daughters who wrote a loving volume
about her father and his cotton plantation.
Another slave found life less leisurely on a plantation on
the Red River in Louisiana: “The hands are required to be
in the cotton field as soon as it is light in the morning, and,
with the exception of ten or fifteen minutes, which is given
them at noon to swallow their allowance of cold bacon, they
are not permitted to be a moment idle until it is too dark
to see, and when the moon is full, they often times labor
till the middle of the night.” Work did not end when the
slaves left the fields. “Each one must attend to his respec¬
tive chores. One feeds the mules, another the swine—an¬
other cuts the wood, and so forth; besides the packing [of
cotton] is all done by candle light. Finally, at a late hour,
they reach the quarters, sleepy and overcome with the long
day’s toil.” 8 These were the bitter memories of Solomon
Northup, a free Negro who had been kidnapped and held
in bondage for twelve years. Northup described his experi¬
ences to a Northerner who helped him prepare his auto¬
biography for publication.
Mammy Harriet’s and Solomon Northup’s disparate ac¬
counts of the work regimen imposed upon slaves suggest
the difficulty of determining the truth from witnesses, Ne¬
gro and white, whose candor was rarely uncompromised by
internal emotions or external pressures. Did Dabney’s al¬
legedly unhurried field-hands (who somehow produced
much cotton and one of whom once tried to kill the over¬
seer) feel the same nostalgia for slavery days? How much

t Susan Dabney Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter (Baltimore,

t887) , p. 57.
s Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, pp. 166-68.

74
II: From Day Clean to First Dark
was Northup’s book influenced by his amanuensis and by
the preconceptions of his potential northern readers?
And yet there is nothing in the narratives of either of
these ex-slaves that renders them entirely implausible. The
question of their complete accuracy is perhaps less im¬
portant than the fact that both conditions actually did exist
in the South. Distortion results from exaggerating the fre¬
quency of either condition or from dwelling upon one and
ignoring the other.
No sweeping generalization about the amount of labor
extracted from bondsmen could possibly be valid, even
when they are classified by regions, or by occupations, or by
the size of the holdings upon which they lived. For the per¬
sonal factor transcended everything else. How hard the
slaves were worked depended upon the demands of indi¬
vidual masters and their ability to enforce them. These de¬
mands were always more or less tempered by the inclina¬
tion of most slaves to minimize their unpaid toil. Here was
a clash of interests in which the master usually, but not al¬
ways, enjoyed the advantage of superior weapons.
Not only must glib generalizations be avoided but a
standard must be fixed by which the slave’s burden of labor
can be judged. Surely a slave was overworked when his toil
impaired his health or endangered his life. Short of this ex¬
treme there are several useful standards upon which judg¬
ments can be based. If, for example, the quantity of labor
were compared with the compensation the inevitable con¬
clusion would be that most slaves were overworked. Also
by present-day labor standards the demands generally made
upon them were excessive. These, of course, were not the
standards of the nineteenth century.
Another standard of comparison—though not an alto¬
gether satisfactory one—is the amount of work performed
by contemporary free laborers in similar occupations. In¬
dependent farmers and artisans set their own pace and

75
 The Peculiar Institution

planned their work to fit their own convenience and inter¬

ests, but they nevertheless often worked from dawn to dusk.
Northern factory workers commonly labored twelve hours
a day. This was arduous toil even for free laborers who en¬
joyed the advantages of greater incentives and compensa¬
tion. Yet contemporaries did not think that slaves were
overworked when their masters respected the normal stand¬
ards of their day. Some slaveowners did respect them, and
some did not.
Unquestionably there were slaves who escaped doing
what was then regarded as a “good day’s work,” and there
were masters who never demanded it of them. The apho¬
rism that it took two slaves to help one to do nothing was
not without its illustrations. After lands and slaves had re¬
mained in the hands of a single family for several genera¬
tions, planters sometimes developed a patriarchal attitude
toward their “people” and took pride in treating them in¬
dulgently. Such masters had lost the competitive spirit and
the urge to increase their worldly possessions which had
characterized their ancestors. To live gracefully on their
declining estates, to smile tolerantly at the listless labor of
their field-hands, and to be surrounded by a horde of pam¬
pered domestics were all parts of their code.
In Virginia, the easygoing manner of the patricians was
proverbial. But Virginia had no monopoly of them; they
were scattered throughout the South. Olmsted visited a
South Carolina rice plantation where the tasks were light
enough to enable reasonably industrious hands to leave the
fields early in the afternoon. Slaves on several sea-island
cotton plantations much of the time did not labor more
than five or six hours a day.9
The production records of some of the small slavehold-

9 Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 434-36; Guion G. Johnson, A Social History

of the Sea Islands (Chapel Hill, 1930), pp. 124-25; E. Merton Coul¬
ter, Thomas Spalding of Sapelo (Baton Rouge, 1940), p. 85.

76
II: From Day Clean to First Dark
ing farmers indicated that neither they nor their slaves
exerted themselves unduly. These masters, especially when
they lived in isolated areas, seemed content to produce lit¬
tle more than a bare subsistence. In addition, part of the
town slaves who hired their own time took advantage of the
opportunity to enjoy a maximum of leisure. The domestics
of some wealthy urban families willingly helped to main¬
tain the tradition that masters with social standing did not
examine too closely into the quantity or efficiency of their
work.
From these models proslavery writers drew their senti¬
mental pictures of slave life. The specific cases they cited
were often valid ones; their profound error was in gener¬
alizing from them. For this leisurely life was the experience
of only a small fraction of the bondsmen. Whether they
lived in the Upper South or Deep South, in rural or urban
communities, on plantations or farms, the labor of the vast
majority of slaves ranged from what was normally expected
of free labor in that period to levels that were clearly exces¬
sive.
It would not be too much to say that masters usually de¬
manded from their slaves a long day of hard work and man¬
aged by some means or other to get it. The evidence does
not sustain the belief that free laborers generally worked
longer hours and at a brisker pace than the unfree. During
the months when crops were being cultivated or harvested
the slaves commonly were in the fields fifteen or sixteen
hours a day, including time allowed for meals and rest.1 By
ante-bellum standards this may not have been excessive,
but it was not a light work routine by the standards of that
or any other day.
In instructions to overseers, planters almost always cau¬
tioned against overwork, yet insisted that the hands be

i Gray, History of Agriculture, I, pp. 556-57.

77
 The Peculiar Institution

made to labor vigorously as many hours as there was day¬

light. Overseers who could not accomplish this were dis¬
charged. An Arkansas master described a work day that was
in no sense unusual on the plantations of the Deep South:
“We get up before day every morning and eat breakfast
before day and have everybody at work before day dawns.
I am never caught in bed after day light nor is any body
else on the place, and we continue in the cotton fields when
we can have fair weather till it is so dark we cant see to
work, and this history of one day is the history of every
day.” 2 3
Planters who contributed articles on the management of
slaves to southern periodicals took this routine for granted.
“It is expected,” one of them wrote, “that servants should
rise early enough to be at work by the time it is light. . . .
While at work, they should be brisk. ... I have no objec¬
tion to their whistling or singing some lively tune, but no
drawling tunes are allowed in the field, for their motions
are almost certain to keep time with the music.” s These
planters had the businessman’s interest in maximum pro¬
duction without injury to their capital.
The work schedule was not strikingly different on the
plantations of the Upper South. Here too it was a common
practice to regulate the hours of labor in accordance with
the amount of daylight. A former slave on a Missouri to¬
bacco and hemp plantation recalled that the field-hands be¬
gan their work at half past four in the morning. Such rules
were far more common on Virginia plantations than were
the customs of languid patricians. An ex-slave in Hanover
County, Virginia, remembered seeing slave women hurry¬
ing to their work in the early morning “with their shoes
and stockings in their hands, and a petticoat wrapped over
2 Gustavus A. Henry to his wife, November 27, i860, Henry Papers.
3 Southern Cultivator, VIII (1850), p. 163.

78
II: From Day Clean to First Dark
their shoulders, to dress in the field the best way they
could.” * The bulk of the Virginia planters were business¬
men too.
Planters who were concerned about the physical condi¬
tion of their slaves permitted them to rest at noon after
eating their dinners in the fields. "In the Winter,” advised
one expert on slave management, “a hand may be pressed
all day, but not so in Summer. ... In May, from one and
a half to two hours; in June, two and a half; in July and
August, three hours rest [should be given] at noon.” 5 Ex¬
cept for certain essential chores, Sunday work was uncom¬
mon but not unheard of if the crops required it. On Satur¬
days slaves were often permitted to quit the fields at noon.
They were also given holidays, most commonly at Christ¬
mas and after the crops were laid by.
But a holiday was not always a time for rest and relaxa¬
tion. Many planters encouraged their bondsmen to culti¬
vate small crops during their “leisure” to provide some of
their own food. Thus a North Carolina planter instructed
his overseer: "As soon as you have laid by the crop give the
people 2 days but . . . they must work their own crops.”
Another planter gave his slaves a “holiday to plant their
potatoes,” and another “holiday to get in their potatoes.”
James H. Hammond once wrote in disgust: “Holiday for
the negroes who fenced in their gardens. Lazy devils they
did nothing after 12 o’clock.” In addition, slave women
had to devote part of their time when they were not in the
fields to washing clothes, cooking, and cleaning their cab¬
ins. An Alabama planter wrote: “I always give them half
of each Saturday, and often the whole day, at which

* William W. Brown, Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave

(Boston, 1847), p. 14; Olmsted, Seaboard, p. 109; De Bow’s Review,
XIV (1853), pp. 176-78; Benjamin Drew, The Refugee: or the Narra¬
tives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada (Boston, 1856), p. 162.
» Southern Cultivator, VIII (1850) , p. 163.

79
 The Peculiar Institution

time . . . the women do their household work; therefore

they are never idle.”6
Planters avoided night work as much as they felt they
could, but slaves rarely escaped it entirely. Night work was
almost universal on sugar plantations during the grinding
season, and on cotton plantations when the crop was being
picked, ginned, and packed. A Mississippi planter did not
hesitate to keep his hands hauling fodder until ten o’clock
at night when the hours of daylight were not sufficient for
his work schedule.7
Occasionally a planter hired free laborers for such heavy
work as ditching in order to protect his slave property. But,
contrary to the legend, this was not a common practice.
Most planters used their own field-hands for ditching and
for clearing new ground. Moreover, they often assigned
slave women to this type of labor as well as to plowing. On
one plantation Olmsted saw twenty women operating heavy
plows with double teams: “They were superintended by a
male negro driver, who carried a whip, which he frequently
cracked at them, permitting no dawdling or delay at the
turning.” 8
Among the smaller planters and slaveholding farmers
there was generally no appreciable relaxation of this nor¬
mal labor routine. Their production records, their diaries
and farm journals, and the testimony of their slaves all sug¬
gest the same dawn-to-dusk regimen that prevailed on the
large plantations.9 This was also the experience of most
slaves engaged in nonagricultural occupations. Every-

« Henry K. Burgwyn to Arthur Souter, August 6, 1843, Henry King

Burgwyn Papers; John C. Jenkins Diary, entries for November 15,
1845; April 22, 1854; Hammond Diary, entry for May 12, 1832; De
Bow’s Review, XIII (1852), pp. 193-94.
r Jenkins Diary, entry for August 7, 1843.
a Olmsted, Back Country, p. 81: Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, p. 12.
» See, for example, Marston Papers; Torbert Plantation Diary; De
Bow’s Review, XI (1851) , pp. 369-72; Drew, Refugee; Douglass, My
Bondage, p. 215; Trexler, Slavery in Missouri, pp. 97-98.

80
II: From Day Clean to First Dark
where, then, masters normally expected from their slaves,
in accordance with the standards of their time, a full stint
of labor from “day clean” to “first dark.”
Some, however, demanded more than this. Continuously,
or at least for long intervals, they drove their slaves at a
pace that was bound, sooner or later, to injure their health.
Such hard driving seldom occurred on the smaller planta¬
tions and farms or in urban centers; it was decidedly a phe¬
nomenon of the large plantations. Though the majority of
planters did not sanction it, more of them tolerated exces¬
sively heavy labor routines than is generally realized. The
records of the plantation regime clearly indicate that slaves
were more frequently overworked by calloused tyrants than
overindulged by mellowed patriarchs.
That a large number of southern bondsmen were worked
severely during the colonial period is beyond dispute. The
South Carolina code of 1740 charged that “many own¬
ers ... do confine them so closely to hard labor, that they
have not sufficient time for natural rest.” 1 In the nine¬
teenth century conditions seemed to have improved, es¬
pecially in the older regions of the South. Unquestionably
the ante-bellum planter who coveted a high rank in society
responded to subtle pressures that others did not feel. The
closing of the African slave trade and the steady rise of slave
prices were additional restraining influences. “The time
has been,” wrote a planter in 1849, “that the farmer could
kill up and wear out one Negro to buy another; but it is
not so now. Negroes are too high in proportion to the price
of cotton, and it behooves those who own them to make
them last as long as possible.” 2
But neither public opinion nor high prices prevented
some of the bondsmen from suffering physical breakdowns

1 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, I, p. 307; Flanders, Plantation

Slavery in Georgia, p. 42.
2 Southern Cultivator, VII (1849), p. 69.

8l
 The Peculiar Institution

and early deaths because of overwork. The abolitionists

never proved their claim that many sugar and cotton grow¬
ers deliberately worked their slaves to death every seven
years with the intention of replacing them from profits. Yet
some of the great planters came close to accomplishing that
result without designing it. In the “race for wealth” in
which, according to one Louisiana planter, all were en¬
listed, few proprietors managed their estates according to
the code of the patricians.* * They were sometimes remark¬
ably shortsighted in the use of their investments.
Irresponsible overseers, who had no permanent interest
in slave property, were frequently blamed for the over¬
working of slaves. Since this was a common complaint, it is
important to remember that nearly half of the slaves lived
on plantations of the size that ordinarily employed over¬
seers. But planters could not escape responsibility for these
conditions simply because their written instructions usu¬
ally prohibited excessive driving. For they often demanded
crop yields that could be achieved by no other method.
Most overseers believed (with good reason) that their
success was measured by how much they produced, and that
merely having the slave force in good condition at the end
of the year would not guarantee re-employment. A Missis¬
sippi overseer with sixteen years of experience confirmed
this belief in defending his profession: “When I came to
Mississippi, I found that the overseer who could have the
most cotton bales ready for market by Christmas, was con¬
sidered best qualified for the business—consequently, every
overseer gave his whole attention to cotton bales, to the ex¬
clusion of everything else.”4
More than a few planters agreed that this was true. A
committee of an Alabama agricultural society reported: “It

s Kenneth M. Clark to Lewis Thompson, December 29, 1859, Thomp¬

son Papers.
* American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, II (1858) , pp. 112-13.

82
II: From Day Clean to First Dark

is too commonly the case that masters look only to the

yearly products of their farms, and praise or condemn their
overseers by this standard alone, without ever once trou¬
bling themselves to inquire into the manner in which
things are managed on their plantations, and whether he
may have lost more in the diminished value of his slaves by
over-work than he has gained by his large crop.” This be¬
ing the case, it was understandably of no consequence to
the overseer that the old hands were “worked down” and
the young ones “overstrained,” that the “breeding women"
miscarried, and that the “sucklers” lost their children. “So
that he has the requisite number of cotton bags, all is over¬
looked; he is re-employed at an advanced salary, and his
reputation increased.” * 5
Some planters, unintentionally perhaps, gave overseers a
special incentive for overworking slaves by making their
compensation depend in part upon the amount they pro¬
duced. Though this practice was repeatedly denounced in
the ante-bellum period, many masters continued to follow
it nevertheless. Cotton growers offered overseers bonuses
of from one to five dollars for each bale above a specified
minimum, or a higher salary if they produced a fixed quota.
A Louisiana planter hired an overseer on a straight com¬
mission basis of $2.75 per bale of cotton and four cents per
bushel of corn. A South Carolina rice planter gave his over¬
seer ten per cent of the net proceeds. And a Virginian of¬
fered his overseer “the seventh part of the good grain, to¬
bacco, cotton, and flax” that was harvested on his estate.
“Soon as I hear [of] such a bargain,” wrote a southern
critic, “I fancy that the overseer, determined to save his
salary, adopts the song of 'drive, drive, drive.’ ” 6

* American Farmer, II (1846), p. 78; Southern Cultivator, II (1844),

pp. 97. 107.
6 North Carolina Farmer, I (1845), pp. 122-23. Agreements of this kind
with overseers are in the records of numerous planters.

83
 The Peculiar Institution

Masters who hired their slaves to others also helped to

create conditions favoring ruthless exploitation. The over¬
working of hired slaves by employers with only a tempo¬
rary interest in their welfare was as notorious as the harsh
practices of overseers. Slaves hired to mine owners or rail¬
road contractors were fortunate if they were not driven to
the point where their health was impaired. The same dan¬
ger confronted slaves hired to sugar planters during the
grinding season or to cotton planters at picking time. Few
Southerners familiar with these conditions would have chal¬
lenged the assertion made before a South Carolina court
that hired slaves were “commonly treated more harshly . . .
than those in possession of their owner[s].” 7
But the master was as responsible for the conduct of
those who hired his slaves as he was for the conduct of the
overseers he employed. Overworked slaves were not always
the innocent victims of forces beyond his control; there
were remedies which he sometimes failed to apply. A
stanch defender of slavery described a set of avaricious
planters whom he labeled “Cotton Snobs,” or “Southern
Yankees.” In their frantic quest for wealth, he wrote indig¬
nantly, the crack of the whip was heard early and late, until
their bondsmen were “bowed to the ground with over-task¬
ing and over-toil.” 8 A southern physician who practiced on
many cotton plantations complained, in 1847, that some
masters still regarded “their sole interest to consist in large
crops, leaving out of view altogether the value of negro
property and its possible deterioration.” During the eco¬
nomic depression of the 1840’s, a planter accused certain
cotton growers of trying to save themselves by increasing
their cotton acreage and by driving their slaves harder,
with the result that slaves broke down from overwork. An

7 Catterall, Judicial Cases, II, p. 374.

8 Hundley, Social Relations, pp. 132, 187-88.

84
II: From Day Clean to First Dark
Alabama newspaper attributed conditions such as these to
“avarice, the desire of growing rich.” 9
On the sugar plantations, during the months of the har¬
vest, slaves were driven to the point of complete exhaus¬
tion. They were, in the normal routine, worked from six¬
teen to eighteen hours a day, seven days a week.* 1 Cotton
planters who boasted about making ten bales per hand
were unconsciously testifying that their slaves were over¬
worked. An overseer on an Arkansas plantation set his goal
at twelve bales to the hand and indicated that this was what
his employer desired. On a North Carolina plantation a
temporary overseer assured the owner that he was a “hole
hog man rain or shine” and boasted that the slaves had not
been working like men but “like horses.” “I’d ruther be
dead than be a nigger on one of these big plantations,” a
white Mississippian told Olmsted.2 * *
Sooner or later excessive labor was bound to take its toll.
In the heat of mid-summer, slaves who could not bear hard
driving without sufficient rest at noon simply collapsed in
the fields. In Mississippi a planter reported “numerous
cases” of sunstroke in his neighborhood during a spell of
extreme heat. His own slaves “gave out.” On a Florida
plantation a number of hands “fainted in the field” one hot
August day. Even in Virginia hot weather and heavy labor
caused “the death of many negroes in the harvest field.” 5

» De Bow’s Review, I (1846) , pp. 434-36; III (1847), p. 4ig; Selma Free
Press, quoted in Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor, July 14, 1846.
1 This is apparent from the records of sugar planters. See also Sitterson,
Sugar Country, pp. 133-36; Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 650, 667-68.
2 P. Weeks to James Sheppard, September 20, 1854, James Sheppard Pa¬
pers; Doctrine Davenport to Ebenezer Pettigrew, April 24, 1836, Pet¬
tigrew Family Papers; Olmsted, Back Country, pp. 55-57, 202.
s Jenkins Diary, entries for August 9, 1844; July 7, 1846; June 30, 1854;
Ulrich B. Phillips and James D. Glunt (eds.), Florida Plantation
Records from the Papers of George Noble Jones (St. Louis, 1927),
p. 90; John B. Garrett Ms. Farm Journal, entry for July 19, 1830.

85
 [86]
CHAPTER THREE

A Troublesome Property

S laves apparently thought of the South’s peculiar institu¬

tion chiefly as a system of labor extortion. Of course
they felt its impact in other ways—in their social status,
their legal status, and their private lives—but they felt it
most acutely in their lack of control over their own time
and labor. If discontented with bondage, they could be ex¬
pected to direct their protests principally against the mas¬
ter’s claim to their work. Whether the majority were satis¬
fied with their lot, whether they willingly obeyed the
master’s commands, has long been a controversial question.
It may be a little presumptuous of one who has never
been a slave to pretend to know how slaves felt; yet de¬
fenders of slavery did not hesitate to assert that most of
them were quite content with servitude. Bondsmen gener¬
ally were cheerful and acquiescent—so the argument went
—because they were treated with kindness and relieved of
all responsibilities; having known no other condition, they
unthinkingly accepted bondage as their natural status.
“They find themselves first existing in this state,” observed
a Northerner who had resided in Mississippi, “and pass
through life without questioning the justice of their allot¬
ment, which, if they think at all, they suppose a natural
Ill: A Troublesome Property

one.” 1 Presumably they acquiesced, too, because of innate

racial traits, because of the “genius of African tempera¬
ment,” the Negro being “instinctively . . . contented” and
"quick to respond to the stimulus of joy, quick to forget
his grief.” Except in rare instances when he was cruelly
treated, his “peaceful frame of mind was not greatly dis¬
turbed by the mere condition of slavery.” 2
Though sometimes asserted with such assurance, it was
never proved that the great majority of bondsmen had no
concept of freedom and were therefore contented. It was
always based upon inference. Most masters believed they
understood their slaves, and most slaves apparently made
no attempt to discourage this belief. Instead, they said the
things they thought their masters wanted to hear, and they
conformed with the rituals that signified their subservience.
Rare, no doubt, was the master who never heard any of his
humble, smiling bondsmen affirm their loyalty and content¬
ment. When visitors in the South asked a slave whether he
wished to be free, he usually replied: “No, massa, me no
want to be free, have good massa, take care of me when I
sick, never ’buse nigger; no, me no want to be free.” 3
This was dubious evidence, as some slaveholders knew
and others learned. (They would have acknowledged the
validity of an affirmation later to be made by a post-bellum
South Carolinian: “the white man does not know the Negro
so well as he thinks he does.” 4) A Virginia master believed
that slaves had their faculties “sharpened by constant exer¬
cise” and that their perceptions were “extremely fine and
acute.” An overseer decided that a man who “put his con-

1 [Ingraham], South-lVest, II, p. 201.

2 Francis P. Gaines, The Southern Plantation: A Study in the Develop¬
ment and the Accuracy of a Tradition (New York, 1924), p. 244.
3 Ethan A. Andrews, Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade in the
United States (Boston, 1836), pp. 97-99.
* Mason Crum, Gullah: Negro Life in the Carolina Sea Islands (Dur¬
ham, 1940), p. 80.

87
 The Peculiar Institution

fidence in a Negro . . . was simply a Damned Fool.” A

Georgia planter concluded: “So deceitful is the Negro that
as far as my own experience extends I could never in a
single instance decipher his character. . . . We planters
could never get at the truth.” 5 When advertising for runa¬
ways, masters repeatedly confirmed these opinions by de¬
scribing them as being “very artful,” as acting and convers¬
ing in a way “calculated to deceive almost any one,” and
(most frequently) as possessing a “pretty glib and plausible
tongue.” Yet proslavery writers swallowed whole the as¬
surances of contentment which these glib-tongued “scoun¬
drels” gave them.
Since there are few reliable records of what went on in
the minds of slaves, one can only infer their thoughts and
feelings from their behavior, that of their masters, and the
logic of their situation. That they had no understanding of
freedom, and therefore accepted bondage as their natural
condition, is hard to believe. They had only to observe
their masters and the other free men about them to obtain
a very distinct idea of the meaning and advantages of free¬
dom. All knew that some Negroes had been emancipated:
they knew that freedom was a possible condition for any of
them. They “continually have before their eyes, persons of
the same color, many of whom they have known in slav¬
ery . . . freed from the control of masters, working where
they please, going whither they please, and expending their
money how they please.” So declared a group of Charleston
whites who petitioned the legislature to expel all free per¬
sons of color from South Carolina.6
Untutored slaves seldom speculated about freedom as an
abstraction. They naturally focused their interest upon

® Abdy, Journal, II, pp. 216-17; Manigault Ms. Plantation Records,

summary of plantation events. May, 1863-May, 1864; entry for March
22, 1867.
® Phillips (ed.) , Plantation and Frontier, II, pp. 108-n.

88
Ill: A Troublesome Property

such immediate and practical benefits as escaping severe

discipline and getting increased compensation for less la¬
bor. An ex-slave explained simply what freedom meant to
her: “I am now my own mistress, and need not work when
I am sick. I can do my own thinkings, without having any
to think for me,—to tell me when to come, what to do, and
to sell me when they get ready.” 7 Though she may never
have heard of the doctrine of natural rights, her concept of
freedom surely embraced more than its incidental aspects.
If slaves had some understanding of the pragmatic bene¬
fits of freedom, no doubt most of them desired to enjoy
these benefits. Some, perhaps the majority, had no more
than a vague, unarticulated yearning for escape from bur¬
dens and restraints. They submitted, but submission did
not necessarily mean enjoyment or even contentment. And
some slaves felt more than a vague longing, felt a sharp
pang and saw a clear objective. They struggled toward it
against imposing obstacles, expressing their discontent
through positive action.
Were these, the actively discontented, to be found only
among slaves exposed to great physical cruelty? Apparently
not. Slaves of gentle masters might seek freedom as eagerly
as those of cruel ones. Frederick Douglass, the most famous
refugee from slavery, testified: ‘‘Beat and cuff your slave,
keep him hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the
chain of his master like a dog; but feed and clothe him
well,—work him moderately—surround him with physical
comfort,—and dreams of freedom intrude. Give him a bad
master, and he aspires to a good master; give him a good
master, and he wishes to become his own master.” 8 Here
was a problem confronting conscientious slaveholders. One
confessed that slaveownership subjected “the man of care
and feeling to more dilemmas than perhaps any other voca-

* Drew, The Refugee, p. 177.

s Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 263-64.

89
 The Peculiar Institution

tion he could follow. . . . To moralize and induce the

slave to assimilate with the master and his interest, has been
and is the great desideratum aimed at; but I am sorry to say
I have long since desponded in the completion of this
task.” 9 Another slaveholder who vaguely affirmed that his
bondsmen were “as contented as their nature will permit”
was in reality agreeing with what a white man once
bluntly stated before the Louisiana Supreme Court: The
desire for freedom “exists in the bosom of every slave—
whether the recent captive, or him to whom bondage has
become a habit.” 1
Slaves showed great eagerness to get some—if they could
not get all—of the advantages of freedom. They liked to
hire their own time, or to work in tobacco factories, or for
the Tredegar Iron Company, because they were then under
less restraint than in the fields, and they had greater oppor¬
tunities to earn money for themselves. They seized the
chance to make their condition approximate that of free¬
men.
But they were not satisfied with a mere loosening of the
bonds. Former slaves affirmed that one had to “know the
heart of the poor slave—learn his secret thoughts—
thoughts he dare not utter in the hearing of the white
man,” to understand this. “A man who has been in slavery
knows, and no one else can know, the yearnings to be free,
and the fear of making the attempt.” While he was still in
bondage Douglass wondered how white people knew that
God had made black people to be slaves. “Did they go up
in the sky and learn it? or, did He come down and tell them
so?” 2 A slave on a Louisiana sugar plantation assured Olm¬
sted that slaves did desire freedom, that they talked about
» Southern Agriculturist, III (1830), p. 238.
‘ Ebenezer Pettigrew to Mrs. Mary Shepard, September 22, 1847, Petti¬
grew Family Papers; Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, p. 568.
» Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, pp. 206-207; Drew, The Refugee, pp.
43, 115; Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 89-91.

9°
Ill: A Troublesome Property

it among themselves, and that they speculated about what

they would do if they were emancipated. When a traveler
in Georgia told a slave he understood his people did not
wish to be free, “His only answer was a short, contemptu¬
ous laugh.” 3
If slaves yielded to authority most of the time, they did
so because they usually saw no other practical choice. Yet
few went through life without expressing discontent some¬
how, some time. Even the most passive slaves, usually be¬
fore they reached middle age, flared up in protest now and
then. The majority, as they grew older, lost hope and spirit.
Some, however, never quite gave in, never stopped fighting
back in one way or another. The “bad character” of this
“insolent,” “surly,” and “unruly” sort made them a liabil¬
ity to those who owned them, for a slave’s value was meas¬
ured by his disposition as much as by his strength and skills.
Such rebels seldom won legal freedom, yet they never quite
admitted they were slaves.
Slave resistance, whether bold and persistent or mild
and sporadic, created for all slaveholders a serious problem
of discipline. As authors or as readers they saw the problem
discussed in numberless essays with such titles as “The
Management of Negroes,” essays which filled the pages of
southern agricultural periodicals. Many masters had reason
to agree with the owner of a hundred slaves who com¬
plained that he possessed “just too troubles,” or with the
North Carolina planter who said that slaves were “a trou¬
blesome property.” 4
The record of slave resistance forms a chapter in the
story of the endless struggle to give dignity to human life.
Though the history of southern bondage reveals that men

3 Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 679-80; James Stirling, Letters from the Slave
States (London, 1857), p. 201.
* Gustavus A. Henry to his wife, November 25, 1849, Henry Papers;
William S. Pettigrew to James C. Johnston, January 6, 1847 (copy),
Pettigrew Family Papers.

9»
 The Peculiar Institution

can be enslaved under certain conditions, it also demon¬

strates that their love of freedom is hard to crush. The sub¬
tle expressions of this spirit, no less than the daring thrusts
for liberty, comprise one of the richest gifts the slaves have
left to posterity. In making themselves “troublesome prop¬
erty,” they provide reassuring evidence that slaves seldom
wear their shackles lightly.
The record of the minority who waged ceaseless and
open warfare against their bondage makes an inspiring
chapter, also, in the history of Americans of African de¬
scent. True, these rebels were exceptional men, but the
historian of any group properly devotes much attention to
those members who did extraordinary things, men in whose
lives the problems of their age found focus, men who voiced
the feelings and aspirations of the more timid and less ar¬
ticulate masses. As the American Revolution produced folk
heroes, so also did southern slavery—heroes who, in both
cases, gave much for the cause of human freedom.

2
Now and then a slave happened to get a chance for free¬
dom but rejected it. A body servant devoted to his master
might accompany him into the free states and then will¬
ingly return to the land of slavery. Or a slave might decline
to be emancipated in accordance with a provision in his
master’s will. A free Negro might even seek a master and
petition to be enslaved. Proslavery men seized upon in¬
stances such as these to support the argument that Negroes
were better off and happier as slaves than as freemen.
Why, actually, did an occasional Negro refuse to be freed
or even ask to be enslaved? One of the reasons is suggested
by the petition a slave once sent to the Virginia legislature.
This slave, Washington, by his master’s will, had the
choice of accepting freedom or selecting a new master from

92
Ill: A Troublesome Property

among the relatives of his late owner. Washington chose

freedom, but he asked the legislature to exempt him from
the law which then required freed Negroes to leave the
state. He declared in his petition that he had no money to
pay the cost of moving, that he was advanced in years, and
that he had a family living in Virginia.5
Given the general hostility toward free Negroes in both
the North and South and the severe handicaps which they
faced, the choice between “freedom” and slavery did not al¬
ways seem to be an altogether clear one. A South Carolina
doctor therefore disagreed with one of his professional col¬
leagues who claimed that Negroes had a “natural” prefer¬
ence for slavery. “To offer to the race the nominal freedom
which a free colored person possesses in our land, is a test
by no means satisfactory,” the physician said. “About as
reasonable would it be to put a muzzle on a pig’s nose, and
then invite him into the potatoe patch. Of course, he would
prefer to remain in his pen, and drink the swill you might
be pleased to give him.” 6
But proslavery writers exaggerated both the number and
the significance of instances in which slaves rejected an of¬
fer of freedom. They usually welcomed the chance even
though aware of the hard role and inferior status of “free
persons of color.” This was one of the ways in which they
demonstrated their prevalent longing to be free. The action
of twenty-two Virginia Negroes who thought that their de¬
ceased master had emancipated them by his will indicated
that they had a vigorous interest in the prospect. These
freedmen—as they thought they were—invaded the office
of the clerk of the Hustings Court in Richmond and de¬
manded legal proof of their status. They were arrested for
their pains and brought before the mayor who informed

» Petition, dated December 8, 1836, in Virginia Ms. Legislative Peti¬

tions.
* Charleston Medical Journal and Review, VII (1852), p. 97.

93
 The Peculiar Institution
them “that they were all slaves, having no claim whatever
to freedom; and that if they were again caught going at
large ... he would punish each and all with 30 stripes.” 7
With rare exceptions slaves eagerly accepted offers of
emancipation regardless of the conditions imposed upon
them. In some cases they were required to leave not merely
the state but the country. One Virginia master offered free¬
dom to his fourteen slaves if they would agree to move to
Liberia at the expense of the American Colonization So¬
ciety. Though they were thus forced to part with friends
and relatives and to settle in a strange land, only one of
them rejected the terms. All of the one hundred and
twenty-three slaves of Isaac Ross, of Mississippi, elected the
option of being transported to Africa to obtain the free¬
dom provided in his will.8
Southern court records contain innumerable suits in be¬
half of Negroes who claimed that they were being held in
bondage illegally. They based their cases upon claims that
they had been kidnapped, or that a female ancestor had
been free, or that they had been emancipated by a will or
by some other legal document. These suits were filled with
human drama which, from the slave’s point of view, some¬
times ended tragically and sometimes joyously. In one case
before the Virginia Court of Appeals, “Daniel and twenty-
three others filed their bill . . . stating that they were the
only slaves of a certain Miss Mary Robinson” whose will
provided “that the whole of them ... as far as the law
enables me to do it, be emancipated.” However, Mary Rob¬
inson had previously deeded these slaves to a nephew, and
the court therefore ordered “that the appellees be delivered
to . . . [him] as his proper slaves.” 9

7 Richmond Enquirer, July 19, 1853.

8 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, I, p. 171; III, pp. 190-92.
8 Ibid., I, pp. 114-15.

94
Ill: A Troublesome Property

In another case before the same court a group of Negroes

won a suit against certain persons who had attempted to
deprive them of the freedom granted in their master’s will.
They then sued for compensation for the period of their il¬
legal detention. This the court refused to grant, because
emancipation was “a benefit rather in name than in fact.”
In bondage they were cared for “in infancy, old age, and
infirmity,” they were exempted from the “anxieties of a
precarious existence,” and they enjoyed the “humane in¬
dulgence” of their master. Hence no “practical injustice”
was done them “by striking an even balance of profit and
loss” while they were illegally held in servitude.1 The freed-
men in this case apparently did not agree.
The emancipating clauses in the wills of slaveholders
were often the products of philanthropy or of a troubled
conscience, but some of them were the products (at least
in part) of pressures applied by the slaves themselves.
Bondsmen occasionally persuaded their masters to make
this philanthropic gesture, or promised to give faithful
service as part of an agreement leading to eventual emanci¬
pation. It is quite likely that many slaves who could get no
such commitment nevertheless hoped ultimately to receive
this reward for their loyalty and devotion. This seemed to
be the objective of a slave carpenter named Jim who be¬
longed to Ebenezer Pettigrew, of North Carolina. Jim had
been known for his “humility” and “good manners” dur¬
ing the many years that he gave Pettigrew “faithful serv¬
ice.” But immediately after his master’s death Jim’s con¬
duct changed when he found that he was not going to be
emancipated. His new master discovered a “deformity” in
his character resulting from his “proud and wicked spirit.”
Jim was “haunted . . . with a desire for freedom” and

i Ibid., I, pp. 214-15.

95
 The Peculiar Institution
indulged in “harsh strictures” against his owner for not
granting it to him.2 Eventually Jim was shipped to New
Orleans.
A few slaves (usually skilled ones in the towns of the Up¬
per South) won the opportunity to purchase their own
freedom. Occasionally, they earned the necessary funds by
working nights and Sundays. More often, they hired their
own time. Either way, they gradually accumulated enough
money to pay their masters an amount equal to their value
and thus obtained deeds of emancipation. Benevolent
masters helped ambitious bondsmen by permitting them to
make the payments in installments over a period of years
or by accepting a sum lower than the market price. Now
and then a slave convinced his master of the wisdom of this
policy by making himself an economic liability. A Virginia
slave was a chronic malingerer until he was given a chance
to purchase his freedom. He then took a job in a tobacco
factory and soon earned his emancipation by diligent toil.3
The long struggle of a bondsman, in effect, to buy him¬
self was invariably a moving story. Sometimes it led to bit¬
ter disappointment when a master repudiated the bargain
or died before the transaction was completed. Sometimes it
led to success, as in the case of Charles White, a slave black¬
smith in Bath County, Virginia. White, an “exceedingly
capable and efficient laborer” who would “do well any¬
where,” began his campaign for freedom in 1832 when he
petitioned his master for permission to hire his own time.
His owner agreed, and White began to save whatever he
could earn above his expenses and what he paid for his hire.
By 1841, the goal seemed to be in sight, for there was talk
of “freedom papers” for White, who sent his master “many

2 William S. Pettigrew to John Williams, November 4, 1852; id. to

J. Johnston Pettigrew, March 17, 1853; undated memorandum in
handwriting of William S. Pettigrew, Pettigrew Family Papers.
3 Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 103-104.

96
Ill: A Troublesome Property

thanks of gratitude . . . with tears in his eyes.” But four

years later he was still eighty dollars short, because he
found it difficult as a slave to collect fees that were due him.
Finally, in 1847, after fifteen years, Charles White paid the
balance of his owner’s claim against him and obtained his
“freedom papers.”4 * Few have earned their freedom more
honestly than this Virginia blacksmith.
Some self-bought freedmen attempted to buy the free¬
dom of other members of their families. A husband might
labor to purchase his wife and children, or a wife might
earn her freedom first, then purchase her husband. No case
is more touching than that of a slave woman in Augusta,
Georgia, who remained in bondage herself but used her
earnings from extra work to pay for the emancipation of
her five children.6 A free person of color occasionally gave
financial assistance to slaves who were not members of his
own family.
Only a small number of bondsmen ever had the chance
to show their desire for freedom by embracing an oppor¬
tunity to gain legal emancipation. The handful who were
permitted to buy themselves, or who were freed by their
masters’ wills, left little doubt about how much they valued
liberty. But most slaves had to register their protests against
bondage and express their yearning for freedom in less
orderly ways.

3
The masses of slaves, for whom freedom could have been
little more than an idle dream, found countless ways to ex¬
asperate their masters—and thus saw to it that bondage
as a labor system had its limitations as well as its advan¬
tages. Many slaves were doubtless pulled by conflicting im-

4 A series of letters concerning Charles White from 1832 to 1847 are in

the Hamilton Brown Papers.
6 Bremer, Homes of the New World, I, p. 363.

97
 The Peculiar Institution
pulses: a desire for the personal satisfaction gained from
doing a piece of work well, as against a desire to resist or
outwit the master by doing it badly or not at all. Which
impulse dominated a given slave at a given time depended
upon many things, but the latter one was bound to control
him at least part of the time. Whether the master was hu¬
mane or cruel, whether he owned a small farm or a large
plantation, did not seem to be crucial considerations, for
almost all slaveholders had trouble in managing this kind
of labor.
Not that every malingering or intractable bondsman was
pursuing a course calculated to lead toward freedom for his
people, or at least for himself. He was not always even
making a conscious protest against bondage. Some of his
“misdeeds” were merely unconscious reflections of the
character that slavery had given him—evidence, as one
planter explained, that slavery tended to render him “cal¬
lous to the ideas of honor and even honesty” (as the master
class understood those terms). “Come day, go day, God
send Sunday,” eloquently expressed the indifference of the
“heedless, thoughtless,” slave.6
But the element of conscious resistance was often present
too; whether or not it was the predominant one the master
usually had no way of knowing. In any case, he was likely
to be distressed by his inability to persuade his slaves to
“assimilate” their interest with his. “We all know,” com¬
plained one slaveholder, that the slave’s feeling of obliga¬
tion to his master “is of so flimsy a character that none of us
rely upon it.” 7
Slaveholders disagreed as to whether “smart” Negroes
or “stupid” ones caused them the greater trouble. A Missis-

• Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina, p. 496; W. P. Harrison, The

Gospel Among the Slaves (Nashville, 1893), p. 103.
1 James W. Bell to William S. Pettigrew, May 3, 1853, Pettigrew Fam¬
ily Papers.

98
Ill: A Troublesome Property

sippian told Olmsted that the “smart” ones were “rascally”

and constantly “getting into scrapes,” and a Louisianian
confessed that his slave Lucy was “the greatest rascal” and
the “smartest negro of her age” he had ever known.3 On the
other hand, many masters were annoyed by the seeming
stupidity of some of their slaves, by their unwillingness to
“think for themselves.” A Negro recently imported from
Africa was said to be especially prone to this kind of stub¬
born obtuseness: “let a hundred men shew him how to
hoe, or drive a wheelbarrow, he’ll still take the one by the
Bottom and the other by the Wheel.” 9
According to a former slave, the bondsmen had good rea¬
son for encouraging their master to underrate their intelli¬
gence. Ignorance was “a high virtue in a human chattel,”
he suggested, and since it was the master’s purpose to keep
his bondsmen in this state, they were shrewd enough to
make him think he succeeded.* 1 A Virginia planter con¬
cluded from his own long experience that many slavehold¬
ers were victimized by the “sagacity” of Negroes whom they
mistakenly thought they understood so well. He was con¬
vinced that the slaves, “under the cloak of great stupidity,”
made “dupes” of their masters: “The most general defect
in the character of the negro, is hypocrisy; and this hypoc¬
risy frequently makes him pretend to more ignorance than
he possesses; and if his master treats him as a fool, he will
be sure to act the fool’s part. This is a very convenient trait,
as it frequently serves as an apology for awkwardness and
neglect of duty." 2
Slaveowners generally took it as a matter of course that

• Olmsted, Back Country, pp. 154-55; Edwin A. Davis (ed.), Plantation

Life in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, 1836-1846. As Reflected in
the Diary of Bennet H. Barrow (New York, 1943), p. 164.
» E. B. R. to James B. Bailey, March 24, 1856, James B. Bailey Papers;
Gray, History of Agriculture, I, p. 519.
1 Douglass, My Bondage, p. 81.
* Farmers' Register, V (1837) , p. 32.

99
 The Peculiar Institution
a laborer would shirk when he could and perform no more
work than he had to. They knew that, in most cases, the
only way to keep him “in the straight path of duty” was to
watch him “with an eye that never slumbers.” 8 They fre¬
quently used such terms as “slow,” “lazy,” “wants push¬
ing,” “an eye servant,” and “a trifling negro” when they
made private appraisals of their slaves. “Hands won’t work
unless I am in sight,” a small Virginia planter once wrote
angrily in his diary. “I left the Field at 12 [with] all going
on well, but very little done after [that].” * * 4 Olmsted, watch¬
ing an overseer riding among the slaves on a South Caro¬
lina plantation, observed that he was “constantly directing
and encouraging them, but ... as often as he visited one
end of the line of operations, the hands at the other end
would discontinue their labor, until he turned to ride
towards them again.” Other visitors in the South also no¬
ticed “the furtive cessation from toil that invariably took
place, as the overseer’s eye was turned from them.” 5
Slaves sought to limit the quantity of their services in
many different ways. At cotton picking time they carried
cotton from the gin house to the held in the morning to be
weighed with the day’s picking at night. They concealed
dirt or rocks in their cotton baskets to escape punishment
for loafing. They fixed their own work quotas, and masters
had to adopt stern measures to persuade them that they had
been unduly presumptuous. Where the task system was
used, they stubbornly resisted any attempt to increase the
size of the daily tasks fixed by custom.6 Athletic and mus-

s William S. Pettigrew to [James C. Johnston], October 3, 1850, Petti¬

grew Family Papers.
* William C. Adams Ms. Diary, entries for July 18, 20, 1857.
5 Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 387-88; Abdy, Journal, II, p. 214; William

Chambers, Things as They Are in America (London, 1854), pp.

269-70.
6 [Ingraham], South-West, II, p. 286; Hammond Diary, entries for Oc¬
tober 23, 24, 1834; Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 434-36.

IOO
Ill: A Troublesome Property

cular slaves, as Frederick Douglass recalled, were inclined

to be proud of their capacity for labor, and the master often
sought to promote rivalry among them; but they knew that
this “was not likely to pay,” for “if, by extraordinary exer¬
tion, a large quantity of work was done in one day, the
fact, becoming known to the master, might lead him to re¬
quire the same amount every day.” Some refused to become
skilled craftsmen, for, as one of them explained, he would
gain nothing by learning a craft.* 7 Few seemed to feel any
personal shame when dubbed “eye servants.”
Slaves retaliated as best they could against those who
treated them severely, and sometimes their reprisals were
at least partly successful. Experience taught many slave¬
holders “that every attempt to force a slave beyond the
limit that he fixes himself as a sufficient amount of labor to
render his master, instead of extorting more work, only
tends to make him unprofitable, unmanageable, a vexation
and a curse. If you protract his regular hours of labor, his
movements become proportionally slower.” The use of
force might cause him to work still more slowly until he
fell “into a state of impassivity” in which he became “in¬
sensible and indifferent to punishment, or even to life.” 8
After a slave was punished in the Richmond tobacco fac¬
tories, the other hands “gave neither song nor careless
shout for days, while the bosses fretted at slackened pro¬
duction.” 9
Besides slowing down, many slaves bedeviled the master
by doing careless work and by damaging property. They
did much of this out of sheer irresponsibility, but they did
at least part of it deliberately, as more than one master

t Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 261-62; Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases,

II, pp. 73-74, 210-11.
8 De Bow’s Review, VII (1849), p. 220; XVII (1854), p. 422; XXV
(1858), p. 51.
» Joseph C. Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America (New York,
1949), p. 89.

lOI
 The Peculiar Institution

suspected. A Louisiana doctor, Samuel W. Cartwright, at¬

tributed their work habits to a disease, peculiar to Negroes,
which he called Dysaethesia /Ethiopica and which over¬
seers “erroneously” called “rascality.” An African who
suffered from this exotic affliction was “apt to do much
mischief” which appeared “as if intentional.” He destroyed
or wasted everything he touched, abused the livestock, and
injured the crops. When he was driven to his labor he per¬
formed his tasks “in a headlong, careless manner, treading
down with his feet or cutting with his hoe the plants” he
was supposed to cultivate, breaking his tools, and “spoil¬
ing everything.” This, wrote the doctor soberly, was en¬
tirely due to “the stupidness of mind and insensibility of
the nerves induced by the disease.” 1
But slaveowners ignored this clinical analysis and per¬
sisted in diagnosing the disease as nothing but “rascality.”
To overcome it, they had to supervise the work closely.
They searched for methods to prevent slaves from abusing
horses and mules, plowing and hoeing “badly,” damaging
tools, killing young plants, and picking “trashy cotton.”
James H. Hammond noted in his diary: “I And [hoe-hands]
chopping up cotton dreadfully and begin to think that my
stand has every year been ruined in this way.” A Louisiana
sugar planter advised his son to turn to cotton production,
because it was “trouble enough to have to manage negroes
in the simplest way, without having to overlook them in the
manufacture of sugar and management of Machinery.” 2
“Rascality” was also a major problem for those who em¬
ployed slaves in factories.
Olmsted found slaveholders fretting about this problem
everywhere in the South. In Texas an angry mistress com¬
plained that her domestics constantly tracked mud through

1 De Bow’s Review, XI (1851) , pp. 333-34.

2 Hammond Diary, entry for June 7, 1839; Lewis Thompson to Thomas
Thompson, December 31, 1858, Lewis Thompson Papers.

102
Ill: A Troublesome Property

the house: “What do they care? They’d just as lief clean

the mud after themselves as [do] anything else—their time
isn’t any value to themselves." A Virginia planter said that
he grew only the coarser and cheaper tobaccos, because the
finer varieties “required more pains-taking and discretion
than it was possible to make a large gang of negroes use.”
Another Virginian complained that slaves were “exces¬
sively careless and wasteful, and, in various ways . . . sub¬
ject us to very annoying losses.” Some masters used only
crude, clumsy tools, because they were afraid to give their
hands better ones.3 One slaveholder felt aggrieved when
he saw that the small patches which his Negroes cultivated
for themselves were better cared for and more productive
than his own fields.4
Masters were also troubled by the slave who idled in the
quarters because of an alleged illness or disability. They
often suspected that they were being victimized, for feign¬
ing illness was a favorite method of avoiding labor. Olm¬
sted found one or more bondsmen “complaining” on
almost every plantation he visited, and the proprietor fre¬
quently expressed “his suspicion that the invalid was really
as well able to work as anyone else.” Some masters and
overseers believed that they could tell when a slave was
deceiving them, but others were afraid to risk permanent
injury to their human property. According to one overseer,
trying to detect those who were “shamming illness” was
“the most disagreeable duty he had to perform. Negroes
were famous for it.” s
Slave women had great success with this stratagem. The
overseer on Pierce Butler’s Georgia plantation reported
that they were constantly “shamming themselves into the

» Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas (New York, 1857), p. 120; id.,

Seaboard, pp. 44-45, 91, 480-82.
* American Farmer, 4th Ser., I (1846), p. 295.
» Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 186-90; id.. Back Country, pp. 77-79.

103
 The Peculiar Institution
family-way in order to obtain a diminution of their labor.”
One female enjoyed a ‘‘protracted pseudo-pregnancy” dur¬
ing which she “continued to reap increased rations as the
reward of her expectation, till she finally had to disappoint
and receive a flogging.” 6 A Virginian asserted that a slave
woman was a less profitable worker after reaching the
“breeding age,” because she so often pretended to be suf¬
fering from what were delicately called “female com¬
plaints.” “You have to take her word for it . . . and you
dare not set her to work; and so she will lay up till she feels
like taking the air again, and plays the lady at your ex¬
pense.” 7
Almost every slaveholder discovered at one time or an¬
other that a bondsman had outwitted him by “playing
possum” or by some ingenious subterfuge. One Negro
spread powdered mustard on his tongue to give it a foul
appearance before he was examined by a doctor. Another
convinced his owner that he was totally disabled by rheu¬
matism, until one day he was discovered vigorously rowing
a boat. A master found two of his slaves “grunting” (a com¬
mon term), one affecting a partial paralysis and the other
declaring that he could not walk; but he soon learned that
they “used their limbs very well when they chose to do so.”
For many years a slave on a Mississippi plantation escaped
work by persuading his master that he was nearly blind.
After the Civil War, however, he produced “no less than
eighteen good crops for himself” and became one of “the
best farmers in the country.” 8
In these and other ways a seemingly docile gang of
slaves drove an inefficient manager well nigh to distrac-

a Frances Anne Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Planta¬

tion in 1838-1839 (New York, 1863), pp. 135-36, 235.
r Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 188-90.
s Buckingham, Slave States, I, pp. 135, 402; Clement Claiborne Clay to
Clement Comer Clay, April 19, 1846, Clement C. Clay Papers; Smedes,
Memorials, p. 80.

IO4
Ill: A Troublesome Property

tion. They probed for his weaknesses, matched their wits

against his, and constantly contrived to disrupt the work
routine. An efficient manager took cognizance of the fact
that many of his bondsmen were “shrewd and cunning,”
ever ready to “disregard all reasonable restraints,” and
eager “to practice upon the old maxim, of ‘give an inch
and take an ell.’ ”9 This was the reason why the owner of a
small cotton plantation rejoiced when at last he could af¬
ford to employ an overseer: “I feel greatly relieved at the
idea of getting a lazy trifling set of negroes off my
hands. . . . They have wearied out all the patience I had
with them.” * 1
Whenever a new master assumed control of a gang of
slaves, there was a period of tension; the outcome of this
crucial period might determine the success or failure of
his enterprise. The bondsmen seemed to think that if the
work burden were to be reduced, or the discipline relaxed,
it would have to be accomplished at a time such as this. If
during this crisis the master had the advantage of superior
authority, the slaves at least had the advantage of superior
numbers. They could share the results of their experiments
as they put him to the test; and, therefore, they probably
knew him sooner than he knew them. (Doubtless slaves
always knew their master better than he knew them.)
Shortly after James H. Hammond took over Silver Bluff
Plantation on the Savannah River, he wrote in his diary:
“All confusion here yet. Just getting things in order and
negroes trying me at every step.” 2
In these contests the bondsmen were sometimes able to
celebrate a victory over their unhappy master, frustrated
in his efforts to make profitable use of their labor. Once
they found an incompetent owner, they pressed their ad-

9 Southern Cultivator, VII (1849), p. 140; XII (1854), p. 206.

1 John W. Brown Diary, entry for January 24, 1854.
2 Hammond Diary, entry for December 13, 1831.

IO5
 The Peculiar Institution
vantage to the point where normal discipline was com¬
pletely destroyed. Cases can be found of slaves who estab¬
lished a dominating influence over their master, or who,
“for want of a better control, would not make crops ade¬
quate to the[ir] support.” The slaves of a small South Caro¬
lina planter were so “unmanageable” and so “unproduc¬
tive as to render it necessary for him to borrow money.” 3
This kind of situation was almost certain to culminate in a
sale of the slaves to a new owner. And this in turn marked
the beginning of another contest of wills.
A similar period of crisis developed each time a new
overseer took command of a plantation labor force. The
chances were that discipline had been lax and affairs gen¬
erally in an unfavorable state during the last weeks of the
previous overseer’s regime. The first problem, therefore,
was to restore order and to re-establish discipline, while the
slaves tried every trick they knew to spread and perpetuate
chaos.
Though the early weeks of an overseer’s administration
were the most critical ones, his problems were never per¬
manently solved. His interests and those of the workers un¬
der his control clashed at almost every point, and so a feud
between them continuously smoldered and occasionally,
perhaps, flared up. Let an overseer slacken his control mo¬
mentarily, let him permit some plantation rule to be vio¬
lated with impunity, let him tolerate some slipshod work,
and the slaves lost no time in putting him to a thorough
test. In an essay entitled “Overseers and Their Enjoy¬
ments” a Louisiana overseer described graphically what it
was like to be “bedeviled with 40 niggers.” He concluded
bitterly: “Oh, what a fine time of it a manager of a large
Louisiana plantation does have.” * *
Plantation records amply illustrate the ways that slaves
® See, for example, Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 129, 421, 438.
* Southern Cultivator, XVIII (i860), p. 151.

106
Ill: A Troublesome Property

capitalized upon the weaknesses of an overseer. In Arkansas,

an overseer “made himself so familiar with the hands, that
they do [with] him as they please.” Another, on a Georgia
plantation, “elated by a strong and very false religious feel¬
ing,” placed himself “on a par with the Negroes, by even
joining with them at their prayer meetings, breaking down
long established discipline, which in every Case is so diffi¬
cult to preserve.” 5 Still another, employed on the North
Carolina plantation of Ebenezer Pettigrew, found the slaves
more than he could handle when the owner was away. They
even “had a great feast” to which they invited the slaves on
a neighboring plantation. By the end of a year, as he con¬
fessed, they had bothered him “near a bout to death.” 6
When a severe overseer assumed control of one of the
Florida plantations of George Noble Jones, the slaves re¬
sorted to nearly every conceivable method of active and
passive resistance. Eventually they attempted a deliberate
slowdown at cotton picking time. “I regret to say,” the
overseer reported to Jones, “that I never have had as hard
work to git cotton picked and that don in good order be-
for. It seames that those people was determine to not pick
cotton.” 7
If an overseer emerged the victor in such a struggle, as
he usually did, the slaves might try one last stratagem.
They might attempt to cause trouble between the overseer
and his employer. An Arkansas planter warned slavehold¬
ers that Negroes were “unprincipled creatures” who would
“frequently evince a great deal of shrewdness in fixing up
a ‘tale’ on an overseer they do not like.” It was his policy,
therefore, to whip any slave who made complaints against
the overseer. “The impropriety and absurdity of listening
o Willie [Empie] to James Sheppard, October 27, 1859, Sheppard Pa¬
pers; Manigault Plantation Records.
• Doctrine Davenport to Ebenezer Pettigrew, February 21, May 16, De¬
cember 31, 1836, Pettigrew Papers.
t Phillips and Glunt (eds.), Florida Plantation Records, pp. 107-18.

107
 The Peculiar Institution
to what negroes have to say about their overseer, is per¬
fectly evident to any who will reflect a minute on the sub¬
ject.” 8
But frequent complaints nevertheless might weaken a
master’s confidence in his overseer and lead to his dismissal.
Anyhow, an overseer was likely to be more circumspect in
his treatment of a slave who had the courage to approach
the master. Some planters permitted their slaves to bring
in their grievances and prohibited overseers from punish¬
ing them for it. Overseers always deplored this practice as a
sure way to undermine their authority. ‘‘Your Negroes be¬
have badly behind my back and then Run to you and you
appear to beleave what they say,” one complained to his
employer as he tendered his resignation. On another plan¬
tation a slave managed to produce a long controversy be¬
tween owner and overseer until his responsibility was fi¬
nally discovered.9 Occasionally the slaves had the pleasure
of watching a hated overseer depart in a futile rage. An
Alabama planter was troubled with a recently discharged
overseer who threatened “to shoot and whip sundries of
the Negroes” for “telling tales on him.” He behaved “like
a madman.” * 1
For the most part the slaves who thus provoked masters
and overseers were the meek, smiling ones whom many
thought were contented though irresponsible. They were
not reckless rebels who risked their lives for freedom; if
the thought of rebellion crossed their minds, the odds
against success seemed too overwhelming to attempt it.
But the inevitability of their bondage made it none the
more attractive. And so, when they could, they protested by

s Southern Cultivator, XVIII (i860), p. 131.

0 Phillips and Glunt (eds.) , Florida Plantation Records, p. 150; John
Berkeley Grimball Ms. Diary, entries for October 12, 17, 20, November
2, 3, 1832.
1 James Pickens to Samuel Pickens, June 15, 1827 (typescript), Israel
Pickens and Family Papers.

108
Ill: A Troublesome Property

shirking their duties, injuring the crops, feigning illness,

and disrupting the routine. These acts were, in part, an un¬
spectacular kind of “day to day resistance to slavery.” 2

4
According to Dr. Cartwright, there was a second disease
peculiar to Negroes which he called Drapetomania: “the
disease causing negroes to run away.” Cartwright believed
that it was a “disease of the mind” and that with “proper
medical advice” it could be cured. The first symptom was
a “sulky and dissatisfied” attitude. To forestall the full on¬
set of the disease, the cause of discontent must be deter¬
mined and removed. If there were no ascertainable cause,
then “whipping the devil out of them” was the proper “pre¬
ventive measure against absconding.” 3
Though Cartwright’s dissertations on Negro diseases are
mere curiosities of medical history, the problem he dealt
with was a real and urgent one to nearly every slaveholder.
Olmsted met few planters, large or small, who were not
more or less troubled by runaways. A Mississippian realized
that his record was most unusual when he wrote in his
diary: “Harry ran away; the first negro that ever ran from
me.” Another slaveholder betrayed his concern when he
avowed that he would “rather a negro would do anything
Else than runaway.” * *
The number of runaways was not large enough to
threaten the survival of the peculiar institution, because
slaveholders took precautions to prevent the problem from
growing to such proportions. But their measures were never
entirely successful, as the advertisements for fugitives in
2 Raymond A. and Alice H. Bauer, "Day to Day Resistance to Slavery,"
Journal of Negro History, XXVII (1942), pp. 388-419.
a De Bow's Review, XI (1851), pp. 331-33-
* Olmsted, Back Country, p. 476; Newstead Plantation Diary, entry for
June 7, i860; Davis (ed.), Diary of Bennet H. Barrow, p. 165.

109
 The Peculiar Institution
southern newspapers made abundantly clear. Actually, the
problem was much greater than these newspapers sug¬
gested, because many owners did not advertise for their ab¬
sconding property. (When an owner did advertise, he usu¬
ally waited until his slave had been missing for several
weeks.) In any case, fugitive slaves were numbered in the
thousands every year. It was an important form of protest
against bondage.
Who were the runaways? They were generally young
slaves, most of them under thirty, but occasionally masters
searched for fugitives who were more than sixty years old.
The majority of them were males, though female runaways
were by no means uncommon. It is not true that most of
them were mulattoes or of predominantly white ancestry.
While this group was well represented among the fugitives,
they were outnumbered by slaves who were described as
“black” or of seemingly “pure” African ancestry. Domestics
and skilled artisans—the ones who supposedly had the most
intimate ties with the master class—ran away as well as
common field-hands.
Some bondsmen tried running away only once, or on
very rare occasions. Others tried it repeatedly and somehow
managed to escape in spite of their owners’ best efforts to
stop them. Such slaves were frequently identified as “ha¬
bitual” or “notorious” runaways. While a few of them
were, according to their masters, “unruly scoundrels” or
“incorrigible scamps,” most of them seemed to be “hum¬
ble,” inoffensive,” or “cheerful” slaves. Thus an advertise¬
ment for a Maryland fugitive stated: he “always appears to
be in a good humor, laughs a good deal, and runs on with
a good deal of foolishness.” A Louisiana master gave the
following description of three slaves who escaped from
him: the first was “very industrious” and always answered
“with a smile” when spoken to; the second, a “well-dis¬
posed and industrious boy,” was “very timid” and spoke to

110
Ill: A Troublesome Property
white men “very humbly, with his hand to his hat”; and
the third addressed whites “humbly and respectfully with
a smile.” 5 Slaves such as these apparently concealed their
feelings and behaved as they were expected to—until one
day they suddenly made off.
Runaways usually went singly or in small groups of two
or three. But some escaped in groups of a dozen or more,
and in a few instances in groups of more than fifty. They
ran off during the warm summer months more often than
during the winter when sleeping out of doors was less fea¬
sible and when frost-bitten feet might put an end to flight.
Many fugitives bore the marks of cruelty on their bodies,
but humane treatment did not necessarily prevent attempts
to escape. More than a few masters shared the bewilder¬
ment of a Marylander who advertised for his slave Jacob:
“He has no particular marks, and his appearance proves the
fact of the kind treatment he has always received.” Slave¬
holders told Olmsted that slaves who were treated well,
fed properly, and worked moderately ran away even when
they knew that it would cause them hardship and, even¬
tually, severe punishment. “This is often mentioned to il¬
lustrate the ingratitude and especial depravity of the Afri¬
can race.” 6
In advertising for a runaway, owners frequently insisted
that he had absconded for no cause, or for none that they
could understand. A Virginia slave ran off without the ex¬
cuse “either of whipping, or threat, or angry word”; the
slaves Moses and Peter left an Alabama plantation “with¬
out provocation.” A small Virginia planter recorded in his
diary that he had punished a slave woman for running
away, because there was “no cause” for it but “badness.” 7
e Baltimore Sun, September 25, 1856; New Orleans Picayune, March 17,
1846.
® Baltimore Sun, August 1, 1840; Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 190-91.
1 Richmond Enquirer, August 1, 1837; Mobile Commercial Register,
November 20, 1837; John Walker Diary, entry for December 16, 1848.

1 1 1
 The Peculiar Institution

"Poor ignorant devils, for what do they run away?” asked a

puzzled master. “They are well clothed, work easy and have
all kinds of plantation produce.” 8 Some masters, it appears,
were betrayed by their own pessimistic assumptions about
human nature, especially about the nature of Negroes 1
When slaves protested against bondage (or some specific
aspect of it) by flight, however, they normally had a clear
personal grievance or an obvious objective. One of their
most common grievances was being arbitrarily separated
from families and friends. Hired slaves often became fugi¬
tives as they attempted to get back to their homes. Many of
the runaways had recently been carried from an eastern
state to the Southwest; torn by loneliness they tried fran¬
tically to find their ways back to Virginia or to one of the
Carolinas. Sometimes a timid slave had never before at¬
tempted escape until he was uprooted by sale to a trader or
to another master.
The advertisements for runaways were filled with per¬
sonal tragedies such as the following: “I think it quite
probable that this fellow has succeeded in getting to his
wife, who was carried away last Spring out of my neighbor¬
hood.” Lawrence, aged fourteen, was trying to make his
way from Florida to Atlanta where “his mother is sup¬
posed to be.” Mary “is no doubt lurking about in the vicin¬
ity of Goose Creek, where she has children.” Will, aged
fifty, “has recently been owned in Savannah, where he has
a wife and children.”9 Items such as these appeared regu¬
larly in the southern press.
Occasionally running away enabled a slave to defeat an
attempt to move him against his will. A North Carolina
slave fled to the woods when his master tried to take him to

® Sellers, Slavery in Alabama, pp. 13-14.

9 Huntsville Southern Advocate, December 11, 1829; Tallahassee Florid¬
ian and Journal, May 20, 1854; Charleston Courier, April 10, 1847;
March 10, 1856.
Ill: A Troublesome Property

Tennessee, and a Georgia slave escaped to his old home

after being taken to Alabama. In both cases the owners de¬
cided to sell them to owners in the neighborhoods where
they wished to remain, rather than be troubled with poten¬
tial “habitual runaways.” 1
Flight was also a means by which slaves resisted attempts
to work them too severely. The heavier labor burdens as
well as the more favorable climatic conditions accounted
for the higher incidence of runaways in summer. Cotton
growers found the number increasing at picking time, su¬
gar growers during the grinding season. Planters who used
the task system faced the danger of “a general stampede to
the ‘swamp’ ” when they attempted to increase the stand¬
ardized tasks. The overseer on a Florida plantation, dissatis¬
fied with the rate at which the hands were picking cotton,
tried “pushing them up a Little,” whereupon some of
them retaliated by absconding. Sometimes these escapes re¬
sembled strikes, and master or overseer had to negotiate
terms upon which the slaves would agree to return. A
small slaveholder in Louisiana once wrote in his diary: “I
arose this morning as usual to proceed to the day’s work,
but there were none to do it, with the exception of Sib and
Jess.” The rest had run off in protest against his work regi¬
men.2
Slaves ran away to avoid punishment for misdeeds or to
get revenge for punishments already received. Most masters
knew that it was folly to threaten slaves with “correction,”
for this usually caused them to disappear. An overseer re¬
ported the escape of a slave to his employer: “I went to
1 Balie Peyton to Samuel Smith Downey, January 6, March 7, 1831, Sam¬
uel Smith Downey Papers; John C. Pickens to Samuel Pickens, June
28, 1827, Pickens Papers.
2 Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 100-101, 434-36; Phillips and Glunt (eds.),
Florida Plantation Records, p. 95; Phillips, American Negro Slavery,
p. 303; John Spencer Bassett, The Southern Plantation Overseer As
Revealed in His Letters (Northampton, Mass., 1925), p. 18; Marston
Diary, entry for May 19, 1828.
 The Peculiar Institution

give him a Floging for not coming to work in due time and
he told me that he would not take it and run off.” 3 * 5 Olm
sted learned that slaves “often ran away after they had been
whipped, or something else had happened to make them
angry.” Those who advertised for fugitives confirmed this
fact; they frequently stated that a bondsman “was well pad-
died before he left,” or that “on examination he will be
found to have been severely whipped.” Slaveholders dis¬
covered that some of their human chattels would not toler¬
ate being “dealt harshly with—otherwise they will run
off—and if once the habit of absconding is fixed, it is diffi¬
cult to conquer it.” *
In other cases escape was simply the result of a longing
for at least temporary relief from the restraints and disci¬
pline of slavery. “John’s running off,” explained an over¬
seer, “was for no other cause, than that he did not feel dis¬
posed to be governed, by the same rules and regulations
that the other negroes . . . are governed by.”6 This
seemed to be the most common motive, and in spite of se¬
vere punishment some ran away time after time. The most
talented fugitives reduced the technique to a science. For
example, Remus and his wife Patty escaped from James
Battle’s Alabama plantation; were caught and jailed in
Montgomery; escaped again; were caught and jailed in Co¬
lumbus, Georgia; escaped again; and were then still at
large. Battle urged the next jailer to “secure Remus well.” 6
Slaves like Remus set “evil” examples for others. A small
slaveholder in South Carolina was distressed by his “runa¬
way fellow” Team: “this is the 2d or 3d time he has rana-

3 Phillips and Glunt (eds.) , Florida Plantation Records, p. 57.

8 Olmsted, Back Country, p. 79; Memphis Daily Appeal, July 23, 1859;
New Orleans Picayune, October 5, 1847; Stephen Duncan to Thomas
Butler, September 20, 1851, Butler Family Papers.
5 Elisha Cain to Alexander Telfair, October 10, 1829, Telfair Planta¬
tion Records.
8 Milledgeville Southern Recorder, February 16, 1836.

114
Ill: A Troublesome Property

way, and lost together nearly a years work, I cannot afford

to keep him at this rate, he will spoil the rest of my people
by his bad example.” Moreover, the skilled, “habitual”
runaway often persuaded friends or relatives to decamp
with him. A Mississippian advertised for his slave Jim, “a
dangerous old scoundrel to be running at large, as he has
the tact of exercising great influence with other negroes to
induce them to run away.” * 7 No punishment could break
the spirit of such a slave, and he remained an “incorrigible
scamp” as long as he lived.
In most cases the runaways were at large for only a short
time—a few days or, at most, a few weeks—before they
were caught or decided to return voluntarily. But some of
them, though remaining in the South, eluded their pur¬
suers with amazing success. It took a South Carolinian a
year to catch a slave woman who was over fifty years old. A
Florida master advertised for a slave who had been a fugi¬
tive for three years. In 1832, a Virginia master was still
searching for two slaves who had escaped fifteen years ear¬
lier. And a jailer in Jones County, North Carolina, gave no¬
tice that he had captured a bondsman who had been a runa¬
way for twenty-five years.8
The success of runaway expeditions depended upon the
willingness of other slaves to give the fugitives aid. Some of
them were helped by literate bondsmen who provided them
with passes. One slave carpenter made a business of writing
passes for his friends; when he was finally detected he ran
away himself.9 Slaveholders knew that their bondsmen fed
and concealed runaways, but they were unable to stop

t Gavin Diary, entry for July 4, 1857; Vicksburg Weekly Sentinel, Au¬
gust 9, 1849.
8 Wilmington (N.C.) Journal, September 5, 1851; July 5, 1855; Talla¬
hassee Floridian, March 13, 1847; Richmond Enquirer, September 4,
1832.
» Rachel O’Connor to Mary C. Weeks, April 9, 1833, David Weeks and
Family Collection.
 The Peculiar Institution

them. In Louisiana a fugitive was found to have been “lurk¬

ing” about his master’s premises for nearly a year while
sympathetic bondsmen “harbored” him.1
A few slaves betrayed runaways, but usually it was futile
for a master to expect their help in catching his property.
Even domestics often refused to be informers. One house
servant was whipped for not reporting that she had heard a
runaway “talking in the yard.” James H. Hammond de¬
moted two domestics to field labor for aiding runaways and
cut off the meat allowance of all his slaves until they would
help him bring them in. A Mississippi planter wrote an¬
grily that his slave woman Nancy, who had been treated
“with the greatest indulgence,” was “taken in the very act”
of carrying food to some runaways. “There is no gratitude
among them,” he concluded, “and there is nothing more
true, than that they will not bear indulgence.” 2
Bands of fugitives sometimes fled into the fastness of a
forest or swamp where they established camps and lived in
rude huts. Occasionally they tried to grow their own food,
but more often they obtained it by raiding nearby farms.
One such camp in South Carolina was in a “clearing in a
very dense thicket” from which the runaways “killed the
hogs and sheep and robbed the fields of the neighbors.” A
party hunting fugitives in the same state found another
camp which was “well provided with meal, cooking uten¬
sils, blankets, etc,” and near which “corn, squashes, and
peas were growing.” Slaves rarely betrayed the locations of
these camps. A Louisiana planter, searching for runaways,
“very foolish[ly]” tried to force a captured slave woman to

1 Davis (ed.), Diary of Bennet H. Barrow, pp. 226-27; Northup, Twelve

Years a Slave, pp. 236-49.
2 Mrs. Andrew McCollam Ms. Diary, entry for April 20, 1847; Ham¬
mond Diary, entries for July 1, 18, 19, 1832; Stephen Duncan to
Thomas Butler, July 1, 1823, Butler Family Papers.
Ill: A Troublesome Property

lead him to their camp and thus “fooled the day off to no
purpose.”* * 3
Some bold fugitives, because of the lightness of their
complexions or because they possessed forged “free pa¬
pers,” made no attempt to conceal themselves. An Alabama
master sounded a warning that appeared frequently in
fugitive-slave advertisements: Daniel would “no doubt
change his name and have a free pass, or pass to hire his
time as he has done before.” 4 This Negro was, in effect,
trying to work and live as a free man while remaining in
the South. A fugitive blacksmith repeatedly wrote passes
for himself authorizing him to travel about and work at
his trade; another managed to find employment in the tur¬
pentine industry for nearly two years.5 Still others, pretend¬
ing to be “free persons of color,” were eventually caught
working in the fisheries, on the wharves, or on river boats.
They could scarcely have given stronger evidence of their
longing for freedom and of their ability to take care of
themselves.
But slaves who ran away with the hope of gaining perma¬
nent freedom usually attempted to get out of the South.
This fearful enterprise involved a dangerous journey along
the back ways in the dead of night. Most of the time it
ended in the tragedy of failure, which meant certain pun¬
ishment and possibly no second opportunity. When it
ended in success, the fugitive at best faced an uncertain fu¬
ture among strangers. But a passionate desire for a new and
better life in freedom caused many bondsmen to take all
these risks. How often they succeeded there is no way of

3 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, p. 434; Howell M. Henry, The Po¬
lice Control of the Slaves in South Carolina (Emory, Va., 1914),
p. 121; Davis (ed.), Diary of Bennet H. Barrow, pp. 341-43.
* Pensacola Gazette, November 3, 1838.
3 Milledgeville Southern Recorder, July 18, 1843; Raleigh North Caro¬
lina Standard, November 7, 1855.

117
 The Peculiar Institution
knowing accurately. The claim of a southern judge in 1855
that the South had by then lost “upwards of 60,000 slaves”
to the North was a reasonable estimate.0 In any case, the
number was large enough to keep southern masters on
guard and to remind Northerners that defenders of slavery
did not speak for the slaves.
Most of the fugitives who tried to reach the free states
naturally came from the Upper South where the distance
was relatively short and the chance of success accordingly
greater. In 1847, a Louisville newspaper reported that
nearly fifty Kentucky slaves had recently escaped across the
Ohio River; slave property, the paper commented, was be¬
coming “entirely insecure” in the river counties.7 Maryland
lacked even a river barrier, and probably more bondsmen
fled to the North through this state than through any other.
In Cecil County, slaves were reported in 1848 to be “run¬
ning away in droves.” In Charles County, a “strange and
singular spirit” once came over the bondsmen, with the re¬
sult that more than eighty fled in a single group. (Their
recapture made it evident again that it was foolhardy to at¬
tempt escape in groups of this size.) On various occasions
Maryland slaveholders assembled to consider measures “to
put a stop to the elopement” of Negroes.8 They never suc¬
ceeded.
Fear of being sold to the Deep South, as well as fear of
having their families broken, often caused bondsmen in the
Upper South to flee to the North. Many ran away when the
estates of deceased masters were being settled. Sometimes
the mere threat of a sale was sufficient provocation. A Vir¬
ginia Negro who escaped to Canada recalled: “Master used

8 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, pp. 45-46; Franklin, From Slav¬
ery to Freedom, p. 255-56.
t Louisville Democrat, September 6, 1847; Coleman, Slavery Times in
Kentucky, p. 219.
s Baltimore Sun, July to, 14, 22, 1845; April 22, 1848.

Il8
Ill: A Troublesome Property

to say, that if we didn’t suit him, he would put us in his

pocket quick—meaning he would sell us.” 9
A few runaways from the Deep South also attempted to
reach the free states in spite of their slender chances of suc¬
cess. An Alabama master advertised for his slave Gilbert,
“a carpenter by trade and an excellent workman,” who
would probably “endeavor to get to Ohio, as he ran
away . . . once before, and his aim was to get to that
state.” Archy and his wife Maria escaped from their master
in Wilkes County, Georgia: “They will make for a free
State, as the boy Archy has heretofore made several at¬
tempts to do.” Prince, a South Carolina fugitive, was doubt¬
less aiming for a free state, “having runaway . . . [before]
and got as far as Salisbury, N.C., before he was appre¬
hended.” * 1 These slaves often tried to reach a seaport and
get aboard a vessel bound for the North. Generally they
were caught before the vessel left port.
Abraham, who lived in Mobile and was for many years
his master’s “confidential servant,” was one of the few slaves
from the Deep South who actually got all the way to a free
state. “By dint of his ingenuity and adroitness at forgery,
and a good share of cunning,” Abraham made his way un¬
hindered until he reached Baltimore. Here he was arrested
and taken before a magistrate, “but his fictitious papers
were so well executed . . . [that] he was at once suffered
to go free.” He then went on to New York where he found
employment as a hotel porter. Eventually, however, his
master found him and under the provisions of the fugitive-
slave law carried him back to bondage.2 Not many runa¬
ways from the Deep South experienced Abraham’s bitter
disappointment, because not many came so close to having
freedom within their grasp.
s Drew, The Refugee, passim.
1 Mobile Commercial Register, March 17, 1834; Nashville Republican
Banner, July 3, 1843; Columbia South Carolinian, July 20, 1847.
2 Baltimore Sun, August 15, 1842.

119
 The Peculiar Institution
While the North Star was the fugitives’ traditional guide,
some saw liberty beckoning from other directions. They
fled to the British during the American Revolution and the
War of 1812, and to the Spanish before the purchases of
Louisiana and Florida. At a later date Florida slaves es¬
caped to the Seminole Indians, aided them in their war
against the whites, and accompanied them when they
moved to the West.* * 3 At Key West, in 1858, a dozen slaves
stole a small boat and successfully navigated it to freedom
in the Bahamas.4 Arkansas runaways often tried to make
their way to the Indian country. For Texas slaves, Mexico
was the land of freedom, and most of those who sought it
headed for the Rio Grande. In Mexico the fugitives gener¬
ally were welcomed and protected, and in some cases sym¬
pathetic peons guided them in their flight.5
How often runaways received assistance from free per¬
sons residing in the South is hard to determine, but it seems
likely that they seldom trusted anyone but fellow slaves. A
few white Southerners who opposed slavery gave sanctuary
to fugitives or directed them along their routes. Slavehold¬
ers sometimes suspected that runaways were being har¬
bored by some “evil disposed person” or “unprincipled
white.” Now and then free Negroes also gave aid to the less
fortunate members of their race. One of them, Richard
Buckner, was convicted of assisting slaves to escape from
Kentucky and sentenced to two years in prison. Free Ne¬
groes who were employed on river boats or on vessels en¬
gaged in the coastal trade occasionally concealed slaves who

* Kenneth W. Porter, "Florida Slaves and Free Negroes in the Seminole

War, 1835-1842," Journal of Negro History, XXVIII (1943), pp. 390-
421.
* Tallahassee Floridian and Journal, February 20, 1858.
5 Austin Texas State Gazette, September 23, 1854; April 7, June 2, 1855;
San Antonio Ledger, September 21, 1854; Olmsted, Texas, pp. 323-27;
Paul S. Taylor, An American-Mexican Frontier (Chapel Hill, 1934),
PP- 33-39-

120
Ill: A Troublesome Property

were trying to reach the free states.®

Many Southerners were convinced that the slave states
were honeycombed with northern abolitionist agents seek¬
ing to create discontent among the slaves and to urge them
to abscond. While this was an exaggeration, a few North¬
erners did undertake this hazardous enterprise. In 1849, a
Missouri newspaper complained that almost every day
slaves were induced “by the persuasions of Abolitionists, to
abandon comfortable homes.” Supporters of the antislavery
movement operated in Kentucky (sometimes disguised as
peddlers) and guided hundreds to freedom across the Ohio
River. On one occasion three Northerners made an unsuc¬
cessful effort to help seventy-eight slaves escape from the
District of Columbia by boat down the Potomac River. In
1844, Jonathan Walker, a New Englander, was severely
punished for attempting to ferry seven fugitives from Pen¬
sacola to the Bahamas. Ten years later, James Redpath,
the Massachusetts abolitionist, traveled through the slave
states trying to persuade slaves to run away.7 But the bonds¬
men generally needed assistance more than persuasion.
Not the least of those who gave assistance to fugitives
were former slaves who had themselves escaped and then
returned to help others. One of them was Ben, “a stout
hearty negro,” who absconded from Kentucky but “was not
satisfied with letting ‘well enough alone.’ ” Instead he en¬
gaged in “running off the ‘property’ of his late master at
every opportunity.” When at length Ben was caught, he
“fought with the desperation of a man who had once tasted

8 Louisville Democrat, October 26, 1858; Richmond Enquirer, August

3, 1847; Trexler, Slavery in Missouri, p. 178.
t St. Louis Missouri Republican, November 5, 1849; Lexington Ken¬
tucky Statesman, June 20, 1854; Baltimore Sun, April 18, 19, 21, 1848;
Edwin L. Williams, Jr., “Negro Slavery in Florida,” Florida Historical
Quarterly, XXVIII (1950), p. 185; James Redpath, The Roving Ed¬
itor: or. Talks with Slaves in the Southern States (New York, 1859),
passim.

121
 The Peculiar Institution
the sweets of liberty”; but he was overpowered and re¬
enslaved. Harriet Tubman, after twenty-five years in bond¬
age, escaped from her master who lived on the Eastern
Shore of Maryland. During the 1850’s she returned nine¬
teen times to deliver parties of fugitives.* * 8 There were oth¬
ers whose careers were less spectacular.
Harriet Tubman was one of the many ex-slaves who
served as “conductors” on the famed Underground Rail¬
road. Along its various routes in the Northeast and North¬
west they, together with northern free Negroes and sympa¬
thetic whites, sheltered the frightened fugitives and sped
them on their way.9 These runaway slaves did much to dis¬
turb the consciences of the northern people and to arouse
sympathy for those they left behind.
But southern masters were less disturbed about the ulti¬
mate consequences than they were about their immediate
losses. Moreover, every successful runaway was bound to en¬
courage other slaves to try their luck in the same enter¬
prise. When a Tennessee master learned that several of his
bondsmen had escaped to Canada, he vowed that he would
recover them if it cost all that they were worth. “I intend
going to Canada next spring and if there is no other choice
I will kidnap them, or have them at the risk of my life.”1
This was idle talk; his slaves were lost forever.
Only a few of the runaways left records of their feelings
at the time they made their break for liberty. One of them,
Anthony Chase, the property of a Baltimore widow, com¬
posed a priceless document. In 1827, after failing to get
permission to purchase his freedom, Chase escaped from

s Louisville Democrat, October 27, 1857; Sarah H. Bradford, Scenes in

the Life of Harriet Tubman (Auburn, N.Y., 1869), passim.
8 William Still, The Underground Railroad (Philadelphia, 1879), pas¬
sim; Wilbur H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to
Freedom (New York, 1898), passim.
1 John P. Chester to Hamilton Brown, September 13, 1837, Hamilton
Brown Papers.

128
Ill: A Troublesome Property

the man to whom he was hired. It was to him, rather than

to his owner, that Chase penned his personal Declaration
of Independence:

I know that you will be astonished and surprised when

you becom acquainted with the unexspected course that I
am now about to take, a step that I never had the most
distant idea of takeing, but what can a man do who has
his hands bound and his feet fettered [?] He will certainly
try to get them loosened in any way that he may think the
most adviseable. I hope sir that you will not think that I
had any fault to find of you or your family[.] No sir I
have none and I could of hired with you all the days of
my life if my conditions could of been in any way bettered
which I intreated with my mistress to do but it was all in
vain[.] She would not consent to anything that would
melorate my condition in any shape or measure[.] So I
shall go to sea in the first vesel that may offer an oppor¬
tunity and as soon as I can acumulate a sum of money
suficient I will remit it to my mistress to prove to her and
to [the] world that I dont mean to be dishonest but wish
to pay her every cent that I think my servaces is
worth. ... I dont supose that I shall ever be forgiven
for this act but I hope to find forgiveness in that world
that is to com.

After wishing his former employer “helth and happyness,”

Anthony Chase, with an unconscious touch of irony, signed
himself “your most obedient serv[an]t.” 2 And thus another
slaveholder was left to meditate upon the folly of placing
confidence in the loyalty of slaves.
The bondsmen who protested against bondage by run¬
ning away or by some form of malingering were a perplex¬
ing lot. Since, by all outward appearances, they usually
seemed cheerful and submissive, masters could never be

a Anthony Chase to Jeremiah Hoffman, August 8, 1827, Otho Holland

Williams Papers.

123
 The Peculiar Institution
sure whether their misdeeds were purposeful or capricious.
Their smiling faces were most disarming.
There were some bondsmen, however, who did not smile.

5
“His look is impudent and insolent, and he holds himself
straight and walks well.” So a Louisiana master described
James, a runaway slave.3 There were always bondsmen like
James. In 1669, a Virginia statute referred to “the obsti¬
nacy of many of them”; in 1802, a South Carolina judge de¬
clared that they were “in general a headstrong, stubborn
race of people”; and in 1859, a committee of a South Caro¬
lina agricultural society complained of the “insolence of
disposition to which, as a race, they are remarkably liable.”
An overseer on a Louisiana plantation wrote nervously
about the many “outrageous acts” recently committed by
slaves in his locality and insisted that he scarcely had time
to eat and sleep: “The truth is no man can begin to attend
to Such a business with any Set of negroes, without the
Strictest vigilance on his part.” 4 It was the minority of
slaves whom his discipline could not humble (the “inso¬
lent,” “surly,” and “unruly” ones) that worried this over¬
seer—and slaveholders generally. These were the slaves
whose discontent drove them to drastic measures.
Legally the offenses of the rebels ranged from petty mis¬
demeanors to capital crimes, and they were punished ac¬
cordingly. The master class looked upon any offense as
more reprehensible (and therefore subject to more severe
penalties) when committed by a slave than when commit¬
ted by a free white. But how can one determine the proper
s New Orleans Picayune, November 4, 1851.
* Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, I, p. 232; Catterall (ed.), Judi¬
cial Cases, II, pp. 281-82; De Bow’s Review, XXVI (1859), p. 107;
Moore Rawls to Lewis Thompson, May 9, 1858, Lewis Thompson
Papers.

124
Ill: A Troublesome Property

ethical standards for identifying undesirable or even crim¬

inal behavior among slaves? How distinguish a “good”
from a “bad” slave? Was the “good” slave the one who was
courteous and loyal to his master, and who did his work
faithfully and cheerfully? Was the “bad” slave the one who
would not submit to his master, and who defiantly fought
back? What were the limits, if any, to which a man de¬
prived of his freedom could properly go in resisting bond¬
age? How accountable was a slave to a legal code which
gave him more penalties than protection and was itself a
bulwark of slavery? This much at least can be said: many
slaves rejected the answers which their masters gave to
questions such as these. The slaves did not thereby repudi¬
ate law and morality: rather, they formulated legal and
moral codes of their own.
The white man’s laws against theft, for example, were
not supported by the slave’s code. In demonstrating the
“absence of moral principle” among bondsmen, one master
observed: “To steal and not to be detected is a merit among
them.” Let a master turn his back, wrote another, and
some “cunning fellow” would appropriate part of his
goods. No slave would betray another, for an informer was
held “in greater detestation than the most notorious
thief.” 5 6
If slaveholders are to be believed, petty theft was an al¬
most universal “vice”; slaves would take anything that was
not under lock and key. Field-hands killed hogs and robbed
the corn crib. House servants helped themselves to wines,
whiskey, jewelry, trinkets, and whatever else was lying
about. Fugitives sometimes gained from their master un¬
willing help in financing the journey to freedom, the ad¬
vertisements often indicating that they absconded with
money, clothing, and a horse or mule. Thefts were not nec-
5 Harrison, Gospel Among the Slaves, p. 103; Farmers' Register, V
('837). P- 3°*-

>*5
 The Peculiar Institution
essarily confined to the master’s goods: any white man
might be considered fair game.
Some bondsmen engaged in theft on more than a casual
and petty basis. They made a business of it and thus sought
to obtain comforts and luxuries which were usually denied
them. A South Carolina master learned that his house serv¬
ants had been regularly looting his wine cellar and that one
of them was involved in an elaborate “system of roguery.”
A planter in North Carolina found that three of his slaves
had “for some months been carrying on a robbery” of meat
and lard, the leader being “a young carpenter, remarkable
for smartness . . . and no less worthy for his lamentable
deficiency in common honesty.”6
If the stolen goods were not consumed directly, they were
traded to whites or to free Negroes. This illegal trade
caused masters endless trouble, for slaves were always will¬
ing to exchange plantation products for tobacco, liquor, or
small sums of money. Southern courts were kept busy han¬
dling the resulting prosecutions. One slaveholder discov¬
ered that his bondsmen had long been engaged in an exten¬
sive trade in corn. “Strict vigilance,” he concluded, was
necessary “to prevent them from theft; particularly when
dishonesty is inherent, as is probably the case with some of
them.” 7 Dishonesty, as the master understood the term, in¬
deed seemed to be a common if not an inherent trait of
southern slaves.
The slaves, however, had a somewhat different definition
of dishonesty in their own code, to which they were reason¬
ably faithful. For appropriating their master’s goods they
might be punished and denounced by him, but they were
not likely to be disgraced among their associates in the

« Hammond Diary, entry for October 16, 1835; William S. Pettigrew to

[James C. Johnston], October 3, 1850, Pettigrew Family Papers.
* William S. Pettigrew to J. Johnston Pettigrew, March 9, 1849, Petti¬
grew Family Papers; Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, passim.

126
Ill: A Troublesome Property

slave quarters, who made a distinction between “stealing”

and “taking.” Appropriating things from the master meant
simply taking part of his property for the benefit of an¬
other part or, as Frederick Douglass phrased it, “taking his
meat out of one tub, and putting it in another.” Thus a fe¬
male domestic who had been scolded for the theft of some
trinkets was reported to have replied: “Law, mam, don’t
say I’s wicked; ole Aunt Ann says it allers right for us poor
colored people to ’popiate whatever of de wite folk’s bless¬
ings de Lord puts in our way.” Stealing, on the other hand,
meant appropriating something that belonged to another
slave, and this was an offense which slaves did not con¬
done.8
The prevalence of theft was a clear sign that slaves were
discontented, at least with the standard of living imposed
upon them. They stole food to increase or enrich their
diets or to trade for other coveted commodities. Quite obvi¬
ously they learned from their masters the pleasures that
could be derived from the possession of worldly goods; and
when the opportunity presented itself, they “took” what
was denied them as slaves.
Next to theft, arson was the most common slave “crime,”
one which slaveholders dreaded almost constantly. Fire was
a favorite means for aggrieved slaves to even the score with
their master. Reports emanated periodically from some re¬
gion or other that there was an “epidemic” of gin-house
burnings, or that some bondsman had taken his revenge by
burning the slave quarters or other farm buildings. More
than one planter thus saw the better part of a year’s harvest
go up in flames.9 Southern newspapers and court records

8 Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 189-91; Austin Steward, Twenty-Two

Years a Slave (Canandaigua, N.Y., 1856) , p. 29; Olmsted, Seaboard,
pp. 116-17; Sellers, Slavery in Alabama, p. 257.
« Davis (ed.), Diary of Bennet H. Barrow, p. 131 n.; Rachel O’Conner
to David Weeks, June 16, 1833, Weeks Collection; S. Porcher Gaillard
Ms. Plantation Journal, entry for May g, 1856.

127
 The Peculiar Institution
are filled with illustrations of this offense, and with evi¬
dence of the severe penalties inflicted upon those found
guilty of committing it.
Another “crime” was what might be called self-sabotage,
a slave deliberately unfitting himself to labor for his mas¬
ter. An Arkansas slave, “at any time to save an hour’s
work,” could “throw his left shoulder out of place.” A Ken¬
tucky slave made himself unserviceable by downing medi¬
cines from his master’s dispensary (thus showing a better
understanding of the value of these nostrums than his
owner). A slave woman was treated as an invalid because
of “swellings in her arms”—until it was discovered that she
produced this condition by thrusting her arms periodically
into a beehive. Yellow Jacob, according to his master’s
plantation journal, “had a kick from a mule and when
nearly well would bruise it and by that means kept from
work.” 1 Another Negro, after being punished by his owner,
retaliated by cutting off his right hand; still another cut off
the fingers of one hand to avoid being sold to the Deep
South.2
A few desperate slaves carried this form of resistance to
the extreme of self-destruction. Those freshly imported
from Africa and those sold away from friends and relatives
were especially prone to suicide.3 London, a slave on a
Georgia rice plantation, ran to the river and drowned him¬
self after being threatened with a whipping. His overseer
gave orders to leave the corpse untouched “to let the
[other] negroes see [that] when a negro takes his own life
they will be treated in this manner.” A Texas planter be-

1 Helena (Ark.) Southern Shield, July 23, 1853; Buckingham, Slave

States, I, p. 402; Gaillard Plantation Journal, entry for May 9, 1856.
2 Harriet Martineau, Society in America (New York, 1837) , II, p. 113;
Drew, The Refugee, p. 178.
3 Phillips (ed.), Plantation and Frontier, II, p. 31; Catterall (ed.), Ju¬
dicial Cases, II, pp. 425-26; III, pp. 216-17; Drew, The Refugee,
p. 178.

128
Ill: A Troublesome Property

wailed the loss of a slave woman who hanged herself after

two unsuccessful breaks for freedom: “I had been offered
$900.00 for her not two months ago, but damn her ... 1
would not have had it happened for twice her value. The
fates pursue me." 4
Some runaways seemed determined to make their recap¬
ture as costly as possible and even resisted at the risk of
their own lives. One advertisement, typical of many,
warned that an escaped slave was a “resolute fellow” who
would probably not be taken without a “show of compe¬
tent force.” When, after a day-long chase, three South Caro¬
lina fugitives were cornered, they “fought desperately,”
inflicted numerous wounds upon their pursuers with a bar¬
rage of rocks, and “refused to surrender until a force of
about forty-five or fifty men arrived.” 5 In southern court
records there are numerous cases of runaway slaves who
killed whites or were themselves killed in their frantic ef¬
forts to gain freedom.
In one dramatic case, a Louisiana fugitive was detected
working as a free Negro on a Mississippi River flatboat. His
pursuers, trailing him with a pack of “Negro dogs,” finally
found him “standing at bay upon the outer edge of a large
raft of drift wood, armed with a club and pistol.” He
threatened to kill anyone who got near him. “Finding him
obstinately determined not to surrender, one of his pur¬
suers shot him. He fell at the third fire, and so determined
was he not to be captured, that when an effort was made to
rescue him from drowning he made battle with his club,
and sunk waving his weapon in angry defiance.” 6
An effort to break up an organized gang of runaways was
a dangerous business, because they were often unwilling to
4 Phillips (ed.), Plantation and Frontier, II, p. 94; John R. Lyons to
William W. Renwick, April 4, 1854, William W. Renwick Papers.
5 Petition of William Boyd to South Carolina legislature, November 29,
1858, in South Carolina Slavery Manuscripts Collection.
6 Feliciana Whig, quoted in Olmsted, Back Country, p. 474.

129
 The Peculiar Institution
surrender without a fight. The fugitives in one well-armed
band in Alabama were building a fort at the time they
were discovered. Their camp was destroyed after a “smart
skirmish’’ during which three of them were killed.7 Such
encounters did not always end in defeat for the slaves; some
runaway bands successfully resisted all attempts at capture
and remained at large for years.
Ante-bellum records are replete with acts of violence
committed by individual slaves upon masters, overseers,
and other whites. A Texan complained, in 1853, that cases
of slaves murdering white men were becoming “painfully
frequent.” “Within the last year or two many murders have
taken place, by negroes upon their owners,” reported a
Louisiana newspaper. And a Florida editor once wrote: “It
is our painful duty to record another instance of the de¬
struction of the life of a white man by a slave.” 8
Many masters owned one or more bondsmen whom they
feared as potential murderers. A Georgia planter remem¬
bered Jack, his plantation carpenter, “the most notoriously
bad character and worst Negro of the place.” Jack “was the
only Negro ever in our possession who I considered capable
of Murdering me, or burning my dwelling at night, or ca¬
pable of committing any act.” 9
Slaves like Jack could be watched closely; but others ap¬
peared to be submissive until suddenly they turned on their
masters. Even trusted house servants might give violent ex¬
pression to long pent up feelings. One “first rate” female
domestic, while being punished, abruptly attacked her mis¬
tress, "threw her down, and beat her unmercifully on the
head and face.” A “favorite body servant” of a “humane
master who rarely or never punished his slaves” one day
1 Phillips (ed.), Plantation and Frontier, II, pp. 90-91; Bassett, Planta¬
tion Overseer, pp. 78-79.
* Austin Texas State Gazette, September 3, 1853; Alexandria (La.) Red
River Republican, April 24, 1852; Pensacola Gazette, May 4, 1839.
* Manigault Plantation Records, entry for March 22, 1867.
Ill: A Troublesome Property

became insolent. Unwilling to be disciplined, this slave

waylaid his owner, “knocked him down with a whiteoak
club, and beat his head to a pumice.” 1 Here was another
reason why it seemed foolish for a master to put his “confi¬
dence in a Negro.”
At times these acts of violence appeared to be for “no
cause”—that is, they resulted from a slave’s “bad disposi¬
tion” rather than from a particular grievance. But more
often they resulted from a clash of personalities, or from
some specific incident. For example, a slave who had been
promised freedom in his master’s will, poisoned his master
to hasten the day of liberation. A South Carolina bondsman
was killed during a fight with an overseer who had whipped
his son. In North Carolina a slave intervened while the
overseer was whipping his wife, and in the ensuing battle
the overseer met his death.2
The most common provocation to violence was the at¬
tempt of a master or overseer either to work or to punish
slaves severely. An Alabama bondsman confessed killing
the overseer because “he was a hard down man on him,
and said he was going to be harder.” Six Louisiana slaves
together killed an overseer and explained in their confes¬
sion that they found it impossible to satisfy him. Three
North Carolina slaves killed their master when they de¬
cided that “the old man was too hard on them, and they
must get rid of him.” 3 During one of these crises an over¬
seer called upon his hands to help him punish an “unman¬
ageable” slave: “not one of them paid the least attention to
me but kept on at their work.” These encounters did not
r Rachel O'Conner to A. T. Conrad, May 26, 1836, Weeks Collection;
Austin Texas State Gazette, September 23, 1854.
2 Martineau, Society in America, II, pp. 110-11; Catterall (ed.), Judi¬
cial Cases, II, pp. 206-207, 434_35-
» Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, pp. 238-41; Reuben Carnal to
Lewis Thompson, June 17, 1855, Lewis Thompson Papers; Hardy
Hardison to William S. Pettigrew, February 11, 1858, Pettigrew Fam¬
ily Papers.
 The Peculiar Institution
always lead to death, but few plantations escaped without
at least one that might easily have ended in tragedy.
“Things move on here in the old Style except that now and
then a refractory negro has to be taken care of,” was the
off-hand comment of a planter.4
Sometimes a slave who showed sufficient determination
to resist punishment managed to get the best of his owner
or overseer. A proud bondsman might vow that, regardless
of the consequences, he would permit no one to whip him.5
An overseer thought twice before precipitating a major
crisis with a strong-willed slave; he might even overlook
minor infractions of discipline.
But an impasse such as this was decidedly unusual; if it
had not been, slavery itself would have stood in jeopardy.
Ordinarily these clashes between master and slave were
fought out to a final settlement, and thus a thread of vio¬
lence was woven into the pattern of southern bondage. Vio¬
lence, indeed, was the method of resistance adopted by the
boldest and most discontented slaves. Its usual reward, how¬
ever, was not liberty but death!

6
No ante-bellum Southerner could ever forget Nat
Turner. The career of this man made an impact upon the
people of his section as great as that of John C. Calhoun or
Jefferson Davis. Yet Turner was only a slave in Southamp¬
ton County, Virginia—and during most of his life a rather
unimpressive one at that. He was a pious man, a Baptist
exhorter by avocation, apparently as humble and docile as
a slave was expected to be. There is no evidence that he was
underfed, overworked, or treated with special cruelty. If
* Taylor, "Negro Slavery in Louisiana," pp. 258-59; Charles L. Petti¬
grew to William S. Pettigrew, October 9, 1837, Pettigrew Family Pa¬
pers.
8 Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 95, 242-46; Brown, Narrative, pp. 17-18.

132
Ill: A Troublesome Property

Nat Turner could not be trusted, what slave could? That

was what made his sudden deed so frightening.
Somehow Turner came to believe that he had been di¬
vinely chosen to deliver his people from bondage, and he
persuaded several other slaves to assist him. In due time he
saw the sign for which he had waited, and early in the
morning of August 22, 1831, he and his followers rose in
rebellion. They began by killing the family to whom
Turner belonged. As they marched through the Southamp¬
ton countryside they gained additional recruits, making a
total of about seventy. (Others seemed ready to join if the
rebels came their way. The slave Jacob, for example, pro¬
claimed “that if they came by he would join them and as¬
sist in killing all the white people.”) Within two days they
killed nearly sixty whites. They could have killed more.
They left undisturbed at least one poor white family, “be¬
cause they thought no better of themselves than they did of
the negroes.” To justify the killings, members of Turner’s
band declared that they had had enough of punishment, or
that they now intended to be as rich as their masters. One
rebel demonstrated his new status by walking off in his late
owner’s shoes and socks.
The Nat Turner rebellion lasted only forty-eight hours.
Swiftly mobilizing in overwhelming strength, the whites
easily dispersed the rebels. Then followed a massacre dur¬
ing which not only the insurrectionists but scores of inno¬
cent bondsmen were slaughtered. Others, charged with
“felonously consulting, advising and conspiring ... to
rebel . . . and making insurrection and taking the lives of
divers free white persons of this Commonwealth,” were
tried before a court of oyer and terminer during the months
of September and October. Some were executed, others
transported. Most of those transported had not actively par¬
ticipated in the rebellion; they had merely expressed sym¬
pathy for the rebels.

133
 The Peculiar Institution
Nat Turner himself was not captured until October 30,
more than two months after the uprising. He was brought
to trial on November 5, convicted the same day, and
hanged six days later.6 Thus ended an event which pro¬
duced in the South something resembling a mass trauma,
from which the whites had not recovered three decades
later. The danger that other Nat Turners might emerge,
that an even more serious insurrection might some day oc¬
cur, became an enduring concern as long as the peculiar in¬
stitution survived. Proslavery writers boldly asserted that
Southerners did not fear their slaves, that a rebellion of the
laboring class was more likely to transpire in the North
than in the South; but the fear of rebellion, sometimes
vague, sometimes acute, was with them always.
Though it was the most disastrous (for both slaves and
masters), Nat Turner’s was not the first insurrection. Sev¬
eral earlier conspiracies, which narrowly missed being car¬
ried into execution might easily have precipitated rebel¬
lions much more extensive than that of Turner.7 These up¬
risings and conspiracies began as early as the seventeenth
century and kept Southerners apprehensive throughout the
colonial period. The preamble to a South Carolina statute
of 1740 defining the duties of slave patrols stated that many
“horrible and barbarous massacres’’ had been committed
or plotted by the slaves who were “generally prone to such

9 Details of the Turner insurrection can be found in contemporary

Richmond newspapers, and in the manuscript records of the trials in
Southampton County Minute Book, 1830-1835. See also William S.
Drewry, The Southampton Insurrection (Washington, D.C., 1900);
Thomas R. Gray, The Confessions of Nat Turner (Baltimore, 1831).
t Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (New York, 1943)
presents evidence of many conspiracies and a few rebellions, each in¬
volving ten or more slaves, from the colonial period to the end of the
Civil War. See also Joseph C. Carroll, Slave Insurrections in the
United States, 1800-1865 (Boston, 1938) ; Harvey Wish, "American
Slave Insurrections before 1861," Journal of Negro History, XXII
(!937). PP- 299-320.

134
Ill: A Troublesome Property

cruel practices.” 8 On the eve of the American Revolution

a Charlestonian wrote about a “disturbance” among the
bondsmen who had "mimicked their betters in crying Lib¬
erty.” In 1785, a West Florida slaveholder was dismayed to
learn that several of his slaves were involved in an insurrec¬
tion plot: "Of what avail is kindness and good usage when
rewarded by such ingratitude . . . [?]”9 Such incidents set
the pattern for the nineteenth century.
The new century opened with the Gabriel Conspiracy
(August, 1800) in Henrico County, Virginia, in which at
least a thousand slaves were implicated. The warnings of
two bondsmen and a severe storm enabled the whites to
forestall a projected march upon Richmond. A decade later
some five hundred slaves in St. John the Baptist Parish,
Louisiana, armed with cane knives and other crude weap¬
ons, advanced toward New Orleans. But the planters and a
strong detachment of troops put them to flight. In 1822,
Denmark Vesey, a free Negro in Charleston, planned a vast
conspiracy which came to nothing after it was given away
by a slave. These and other plots were invariably followed
by severe reprisals, including the indiscriminate killing of
slaves as well as mass executions after regular trials. The
heads of sixteen Louisiana rebels were stuck upon poles
along the Mississippi River as a grim warning to other
slaves. After the Vesey conspiracy, Charlestonians ex¬
pressed disillusionment with the idea that by generous
treatment the slaves "would become more satisfied with
their condition and more attached to the whites.” * 1

* Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, I, p. 308.

» Henry Laurens to J. Gervais, January 29, 1766, Henry Laurens Ms.
Letter Book, 1762-1766, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadel¬
phia (copy in possession of Professor Carl Bridenbaugh) ; Sellers,
Slavery in Alabama, pp. 13-14.
1 Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, pp. 209-92; Taylor, "Negro
Slavery in Louisiana," pp. 268-74; Phillips, Plantation and Frontier,
II, pp. 103-104.

»35
 The Peculiar Institution
The shock of Nat Turner caused Southerners to take
preventive measures, but these never eliminated their ap¬
prehension or the actual danger. Hardly a year passed with¬
out some kind of alarming disturbance somewhere in the
South. When no real conspiracy existed, wild rumors often
agitated the whites and at times came close to creating an
insurrection panic. The rumors might be entirely un¬
founded, or they might grow out of some local incident
which was magnified by exaggeration. Even the historian
cannot always distinguish between the rumors and the facts.
Most of the stories seem to have had a foundation in at
least a minor disturbance, limited perhaps to a single
plantation where the slaves suddenly became insubordi¬
nate, or to a whole neighborhood where they showed signs
of becoming restive. Whether caused by rumor or fact, the
specter of rebellion often troubled the sleep of the master
class.
The Turner rebellion itself produced an insurrection
panic that swept the entire South. A Richmond editor won¬
dered whether the southern press was trying to give the
slaves “false conceptions of their numbers and capacity, by
exhibiting the terror and confusion of the whites, and to
induce them to think that practicable, which they see is so
much feared by their superiors.” 2 In eastern North Caro¬
lina the panic caused the arrest of scores of slaves and the
execution of more than a dozen. A South Carolinian re¬
ported that there was “considerable alarm” in his state too
and that some slaves were hanged to prevent a rumored up¬
rising.3 The excitement spread into the Southwest where it
was feared that the bondsmen would become “trouble¬
some.” A Mississippian, confessing “great apprehension,”

2 Richmond Whig, quoted in Alexandria (Va.) Phenix Gazette, Sep¬

tember 6, 1831.
8 Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina, pp. 519-20; Rosannah P. Rog¬
ers to David S. Rogers, October 29, 1831, Renwick Papers.

136
Ill: A Troublesome Property

noted that “within 4 hours march of Natchez” there were

“2200 able bodied male slaves.” He warned: “It behooves
[us] to be vigilent—but silent.”4
Similar insurrection panics developed from time to time
thereafter. In 1835, one of these frightful disturbances cen¬
tered in Mississippi and Louisiana; before it subsided, nu¬
merous bondsmen had been legally or extra-legally exe¬
cuted. This panic even spread into Roane County in East
Tennessee, though that county contained a very small slave
population. There was “a great deal of talk and some dread
of the negroes rising at Christmas or new year,” reported a
local slaveholder. “I can not say that I have had much fear
of their rising here, but have thought it right to be careful
and watchful. It is a disagreeable state of living to be ever
suspicious of those with whom we live.” 6 This point was
illustrated by a not uncommon incident in a small village
on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. One night in 1849, lhe
firing of guns “alarmed the people very much. They at
once thought that the Slaves had risen to murder the white
people. Many immediately left their houses and fled to the
woods. . . . But it was afterwards ascertained that it was a
false alarm.”6 This was indeed a “disagreeable state of
living”!
The most acute and widespread insurrection panics, after
the Turner rebellion, occurred in 1856 and i860, each of
them resulting in part from the rise of the Republican
party and the exciting political campaigns. On both occa¬
sions alarming stories of huge conspiracies spread through
every slave state, stories frequently mentioning “unscrupu¬
lous” white men (presumably abolitionist emissaries like

* Nevitt Plantation Journal, entry for October 28, 1831; Stephen Dun¬
can to Thomas Butler, October 4, 1831, Butler Family Papers.
» William B. Lenoir to Thomas Lenoir, December 27, 1835, Lenoir
Family Papers.
• J. Milton Emerson Ms. Journal, entry for September 29, 1849.

137
 The Peculiar Institution

John Brown) who were “tampering” with the Negroes and

encouraging them to rebel. “All at once, in Kentucky, Ten¬
nessee, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, it is dis¬
covered that the slaves are meditating schemes of insurrec¬
tion,” proclaimed a Richmond newspaper in a hysterical
editorial. “From almost every point in the Southwest, ru¬
mors of insurrectionary movements among the negroes
come upon us with more or less distinct and authentic de¬
tail.” In Virginia, as a slaveholder noted, “reports of negro
plots” had “induced proper measures of vigilance.” i * * * *
South Carolinian observed privately that there was “a good
deal of anxiety,” but little was being said about it, “as every
one felt it should not be the subject of general talk.” In
Texas, one of the principal centers of these insurrection
panics, vigilance committees were hastily formed to deal
with the expected emergency.8 On these occasions, as on
others, there was some substance to the rumors, however
much they were exaggerated. In 1856 slave unrest did in¬
crease noticeably in certain areas, including Texas where
there was at least one well authenticated conspiracy.9
Sometimes rebellions took odd forms. The Seminole
War in Florida was in part a slave revolt, for many fugitive
Negroes fought alongside the Indian warriors. In 1841, a
group of slaves being carried from Virginia to New Orleans
on the brig Creole rose in rebellion, seized the ship, and
sailed it to the Bermudas. In 1848, about seventy-five slaves
from Fayette County, Kentucky, led by a white man, made
a break for the Ohio River. They waged a brisk battle with

i Richmond Enquirer, December 16, 1856; Edmund Ruffin Ms. Diary,

entry for December 25, 1856.
s Easterby (ed.) , South Carolina Rice Plantation, p. 136; Austin Texas
State Gazette, November 15, 22, 29, 1856; Harvey Wish, "The Slave In¬
surrection Panic of 1856,” Journal of Southern History, V (1939),
pp. 206-22.
« Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, pp. 325-58; Wendell G.
Addington, "Slave Insurrections in Texas,” Journal of Negro His¬
tory, XXXV (1950), pp. 408-35.
Ill: A Troublesome Property

their pursuers before they were forced to surrender. More

than forty of them were tried for “most wickedly, sedi¬
tiously, and rebelliously’’ making a “public insurrection.”
Three of the slaves were executed, and their white leader
was sentenced to twenty years in prison.1
One of the last ante-bellum slave conspiracies occurred
in October, i860, in the neighborhood of Plymouth, in
eastern North Carolina. It began when a score of slaves
met in a swamp to plan an insurrection. Their plan was to
persuade several hundred bondsmen to join them in a
march on Plymouth; they would kill all the whites they met
on the road, burn the town, take money and weapons, and
escape by ship through Albemarle Sound. The plot was be¬
trayed by a slave, and once again panic spread throughout
the neighborhood. “When I reached Plymouth,” wrote a
local planter, “the town was in the greatest of commotion,
and, as even calm persons thought, with some reason.” The
country people were “so much excited and alarmed as to
vow themselves as ready to slaughter the negroes indis¬
criminately.” This planter believed that during an insur¬
rection panic “the negroes are in much more danger from
the non slave holding whites than the whites are from the
negroes.” 2 He was probably right, though the slaveholders
were hardly less inclined, on that account, to be ruthless
whenever rumors of rebellion swept through the land.
That there was no slave conspiracy comparable to Den¬
mark Vesey’s and no rebellion comparable to Nat Turner’s,
during the three decades before the Civil War, has been ex¬
plained in many ways. The explanations, however, do not
sufficiently emphasize the impact which the Turner rebel¬
lion had on the slaves themselves. The speed with which it

1 Porter, "Florida Slaves and Free Negroes in the Seminole War, 1835-
1842," loc. cit., pp. 420-21; Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, pp.
565-67; Coleman, Slavery Times in Kentucky, pp. 88-92.
2 William S. Pettigrew to James C. Johnston, October 25, i860, Petti¬
grew Family Papers.

J39
 The Peculiar Institution

was crushed and the massacre that followed were facts soon
known, doubtless, to every slave in Virginia and, before
long, to almost every slave in the South. Among the Negroes
everywhere, news generally spread so far and so fast as to
amaze the whites. The Turner story was not likely to en¬
courage slaves to make new attempts to win their freedom
by fighting for it. They now realized that they would face
a united white community, well armed and quite willing to
annihilate as much of the black population as might seem
necessary.
In truth, no slave uprising ever had a chance of ultimate
success, even though it might have cost the master class
heavy casualties. The great majority of the disarmed and
outnumbered slaves, knowing the futility of rebellion, re¬
fused to join in any of the numerous plots. Most slaves had
to express their desire for freedom in less dramatic ways.
They rarely went beyond disorganized individual action—
which, to be sure, caused their masters no little annoyance.
The bondsmen themselves lacked the power to destroy the
web of bondage. They would have to have the aid of free
men inside or outside the South.
The survival of slavery, then, cannot be explained as due
to the contentment of slaves or their failure to comprehend
the advantages of freedom. They longed for liberty and re¬
sisted bondage as much as any people could have done in
their circumstances, but their longing and their resistance
were not enough even to render the institution unprofit¬
able to most masters. The masters had power and, as will
be seen, they developed an elaborate technique of slave
control. Their very preoccupation with this technique was,
in itself, a striking refutation of the myth that slavery sur¬
vived because of the cheerful acquiescence of the slaves.

140
 [■4* *]

CHAPTER FOUR

To Make Them Stand in Fear

I t is a pity,” a North Carolina planter wrote sadly, “that

agreeable to the nature of things Slavery and Tyranny
must go together and that there is no such thing as having
an obedient and useful Slave, without the painful exercise
of undue and tyrannical authority.” The legislatures and
courts of the ante-bellum South recognized this fact and
regulated the relationship of master and slave accordingly.
"The power of the master must be absolute, to render the
submission of the slave perfect,” a southern judge once af¬
firmed.1 Short of deliberately killing or maliciously maim¬
ing them, the owner did have almost absolute power over
his chattels.
If a bondsman ran away, if he stole the goods, injured the
property, or disobeyed the commands of the master, he was
guilty of a private and not a public offense; and the state
left the prevention and punishment of such offenses to the
owner.* In governing his bondsmen, therefore, the master
made the law, tried offenders, and administered penalties.
Whether he exercised his despotic authority benevolently
or malevolently depended upon his nature.
Masters were not all alike. Some governed their slaves

i Charles Pettigrew to Ebenczer Pettigrew, May 19, 1802, Pettigrew

Family Papers; Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, p. 57.
* Catterall (ed.) , Judicial Cases, I, p. $82; V, p. 249.
 The Peculiar Institution
with great skill and induced them to submit with a mini¬
mum of force. Others, lacking the personal qualities needed
to accomplish this, governed inefficiently. For example, an
Alabama woman with an undisciplined temper found it
nearly impossible to control her domestics. Two of them,
Alex and Hampton, obeyed her commands only when they
found it agreeable to do so; the rest of the time they treated
her orders with “the utmost contempt.” Hampton “has
often laughed in my face and told me that I was the only
mistress he ever failed to please, on my saying he should try
another soon, he said he could not be worsted, and was will¬
ing to go.” During a dinner with a friend this mistress was
astonished to see how smoothly his household ran. His serv¬
ants were perfectly trained: “you hear no noise, see no con¬
fusion, . . . and their master has no need to point them to
their duty. By what secret does he manage all this? The con¬
trast with me is mortifying, truly.” 3
Slaves were not all alike either. They reacted to a particu¬
lar master or overseer in different ways, some acquiescing
in his authority and others rebelling against it. Some, be¬
cause of their temperaments, found it impossible to get
along with even a humane master. Ephraim, the property
of a kind and pious small Virginia slaveholder, was in trou¬
ble so frequently that his master labeled him a “bad negro.”
After running away Ephraim was sold to a New Orleans
slave trader; according to his owner, it was “his wish . . .
to be sold.” 4 Sometimes a restless slave became passive
when transferred to another owner.
A master valued each slave not only on the basis of his
physical condition and proficiency as a worker but also in
terms of mutual compatibility. For this reason southern
courts repeatedly ruled that it was impossible to give any

Sarah A. Gayle Ms. Journal, entries for March 24, September 15, No¬
vember to, 1833.
Walker Diary, entry for October 5, 1846.

142
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

slave an objective valuation. "One man will give or take

fifty or one hundred dollars more or less in the purchase of
one [bondsman] than another man will,” declared a judge.
Two prospective purchasers might come to opposite con¬
clusions about the character of a slave: “A habit that would
render him useless to one man, would scarcely be consid¬
ered a blot upon his character in the hands of another.” In¬
deed, the value of slaves depended "upon a thousand
things”; it was in the “wretched market of the mere slave
trader” that they were rated only “by pound avoirdupois.”5
The successful master was often a keen student of human
psychology. Those who discussed the problem of managing
slaves advised owners to study carefully the character of
each chattel. “As . . . some negroes are greater offenders
than others, so does it require different management for
differently disposed negroes. You should not ‘treat them all
alike.’ ” Too many masters did not understand this. Some
bondsmen, warned a Virginian, required “spurring up,
some coaxing, some flattery, and others nothing but good
words.” Many a valuable slave had been “broken down by
injudicious management.” 6
It was within this framework of human relationships
that the peculiar institution had to operate. To achieve the
“perfect” submission of his slaves, to utilize their labor
profitably, each master devised a set of rules by which he
governed. These were the laws of his private domain—and
the techniques which enabled him to minimize the bonds¬
men’s resistance to servitude. The techniques of control
were many and varied, some subtle, some ingenious, some
brutal. Slaveholders generally relied upon more than one.

« Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 97, 318, 530.

« Southern Cultivator, XVIII (i860), p. 287; Farmers' Register, I
(1834), pp. 564-65; IV (1836) , p. 115.

143
 The Peculiar Institution

2
A wise master did not take seriously the belief that Ne¬
groes were natural-born slaves. He knew better. He knew
that Negroes freshly imported from Africa had to be
broken in to bondage; that each succeeding generation had
to be carefully trained. This was no easy task, for the bonds¬
man rarely submitted willingly. Moreover, he rarely sub¬
mitted completely. In most cases there was no end to the
need for control—at least not until old age reduced the
slave to a condition of helplessness.
Masters revealed the qualities they sought to develop in
slaves when they singled out certain ones for special com¬
mendation. A small Mississippi planter mourned the death
of his “faithful and dearly beloved servant” Jack: “Since I
have owned him he has been true to me in all respects. He
was an obedient trusty servant. ... I never knew him to
steal nor lie and he ever set a moral and industrious ex¬
ample to those around him. ... I shall ever cherish his
memory.” A Louisiana sugar planter lost a “very valuable
Boy” through an accident: “His life was a very great one.
I have always found him willing and obedient and never
knew him to fail to do anything he was put to do.” 7 These
were “ideal” slaves, the models slaveholders had in mind
as they trained and governed their workers.
How might this ideal be approached? The first step, ad¬
vised those who wrote discourses on the management of
slaves, was to establish and maintain strict discipline. An
Arkansas master suggested the adoption of the “Army
Regulations as to the discipline in Forts.” “They must obey
at all times, and under all circumstances, cheerfully and
with alacrity,” affirmed a Virginia slaveholder. “It greatly

r Baker Diary, entry for July t, 1854; Alexander Franklin Pugh Ms.
Plantation Diary, entry for June 21, i860.

144
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

impairs the happiness of a negro, to be allowed to cultivate

an insubordinate temper. Unconditional submission is the
only footing upon which slavery should be placed. It is
precisely similar to the attitude of a minor to his parent, or
a soldier to his general.” A South Carolinian limned a per¬
fect relationship between a slave and his master: “that the
slave should know that his master is to govern absolutely,
and he is to obey implicitly. That he is never for a moment
to exercise either his will or judgment in opposition to a
positive order.” * * 8
The second step was to implant in the bondsmen them¬
selves a consciousness of personal inferiority. They had “to
know and keep their places,” to “feel the difference be¬
tween master and slave,” to understand that bondage was
their natural status. They had to feel that African ancestry
tainted them, that their color was a badge of degradation.
In the country they were to show respect for even their
master’s nonslaveholding neighbors; in the towns they were
to give way on the streets to the most wretched white man.
The line between the races must never be crossed, for fa¬
miliarity caused slaves to forget their lowly station and to
become “impudent.” 9
Frederick Douglass explained that a slave might commit
the offense of impudence in various ways: “in the tone of
an answer; in answering at all; in not answering; in the ex¬
pression of countenance; in the motion of the head; in the
gait, manner and bearing of the slave.” Any of these acts,
in some subtle way, might indicate the absence of proper
subordination. "In a well regulated community,” wrote a
Texan, “a negro takes off his hat in addressing a white

8 Southern Cultivator, IV (1846), pp. 43-44; XVIII (i860), pp. 304-

305; Farmers’ Register, V (1837), p. 32.
8 Southern Planter, XII (1852), pp. 376-79; Southern Cultivator, VIII
(1850), p. 163; Farmers’ Register, I (1834), pp. 564-65.

»45
 The Peculiar Institution

man. . . . Where this is not enforced, we may always look

for impudent and rebellious negroes.” 1
The third step in the training of slaves was to awe them
with a sense of their master’s enormous power. The only
principle upon which slavery could be maintained, re¬
ported a group of Charlestonians, was the ‘‘principle of
fear.” In his defense of slavery James H. Hammond admit¬
ted that this, unfortunately, was true but put the responsi¬
bility upon the abolitionists. Antislavery agitation had
forced masters to strengthen their authority: “We have to
rely more and more on the power of fear. . . . We are de¬
termined to continue masters, and to do so we have to draw
the reign tighter and tighter day by day to be assured that
we hold them in complete check.” A North Carolina mis¬
tress, after subduing a troublesome domestic, realized that
it was essential “to make them stand in fear”! 2
In this the slaveholders had considerable success. Freder¬
ick Douglass believed that most slaves stood “in awe” of
white men; few could free themselves altogether from the
notion that their masters were “invested with a sort of sa¬
credness.” Olmsted saw a small white girl stop a slave on
the road and boldly order him to return to his plantation.
The slave fearfully obeyed her command. A visitor in Mis¬
sissippi claimed that a master, armed only with a whip or
cane, could throw himself among a score of bondsmen and
cause them to “flee with terror.” He accomplished this by
the “peculiar tone of authority” with which he spoke.
“Fear, awe, and obedience . . . are interwoven into the
very nature of the slave.” 3

1 Douglass, My Bondage, p. 92; Austin Texas State Gazette, October 10,

1857.
2 Phillips (ed.), Plantation and Frontier, II, pp. 108-11; De Bow's Re¬
view, VII (1849) . p. 498; Mary W. Bryan to Ebenezer Pettigrew, Oc¬
tober 20, 1835, Pettigrew Family Papers.
3 Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 250-51; Olmsted, Back Country, pp. 444-
45; pngraham], South-West, II, pp. 260-61.

146
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

The fourth step was to persuade the bondsmen to take

an interest in the master’s enterprise and to accept his
standards of good conduct. A South Carolina planter ex¬
plained: “The master should make it his business to show
his slaves, that the advancement of his individual interest,
is at the same time an advancement of theirs. Once they
feel this, it will require but little compulsion to make them
act as it becomes them.” * Though slaveholders induced
only a few chattels to respond to this appeal, these few
were useful examples for others.
The final step was to impress Negroes with their helpless¬
ness, to create in them “a habit of perfect dependence”
upon their masters.* 5 Many believed it dangerous to train
slaves to be skilled artisans in the towns, because they
tended to become self-reliant. Some thought it equally dan¬
gerous to hire them to factory owners. In the Richmond
tobacco factories they were alarmingly independent and “in¬
solent.” A Virginian was dismayed to find that his bonds¬
men, while working at an iron furnace, “got a habit of
roaming about and taking care of themselves.” Permitting
them to hire their own time produced even worse results.
“No higher evidence can be furnished of its baneful ef¬
fects,” wrote a Charlestonian, “than the unwillingness it
produces in the slave, to return to the regular life and do¬
mestic control of the master.”6
A spirit of independence was less likely to develop among
slaves kept on the land, where most of them became accus¬
tomed to having their master provide their basic needs,
and where they might be taught that they were unfit to
look out for themselves. Slaves then directed their energies
to the attainment of mere “temporary ease and enjoy-

* Farmers' Register, IV (1837) , p. 574.

5 Southern Cultivator, IV (1846), p. 44.

• Southern Planter, XII (1852) , pp. 376-79; Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 58-
59; Charleston Courier, September 12, 1850.
 The Peculiar Institution

ment.” “Their masters,’’ Olmsted believed, “calculated on

it in them—do not wish to cure it—and by constant prac¬
tice encourage it.” 7
Here, then, was the way to produce the perfect slave: ac¬
custom him to rigid discipline, demand from him uncondi¬
tional submission, impress upon him his innate inferiority,
develop in him a paralyzing fear of white men, train him to
adopt the master’s code of good behavior, and instill in him
a sense of complete dependence. This, at least, was the goal.
But the goal was seldom reached. Every master knew that
the average slave was only an imperfect copy of the model.
He knew that some bondsmen yielded only to superior
power—and yielded reluctantly. This complicated his
problem of control.

3
“Never be induced by a course of good behavior on the
part of the negroes, to relax the strictness of your disci¬
pline. . . . The only way to keep a negro honest is not to
trust him. This seems a harsh assertion; but it is unfor¬
tunately, too true.” So wrote a Southerner who was giving
advice to overseers. To a former slave it sometimes ap¬
peared that masters, “with skilled and practiced eyes,”
probed into the chattel’s mind and heart to detect his
changing moods. A slave, Olmsted observed, “is trusted as
little as possible to use his own discretion, and it is taken
for granted that he will never do anything desired of him
that he dares avoid.” 8
Because most Negroes were imperfect slaves, because
they needed to be watched constantly, each master devised

7 Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 128-29.

s Printed instructions in Affleck, Cotton Plantation Record and Account
Book; Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 276-77; Olmsted, Seaboard, pp.
478-79.

148
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

a set of rules for the efficient day-by-day operation of his en¬

terprise. Slaveholders were not always in accord about the
value of specific rules, but there were large areas of agree¬
ment nevertheless. They recorded the rules they consid¬
ered most important in their private journals, in their
instructions to overseers, and in essays published in agri¬
cultural periodicals. Here are the ones they generally ac¬
cepted:
1. An overseer was not to be absent from the estate with¬
out his employer’s consent. He was to stay constantly in the
fields while the hands were at work, to search the cabins
periodically for weapons or stolen goods, and to guard the
keys to the corn crib, smoke house, and stable. If there were
no overseer, the master (even on small establishments) as¬
sumed responsibility for these police measures.
2. A slave was not to be out of his cabin after “horn-
blow,” usually at eight o’clock in winter and nine o’clock
in summer. The master or overseer was to tour the cabins
at night to see that none were missing. Some masters estab¬
lished a system of regular night watches.
3. A slave was not to leave the estate without a pass which
gave his destination and the time he was to return. Some
owners issued passes generously when slaves were not at
work; others issued them sparingly. Many agreed that
bondsmen should not visit neighboring estates, or associate
with “mean white men” who might be disposed to make
them dissatisfied. By keeping them at home “they do not
know what is going on beyond the limits of the planta¬
tion, and feel satisfied that they could not . . . accom¬
plish anything that would change their condition.” Stran¬
gers, white and black, were to be “run off” the plantations.9
4. Free Negroes or whites were not to work with slaves.
One planter, for example, discharged a white mechanic for

® Southern Cultivator, XVIII (1860), p. 305; St. John R. Liddell Ms.

Diary, entry for October 18, 1841.

>49
 The Peculiar Institution

"talking with the negroes.” Another believed that the

value of a slave was “always impaired by contact with
white labor,” because the whites worked less, received
“more consideration,” and enjoyed “higher privileges.” 1
Whites who associated with slaves became objects of sus¬
picion. According to a Texan, “no white men will ever be
found on familiar terms with negroes, who are not either
of an abandoned or worthless character or are abolition¬
ists.” 2
5. Slaves were not to marry free Negroes, though some
were permitted to marry slaves living on other estates.
Often they were required to select their spouses only among
the master’s own chattels. Men who married away from
home were frequently absent and thus exposed “to tempta¬
tions from meeting and associating with negroes . . . with
various habits and views.” Women with husbands abroad
brought to the home estate slaves accustomed to different
treatment and thus created a rendezvous for a “medley of
characters.” It was better for a master to buy husbands or
wives for his bondsmen when necessary. Otherwise, “if
they cannot be suited at home,” it should be a settled prin¬
ciple that “they must live single.” 3
6. A slave was not to sell anything without a permit, have
whiskey in his cabin, quarrel or fight, or use abusive lan¬
guage.
These rules were to be enforced consistently, and no vio¬
lations were to pass unnoticed. Master and overseer must
make it clear that they were in perfect agreement, for
slaves soon discovered “any little jarring” between them
and were “sure to take advantage of it.” Moreover, each
neighborhood of slaveholders needed to be harmonious;

1 Southern Planter, XIII (1853) , p. 23.

2 Austin Texas State Gazette, June 16, 1855; J. Benwell, An English¬
man’s Travels in America (London, n.d.), pp. 165-66.
s Southern Cultivator, IV (1846) , p. 44; VIII (1850), p. 164.

150
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

when all enforced similar rules and maintained effective

discipline, the government of slaves was easier. “A good dis¬
ciplinarian in the midst of bad managers . . . cannot do
much.” *
Some also believed it undesirable to have groups of
lower-class whites living shiftlessly on the fringes of planta¬
tions where they could corrupt the slaves. Planters some¬
times bought the lands of their poor neighbors to get them
out of the way.* 5 Thus the plantation often became a kind
of isolated, autonomous enclave.
The slaveholder needed the willing cooperation of some
of his bondsmen to make his government work efficiently.
Knowing that the majority could not be trusted, he tried to
recruit a few who would be loyal to him and take his side
against the others. Usually he found his allies among the
domestics, skilled artisans, and foremen, all of whom he en¬
couraged to feel superior to, and remain apart from, the
field-hands. He gave them better clothes, more food, and
special privileges as long as they remained true to his inter¬
ests. He withdrew these favors and demoted them to field
labor when they failed him.
“The head driver . . . is to be treated with more respect
than any other negro,” wrote James H. Hammond in his
plantation manual. A South Carolina overseer always re¬
quired his driver to dress better than the other slaves. “This
caused him to maintain a pride of character before them
that was highly beneficial. . . . The more the driver is
kept aloof from the negroes, the better.” 6
In this manner some planters gained the assistance of
chattels who identified themselves wholly with the master
class. Jefferson Davis found such a bondsman in James

* Farmers' Register, I (1834) , pp. 564-65.

5 Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 673-74.
9 James H. Hammond Ms. Plantation Manual, Hammond Papers, Li¬
brary of Congress; Farmers’ Register, IV (1836), p. 115.
 The Peculiar Institution

Pemberton, who was first his body-servant and then his

able plantation manager. Fanny Kemble reported that the
head driver on Pierce Butler’s Georgia plantation was re¬
served in his relations with other slaves, and completely
faithful in handling his master’s business.7
William S. Pettigrew, a Tyrrell County, North Carolina,
planter, rejoiced that he owned two excellent slave fore¬
men who were “subservient, without a murmur,” to his
will. “What a blessing it is to have two such men . . .
whose chief desire I think is to relieve me of as much bur¬
den as possible; . . . also to add to their own character as
men of honesty, industry, faithfulness and success.” In the
summer Pettigrew was able to leave his estate in their
charge (under the nominal direction of a white man)
while he vacationed at the Virginia springs. In his letters
Pettigrew warned the foremen that any disorder during his
absence would disgrace them. “I am anxious for your credit
as well as my own that all things should go on well, and it
would be distressing and mortifying to me to hear the con¬
trary on my return.” One of the foremen replied (through
an amanuensis) : “I have don[e] all . . . in my power to¬
wards your benefit. . . . our respects to master wanting
to see you very bad.” 8
Some domestics also became “white folk’s servants”—
i.e., devoted to the master and his family and alienated
from the other slaves. “They are just the same as white
men,” said a former slave in disgust. “Some of them will
betray another to curry favor with the master.” In this way,
observed a visitor in Virginia, the master destroyed “the

i Walter L. Fleming, "Jefferson Davis, The Negroes and the Negro

Problem," Sewanee Review, XVI (1908), pp. 408-409; Kemble, Jour¬
nal, pp. 43-45.
* William S. Pettigrew to James C. Johnston, December 31, 1845; May
11, 1856, Pettigrew Family Papers. Correspondence between Pettigrew
and his foremen during the summers of 1856-58 is in this collection.
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

sympathy that unites . . . the victims of the same oppres¬

sion. . . . He has but to arm the human passions against
each other.” *
The recruitment of a slave elite was related in part to the
runaway problem, for some of these favored slaves helped
to catch the fugitives. But there were other groups whose
assistance was even more valuable. Legally all white men
were authorized to seize runaways; some of them, tempted
by the rewards masters were willing to pay, made a profes¬
sion of it. Poor white men habitually kept their eyes open
for strange Negroes without passes, for the apprehension of
a fugitive was a financial windfall. Few southern white la¬
borers showed much sympathy for the runaway slave. For
example, white workingmen on the Baltimore and Susque¬
hanna Railroad caught several Maryland bondsmen who
had escaped to within five miles of the Pennsylvania bor¬
der. The workingmen returned them to their owners and
collected the rewards.* 1
Nor was a runaway necessarily beyond his master’s grasp
if he managed to reach a free state. The Federal fugitive-
slave law still enabled his master to claim him if he could
be found. In the North, too, the runaway had to be wary
of professional slave catchers—of men such as F. H. Pettis,
a lawyer in New York City. Pettis advertised in the south¬
ern newspapers that he had much experience “in causing
fugitive slaves to be secured ... in defiance of the Aboli¬
tionists.” Masters who desired his services were to forward
him power of attorney, a description of the runaway, “and
also a fee of $20.” “When the slave shall have been secured
and handed over to the master, $100 additional charge will
be made.” 2

9 Drew, The Refugee, p. sn; Abdy, Journal, II, pp. 215-16.

1 Baltimore Sun, July 1, 1850.
1 Charleston Courier, June 9, 1840.

153
 The Peculiar Institution

Not only the slave’s fear of capture but his limited knowl¬
edge of geography made the prospect of successful escape
seem discouragingly dim. Frederick Douglass gave a
graphic description of the fears he and several other slaves
shared when they planned to escape. They were afraid that
their owner would discover the plot, that he would discern
their thoughts from their behavior. Often they wondered
whether bondage might not be easier than the “doubts,
fears and uncertainties” which now perplexed them. “The
case, sometimes, to our excited visions, stood thus: At every
gate through which we had to pass, we saw a watchman; at
every ferry, a guard; on every bridge, a sentinel; and in ev¬
ery wood, a patrol or slave-hunter. . . . No man can tell
the intense agony which is felt by the slave, when wavering
on the point of making his escape.” 3
Slaves in the Upper South knew that the probable pen¬
alty for an unsuccessful attempt at escape was to be sold to
the Deep South. They knew that slaveholders in the border
states seldom gambled with bondsmen who showed any in¬
clination to seek freedom through flight. In fact, runaways
were often sold to speculators at a reduced price even be¬
fore they were recaptured. As they were driven southward,
freedom slipped from their grasp forever.
The mere threat of sale was an effective method of dis¬
couraging potential runaways. Many slaves believed that
bondage in some distant state would be infinitely worse
than the bondage they knew, because their masters painted
terrifying pictures of what was in store for those who were
sold. Virginia slaves heard of the horrors of the Georgia
rice swamps, while Georgia slaves trembled at the thought
of being shipped to the Louisiana sugar district. A trouble¬
maker belonging to a Georgia planter was warned that “if
he don’t change for the better I’ll sell him to a slave trader
who will send him to New Orleans, where I have already
a Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 273-98.

154
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

sent several of the gang for their misconduct, or their run¬

ning away for no cause.” 4
According to the South Carolina Court of Appeals: “The
owners of slaves frequently send them off from amongst
their kindred and associates as a punishment, and it is fre¬
quently resorted to, as the means of separating a vicious ne¬
gro from amongst others exposed to be influenced and cor¬
rupted by his example.” 5 When no method of discipline
worked, this was the master’s last resort. An Alabama
planter sold two chattels and invested the proceeds “in like
property,” for he was determined “not to keep a mean ne¬
gro.” A North Carolina planter disposed of a “malignant
enemy” in the heart of his establishment who was “poison¬
ing the minds of all around him” and “disturbing the
quiet” of the estate.6 Those who had a surplus of slaves for
sale naturally marketed the ones they found most difficult
to control.
If the new master had no greater success than the old, he
might put the ungovernable bondsman up for sale again.
In this manner slaveholders passed a considerable number
of the incorrigibles from hand to hand. Six different own¬
ers, for example, found an “old scoundrel,” who had been
sent from South Carolina to Mississippi, more than they
could handle; in 1848, his most recent master advertised
that he was a runaway.7 Because slaveholders had to man¬
age less-than-perfect slaves, they found that their govern¬
ment never worked perfectly.
* Phillips, American Negro Slavery, pp. 304-305; id... Plantation and
Frontier, II, pp. 31-32.
* Catterall (ed.) , Judicial Cases, II, p. 352.
* James H. Taylor to Franklin H. Elmore, March 24, 1836, Franklin H.
Elmore Papers; William S. Pettigrew to John Williams, November 4,
1852; id. to [James C. Johnston], January 27, 1853, Pettigrew Family
Papers.
f Vicksburg Weekly Sentinel, August 9, 1848.

*55
 The Peculiar Institution

4
“I greatly desire that the Gospel be preached to the Ne¬
groes when the services of a suitable person can be pro¬
cured,” wrote a Mississippian to his overseer. Religious
instruction “not only benefits the slave in his moral rela¬
tions, but enhances his value as an honest, faithful servant
and laborer,” affirmed an Alabama judge.8 Pious masters
regarded their bondsmen as human beings with immortal
souls and therefore felt an obligation to look after their
spiritual life. Many of them also considered Christian in¬
doctrination an effective method of keeping slaves docile
and contented.
When the first Africans were imported in the seven¬
teenth century, some purchasers opposed converting them
to Christianity lest baptism give them a claim to freedom.
After the colonial legislatures provided that conversion
would not have this effect, the opposition diminished.
Thereafter most masters encouraged Christian proselytiz¬
ing among their bondsmen, and conversion proceeded rap¬
idly.
A minority, however, continued to be indifferent. Even
in the nineteenth century a southern clergyman com¬
plained that some, “forgetful of God and eternity,” treated
their slaves “too much as creatures of profit.” In “extensive
districts” thousands of bondsmen never heard the voices of
those who brought “the glad tidings of salvation to perish¬
ing men.” Another clergyman was “astonished to find plant¬
ers of high moral pretensions” who kept their slaves “shut
out almost entirely from the privileges of the Gospel.” 9

8 Phillips (ed.), Plantation and Frontier, I, pp. 112-15; Catterall (ed.),

Judicial Cases, III, p. 238.
» Charles Colcock Jones, Suggestions on the Religious Instruction of
the Negroes in the Southern States (Philadelphia, 1847), pp. 7-9, 31;
Southern Cultivator, IX (1851) , pp. 84-85.

156
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

A few were openly hostile. “Be assured,” wrote a North

Carolinian, “that religion among the mass of negroes who
profess, is nothing more than a humbug.” He did not be¬
lieve “in the efficacy of preaching to negroes and would
never contribute a cent for that purpose.” A Louisianian
considered attempts to convert slaves the “greatest piece of
foolishness”; the only way to improve them, he thought,
was through “proper discipline.” Olmsted met other slave¬
holders who shared these views. A Mississippian told him
that religious exercises excited the slaves so much that it
was difficult to control them. “They would be singing and
dancing every night in their cabins, till dawn of day, and
utterly unfit themselves for work.” 1
Since Nat Turner had been a slave preacher, the South¬
ampton insurrection temporarily increased sentiment of
this kind. Its lasting effect was to convince the master class
that the religious life of the slaves needed rigid supervision.
In December, 1831, James H. Hammond resolved “to break
up negro preaching and negro Churches.” Many years later
another South Carolinian was still warning slaveholders,
“Do not, I beseech you, send off your negroes to wor¬
ship ... by themselves. I have known great mischief to
have grown out of such meetings.” 2
The early attitude of certain Protestant sects toward slav¬
ery also accounted for some of the surviving suspicion. In
the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, south¬
ern Baptists and Methodists exhibited considerable anti¬
slavery sentiment. Many slaveholders were therefore re¬
luctant to have the preachers and missionaries of these

1 Ebenezer Pettigrew to James C. Johnston, July 16, 1838, Pettigrew

Family Papers; Davis (ed.), Diary of Bennet H. Barrow, pp. 323-24;
Olmsted, Back Country, pp. 92-93, 107-108.
* Hammond Diary, entries for December 15, 16, 1831; De Bow’s Review,
XXIV (1858) , p. 64; Luther P. Jackson, “Religious Development of
the Negro in Virginia from 1760 to i860," Journal of Negro History,
XVI (1931) , p. 206.

157
 The Peculiar Institution

denominations work among their slaves. But when the

southern wings of these churches changed their positions,
when southern clergymen became ardent defenders of slav¬
ery, the master class could look upon organized religion as
an ally. Church leaders now argued “that the gospel, in¬
stead of becoming a means of creating trouble and strife,
was really the best instrument to preserve peace and good
conduct among the negroes.” This was a persuasive argu¬
ment. “In point of fact,” recalled one churchman, “it was
this conviction that ultimately opened the way for the gos¬
pel on the large plantations.” 8
Through religious instruction the bondsmen learned
that slavery had divine sanction, that insolence was as much
an offense against God as against the temporal master.
They received the Biblical command that servants should
obey their masters, and they heard of the punishments
awaiting the disobedient slave in the hereafter. They heard,
too, that eternal salvation would be their reward for faith¬
ful service, and that on the day of judgment “God would
deal impartially with the poor and the rich, the black man
and the white.” Their Christian preceptors, Fanny Kemble
noted, “jumpfed] the present life” and went on "to furnish
them with all the requisite conveniences for the next.”4
Numerous slaveholders agreed that this indoctrination
had a felicitous effect. A committee of a South Carolina
agricultural society reported that religion contributed
much to “the government and discipline of the slave pop¬
ulation.” A traveler in Mississippi met a planter who was
himself “a most decided infidel” but who nevertheless saw
“the advantage of giving religious instruction to slaves.”
Many claimed that imparting Christian doctrine to impres¬
sionable slave children was especially beneficial. It taught

* Harrison, Gospel Among the Slaves, pp. 149-51.

* Sir Charles Lyell, A Second Visit to North America (London, 1849),
II, pp. 2-3; Kemble, Journal, p. 57.

158
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

them “respect and obedience to their superiors,” made

them “more pleasant and profitable servants,” and aided
“the discipline of a plantation in a wonderful manner.” 5 6
Others noticed a decline in theft when bondsmen “got
religion.” A Methodist missionary related a slave’s confes¬
sion that the Gospel “had saved more rice for massa than
all the locks and keys on the plantation.” Moreover, reli¬
gious services on Sundays kept idle slaves at home and out
of mischief. Indeed, one planter even used a Methodist ex-
horter as an overseer, with gratifying success; another,
hearing of it, tried to get one too.6
In 1845, a group of distinguished South Carolina slave¬
holders published a pamphlet illustrating "the practical
working and wholesome effects of religious instruction,
when properly and judiciously imparted to our negro
peasantry.” Each plantation, they believed, ought to be¬
come a “religious or parochial family,” for religion could
play a major role in the perpetuation of slavery. “Precepts
that inculcated good-will, forbearance and forgiveness; that
enjoin meekness and patience under evils; that demand
truth and faithfulness under all circumstances; a teaching
that sets before men a righteous judgment, and happiness
or misery in the life to come, according to our course of
faith and practice in the life that now is, must . . . change
the general character of persons thus taught.” 7
The master class understood, of course, that only a care¬
fully censored version of Christianity could have this de¬
sired effect. Inappropriate Biblical passages had to be de¬
leted; sermons that might be proper for freemen were not

5 De Boiu’s Review, VII (1849), p. 221; XXVI (1859) , p. 107; Southern

Agriculturist, IV (1831), pp. 351-52; Jones, Suggestions on the Reli¬
gious Instruction of the Negroes, pp. 34-35.
6 Harrison, Gospel Among the Slaves, pp. 205, 210-11; Farmers' Regis¬
ter, IV (1837), p. 574; Henry, Police Control, p. 139.
1 Quoted in Charleston Courier, August 28, 1845.

159
 The Peculiar Institution

necessarily proper for slaves. Church leaders addressed

themselves to this problem and prepared special catechisms
and sermons for bondsmen, and special instructions for
those concerned with their religious indoctrination. In
1847, f°r example, Charles Colcock Jones, of Georgia,
wrote a book entitled Suggestions on the Religious Instruc¬
tion of the Negroes in the Southern States, which was pub¬
lished by the Presbyterian Board of Publications. From his
own experience Jones advised missionaries to ignore the
“civil condition” of the slaves and to listen to no com¬
plaints against masters or overseers. In preaching to the
bondsmen missionaries should condemn “every vice and
evil custom,” advocate the “discharge of every duty,” and
support the “peace and order of society.” They should
teach the slaves to give “respect and obedience [to] all those
whom God in his providence has placed in authority over
them.” Religion, in short, should underwrite the status
quo.
Owners had various methods of providing religious
training. Most of them believed it “pernicious and evil”
for slaves to preach at their own services or prayer meet¬
ings.8 Nevertheless, some permitted it. The master or over¬
seer usually attended such meetings, as required by law—
and the preacher, naturally, was a trusted slave. In a num¬
ber of southern towns the bondsmen attended their own
churches. Richmond had four African Baptist Churches
before i860, each controlled by a governing board of
whites and served by a white pastor. In Savannah, Andrew
Marshall, a free Negro, was the minister of the First Afri¬
can Baptist Church. Until his death in 1856, Marshall was
“greatly respected” by the whites and the “idol” of his
slave congregation.9

* De Bow’s Review, XXVI (1859), p. 107.

® Jackson. “Religious Development . . . ,” loc. cit., pp. 221-22; Savan¬
nah Republican, December 15, 1856.

160
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear
In the regions of small slaveholdings whites and blacks
commonly belonged to the same churches; on the large
plantations only the domestics accompanied their masters
to worship. When there were mixed congregations the
slaves sat in the galleries, or were grouped together at the
rear. Sometimes they attended special services on Sunday
afternoon. Whatever the arrangements, whites admitted
Negro members to their churches everywhere in the ante¬
bellum South.
The white-controlled churches made an important con¬
tribution to the governing of their slave communicants.
They disciplined or “excluded from fellowship” bondsmen
guilty of such offenses as “disorder,” thievery, “selling spir¬
its on the Lord’s day at meeting,” “unchristian conduct,”
and “immorality.” For instance, the slave Peter, a member
of a Presbyterian church in Iredell County, North Caro¬
lina, confessed that he had forged a pass. Because forgery
and falsehood were such “flagrant crimes,” he was sus¬
pended from membership and “exhorted to repentence and
[a] better life.” A year later, Peter applied for the restora¬
tion of his church privileges, “professing a deep penitence
for his sins, and a strong determination to lead hereafter a
life of greater watchfulness and more prayer.” Peter was
forgiven.1
Large slaveholders occasionally built churches on their
estates and hired clergymen to preach to their bondsmen
each Sunday. The proprietor of a Mississippi plantation
maintained a “beautiful little Gothic church” where a res¬
ident pastor administered to the spiritual needs of both
master and slaves. Other planters, depending upon mission¬
aries who visited their estates periodically, made no provi¬
sion for regular religious services. Their slaves apparently
had mixed feelings about the occasional visitations of the

i Church of Bethany Ms. Session Book.

161
 The Peculiar Institution

white preachers. One divine noted sadly that some of them

made it “a settled point to sleep during sermons.” 2
The best system, many agreed, was one in which the mas¬
ter himself assumed responsibility for the religious life of
his slaves. Gathering his “people” around him on the Sab¬
bath, he preached to them from one of the handbooks or
read to them from the Scriptures. The advantage of this
system, according to a South Carolina planter, was that it
created “a feeling of interest between the master and the
slave.” It produced “that happy state of protection on the
one part, and obedience on the other.” 3
Whatever form the bondsmen’s religious training took,
it appeared that piety increased their value. A former slave
remembered hearing a Missouri auctioneer expounding
the virtues of a female domestic who was up for sale. She
was a good cook and an obedient servant. Moreover, “She
has got religion!” Why should this have mattered? Because
"the religious teaching consists in teaching the slave that he
must never strike a white man; that God made him for a
slave; and that, when whipped, he must not find fault,—
for the Bible says, ‘He that knoweth his master’s will and
doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes!’ And slave¬
holders find such religion very profitable to them.” * *

5
One of the inherent tragedies of slavery was that a hu¬
mane master’s impulse to be kind to his slaves was severely
circumscribed by the inescapable problem of control. He

a De Bow's Review, VII (1849), p. 221; Southern Cultivator, IX (1851),

P. 85.
* Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, pp. 97-98; Charleston Courier, April
15, 1851.

* Brown, Narrative, pp. 83-84.

162
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear
could indulge only the most obsequious of them, and only
within the bounds of essential discipline. He knew, too,
that some of his bondsmen would show precious little grat¬
itude for his benevolence.
Moreover, a conscientious slaveholder might be dis¬
turbed by the thought that his humanitarianism could be
interpreted as merely a form of enlightened self-interest.
For some did suggest that a policy of kindness was a prac¬
tical method of binding a certain type of slave to his owner.
Though many paternalistic masters had no conscious ulte¬
rior motive for their liberality, others were clearly seeking
a way to induce their workers to be more productive.
“Now, I contend that the surest and best method of man¬
aging negroes, is to love them,” wrote a Georgia patriarch.
“We know . . . that if we love our horse, we will treat him
well, and if we treat him well he will become gentle, docile
and obedient; . . . and if this treatment has this effect
upon all the animal creation . . . why will it not have the
same effect upon slaves?” Many of them, he added, re¬
sponded to praise more readily than to punishment. A few
kind words, a little flattery, would sometimes go a long
way. Negroes, like children, instinctively loved a kind mas¬
ter who ministered generously to their wants.5
An Alabama planter assured slaveholders that the Ne¬
gro had “self-respect” and was capable of “moral elevation.”
Much could be gained by “exciting his pride,” by cultivat¬
ing in him a desire to have a reputation for honesty and
fidelity. By winning his bondsman’s love the master solved
the problem of control. Such a slave “is more contented
and profitable . . . [and] will bring more money when of¬
fered for sale; will make as many bales of cotton with less
trouble to the owner; will steal fewer chickens and drink

5 Southern Cultivator, XVIII (i860), p. 326; De Bow's Review, XI

(1851), p. 67; XXI (1856), p. 279; Farmers' Register, I (1834), pp.
564-65.

163
 The Peculiar Institution

less whiskey without watching than the one whose spirit is

crushed and whose self-respect is trampled upon.”a
Some masters—often the ones with modest holdings—
pursued a policy of kindness as far as possible. Olmsted
frequently heard slaves singing or whistling as they worked
on southern farms. A Mississippi farmer explained his
method thus: ‘‘If I ever notice one of ’em getting a little
slack, I just talk to him; tell him we must get out of the
grass, . . . and then, maybe, I slip a dollar into his hand,
and when he gits into the field he’ll go ahead, and the rest
seeing him, won’t let themselves be distanced by him.” 7
The dollar may have been as important as the kind
words. Some slaveholders apparently thought so; even
though they had the power to coerce their workers to toil
without compensation, they saw the wisdom of providing
incentives for faithful service. “Hope, that great prompter
to cheerful action,” had to be cultivated in the slaves, one
master contended. “In order to beget in mine this essential
principle, the hope of reward is constantly held out as an
inducement.” 8
The rewards and incentives took numerous forms. Giv¬
ing slaves a small plot of ground in which to cultivate their
own crops during spare hours was one of the most popular.
If this was not simply a means of forcing them to grow
part of their essential food, as it sometimes was, it was an
effective incentive. Bondsmen were thus able to add to the
minimum diet provided them and to exchange the surplus
for luxuries such as tobacco, sugar, coffee, and bits of finery.
Each slave might cultivate his plot independently, or all
of them might cultivate a larger plot collectively and di¬
vide the harvest. Either way, their usual crops were vegeta¬
bles and corn—seldom cotton or tobacco lest they be

o Southern Cultivator, XVIII (i860), p. 176-77.

t Olmsted, Back Country, pp. 155-56, 220.
s American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, I (1857), pp. 374-75.

164
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear
tempted to augment their yield by theft from the master.
In addition, they were frequently permitted to raise chick¬
ens, occasionally swine, and in a few instances a cow. They
also made baskets, cut puncheons, caught fish, or gathered
Spanish moss. They sold all of these commodities along
with the surplus from their “patches.” In this manner
many slaves earned a few dollars a year.
Some masters permitted them to sell their goods in town,
while others bought for their own use whatever their
bondsmen produced. A large Mississippi planter once paid
his slaves two hundred dollars for their hay crop; and a
South Carolinian obtained his pork in this way.9 These
masters acted as bankers for their bondsmen and kept care¬
ful accounts in their plantation records. They debited the
slaves for items purchased for them during the year and
made a cash settlement at the end of the year.
Olmsted described the agreement a South Carolina
planter made with his hands: “He has a rule to purchase
everything they desire to sell. . . . Eggs constitute a circu¬
lating medium on the plantation. The negroes do not com¬
monly take money for the articles he has of them, but the
value of them is put to their credit, and regular accounts
kept with them. He has a store, usually well supplied with
articles that they most want. . . . His slaves are sometimes
his creditors to large amounts; at the present time he says
he owes them about five hundred dollars.” *1
Many believed that this form of incentive was beneficial,
even indispensable. Since the money settlements did not
come until after the crops were harvested, deductions could
be made for misbehavior. “This I have found to be a pow¬
erful lever in my hands to enforce obedience and fidelity,”
reported a Virginian. “No Negro with a well stocked poul-

» Jenkins Diary, entry for January 1, 1852; Easterby (ed.), South Caro¬
lina Rice Plantation, p. 350.
1 Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 442-43.

165
 The Peculiar Institution

try house, a small crop advancing, a canoe partly finished,

or a few tubs unsold, all of which he calculate[d] soon to
enjoy,” would run away, insisted a Georgia overseer.2
A minority, however, thought it unwise to permit slaves
to raise and sell produce. They complained that bondsmen
cultivated their own crops at night and on Sunday instead
of getting needed rest, fell into the habit of trading, and
were tempted to mix some of their master’s goods with
their own. Critics also argued that when slaves earned
money they became “vain and arrogant” and felt “more in¬
dependent.” It was better to make them work full time for
their masters who might give money rewards to those who
served faithfully. Accordingly, a Mississippi planter, in¬
stead of permitting them to have a “truck patch,” presented
five dollars to each head of a family and each unmarried
adult on Christmas.3
Distributing gifts at the end of the year was a common
practice. At Christmas time one rice planter gave each
adult a bonus of twelve quarts of rough rice, one quart of
molasses, two pipes, and three “hands” of tobacco. A Mis-
sissippian purchased nearly ten dollars’ worth of molasses,
coffee, tobacco, calico, and “Sunday tricks” for each of his
bondsmen. Most slaveholders gave them articles of cloth¬
ing, usually handkerchiefs for the women and hats for the
men.4 The value and quantity of the presents often de¬
pended upon their conduct during the past year.
Another form of incentive was to compensate slaves for
work performed beyond what was normally expected of

2 American Farmer, VII (1852), p. 397; Southern Agriculturist, I

(1828), p. 525.
3 De Bow’s Review, X (1851) , p. 624; XVII (1854) , p. 424; XIX (1855) ,
p. 362; American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, II (1858),
pp. 20-21.
* John B. Milliken Ms. Plantation Journal, entry for December 26,
1853; James A. Gillespie Ms. Diary, entry for December 24, 1854;
Olmsted, Back Country, pp. 50-51.

l66
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

them, for example, for night and Sunday work. A small

Louisiana cotton farmer noted in his diary one Sunday:
“To day I gave the hands leave to go into the cotton field to
pick on wages.” Besides “keeping them out of mischief,”
this gave them a chance “to earn something for them¬
selves.” 8 Those who owned or hired skilled artisans fre¬
quently paid them for their labor above a specified mini¬
mum; factory owners paid their hands for overtime. In the
tobacco factories many bondsmen earned several dollars a
month, and in Richmond’s Tredegar Iron Works a few
earned as much as ten dollars a month.
Cotton growers were resourceful in devising induce¬
ments for diligent toil at picking time. Some divided their
pickers into competing teams; others promoted competi¬
tion between individuals. Thomas Dabney, of Mississippi,
gave a prize of a dollar to the best picker each week and
smaller amounts to all who had worked well. An Alabama
planter incited two gangs of pickers to race for a prize of
two and a half pounds of tobacco.6
A few masters stimulated their laborers by making profit
sharing agreements with them. A sugar planter gave his
slaves a dollar for each hogshead of sugar they produced.
An Alabamian at various times permitted his slaves to
share in the profits of the cotton, peanut, and pea crops.
Another Alabamian developed a system of share-cropping.
He gave his slaves two-thirds of the cotton and corn crops
and kept the other third himself. He instructed them to
appropriate the proceeds from their share in the following
manner: “You are then to pay your overseer his part and
pay me [for] what I furnish, clothe yourselves, pay your
own taxes and doctor’s fee with all expenses of the
farm. . . . You have the use of the stock and plantation
tools. You are to return them as good as they are and the

o Marston Diary, entry for October 20, 1822.

« Smedes, Memorials, pp. 68-70; Jordan, Hugh Davis, p. 105.

167
 The Peculiar Institution

plantation to be kept in good repair, and what clear

money you make shall be divided equally amongst you in
a fair proportion agreeable to the services rendered by each
hand.” T These, however, were rare procedures.
The promise of periodic relief from the labor routine
was still another form of incentive. Those who used the
task system dangled the privilege of leaving the fields early
before bondsmen who worked with speed and care. Almost
all masters gave them Sunday for rest and relaxation. Many
thought it wise to give half of Saturday, and occasionally
the whole day, at least to those who had been working
well. One slaveholder let his bondsmen know that, to be ex¬
cused from the fields at noon on Saturday, they had to be¬
have themselves all week. “It is a very great stimulus to
labor, and I really believe more work will be done by hands
treated in this way than by those who know that to them,
work as they may, they never stop.” 78
During these respites some slaveholders, especially the
smaller ones, gave their workers passes to visit a nearby
town or to visit friends or relatives in the neighborhood.
They occasionally permitted the bondsmen to have a dance
on Saturday night. “I have a good fiddler, and keep him
well supplied with catgut, and I make it his duty to play
for the negroes every Saturday night until 12 o’clock,”
wrote a Mississippi planter. A North Carolina court once
rebuked a slave patrol for trying to stop one of these bois¬
terous affairs. “We may let them make the most of their
idle hours,” said the court, “and may well make allowances
for the noisy outpourings of glad hearts, which providence
bestows as a blessing on corporeal vigor united to a vacant
mind.” •
7 Olmsted, Seaboard, p. 660; Jordan, Hugh Davis, pp. 104-105; Sellers,
Slavery in Alabama, p. 59.
8 Southern Cultivator, IX (1851) , p. 85.
0 De Bow’s Review, X (1851), p. 625; Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases,
a, pp. 139-41.

168
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

Nearly every master observed a number of special holi¬

days, the most common being Good Friday, Independence
Day, “laying-by time,” and Christmas. These were occa¬
sions not only for the granting of passes but also for feast¬
ing. After the crops were laid by, a Mississippian “Called
off the hands ... to take holiday for the balance of the
week. . . . Gave the negroes a dinner; and they did eat,
and were filled. They demolished a beef, two shoats and
two lam[b]s. . . . Sent down for Courtney’s colored band
to play for my negroes to dance tonight, which pleases
them greatly.”1 Similar banquets and celebrations oc¬
curred at corn shuckings and at weddings.
Christmas was the festival that bondsmen looked for¬
ward to most, for they enjoyed a general relaxation of dis¬
cipline along with the gifts and feasts and the holiday from
labor. Even the severest masters gave their slaves Christ¬
mas Day to celebrate; most gave them one or two addi¬
tional days; and some gave them a whole week of vacation
between Christmas and New Year’s Day. “At Christmas a
holyday of three or four days is given,” James H. Ham¬
mond wrote in his plantation manual. “On that day . . .
a barbecue is given, beef or mutton and pork, coffee and
bread being bountifully provided.” 2
Some went to considerable expense and took great pains
to make the Christmas holiday pleasant. “I have endeav¬
ored ... to make my Negroes joyous and happy,—and
am glad to see them enjoying themselves with such a con¬
tented hearty good will,” exulted a small Mississippi slave¬
holder. Another Mississippian “Spent the day waiting on
the negroes, and making them as comfortable as possible.”
A Tennesseean noted with satisfaction that his “people”
were “as happy as Lords.” Though most masters made it a
policy to keep liquor away from their bondsmen, save for

1 Newstead Plantation Diary, entries tor August 20, 21, 1858.

2 Plantation Manual in Hammond Papers.

169
 The Peculiar Institution

medicinal purposes, they often made an exception of

Christmas. At the end of the holiday one slaveholder ob¬
served that his chattels were “all drunk or asleep.” 3
Now and then a Southerner deplored the widespread
practice of permitting slaves to have so much freedom at
Christmas, especially the practice of giving them passes to
wander about. No man of common sense, wrote one nerv¬
ous critic, believed that this “idle, lounging, roving,
drunken, and otherwise mischievous [Christmas] week fits
the Negro in the least degree for the discharge of his du¬
ties.” 4
This was a narrow view of the matter. A former slave
thought that the occasional festivities and holidays were an
essential part of the master's system of control. They kept
the minds of the bondsmen “occupied with prospective
pleasures within the limits of slavery. . . . These holidays
are conductors or safety valves to carry off the explosive ele¬
ments inseparable from the human mind, when reduced to
the condition of slavery.” 5
In general, the master class agreed. An Alabamian urged
others to adopt his policy of giving the slaves occasional
dances, dinners, holidays, and other harmless indulgences.
It contributed to their happiness and caused them to be¬
come attached to their master, he claimed. “Some will say
that this plan will not do to make money, but I know of no
man who realizes more to the hand than I.” 6

3 Baker Diary, entry for December 25, 1852; Newstead Plantation Di¬
ary, entry for December 25, 1858; John Houston Bills Ms. Diary, entry
for December 30, 1843; Nevitt Plantation Journal, entry for Decem¬
ber 30, 1827.
* Tallahassee Floridian and Journal, April 11, 1857.
® Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 253-54.
« De Bow's Review, XIII (1852), pp. 193-94.

170
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

6
A realistic Arkansas slaveholder once addressed himself
to the great problem of his class, “the management of Ne¬
groes,” and bluntly concluded: “Now, I speak what I know,
when I say it is like ‘casting pearls before swine’ to try to
persuade a negro to work. He must be made to work, and
should always be given to understand that if he fails to
perform his duty he will be punished for it.” Having tested
the “persuasion doctrine” when he began planting, he
warned all beginners that if they tried it they would surely
fail.7
Most masters preferred the “persuasion doctrine” nev¬
ertheless. They would have been gratified if their slaves
had willingly shown proper subordination and wholeheart¬
edly responded to the incentives offered for efficient labor.
They found, however, that some did not respond at all, and
that others responded only intermittently. As a result,
slaveholders were obliged to supplement the lure of re¬
wards for good behavior with the threat of punishment for
bad. One Virginian always assumed that slaves would “not
labor at all except to avoid punishment,” and would “never
do more than just enough to save themselves from being
punished.” Fortunately, said a Georgian, punishment did
not make the Negro revengeful as it did members of other
races. Rather, it tended “to win his attachment and pro¬
mote his happiness and well being.” 8
Without the power to punish, which the state conferred
upon the master, bondage could not have existed. By com¬
parison, all other techniques of control were of secondary
importance. Jefferson Davis and a few others gave their
bondsmen a hand in the chastisement of culprits. On Da-

i Southern Cultivator, XVIII (i860), pp. 130-31, 239-40.

s Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 104-105; Southern Cultivator, XII (1854),
p. 206.

171
 The Peculiar Institution

vis’s Mississippi estate trusted slaves tried, convicted, and

punished the violators of plantation law.8 But this was an
eccentric arrangement. Normally the master alone judged
the seriousness of an offense and fixed the kind and amount
of punishment to be administered.
Slaveholders devised a great variety of penalties. They
demoted unfaithful domestics, foremen, and drivers to field
labor. They denied passes to incorrigibles, or excluded
them from participating in Saturday night dances. An Ar¬
kansas planter gave his bondsmen a dinner every Sunday
and required those on the “punishment list” to wait on
the others without getting any of the food themselves. Mas¬
ters forced malingerers to work on Sundays and holidays
and at night after the others had finished. They penalized
them by confiscating the crops in their “truck patches,” or
by reducing the sums due them. They put them on short
rations for a period of time, usually depriving them of their
meat allowances. And they sold them away from their fam¬
ilies and friends.
Some of the penalties were ingenious. A Maryland to¬
bacco grower forced a hand to eat the worms he failed to
pick off the tobacco leaves. A Mississippian gave a runaway
a wretched time by requiring him to sit at the table and eat
his evening meal with the white family. A Louisiana
planter humiliated disobedient male field-hands by giving
them “women’s work” such as washing clothes, by dressing
them in women’s clothing, and by exhibiting them on a
scaffold wearing a red flannel cap.* 1
A few slaveholders built private jails on their premises.
They knew that close confinement during a working day
was a punishment of dubious value, but they believed that
» Fleming, “Jefferson Davis, the Negroes and the Negro Problem," loc.
cit., pp. 410-11.
1 John Thompson, The Life of John Thompson, A Fugitive Slave
(Worcester, Mass., 1856), p. 18; Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, p. 89;
Davis (ed.), Diary of Bennet H. Barrow, pp. 112, 154, 175.
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

it was effective during leisure hours. “Negroes are gregari¬

ous,” explained a small planter, “they dread solitariness,
and to be deprived from the little weekly dances and chit¬
chat. They will work to death rather than be shut up.” Ac¬
cordingly, a Louisianian locked runaways in his jail from
Saturday night until Monday morning. When he caught a
cotton picker with a ten pound rock in his basket, he jailed
him every night and holiday for five months.2
Others made use of public jails, paying the jailer a fee
for the service. One South Carolinian put a runaway in sol¬
itary confinement in the Charleston workhouse; another
had a slave “shut in a darkcell” in the same institution. A
Georgia planter advised his overseer to take a disobedient
slave “down to the Savannah jail, and give him prison dis¬
cipline and by all means solitary confinement for 3 weeks,
when he will be glad to get home again.” 3
The stocks were still a familiar piece of equipment on
the plantations of the ante-bellum South. Thomas Affleck’s
widely used plantation record book recommended incar¬
ceration in the stocks as an appropriate form of punish¬
ment: “So secured, in a lonely, quiet place, where no com¬
munication can be held with anyone, nothing but bread
and water allowed, and the confinement extending from
Saturday, when they drop work, until Sabbath evening,
will prove . . . effectual.” Heeding this advice, a Louisi¬
ana planter put his runaways in the stocks for a week.
“Drunkenness,” wrote a Georgia planter, “would be pun¬
ished by lying in the stocks all night and drinking a pint
of warm water.” 4

* De Bow’s Review, XI (1851) , p. 371; Davis (ed.) , Diary of Bennet H.

Barrow, pp. 165, * *69.
* Gaillard Plantation Journal, entry for May 22, 1849: Gavin Diary,
entry for March 26, 1856; Phillips (ed.) , Plantation and Frontier, II,
PP- S *—32-
* McCollam Diary, entry for February 5, 1845; Southern Agriculturist,
IV (1831) , p. 352.

173
 The Peculiar Institution

“Chains and irons,” James H. Hammond correctly ex¬

plained, were used chiefly to control and discipline run¬
aways. “You will admit,” he argued logically enough, “that
if we pretend to own slaves, they must not be permitted to
abscond whenever they see fit; and that if nothing else will
prevent it these means must be resorted to.” 5 Three entries
in Hammond’s diary, in 1844, indicated that he practiced
what he preached. July 17: “Alonzo runaway with his irons
on.” July 30: “Alonzo came in with his irons off.” July 31:
. . re-ironed Alonzo.”
Hammond was but one of many masters who gave critics
of the peculiar institution a poignant symbol—the fettered
slave. A Mississippian had his runaway Maria “Ironed with
a shackle on each leg connected with a chain.” When he
caught Albert he “had an iron collar put on his neck”; on
Woodson, a habitual runaway, he “put the ball and chain.”
A Kentuckian recalled seeing slaves in his state wearing
iron collars, some of them with bells attached. The fetters,
however, did not always accomplish their purpose, for nu¬
merous advertisements stated that fugitives wore these en¬
cumbrances when they escaped. For example, Peter, a Lou¬
isiana runaway, “Had on each foot when leaving, an iron
ring, with a small chain attached to it.” 6
But the whip was the most common instrument of pun¬
ishment—indeed, it was the emblem of the master’s author¬
ity. Nearly every slaveholder used it, and few grown slaves
escaped it entirely. Defenders of the institution conceded
that corporal punishment was essential in certain situa¬
tions; some were convinced that it was better than any
other remedy. If slavery were right, argued an Arkansas
planter, means had to be found to keep slaves in subjuga-

s De Bow's Review, VII (1849), p. 500.

« Nevitt Plantation Journal, entries for November 9, 1827; March 28,
1831; July 18, 1832; Coleman, Slavery Times in Kentucky, pp. 248-49;
New Orleans Picayune, December 26, 1847.

r74
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

tion, “and my opinion is, the lash—not used murderously,

as would-be philanthropists assert, is the most effectual.” A
Virginian agreed: “A great deal of whipping is not neces¬
sary; some is.” * 7
The majority seemed to think that the certainty, and not
the severity, of physical “correction” was what made it ef¬
fective. While no offense could go unpunished, the number
of lashes should be in proportion to the nature of the of¬
fense and the character of the offender. The master should
control his temper. “Never inflict punishment when in a
passion,” advised a Louisiana slaveholder, “but wait until
perfectly cool, and until it can be done rather in sorrow
than in anger.” Many urged, therefore, that time be per¬
mitted to elapse between the misdeed and the flogging. A
Georgian required his driver to do the whipping so that
his bondsmen would not think that it was “for the pleasure
of punishing, rather than for the purpose of enforcing obe¬
dience.” 8
Planters who employed overseers often fixed the number
of stripes they could inflict for each specific offense, or a
maximum number whatever the offense. On Pierce But¬
ler’s Georgia plantation each driver could administer
twelve lashes, the head driver thirty-six, and the overseer
fifty. A South Carolinian instructed his overseer to ask per¬
mission before going beyond fifteen. “The highest punish¬
ment must not exceed 100 lashes in one day and to that ex¬
tent only in extreme cases,” wrote James H. Hammond.
“In general 15 to 20 lashes will be a sufficient flogging.” 9
The significance of these numbers depended in part
upon the kind of whip that was used. The “rawhide,” or

t Southern Cultivator, XVIII (i860) , p. 239-40; Southern Planter, XII

(1852), p. 107.
8 De Bow’s Review, XXII (1857), pp. 376-79; Southern Agriculturist,
IV (1831) , p. 350.
9 Kemble, Journal, pp. 42—43; Phillips (ed.), Plantation and Frontier, I,
pp. 116-22; Plantation Manual in Hammond Papers.

175
 The Peculiar Institution

“cowskin,” was a savage instrument requiring only a few

strokes to provide a chastisement that a slave would not
soon forget. A former bondsman remembered that it was
made of about three feet of untanned ox hide, an inch
thick at the butt end, and tapering to a point which made
it “quite elastic and springy.” 1
Many slaveholders would not use the rawhide because it
lacerated the skin. One recommended, instead, a leather
strap, eighteen inches long and two and a half inches wide,
fastened to a wooden handle. In Mississippi, according to a
visitor, the whip in general use consisted of a “stout flexi¬
ble stalk” covered with a tapering leather plait, about
three and a half feet in length, which formed the lash. “To
the end of the lash is attached a soft, dry, buckskin cracker,
about three eighths of an inch wide and ten or twelve
inches long, which is the only part allowed to strike, in
whipping on the bare skin. . . . When it is used by an ex¬
perienced hand it makes a very loud report, and stings, or
‘burns’ the skin smartly, but does not bruise it.” 2
How frequently a master resorted to the whip depended
upon his temperament and his methods of management.
On some establishments long periods of time elapsed with
relatively few whippings—until, as a rice planter explained,
it seemed “as if the devil had got into” the hands, and for
a time there was “a good deal of it.” Or, occasionally, a nor¬
mally amiable slave got out of hand and had to be flogged.
“Had to whip my Man Willis for insolence to the overseer,”
wrote a Tennesseean. “This I done with much regret as he
was never whipped before.” 3
On other establishments the whip was in constant use.
The size of the estate may have had some relationship to

1 Douglass, My Bondage, p. 103.

2 Southern Cultivator, VII (1849), p. 135; [Ingraham], South-West, II,
pp. 287-88.
2 Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 438-39; Bills Diary, entry for March 30, i860.

176
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

the amount of whipping, but the disposition of the propri¬

etor was decidedly more crucial. Small farmers, as well as
large planters, often relied upon corporal punishment
as their chief method of enforcing discipline. Southern
women were sometimes equally prone to use the lash upon
errant domestics.
Some overseers, upon assuming control, thought it wise
to whip every hand on the plantation to let them know who
was in command. Some masters used the lash as a form of
incentive by flogging the last slave out of his cabin in the
morning.* 4 Many used it to “break in” a young slave and to
“break the spirit” of an insubordinate older one. “If the
negro is humble and appears duly sensible of the impro¬
priety of his conduct, a very moderate chastisement will
answer better than a severe one,” advised a planter. “If,
however, he is stubborn ... a slight punishment will
only make bad worse.” Slaves had to be flogged, explained
an Alabamian, until they manifested “submission and pen¬
itence.” 5
In short, the infliction of stripes curbed many a bonds¬
man who could not be influenced by any other technique.
Whipping had a dispiriting effect upon most of them. “Had
to administer a little rod to Bob this morning,” reported a
Virginian. “Have seen for more than 3 months I should
have to humble him some, hope it may benefit him.” s

7
“To manage negroes without the exercise of too much
passion, is next to an impossibility. ... I would there¬
fore put you on your guard, lest their provocations should
* Southern Cultivator, II (1844), pp. 169-70; Davis, Cotton Kingdom
in Alabama, pp. 54-55.
5 Southern Cultivator, VIII (1850), p. 164; William P. Gould Ms. Plan¬
tation Rules.
« Adams Diary, entry for July 2, i860.

177
 The Peculiar Institution

on some occasions transport you beyond the limits of de¬

cency and Christian morality.” The Reverend Charles Pet¬
tigrew, of North Carolina, gave this advice to his sons when
he willed them his estate. John H. Cocke, of Virginia, cau¬
tioned the overseer on his Bremo Plantation: “Most per¬
sons are liable to be thrown into a passion by the improper
conduct of those they have to govern.” After traveling
through the South, Olmsted wondered “whether human¬
ity and the accumulation of wealth, the prosperity of the
master and the happiness and improvement of the subject,
are not in some degree incompatible.” 7 Physical cruelty,
as these observations suggest, was always a possible conse¬
quence of the master’s power to punish. Place an intem¬
perate master over an ill-disposed slave, and the possibility
became a reality.
Not that a substantial number of slaveholders deliber¬
ately adopted a policy of brutality. The great majority, in
fact, preferred to use as little violence as possible. Many
small slaveholders, urban and rural, who had close per¬
sonal contacts with their bondsmen and knew them as hu¬
man beings, found it highly disagreeable to treat them un¬
kindly. Large planters, in their instructions to overseers,
frequently prohibited barbarous punishments. Thomas Af¬
fleck’s plantation record book advised overseers that the
“indiscriminate, constant and excessive use of the whip”
was “altogether unnecessary and inexcusable.” A Louisi¬
ana proprietor was very explicit on this point. In whipping
a slave the overseer was never to be “cruel or severe,”
though he could repeat the whipping at intervals “until
the most entire submission” was achieved. “I object to
having the skin cut, or my negroes marked in any way by
the lash. ... I will most certainly discharge any overseer

7 Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina, p. 496; John H. Cocke Ms.

Plantation Rules, in N. F. Cabell Collection of Agricultural Papers;
Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 367-68.
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

for striking any of my negroes with a club or the butt of his

whip.” 8
A master who gave some thought to his standing in the
community certainly wished to avoid a reputation for in¬
ordinate cruelty. To be counted a true Southern Gentle¬
man one had to be humane to his bondsmen, to exercise
self-control in dealing with them, to know how to give
commands without raising his voice. Plenty of masters pos¬
sessed these qualities. A European visitor marveled at the
patience, the “mild forbearance,” some of them exhibited.
It seemed that every slaveholder’s temper was subjected to
a discipline which either ruined or perfected it. And more
than a few met the test with remarkable success.9
Many openly censured those who were guilty of inhu¬
manity. A Georgian told a Northerner that the government
of slaves was necessarily despotic, but that Southerners de¬
spised ruthless masters. A South Carolinian wrote in a
published letter, “The overseer whose constant and only
resort is to the lash ... is a brute, and deserves the peni¬
tentiary.” And a North Carolinian denounced a neighbor
as a “moral miasma” because of the way he treated his
slaves.* 1
Those who were destitute of humane instincts might still
be restrained by the slave’s economic worth. To injure by
harsh punishment a prime field-hand valued at a thousand
dollars or more was a costly indulgence. It may be, there¬
fore, that rising slave prices encouraged a decline in the in¬
cidence of brutality.
But these restraints were not always enough. Some mas¬
ters, made irascible by the endless irritations which were

8 De Bow’s Review, XXII (1857), pp. 376-79.

» Martineau, Society in America, II, pp. 109-10.
1 Lester B. Shippee (ed.), Bishop Whipple’s Southern Diary 1843-1844
(Minneapolis, 1937), pp. 31-32; Southern Cultivator, II (1844), p.
107; William S. Pettigrew to James C. Johnston, September 24, 1846,
Pettigrew Family Papers.

179
 The Peculiar Institution

an inevitable part of owning slaves, were unmerciful in ex¬

ercising their almost unlimited powers. Some were indif¬
ferent about their reputations among neighbors, or hoped
to conceal the conditions that existed on their isolated es¬
tates. Some were as prodigal in the use of human chattels
as they were in the use of other property. Neither law, nor
social pressure, nor economic self-interest made Southern
Gentlemen out of all slaveholders. As long as the peculiar
institution survived, the master class contained a group of
unfeeling men.
Few who knew southern slavery intimately denied that
there existed within it an element of savagery. No apologist
disputed the evidence published by Theodore Dwight
Weld, the abolitionist, for he gathered it from southern
newspapers and public records.2 It is unnecessary, however,
to turn to the abolitionists—or to former slaves—for proof.
Daniel R. Hundley, a Southerner who admired and de¬
fended his section’s institutions, agreed that the South was
“no second paradise.” He knew that slaves were “badly
treated” on some estates, and that masters were sometimes
unconcerned about it. Moreover, “he must be a very bold
man who will deny that the overseers on many southern
plantations, are cruel and unmercifully severe.” 3
A committee of an Alabama agricultural society reported
that there were “instances” in which self-interest and mo¬
rality had “not been sufficient to restrain masters from cru¬
elty to slaves.” A former Mississippi slaveholder knew “of
his own knowledge, that cruelties and grievous wrongs were
perpetrated upon slaves by their owners.” Another Missis-
sippian hoped that southern public opinion would con¬
demn the “many things” that were “cancerous” in slavery.
As an example he cited a “certain class of overseers” who

2 Theodore Dwight Weld, American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a

Thousand Witnesses (New York, 1839).
s Hundley, Social Relations, pp. 63-64, 187-88, 203-205.

l8o
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

were consistently bestial toward bondsmen. “It is this un¬

relenting, brutalizing, drive, drive, watch and whip, that
furnishes facts to abolition writers that cannot be disputed,
and that are infamous.” *
Southerners themselves having established the fact of
cruelty, it only remains to estimate its extent and to exam¬
ine is nature. Proslavery writers asserted that cases of cru¬
elty were the rare exceptions to the general rule of human¬
ity by which slaves were governed. Travelers in the South
gave conflicting testimony. Abolitionists and ex-slaves in¬
sisted that cruelty was far more common than defenders of
the institution would admit.
The exact truth will never be known, because surviving
records are fragmentary and sometimes hint only vaguely
at conditions. There is no way to discover what went on in
the “voiceless solitudes” where no records were kept, or on
hundreds of plantations where visitors were unwelcome
and the proprietors were in residence only part of the
year. (In i860, several large planters in Rapides Parish,
Louisiana, would not even permit the census takers to tres¬
pass upon their estates.) Even so, the public and private
records that do survive suggest that, although the average
slaveholder was not the inhuman brute described by the
abolitionists, acts of cruelty were not as exceptional as pro¬
slavery writers claimed.
As a South Carolina judge sadly confessed, there were
“men and women on earth who deserved no other name
than fiends," for they seemed to delight in brutality.0 No
southern state required masters to be tested for their com¬
petence to rule slaves. Instead, they permitted slaves to fall
willy-nilly into the hands of whoever inherited them or had
the cash or credit to buy them. As a result, bondsmen were

* American Farmer, II (1846), pp. 77-78; Fulkerson, Random Recollec¬

tions, pp. 128-30; Southern Culivator, XVIII (18O0), p. 258.
» Charleston Courier, May 14, 1847.
 The Peculiar Institution

owned by persons of unsound minds, such as the South Car¬

olinian who had his chattels “throw dirt upon [his] roof
... to drive off witches.” They were owned by a woman
“unable to read or write, . . . scarcely able to count ten,”
legally incompetent to contract marriage.6 They were
owned by drunkards, such as Lilburne Lewis, of Living¬
ston County, Kentucky, who once chopped a slave to bits
with an ax; and by sadists, such as Madame Lalaurie, of
New Orleans, who tortured her slaves for her own amuse¬
ment. It would be pointless to catalogue the atrocities com¬
mitted by psychopaths.
Cruelty, unfortunately, was not limited to the mentally
unbalanced. Men and women, otherwise “normal,” were
sometimes corrupted by the extraordinary power that slav¬
ery conferred upon them. Some made bondsmen the vic¬
tims of their petulance. (The repentant wife of a Louisi¬
ana planter once wrote in her diary: “I feel badly got very
angry and whipped Lavinia. O! for government over my
temper.” T) Others who were reasonably humane to most
of their slaves made the ones who annoyed them beyond
endurance the targets of their animosity. Still others who
were merely irresponsible, rather than inherently brutal,
made slaves the objects of their whims. In other words,
masters were seldom consistent; they were apt to be indul¬
gent or harsh depending upon their changing moods, or
their feelings toward individual slaves. In truth, said one
Southerner, “men of the right stamp to manage negroes are
like Angels visits few and far between.” 8
Kindness was not a universal trait among small slave¬
holders, especially among those who were ambitious to
climb the economic ladder. Both a shoemaker and a car¬
penter, each of whom owned a single slave, were guilty of

« Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 336, 427.

f Quoted in Taylor, “Negro Slavery in Louisiana,’’ p. 254.
a Moore Rawls to Lewis Thompson (n.d.), Lewis Thompson Papers.

182
 IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

atrocities.9 Southern farmers with modest holdings were

also, on occasion, capable of extreme cruelty toward slaves.
But brutality was more common on the large planta¬
tions. Overseers, almost all of whom were native-born
Southerners, seldom felt any personal affection for the
bondsmen they governed. Their inclination in most cases
was to punish severely; if their employers prohibited sever¬
ity, they ignored such instructions as often as not. Planters
complained that it was difficult to find an overseer who
would “condescend to take orders from his employer, and
manage according to the system of another man.” The typi¬
cal overseer seemed to have little confidence in the use of
incentives as a method of governing slaves; he had a decided
preference for physical force.* 1
Illustrations of this problem sometimes found their way
into the records of southern courts. Overseers sued masters
for their wages when discharged for cruelty; masters sued
overseers for injuring slave property; occasionally the state
intervened to prosecute an overseer for killing or maiming
a bondsman.2 Most of these cases never reached the courts,
as the planter dealt with the problem himself. An Ala¬
bamian discovered that he had found no solution even
when he employed a relative to oversee. “I want you to dis¬
tinctly understand me,” he scolded, “withhold your rush¬
ing whipping and lashing—for I will not stand it any
longer.” A Louisiana planter, returning to his estate after
a year’s absence, related in his journal the “most terrible
account of the severity [and] cruelty” of his overseer. At
least twelve slaves had died from “negligence and ill treat¬
ment.” Discharging this overseer and employing another,

» New Orleans Picayune, March 16, 1858; Northup, Twelve Years a

Slave, pp. 105-16.
1 Southern Cultivator, II (1844) , p. 107; Bassett, Plantation Overseer,
PP- 3-5-
a Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, passim.

183
 The Peculiar Institution

he was dismayed to find that the new one also “punished

severely without discretion.” 8
A planter was often in a quandary when his overseer was
both brutal and efficient. “I do not know whether I will
keep Harris another year or not,” a Mississippian told his
wife. “He is a first rate manager except he is too cruel. I
have had my feelings greatly shocked at some of his con¬
duct.” But he re-employed Harris after exacting from him
a promise to be less harsh. Harris, he explained, made big
crops, and he did not wish “to break it all up by getting a
new manager.”
A few years later this same planter, having transferred
his operations to Arkansas, viewed the problem of slave
management in a different light. While Harris was away
on a month’s leave of absence, the proprietor ran the es¬
tate himself. He found governing slaves to be a “pretty
rough business” and waited impatiently for his overseer to
return.* *
Ordinarily the owner of a large plantation was realistic
enough to know that controlling a gang of field-hands was
at best a wretched business, and that a certain amount of
savagery was inevitable. There seemed to be no other way
to keep certain bondsmen under control. “Experience and
observation have taught me that some negroes require a
vast deal more punishment than others to be brought to a
performance of their duties,” wrote an Arkansas planter.
And a Louisiana sugar planter assured his distressed wife
that he would not sanction the admitted cruelty of his
overseer unless there was “a great necessity for it.” Indeed,

* James P. Tarry to Samuel O. Wood, November 27, 1853; July 1, 1854,

Samuel O. Wood Papers; Haller Nutt Ms. Journal o£ Araby Planta¬
tion, entries for November 1, 1843, et seq.
* Gustavus A. Henry to his wife, December t2, 17, 1848; December 7,
1857, Henry Papers.

184
 IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

he found the management of slaves “exceedingly disagree¬

able . . . under any and all circumstances.” 5
Although cruelty was endemic in all slaveholding com¬
munities, it was always most common in newly settled re¬
gions. Along the rough southern frontier thousands of am¬
bitious men were trying swiftly to make their fortunes.
They operated in a frantically competitive society which
provided few rewards for the virtues of gentility and almost
put a premium upon ruthlessness. In the eastern tobacco
and rice districts brutality was unquestionably less preva¬
lent in the nineteenth century than it had been during the
colonial period. But in the Southwest only limited areas
had developed a mellowed gentry as late as i860. In the
Alabama-Mississippi Black Belt, in the cotton and sugar
parishes of Louisiana, along the Arkansas River, and in
eastern Texas the master class included the “parvenus,” the
“cotton snobs,” and the “Southern Yankees.” If these plant¬
ers failed to observe the code of the patrician, they appar¬
ently thought none the less of each other for it.
The hired slave stood the greatest chance of subjection
to cruel punishments as well as to overwork. His employer,
a Kentucky judge confessed, had no incentive to treat him
kindly “except the mere feelings of humanity, which we
have too much reason to believe in many instances . . .
are too weak to stimulate the active virtue.” 6 This was no
exaggeration.
Southerners who were concerned about the welfare of
slaves found it difficult to draw a sharp line between acts of
cruelty and such measures of physical force as were an in¬
extricable part of slavery. Since the line was necessarily ar¬
bitrary, slaveholders themselves disagreed about where it

« Southern Cultivator, XVIII (i860), p. 287; Sitterson, Sugar Country,

p. 105.
« Catterall (ed.) , Judicial Cases, I, p. 284.

185
 The Peculiar Institution
should be drawn. Was it barbarous to “correct” a slave by
putting him in the stocks, or by forcing him to wear chains
or an iron collar? How severely might a slave be flogged be¬
fore the punishment became brutal? These were matters of
personal taste.
But no master denied the propriety of giving a moderate
whipping to a disobedient bondsman. During the seven¬
teenth and eighteenth centuries the lash was used to pun¬
ish free men as well as slaves. By mid-nineteenth century,
however, it was seldom used upon any but slaves, because
public opinion now considered it to be cruel. Why it was
less cruel to whip a bondsman was a problem that troubled
many sensitive masters. That they often had no choice as
long as they owned slaves made their problem no easier to
resolve.
Bennet H. Barrow, a Louisiana planter, kept an unusu¬
ally full record of punishments—a record which illustrates
the difficulty of distinguishing between cruelty and reason¬
able “correction.” A substantial and respected man in his
community, Barrow inherited lands and slaves from his fa¬
ther; he was in no sense a crude parvenu. Yet he flogged his
chattels freely, sometimes severely. On various occasions he
had a “general whipping frollick,” whipped “every hand in
the field . . . comencing with the driver,” or gave “a
number of them a good flogging.” He broke his sword cane
on the head of one offending slave, “beat” another “very
much” and “cut him with a club in 3 places verry bad.”
Barrow was one of the few large planters who refused to
employ overseers, because of their bad reputation.7
If it was cruel to flog slaves so frequently and severely
that their backs were permanently scarred, southern news¬
papers provided evidence of an abundance of this variety
of inhumanity. The following illustrations are from ante-

1 Davis (ed.), Diary of Bennet H. Barrow, passim.

186
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear

bellum fugitive-slave advertisements and from sheriffs’

committal notices: Charles, “an old sinner” who escaped
from a Louisiana plantation, had “many stripes of the
lash”; a Mississippi slave had “large raised scars or whelks
in the small of his back and on his abdomen nearly as large
as a person’s finger”; Nancy, a Georgia slave, was “consid¬
erably marked by the whip”; Esther, an Alabama slave, was
“marked.about the shoulders from whipping”; a Missouri
fugitive had “many scars on his back”; Gid, according to
his North Carolina master, had a “remarkably bad tem¬
per” and had in consequence “marks of the lash upon his
back”; Tom, who was held by the jailer of Augusta County,
Virginia, had “the appearance of frequent and severe flog¬
ging”; Anaca, who escaped from her Kentucky master, had
“a large scar immediately on her chest from the cut of a
whip.”
After northern abolitionists began scanning the southern
press for atrocities, specific references to slaves who were
“marked by the whip” declined. The number of slaves
identified more vaguely as having “scars” or “burns” in¬
creased.
Beyond this were cases of pure brutality—cases of flog¬
ging that resulted in the crippling, maiming, or killing of
slaves. An early nineteenth-century Charleston grand jury
presented “as a serious evil the many instances of Negro
Homicide” and condemned those who indulged their pas¬
sions “in the barbarous treatment of slaves.” 8 “Salting”—
washing the cuts received from the whip with brine—was a
harsh punishment inflicted upon the most obstinate bonds¬
men. Though all but a few deplored such brutality, slave¬
holders found themselves in a dilemma when nothing else
could subdue a rebel.
If a master was too squeamish to undertake the rugged
task of humbling a refractory bondsman, he might send
* Henry, Police Control, pp. 67-68.
 The Peculiar Institution

him to a more calloused neighbor or to a professional “slave

breaker.” John Nevitt, a Mississippi planter not averse to
the application of heroic remedies, received from another
master a young chattel “for the purpose of punishing him
for bad conduct.” Frederick Douglass remembered a ruth¬
less man in Maryland who had a reputation for being “a
first rate hand at breaking young negroes”; some slavehold¬
ers found it beneficial to send their beginning hands to him
for training.9
The branding of slaves was a widespread custom in co¬
lonial days; it was less common in the nineteenth century.
But as late as 1838, a North Carolinian advertised that
Betty, a fugitive, was recently “burnt . . . with a hot iron
on the left side of her face; I tried to make the letter M.”
In 1848, a Kentuckian identified his runaway Jane by a
brand mark “on the breast something like L blotched.”* 1
Mutilation as a form of punishment also declined without
disappearing entirely. A Louisiana jailer, in 1831, gave no¬
tice that he had a runaway in his custody: “He has been
lately gelded, and is not yet well.” Another Louisianian re¬
corded his disgust for a neighbor who had “castrated 3 men
of his.” 2
Some masters who were otherwise as humane as the pe¬
culiar institution would permit tolerated almost anything
that might “cure” habitual runaways. Andrew Jackson
once offered fifty dollars reward for the capture of a fugi¬
tive, “and ten dollars extra for every hundred lashes any
person will give him to the amount of three hundred.” A
Georgian punished his runaways by pulling out one of
their toenails with a pair of pincers. Others hunted them

» Nevitt Plantation Journal, entry for June 5, 1828; Douglass, My Bond¬

age, p. 203; Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, pp. 69-70.
1 Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina, pp. 493-94; Coleman, Slavery
Times in Kentucky, pp. 248-49.
2 Taylor, “Slavery in Louisiana,” p. 236; Davis (ed.), Diary of Ben-
net H. Barrow, pp. 173-74.

l88
IV: To Make Them, Stand in Fear
with shotguns. A North Carolinian advertised for an es¬
caped slave who had “some marks of shot about his hips,
thighs, neck and face.” Bennet H. Barrow caught Jerry “in
the Bayou behind the Quarter, [and] shot him in the
thigh”; when Jerry absconded again, Barrow vowed he
would this time “shoot to kill.” A Mississippian, appar¬
ently wishing to give his slaves a stern warning, promised
to compensate whoever captured his fugitive “dead or
alive.” 3
The tracking of runaways with dogs was no figment of
abolitionist imaginations; it was a common practice in all
slave states, defended and justified in the courts. Groups of
slaveholders sometimes rode through the swamps with their
dogs and made the search for fugitives a sport comparable
to fox hunting. Others preferred to hire professional slave
catchers who provided their own “Negro dogs.” A Missis¬
sippi master described the talents of a slave catcher he em¬
ployed: “He follows a negro with his dogs 36 hours after
he has passed and never fails to overtake him. It is his pro¬
fession and he makes some $600 per annum by it.” 4 South¬
ern newspapers carried the advertisements of professionals
who solicited the patronage of slaveholders, and of those
who trained “Negro dogs” for sale.
The dogs could give a fugitive a severe mauling if the
owner was willing to permit it. After a Mississippi master
caught an escaped slave he allowed his dogs to “bite him
very severely.” A Louisiana planter “treed” a runaway and
then “made the dogs pull him out of the tree, Bit him very
badly, think he will stay home a while.” On another occa¬
sion his dogs tore a slave naked; he then “took him Home

s Phillips (ed.) , Plantation and Frontier, II, pp. 85-88; Olmsted, Texas,
pp. 104-105; Davis (ed.), Diary of Bennet H. Barrow, pp. 239, 242;
Jackson Mississippian, July 11, 1834.
* Gustavus A. Henry to his wife, November 23, 1849, Henry Papers;
Coleman, Slavery Times in Kentucky, pp. 61-62; Olmsted, Back
Country, pp. 214-15.
 The Peculiar Institution

Before the other negro[es] . . . and made the dogs give

him another over hauling.” * 5
The angry mobs who dealt extra-legal justice to slaves
accused of serious crimes committed barbarities seldom
matched by the most brutal masters. “They call it Lintch’s
Law,” wrote a frightened Louisiana plantation mistress
during a local insurrection panic. “If they continue hang¬
ing, as they have done for some time past, we should be
careful of the children, otherwise the World might be left
without people.” 6 Fear turned groups of decent white men
into ferocious mobs—fear and the knowledge that the law
was not strong enough to touch them.
After the Nat Turner rebellion a Richmond newspaper
declared that the reprisals of the whites were “hardly infe¬
rior in barbarity to the atrocities of the insurgents.” Dur¬
ing the insurrection panic of 1856, a Texas editor affirmed
that at such a time “the popular vengeance may be meted
out to the criminal with as much necessity as we would
strike down an enemy in self-defence, or shoot a mad dog in
our path.” A Mississippian was ready for the “fagot and the
flame” and to “let every tree in the country bend with ne¬
gro meat.” Four years later a Georgia editor urged the old¬
est and best citizens in each community to examine persons
suspected of encouraging slave rebellions; if they were
adjudged guilty, “swing the vagabonds from the nearest
tree, and say nothing about it.” 7
Mobs all too frequently dealt with slaves accused of mur¬
der or rape. They conducted their own trials or broke into
jails or court rooms to seize prisoners for summary execu-
s William Read to Samuel S. Downey, August 8, 1848, Downey Papers;
Davis (ed.) , Diary of Bennet H. Barrow, pp. 369-70, 376.
6 Rachel O’Conner to Frances S. Weeks, September 7, 1835, Weeks Col¬
lection.
1 Richmond Whig, quoted in Alexandria (Va.) Phenix Gazette, Sep¬
tember 1, 1831; Austin Texas State Gazette, November 15, 1856; Jack-
son Mississippian, December 19, 1856; Augusta Daily Chronicle and
Sentinel, September 9, i860.

190
IV: To Make Them Stand in Fear
tion. Their more fortunate victims were hanged; the oth¬
ers were burned to death, sometimes in the presence of
hundreds of bondsmen who were forced to attend the cere¬
mony. Thus, wrote a Mississippian after one such incident,
“justice was satisfied; the law of retaliation was inflicted
. . . while the example made of this wretch had, no doubt,
a salutary effect upon the two thousand slaves who wit¬
nessed his execution.” An Alabama editor justified the
burning of a slave at the stake by “the law of self-protec¬
tion, which abrogates all other law. . . . There was no
passionate conduct here. The whole subject was disposed of
with the coolest deliberation and with regard only to the
interest of the public.” 8
The abolition of slavery, of course, did not bring to a
close the record of brutality in the South any more than it
did elsewhere. But it did make less tenable the argument
that brutality was sometimes in the public interest. And it
did rescue many a master from the dilemma he faced when
his desire to be humane was compromised by the demands
of proper discipline.
Surely there is room for compassion for a profoundly dis¬
turbed North Carolinian who owned several plantations in
Mississippi. “My great desire is to have my blacks taken
proper care of,” he wrote. “I would be content with much
less . . . cotton if less cruelty was exercised. I fear I am
near an abolition[i]st. But I should consider myself an un¬
just and unfeeling man if I did not have a proper regard
for those who are making me so much money[.]” 9
s Vicksburg Weekly Sentinel, June 13, 1855; Huntsville Democrat,
quoted in Sellers, Slavery in Alabama, pp. 262-63.
® William Boylan to [George W. Mordecai], December 20, 1850, Cam¬
eron Family Papers.
 [ »9*]
CHAPTER FIVE

Chattels Personal

I n Alabama’s legal code of 1852 two clauses, standing in

significant juxtaposition, recognized the dual character
of the slave.1
The first clause confirmed his status as property—the
right of the owner to his “time, labor and services” and to
his obedient compliance with all lawful commands. Slav¬
ery thus being established by law, masters relied upon the
state to use its power against white men who “tampered”
with their bondsmen, and against bondsmen they could not
subdue. Courts, police, and militia were indispensable
parts of the machinery of control.
The second clause acknowledged the slave’s status as a
person. The law required that masters be humane to their
slaves, furnish them adequate food and clothing, and pro¬
vide care for them during sickness and in old age. In short,
the state endowed masters with obligations as well as rights
and assumed some responsibility for the welfare of the
bondsmen.
But legislators and magistrates were caught in a dilemma
whenever they found that the slave’s status as property was

r Extracts from the slave codes presented in this chapter were taken
from the legal codes or revised statutes of the southern states. See
also Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, and the various studies of
slavery in individual states.
V: Chattels Personal

incompatible with his status as a person. Individual mas¬

ters struggled with this dilemma in different ways, some
conceding much to the dictates of humanity, others de¬
manding the utmost return from their investment. Olm¬
sted explained the problem succinctly: “It is difficult to
handle simply as property, a creature possessing human
passions and human feelings, . . . while, on the other
hand, the absolute necessity of dealing with property as a
thing, greatly embarrasses a man in any attempt to treat
it as a person.’’2
After adopting Draconian codes in the early eighteenth
century, the various legislatures in some respects gradually
humanized them, while the courts tempered their applica¬
tion, but there was no way to resolve the contradiction im¬
plicit in the very term “human property.” Both legislators
and judges frequently appeared erratic in dealing with
bondsmen as both things and persons. Alabama’s code de¬
fined the property status of the slave before acknowledging
his human status, and throughout the ante-bellum South
the cold language of statutes and judicial decisions made it
evident that, legally, the slave was less a person than a
thing.

2
The fact that southern slavery was, in the main, Negro
slavery gave an advantage to those who wished to preserve
it. If he ran away, the Negro slave with his distinctive skin
color could not so easily escape detection as could a white
indentured servant. Moreover, all Negroes were brought to
America in bondage, and legislatures soon adopted the
principle of partus sequitur ventrem—the child inherits
the condition of the mother. Therefore, the English com¬
mon-law presumption in favor of freedom did not apply to

* Olmsted, Back Country, p. 64.

193
 The Peculiar Institution

Negroes; in all the slave states (except Delaware) the pre¬

sumption was that people with black skins were slaves un¬
less they could prove that they were free. Any strange Ne¬
gro found in a southern community without “freedom
papers” was arrested as a fugitive.
But southern slavery was not exclusively Negro slavery.
The status of a child of mixed Negro and white ancestry
depended upon the status of the mother. The offspring of
a Negro slave father and a free white mother was free. The
offspring of a free white father and a Negro, mulatto,
quadroon, or octoroon slave mother was a slave. In fact,
the Texas Supreme Court once ruled that the child of a
slave mother was a slave no matter how remote the Negro
ancestry.3 Hence some slaves were whites by any rational
definition as well as by all outward appearances, even
though some distant female ancestor may have been a Ne¬
gro. One Virginia fugitive had a “complexion so nearly
white, that ... a stranger would suppose there was no
African blood in him.” * *
Not all southern slaves were Negroes, and not all south¬
ern masters were whites. In 1830, more than thirty-six hun¬
dred free Negroes or persons of mixed ancestry owned
slaves. The great majority of these colored slaveowners had
merely purchased husbands, wives, or children and were
unable to emancipate them under existing state laws. A few
were substantial planters, such as the Negro in King George
County, Virginia, who owned seventy-one slaves; another
in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, who owned seventy-five;
and two others in Colleton District, South Carolina, who
owned eighty-four apiece. Though southern whites over¬
whelmingly disapproved, only in Delaware and Arkansas
did the courts refuse to sanction the ownership of slaves by
“free persons of color.” The Arkansas Supreme Court held
3 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, V, p. 295.

* Richmond Enquirer, February 7, 1837.

*94
V: Chattels Personal

that slavery had its foundation “in an inferiority of race "

and the bondage of one Negro to another lacked “this solid
foundation to rest upon.” 5
Since Negroes were presumed to be slaves and whites
were presumed to be free, the southern states found it es¬
sential in cases of mixed ancestry to decide who were to be
treated as Negroes and who as whites. No state adopted the
principle that “a single drop of Negro blood” made a per¬
son legally a member of the “inferior race.” Each state pre¬
scribed the proportion of Negro ancestry which excluded a
person from the privileges enjoyed by white men.
In Virginia, according to the code of 1849, “Every per¬
son who has one-fourth part or more of negro blood shall
be deemed a mulatto, and the word ‘negro’ . . . shall be
construed to mean mulatto as well as negro.” In Alabama a
“mulatto” was “a person of mixed blood, descended, on
the part of the mother or father, from negro ancestors, to
the third generation inclusive, though one ancestor of each
generation may have been a white person.” In other south¬
ern states also the term mulatto was defined loosely, so as to
include as a rule persons with one Negro grandparent
(quadroon) or great grandparent (octoroon) ; such per¬
sons were treated in law as Negroes. Only in South Caro¬
lina did the statutes refer to “negroes, mulattoes and per¬
sons of color” without defining these terms. The Court of
Appeals, however, refused to infer from this that all per¬
sons “of any mixture of negro blood” were legally Negroes.
Rather, it ruled that there must be a “visible mixture” and
that much depended upon a person’s “reputation” among
his neighbors.6
Any person with Negro ancestors too remote to cause

8 Carter G. Woodson, Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the United States

in 18)0 (Washington, D.C., 1924) ; Catterall (ed.) , Judicial Cases, IV,
p. 215; V, p. 257.
« Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 358-59.

195
 The Peculiar Institution

him to be classified as a mulatto was by law a white man.

While such a person could be held as a slave, the burden of
proof was placed upon the putative master. In Kentucky,
affirmed the Court of Appeals, “it has been well settled,
that . . . having less than a fourth of African blood, is
prima facie evidence of freedom.” A Virginia jury having
found that a woman suing for her freedom was white, it
was incumbent upon her master to prove that she “was
descended in the maternal line from a slave. Having not
proved it, she and her children must be considered free.” 7
Some slaveholders preferred to use “bright mulattoes”
as domestics; a few paid premium prices for light-skinned
females to be used as concubines or prostitutes. But most
masters saw the inconvenience of owning slaves who were
nearly white: the presumption of freedom in their favor,
and the greater ease with which they could escape. One
former bondsman, a “white man with blue eyes,” recalled
his master’s repeated attempts to sell him, always unsuccess¬
ful. A Kentucky slave, “owing to his being almost white,
and to the consequent facilities of escape,” was adjudged
to be worth only “half as much as other slaves of the ordi¬
nary color and capacities.” 8 Here was convincing evidence
of the importance of racial visibility in keeping the Negro
in bondage.

3
In the customary phraseology of the ante-bellum codes,
South Carolina’s slaves were “deemed, held, taken, reputed
and adjudged in law to be chattels personal, in the hands of
their owners and possessors and their executors, admin¬
istrators and assigns, to all intents, constructions and pur-

7 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, I, pp. tsi, 330.

s Drew, The Refugee, pp. 123-32; Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, I,
p. 278.
V: Chattels Personal
poses whatsoever.” Slaves had the attributes of personal
property everywhere, except in Louisiana (and Kentucky
before 1852) where they had the attributes of real estate.
Neither the laws nor the courts, however, were altogether
consistent. In states where slaves were generally considered
as personalty, they were treated as realty for purposes of
inheritance. In Louisiana, where they were supposedly like
real property, they retained many of the characteristics of
“chattels personal.”
Though the slave was property “of a distinctive and pe¬
culiar character,” though recognized as a person, he was
legally at the disposal of his master, whose property right
was very nearly absolute. “The master,” proclaimed the
Louisiana code, “may sell him, dispose of his person, his in¬
dustry, and his labor: he can do nothing, possess nothing,
nor acquire anything but what must belong to his master.”
Even in Kentucky, slaves had “no rights secured to them by
the constitution, except of trial by jury in cases of felony.” 9
Legally a bondsman was unable to acquire title to prop¬
erty by purchase, gift, or devise; he could not be a party to
a contract. No promise of freedom, oral or written, was
binding upon his master. According to the Arkansas Su¬
preme Court, “If the master contract . . . that the slave
shall be emancipated upon his paying to his master a sum
of money, or rendering him some stipulated amount of la¬
bor, although the slave may pay the money, ... or per¬
form the labor, yet he cannot compel his master to execute
the contract, because both the money and the labor of the
slave belong to the master and could constitute no legal
consideration for the contract.” * 1
Nor could a chattel be a party to a suit, except indirectly
when a free person represented him in a suit for freedom.
In court he was not a competent witness, except in a case

» Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, I, p. 311.

1 Ibid., V, pp. 250-51.

197
 The Peculiar Institution

involving another slave. He had no civil rights, no political

rights, no claim to this time, no freedom of movement.
Since slaves, as chattels, could not make contracts, mar¬
riages between them were not legally binding. “The rela¬
tion between slaves is essentially different from that of man
and wife joined in lawful wedlock,” ruled the North Caro¬
lina Supreme Court, for “with slaves it may be dissolved at
the pleasure of either party, or by the sale of one or both,
depending upon the caprice or necessity of the owners.”
Their condition was compatible only with a form of con¬
cubinage, “voluntary on the part of the slaves, and permis¬
sive on that of the master.” In law there was no such thing
as fornication or adultery between slaves; nor was there
bastardy, for, as a Kentucky judge noted, the father of a
slave was “unknown” to the law.2 No state legislature ever
seriously entertained the thought of encroaching upon the
master’s rights by legalizing slave marriages.
On the contrary, the states guaranteed the rights of prop¬
erty in human chattels in every way feasible. Most southern
constitutions prohibited the legislatures from emancipat¬
ing slaves without both the consent of the owners and the
payment of a full equivalent in money. Every state pro¬
vided severe penalties for the theft of a slave—a common
crime in the ante-bellum South. In Virginia the penalty
was two to ten years in the penitentiary, in Tennessee it
was five to fifteen years, and in many states it was death.
When a bondsman was executed for a capital crime the
state usually compensated the owner, the normal compen¬
sation being something less than the full value assessed by
a jury. In Arkansas, which gave no compensation, a slave¬
holder complained bitterly of the “injustice” done him
when one of his slaves was hanged for rape. “I had, or
ought to have, some claims upon the State for the destruc-

2 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, I, p. 287; II, pp. 76-77, 221.

V: Chattels Personal
tion of my property,” he thought. “That would be good
policy and good law.” 3 Since the execution of a slave re¬
sembled the public seizure or condemnation of private
property, most of the states recognized the justice of the
owner’s claim. Sometimes they levied a special tax on
slaves and established a separate public fund for this pur¬
pose.
There were virtually no restrictions upon the owner’s
right to deed his bondsmen to others. Normally the courts
nullified such transfers only if the seller fraudulently war¬
ranted a slave to be “free from defects” or “vices” such as
the “habit of running away.” In devising his chattels a
testator had the power to divide them among his heirs in
any way he saw fit—including the power to dissolve fam¬
ilies for the purpose of making an equitable distribution. If
a master died intestate, the division was made in accord¬
ance with the state’s laws of inheritance.
Sometimes the division provided by a will, or the claims
of heirs of a master who died intestate, could not be real¬
ized without a sale of slaves. In such cases the southern
courts seldom tried to prevent the breaking up of slave
families. The executor of an estate was expected to dispose
of human chattels, like other property, in the way that was
most profitable to the heirs. It may be “harsh” to separate
members of families, said the North Carolina Supreme
Court, yet “it must be done, if the executor discovers that
the interest of the estate requires it; for he is not to indulge
his charities at the expense of others.” 4
Advertisements of administrators’ sales appeared con¬
stantly in southern newspapers. Among several dozen in a
single issue of a Georgia newspaper were these; “A negro
boy, George, about 25 years old,” to be sold “for division

3 Francis Terry Leak Ms. Diary, entries for September 22, October 23,
November 5, 1856.
* Catterall (ed.) , Judicial Cases, II, pp. 58-59.

199
 The Peculiar Institution

among the heirs”; two Negro girls, Ann and Lucy, “the
former 13, the latter 9 years old,” to be sold “for the benefit
of the legatees”; fifteen Negroes, “most of them likely and
very valuable,” to be sold to the highest bidder to settle an
estate. Some administrators had to find purchasers for
scores of slaves. One lot of a hundred, sold “for the benefit
of the heirs,” included “a large number of healthy fine
children, boys and girls, young men and young women, a
house carpenter, a plantation blacksmith and a miller; al¬
most every description of servants can be had out of the
above negroes.”
Since slaves were frequently sold on credit or used as se¬
curity for loans, they were subject to seizure and sale for
the benefit of creditors. A clause in the Virginia code added
the proviso that human chattels were not to be seized “with¬
out the debtor’s consent” when there were “other goods
and chattels of such debtor for the purpose." Slaves who
were seized were to be sold “at the court house of the
county or corporation, between the hours of ten in the
morning and four in the afternoon ... on the first day
of the court.” In “execution sales,” except for mothers and
small children, family ties were ignored whenever it was
beneficial to the debtor. As a witness testified before the
Georgia Supreme Court, “It is not usual to put up negroes
in families at Sheriff’s sales.” 5
For several weeks prior to a public auction the sheriff
advertised the event in a local newspaper. “Will be sold
before the Court-house door in the town of Covington,”
ran a typical sheriff’s notice in Newton County, Georgia,
“within the usual hours of sale, on the first Tuesday in
February next, the following property, to-wit: Three Ne¬
groes—John, a boy about 18 years old; Ann, a girl about
4 years old; Riley, a boy about three years old; all levied on

s Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, p. 68.

200
V: Chattels Personal

as the property of Burwell Moss, to satisfy a mortgage . . .

in favor of Alfred M. Ramsey.” 6
Executors and administrators also sold slaves when it
was necessary to satisfy the creditors of the deceased. Their
notices of sales “for the purpose of paying debts” against
estates appeared in the newspapers alongside the sheriff’s
notices. Sometimes their advertisements listed bondsmen
together with horses, mules, cows, farm implements, and
other forms of personal property.

4
The unsentimental prose of legal codes and court rec¬
ords, of sheriff’s notices and administrator’s accounts, gave
some indication of the dehumanizing effects of reducing
people to “chattels personal.” Masters who claimed their
rights under the laws of property, and who developed the
habit of thinking of their chattels in impersonal terms, pro¬
vided further evidence. The laws, after all, were not ab¬
stractions; they were written by practical men who ex¬
pected them to be applied to real situations. Accordingly,
slaves were bartered, deeded, devised, pledged, seized, and
auctioned. They were awarded as prizes in lotteries and
raffles; they were wagered at gaming tables and horse races.
They were, in short, property in fact as well as in law.
Men discussed the price of slaves with as much interest
as the price of cotton or tobacco. Commenting upon the
extraordinarily good prices in 1853, a South Carolina edi¬
tor reported, “Boys weighing about fifty lbs. can be sold
for about five hundred dollars.” “It really seems that there
is to be no stop to the rise,” added a North Carolina edi¬
tor. “This species of property is at least 30 per cent higher
now, (in the dull season of the year), than it was last Janu-

« Milledgeville Southern Recorder, January 7, 1851.

201
 The Peculiar Institution

ary. . . . What negroes will bring next January, it is im¬

possible for mortal man to say.” 1*****7
Olmsted noticed how frequently the death of a slave,
when mentioned in a southern newspaper, was treated as
the loss of a valuable piece of property. A Mississippi editor
reported a tragedy on the Mississippi River involving the
drowning of six “likely” male slaves “owned by a couple
of young men who had bought and paid for them by the
sweat of their brows.” A young North Carolina planter,
who seemed “doomed to misfortune,” lost through an acci¬
dent a slave he had inherited from his grandmother and
was thus “minus the whole legacy.” One morning James H.
Hammond discovered that his slave Anny had “brought
forth a dead child.” “She has not earned her salt for 4
months past,” he grumbled. “Bad luck—my usual luck in
this way.” 8
In new regions—for example, in Alabama and Missis¬
sippi during the 1830’s—the buying and selling of slaves
and plantations was the favorite operation of speculators.
Everywhere people invested cash in bondsmen as people in
an industrial society would invest in stocks and bonds. Af¬
fluent parents liked to give slaves to their children as pres¬
ents. “With us,” said a Virginia judge, “nothing is so usual
as to advance children by gifts of slaves. They stand with us
instead of money.” A Kentuckian, “in easy circumstances,”
was “in the habit of . . . presenting a slave to each of his
grandchildren.” “I buy . . . Negro boy Jessee,” wrote a
Tennessee planter, “and send him as a gift to my daughter
Eva and the heirs of her body.” 9

1 Wilmington (N.C.) , Journal, July 12, 1853, quoting and commenting

upon an editorial in the Anderson (S.C.) Gazette.
s Olmsted, Back Country, p. 63; Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, p. 250;
Ebenezer Pettigrew to James C. Johnston, February 22, 1842, Petti¬
grew Family Papers; Hammond Diary, entry for February 26, 1838.
» Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, I, pp. 149-50, 311; II, p. 112; Bills
Diary, entry for January 7, i860.

202
V: Chattels Personal

Slaveholders kept the courts busy with litigation involv¬

ing titles and charges of fraudulent sales. “The plaintiff
declares that the defendent . . . deceitfully represented
the . . . slave to be sound except one hip, and a good
house servant,” ran a typical complaint. A lawyer, searching
for legal precedents which might justify a claim of “un¬
soundness” in a slave recently sold, cited past judicial opin¬
ions “as regards horseflesh.” Two South Carolinians pre¬
sented to the state Court of Appeals the question of
whether the seller or buyer must suffer the loss of a slave
who had committed suicide during the course of the trans¬
action.1 Families were sometimes rent asunder as relatives
fought for years, in court and out, over claims to bondsmen.
Litigation between slaveholders and their creditors also
brought much business to the southern courts. Many mas¬
ters who would have refused to sell bondsmen to traders
nevertheless mortgaged them and thus often made sales in¬
evitable when their estates were settled, if not before. A
Tennesseean with “heavy debts over him” escaped the sher¬
iff by fleeing to Texas with his slaves. This was a familiar
story in the Old South, so familiar that the phrase “gone to
Texas” was applied to any debtor who fled from his credi¬
tors. A slaveholder would abandon his lands and escape in
the night with his movable chattels. The courts heard case
after case like that of a Georgian who “clandestinely re¬
moved his property, consisting of negroes, to . . . Ala¬
bama, ... to avoid the payment of his debts,” and of a
Mississippian, who “ran off . . . into Texas, certain negro
slaves, with a view of defrauding his creditors.” 2
The reduction of bondsmen to mere pawns in disputes
over titles and in actions by creditors was a sordid business.

1 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 425-26, 561; Easterby, (ed.),
South Carolina Rice Plantation, p. 69.
2 Allen Brown to Hamilton Brown, March 4, 1833, Hamilton Brown
Papers; Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, p. 440; III, p. 24.

203
 The Peculiar Institution

But the suits for trespass masters brought against those who
had injured their chattels were no less depressing. For ex¬
ample, when a Kentucky bondsman “died in consequence
of injuries inflicted on him by Thos. Kennedy and others,”
the owner sued and recovered a judgment for one hundred
and ninety-five dollars and costs. A Tennessee slave was
hired to a man who permitted him to die of neglect. An in¬
dignant judge affirmed that “the hirer of a slave should be
taught . . . that more is required of him than to exact
from the slave the greatest amount of service, with the least
degree of attention to his comfort, health, or even life”—
and gave a judgment of five hundred dollars for the master,
the sole penalty. An Alabama slave was scarred by severe
whippings inflicted by his hirer. The owner brought suit
on the ground that the slave’s “market value . . . was per¬
manently injured.” 3
In all these ways the slave as property clearly had priority
over the slave as a person. Contrary to tradition, this was
equally the case when masters executed their last wills and
testaments. To be sure, some exhibited tender solicitude
for their “people” and made special provisions for them,
but they were decidedly exceptional. In addition to those
who died intestate and thus left the fate of their slaves to
be settled by the courts, most testators—Virginians as well
as Mississippians, large as well as small—merely explained
how they wished their chattels to be divided among the
heirs.
John Ensor, of Baltimore County, Maryland, who died
in 1831, bequeathed to a daughter “three negroes . . . also
one gray mare and one cow.” He gave a second daughter
“one negro boy called Lee, one horse called Tom, and one
cow.” Ensor’s will made no further reference to his slaves.4
3 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, I, p. 390; II, pp. 103, 541-42; III,
p. 224.
* These and subsequent quotations are from ms. county will books
listed in the bibliography.

204
V: Chattels Personal

In 1851, Elizabeth Ann Boswell, of Prince Georges County

Maryland, willed to her three children eight slaves to be
“divided among them in equal portions, share and share
alike”—and thus made the sale of all or part of these slaves
inevitable for the division she required. Time after time
devisors uprooted small slave communities, as did Sher¬
wood Barksdale, of Cumberland County, North Carolina,
in 1841, when he divided his twenty-five slaves among nine
heirs.
Testators often specifically authorized or ordered the
sale of slaves. In 1849, Martha DuBose, of Fairfield District,
South Carolina, provided for a division of slaves among her
devisees “either by sale or otherwise.” Stephen Taylor, of
Edgecombe County, North Carolina, in 1848, bequeathed
to his wife five slaves during her life, after which they were
“to be sold and the money arising therefrom to be equally
divided” among several heirs. In 1842, James Atkinson,
also of Edgecombe County, instructed his executor to sell
nine slaves immediately after his death; upon his wife’s
death his two remaining slaves were to be “sold at public
sale to the highest bidder and the monies arising from said
sale equally divided among my lawful heirs.”
The offspring of slave women were frequently devised
before they were bom—occasionally before they were con¬
ceived. In Fairfield District, South Carolina, in 1830, Mary
Kincaid gave a slave woman named Sillar to a grandchild,
and Sillar’s two children to other grandchildren. If Sillar
should have a third child, it was to go to still another grand¬
child. If not, “I will that her two children now living be
sold at twelve years of age and the proceeds equally divided
among my said grand children.” In Mecklenburg County,
North Carolina, George Houston, in 1839, willed to one
daughter a slave named Charity, and to another daughter
“the first child that . . . Charity shal have.”
Thomas Harvey, of Prince Georges County, Maryland, a

205
 The Peculiar Institution

kind and thoughtful grandfather, in 1851, inserted the fol¬

lowing item in his will: “I give and bequeath to my Grand¬
child ... a little negro girl by the name of Sally who is
the daughter of my woman Harriet. ... It is my desire
that . . . the little negro Sally remain and live with my
aforesaid Grand child to wait on her and attend to her
comforts until she arrives at the age of eighteen; when she
is to have full possession of the said negro Sally and her
children should she have any at that time.”

5
Every slave state had a slave code. Besides establishing
the property rights of those who owned human chattels,
these codes supported masters in maintaining discipline
and provided safeguards for the white community against
slave rebellions. In addition, they held slaves, as thinking
beings, morally responsible and punishable for misde¬
meanors and felonies.
Fundamentally the slave codes were much alike. Those
of the Deep South were somewhat more severe than those
of the Upper South, but most of the variations were in
minor details. The similarities were due, in part, to the fact
that new states patterned their codes after those of the old.
South Carolina’s code of 1712 was almost a copy of the Bar¬
badian code; Georgia’s code of 1770 duplicated South Caro¬
lina’s code of 1740; and later the Gulf states borrowed heav¬
ily from both. In the Upper South, Tennessee virtually
adopted North Carolina’s code, while Kentucky and Mis¬
souri lifted many passages from Virginia’s. But the similari¬
ties were also due to the fact that slavery, wherever it ex¬
isted, made necessary certain kinds of regulatory laws. The
South Carolina code would probably have been essentially
the same if the Barbadian code had never been written.
After a generation of liberalization following the Ameri-

206
V: Chattels Personal
can Revolution, the codes underwent a reverse trend to¬
ward increasing restrictions. This trend was clearly evident
by the 1820’s, when rising slave prices and expansion into
the Southwest caused more and more Southerners to accept
slavery as a permanent institution. The Nat Turner rebel¬
lion and northern abolitionist attacks merely accelerated a
trend which had already begun.
In practice the slave codes went through alternating pe¬
riods of rigid and lax enforcement. Sometimes slaveholders
demanded even more rigorous codes, and sometimes they
were remiss in enforcing parts of existing ones. When the
danger of attack from without or of rebellion from within
seemed most acute, they looked anxiously to the state gov¬
ernments for additional protection. After the Turner
uprising, Governor John Floyd advised the Virginia legisla¬
ture: “As the means of guarding against the possible repeti¬
tion of these sanquinary scenes, I cannot fail to recom¬
mend to your early attention, the revision of all the laws,
intended to preserve in due subordination the slave popu¬
lation of our State.” s The legislature responded with sev¬
eral harsh additions to the code, but enforcement during
the next three decades continued to be spasmodic.
At the heart of every code was the requirement that slaves
submit to their masters and respect all white men. The
Louisiana code of 1806 proclaimed this most lucidly: “The
condition of the slave being merely a passive one, his sub¬
ordination to his master and to all who represent him is
not susceptible of modification or restriction ... he owes
to his master, and to all his family, a respect without
bounds, and an absolute obedience, and he is consequently
to execute all the orders which he receives from him, his
said master, or from them.” A slave was neither to raise his
hand against a white man nor to use insulting or abusive
language. Any number of acts, said a North Carolina judge,
» Richmond Enquirer, December 8, 1831.

207
 The Peculiar Institution
may constitute ‘‘insolence’’—it may be merely “a look, the
pointing of a finger, a refusal or neglect to step out of the
way when a white person is seen to approach. But each of
such acts violates the rules of propriety, and if tolerated,
would destroy that subordination, upon which our social
system rests.” 6
The codes rigidly controlled the slave’s movements and
his communication with others. A slave was not to be ‘‘at
large” without a pass which he must show to any white man
who asked to see it; if he forged a pass or free papers he was
guilty of a felony. Except in a few localities, he was pro¬
hibited from hiring his own time, finding his own employ¬
ment, or living by himself. A slave was not to preach, ex¬
cept to his master’s own slaves on his master’s premises in
the presence of whites. A gathering of more than a few
slaves (usually five) away from home, unattended by a
white, was an “unlawful assembly”.regardless of its purpose
or orderly decorum.
No person, not even the master, was to teach a slave to
read or write, employ him in setting type in a printing
office, or give him books or pamphlets. A religious publica¬
tion asked rhetorically: “Is there any great moral reason
why we should incur the tremendous risk of having our
wives slaughtered in consequence of our slaves being taught
to read incendiary publications?” They did not need to
read the Bible to find salvation: “Millions of those now in
heaven never owned a bible.” 7
Farms and plantations employing slaves were to be un¬
der the supervision of resident white men, and not left to
the sole direction of slave foremen. Slaves were not to beat
drums, blow horns, or possess guns; periodically their cab¬
ins were to be searched for weapons. They were not to ad-

• Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, p. 168.

T Southern Presbyterian, quoted in De Bow’s Review, XVIII (1855),
p. 52; Farmers' Register, IV (1836) , p. 181.

208
V: Chattels Personal

minister drugs to whites or practice medicine. “A slave un¬

der pretence of practicing medicine,” warned a Tennessee
judge, ‘‘might convey intelligence from one plantation to
another, of a contemplated insurrectionary movement; and
thus enable the slaves to act in concert.” 8
A slave was not to possess liquor, or purchase it without
a written order from his owner. He was not to trade with¬
out a permit, or gamble with whites or with other slaves.
He was not to raise cotton, swine, horses, mules, or cattle.
Allowing a slave to own animals, explained the North
Carolina Supreme Court, tended ‘‘to make other slaves dis¬
satisfied . . . and thereby excite ... a spirit of insubor¬
dination.” 9
Southern cities and towns supplemented the state codes
with additional regulations. Most of them prohibited slaves
from being on the streets after curfew or living in dwellings
separate from their masters. Richmond required Negroes
and mulattoes to step aside when whites passed by, and
barred them from riding in carriages except in the capacity
of menials. Charleston slaves could not swear, smoke, walk
with a cane, assemble at military parades, or make joyful
demonstrations. In Washington, North Carolina, the town
Commissioners prohibited ‘‘all disorderly shouting and
dancing, and all disorderly . . . assemblies ... of slaves
and free Negroes in the streets, market and other public
places.” In Natchez, all ‘‘strange slaves” had to leave the
city by four o’clock on Sunday afternoon.* 1
Violations of the state and local codes were misdemean¬
ors or felonies subject to punishment by justices, sheriffs,
police, and constabulary. Whipping was the most common
form of public punishment for less than capital offenses.

s Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 520-21.

a Ibid., II, pp. 240-41.
1 Ibid., II, p. 182; Henry, Police Control, p. 48; [Ingraham], South-West,
II, pp. 72-73; Phillips, American Negro Slavery, pp. 497-98.

209
 The Peculiar Institution
Except in Louisiana, imprisonment was rare. By mid-nine¬
teenth century branding and mutilation had declined,
though they had not been abolished everywhere. South
Carolina did not prohibit branding until 1833, and occa¬
sionally thereafter slave felons still had their ears cropped.
Mississippi and Alabama continued to enforce the penalty
of “burning in the hand” for felonies not capitally pun¬
ished.2
But most slave offenders were simply tied up in the jail
or at a whipping post and flogged. Some states in the Upper
South limited to thirty-nine the number of stripes that
could be administered at any one time, though more could
be given in a series of whippings over a period of days or
weeks. In the Deep South floggings could legally be more
severe. Alabama permitted up to one hundred stripes on
the bare back of a slave who forged a pass or engaged in
“riots, routs, unlawful assemblies, trespasses, and seditious
speeches.”
State criminal codes dealt more severely with slaves and
free Negroes than with whites. In the first place, they made
certain acts felonies when committed by Negroes but not
when committed by whites; and in the second place, they
assigned heavier penalties to Negroes than whites convicted
of the same offense. Every southern state defined a substan¬
tial number of felonies carrying capital punishment for
slaves and lesser punishments for whites. In addition to
murder of any degree, slaves received the death penalty for
attempted murder, manslaughter, rape and attempted rape
upon a white woman, rebellion and attempted rebellion,
poisoning, robbery, and arson. A battery upon a white per¬
son might also carry a sentence of death under certain cir¬
cumstances. In Louisiana, a slave who struck his master, a
member of the master’s family, or the overseer, “so as to

2 Henry, Police Control, p. 52; Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, p. 83.

210
V: Chattels Personal

cause a contusion, or effusion or shedding of blood,” was to

suffer death—as was a slave on a third conviction for strik¬
ing a white.
The codes were quite unmerciful toward whites who in¬
terfered with slave discipline. Heavy fines were levied upon
persons who unlawfully traded with slaves, sold them liq¬
uor without the master’s permission, gave them passes,
gambled with them, or taught them to read or write. North
Carolina made death the penalty for concealing a slave
“with the intent and for the purpose of enabling such slave
to escape.” Aiding or encouraging a bondsman to rebel was
the most heinous crime of all. “If a free person,” said
the Alabama code, “advise or conspire with a slave
to . . . make insurrection, ... he shall be punished with
death, whether such rebellion or insurrection be made or
not.”
Every slave state made it a felony to say or write anything
that might lead, directly or indirectly, to discontent or re¬
bellion. In 1837, the Missouri legislature passed an act “to
prohibit the publication, circulation, and promulgation of
the abolition doctrines.” The Virginia code of 1849 Pro'
vided a fine and imprisonment for any person who main¬
tained “that owners have not right of property in their
slaves.” Louisiana made it a capital offense to use “language
in any public discourse, from the bar, the bench, the stage,
the pulpit, or in any place whatsoever” that might produce
"insubordination among the slaves.” Most southern states
used their police power to prohibit the circulation of “in¬
cendiary” material through the United States mail; on nu¬
merous occasions local postmasters, public officials, or mobs
seized and destroyed antislavery publications.
Southerners justified these seizures on the ground that
some slaves were literate in spite of the laws against teach¬
ing them to read. A petition to the South Carolina legisla¬
ture claimed that “the ability to read exists on probably ev-

211
 The Peculiar Institution
ery plantation in the State; and it is utterly impossible for
even the masters to prevent this—as is apparent from the
cases in which servants learn to write by stealth.” But
whether or not slaves could read, the “corrupting influ¬
ence” of antislavery propaganda was bound to reach them
unless it was suppressed. There seemed to be no choice but
to construct an “intellectual blockade” against ideas hostile
to slavery if property were to be protected and the peace of
society secured. Hence the laws controlled the voices and
pens of white men as well as black.3
In brief, Southerners were not to do or say anything
which might destroy what the Louisiana code called “that
line of distinction . . . established between the several
classes” of the community. If a white man fraternized with
another man’s slave, he became an object of suspicion;
sometimes he found himself in trouble with the law. “On
Sunday evening last,” ran an item in a Richmond newspa¬
per, “while Officer Reed, of the Police, was passing down
Broad Street, he met a white man, walking arm-in-arm with
a black man. Officer Reed stopped them and demanded to
know the why and the wherefore of such a cheek by jowl
business. . . . They were both arrested and taken to the
cage.” Happily for the white man, he could produce wit¬
nesses who testified that he was a person “of general good
character, who happened to be ‘on a spree’ at the time he
was found in company with the negro.” He was therefore
discharged “with an admonition.”4
Southern slave codes protected the owners of bondsmen
who attempted to abscond by requiring officers to assist in
their recapture and by giving all white men power to arrest
them. Every state required the owner of a fugitive to com-

3 Undated petition from Chester District, South Carolina Slavery Man¬

uscripts Collection; Clement Eaton, Freedom of Thought in the Old
South (Durham, 1940) , passim.
* Richmond Enquirer, August 30, 1853.

212
V: Chattels Personal

pensate the captor for his trouble. Because of the magni¬

tude of the problem, Kentucky obligated masters to pay a
reward of one hundred dollars for runaways taken “in a
State where slavery is not tolerated by law.” In an effort to
induce the return of fugitives escaping to Mexico, Texas
promised a reward of one-third the value of a slave who fled
"beyond the limits of the slave territories of the United
States.” 6
A slave was legally a runaway if found without a pass be¬
yond a certain prescribed distance from home—eight miles
in Mississippi, twenty in Missouri. If his master could not
be located or lived far away, the fugitive was delivered to a
justice of the peace who committed him to jail. The slave
of an unknown master was advertised for a period ranging
from three months to one year, and if he was not claimed by
the end of this time he was sold to the highest bidder. The
proceeds of the sale, minus the reward, jail fees, and other
costs, were recoverable by the master should he appear at
some future date.
North Carolina authorized the outlawing of a “vicious”
runaway. For example, two justices of New Hanover
County gave notice that the slave London was “lurking
about” and “committing acts of felony and other mis¬
deeds.” London was therefore outlawed; unless he surren¬
dered immediately, “any person may KILL and DESTROY
the said slave by such means as he or they may think fit,
without accusation or impeachment of any crime or offense
for so doing.” At the same time, London’s master offered a
reward of fifty dollars for his confinement in jail, or one
hundred dollars for his head. Louisiana permitted a person
to shoot a runaway who would not stop when ordered to
do so. The state Supreme Court cautioned pursuers that
they ought to try to avoid giving a fugitive a “mortal

5 Austin Texas State Gazette, February 19, 1859.

213
 The Peculiar Institution
wound,” but if he were killed “the homicide is a conse¬
quence of the permission to fire upon him.” 6
Occasionally a band of runaways was too formidable to
be dispersed by volunteers, and the governor called upon
the militia to capture or destroy it. Ordinarily, however,
this and other organized police activity was delegated to the
slave patrols. A system of patrols, often more or less loosely
connected with the militia, existed in every slave state. Vir¬
ginia empowered each county or corporation court to “ap¬
point, for a term not exceeding three months, one or more
patrols” to visit “all negro quarters and other places sus¬
pected of having therein unlawful assemblies,” and to ar¬
rest “such slaves as may stroll from one plantation to an¬
other without permission.” Alabama compelled every
slaveowner under sixty and every nonslaveholder under
forty-five to perform patrol duty. The justices of each pre¬
cinct divided the eligible males into detachments which
had to patrol at least one night a week during their terms
of service. Everywhere the patrols played a major role in
the system of control.
The patrols were naturally more active and efficient in
regions with many slaves than in regions with few. In some
places patrol activity was sporadic, at least between insur¬
rection panics. “We should always act as if we had an enemy
in the very bosom of the State,” warned a group of Charles¬
tonians after the Vesey conspiracy.7 But when their fears
subsided, many Southerners looked upon patrol service as
an irksome duty and escaped it when possible. Even the
slaveholders often preferred to pay the fines levied for non¬
performance of this duty, or to hire substitutes as they were
sometimes permitted to do. The complaint of an editor in
Austin, Texas, that the state patrol law was not effective,

® Wilmington (N.C.) Journal, August 24,1849; Catterall (ed.) , Judicial

Cases, III, p. 666.
1 Phillips (ed.), Plantation and Frontier, II, pp. 113-14.

214
V: Chattels Personal

“in consequence of the indisposition of parties to perform

their duties,’’ was frequently heard—until the whites were
again alarmed by rumors of rebellion.8
But complaints about patrols abusing their powers were
as common as complaints about their failing to function.
The nonslaveholding whites, to whom most patrol service
was relegated, frequently disliked the masters almost as in¬
tensely as the Negroes, and as patrollers they were in a posi¬
tion to vent their feelings toward both. Slaveholders re¬
peatedly went to the courts with charges that patrollers had
invaded their premises and whipped their slaves excessively
or illegally. The slaves in turn both hated and feared the
“paterollers” and retaliated against them when they could.
Yet masters looked upon the patrol as an essential police
system, and none ever seriously suggested abolishing it.
The final clauses in the southern legal codes relating di¬
rectly to the control of slaves were those governing free Ne¬
groes. The laws reflected the general opinion that these peo¬
ple were an anomaly, a living denial “that nature’s God
intended the African for the status of slavery.” They “em¬
bitter by their presence the happiness of those who remain
slaves. They entice them and furnish them with facilities to
elope.” They were potential allies of the slaves in the event
of a rebellion. In 1830, David Walker, a free Negro who
moved from North Carolina to Boston, wrote and at¬
tempted to circulate in the South a pamphlet which urged
the slaves to fight for their freedom. He thus aroused
southern legislatures to the menace of the free Negro.9
The trend of ante-bellum legislation was toward ever
more stringent controls. Free Negroes could not move from
one state to another, and those who left their own state for

8 Austin Texas State Gazette, July 22, 1854.

9 Jackson Mississippian, February 26, 1858; Tallahassee Floridian and
Journal, April n, 1857; American Farmer, XI (1829) , p. 167; Johnson,
Ante-Bellum North Carolina, pp. 515-16.

215
 The Peculiar Institution
any purpose could not return. In South Carolina and the
Gulf states Negro seamen were arrested and kept in cus¬
tody while their vessels were in port. Though free Negroes
could make contracts and own property, in most other re¬
spects their civil rights were as circumscribed as those of
slaves. They were the victims of the white man’s fears, of
racial prejudice, and of the desire to convince slaves that
winning freedom was scarcely worth the effort.
Many Southerners desired the complete expulsion of the
free Negroes, or the re-enslavement of those who would not
leave. Petitions poured in to the state legislatures demand¬
ing laws that would implement one or the other of these
policies. In 1849, a petition from Augusta County, Vir¬
ginia, asked the legislature to make an appropriation for a
program of gradual removal; all free Negroes who refused
to go to Liberia should be expelled from the state within
five years.1 In 1859, the Arkansas legislature required sher¬
iffs to order the state’s handful of free Negroes to leave.
Those who remained were to be hired out as slaves for a
year, after which those who still remained were to be sold
into permanent bondage.
A Texas editor caught the spirit of the extreme pro¬
slavery element during the 1850’s when he proclaimed that
the time was “near at hand for determined action.” South¬
ern free Negroes were “destined to be remitted back into
slavery,” which was their “true condition.” 2 In this last
ante-bellum decade most states adopted laws authorizing
the “voluntary enslavement” of these people and enabling
them to select their own masters. Virginia went a step
further and permitted the sale into “absolute slavery” of
free Negroes convicted of offenses “punishable by confine¬
ment in the penitentiary”; Florida applied the same pen¬
alty to those who were “idle” or “dissolute.” This problem,

1 Virginia Legislative Petitions.

2 Austin Texas State Gazette, September 12, 1857.

2l6
V: Chattels Personal

some apparently felt, would remain unsolved until all Ne¬

groes and “mulattoes” were not only presumed to be slaves
but were in fact slaves.

6
“A slave,” said a Tennessee judge, ‘‘is not in the condi¬
tion of a horse. . . . He has mental capacities, and an im¬
mortal principle in his nature.” The laws did not “extin¬
guish his high-born nature nor deprive him of many rights
which are inherent in man.” 3 All the southern codes recog¬
nized the slave as a person for purposes other than holding
him accountable for crimes. Many state constitutions re¬
quired the legislature “to pass such laws as may be neces¬
sary to oblige the owners of slaves to treat them with
humanity; to provide for them necessary clothing and pro¬
visions; [and] to abstain from all injuries to them, extend¬
ing to life or limb.”
The legislatures responded with laws extending some
protection to the persons of slaves. Masters who refused to
feed and clothe slaves properly might be fined; in several
states the court might order them to be sold, the proceeds
going to the dispossessed owners. Those who abandoned or
neglected insane, aged, or infirm slaves were also liable to
fines. In Virginia the overseers of the poor were required
to care for such slaves and to charge their masters.
Now and then a master was tried and convicted for the
violation of one of these laws. In 1849, the South Carolina
Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a slaveholder who
“did not give his negroes enough even of [corn] meal, the
only provision he did give.” In such a case, said the court,
the law had to be enforced for the sake of “public senti¬
ment, . . . and to protect property from the depredation

3 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, p. 530.

217
 The Peculiar Institution
of famishing slaves.” 4 But prosecutions were infrequent.
Since a slave could neither file a complaint nor give evi¬
dence against his master, action depended upon the will¬
ingness of whites to testify in the slave’s behalf. This hap¬
pened only under unusual circumstances.
Some of the codes regulated the hours of labor. As early
as 1740, South Carolina limited the working day to fifteen
hours from March to September and fourteen hours from
September to March. All the codes forbade field labor on
Sunday. In Virginia, a master who worked his slaves on
Sunday, “except in household or other work of necessity
or charity,” was to be fined two dollars for each offense. It
was permissible, however, to let slaves labor on the Sab¬
bath for wages; and the North Carolina Supreme Court
ruled that it was not an indictable offense to give them Sun¬
day tasks as a punishment.5 With rare exceptions, masters
who were so inclined violated these laws with impunity.
The early colonial codes had assessed only light penal¬
ties, or none at all, for killing a slave. South Carolina, “to
restrain and prevent barbarity being exercised toward
slaves,” provided, in 1740, that a white who willfully mur¬
dered a slave was to be punished by a fine of seven hundred
pounds or imprisonment at hard labor for seven years. Kill¬
ing a slave in “sudden heat or passion” or by “undue cor¬
rection” carried a fine of three hundred and fifty pounds.
In Georgia prior to 1770, and in North Carolina prior to
1775, taking a slave’s life was not a felony.
After the American Revolution there was a drastic
change of policy. Virginia, in 1788, and North Carolina, in
1791, defined the malicious killing of a slave as murder sub¬
ject to the same penalty imposed upon the murderer of a
freeman. In 1817, North Carolina applied this principle to
persons convicted of manslaughter. Georgia’s Constitution

* Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 412-13.

5 Ibid., II, p. 107.
V: Chattels Personal

of 1798 contained a clause that was copied, in substance,

into the constitutions of several states in the Southwest:
“Any person who shall maliciously dismember or deprive
a slave of life shall suffer such punishment as would be in¬
flicted in case the like offence had been committed on a
free white person.”
Eventually all the southern states adopted laws of this
kind. In 1821, South Carolina belatedly provided that a
person who killed a slave “willfully, maliciously, and de¬
liberately” was to suffer death, and a person who killed a
slave in “sudden heat or passion” was to be fined up to five
hundred dollars and imprisoned up to six months. In Ala¬
bama a person who, “with malice aforethought,” caused the
death of a slave “by cruel whipping or beating, or by any
inhuman treatment, or by the use of any weapon in its na¬
ture calculated to produce death,” was guilty of murder in
the first degree. A master or overseer causing death by cruel
whipping or by other cruel punishment, “though without
any intention to kill,” was guilty of murder in the second
degree.
By the i85o’s, most of the codes had made cruelty a pub¬
lic offense even when not resulting in death. Alabama mas¬
ters and overseers who inflicted brutal punishments were
subject to fines of from twenty-five to one thousand dollars.
A person who committed an assault and battery upon a
slave not his own, “without just cause or excuse,” was guilty
of a misdemeanor. Louisiana prohibited the owner from
punishing a slave with “unusual rigor” or “so as to maim or
mutilate him.” Georgia more explicitly prohibited “cut¬
ting, or wounding, or . . . cruelly and unnecessarily bit¬
ing or tearing with dogs.” In Kentucky, a slave who was
treated cruelly might be taken from his master and sold.
But these laws invariably had significant qualifications.
For example, the accidental death of a slave while receiving
“moderate correction” was not homicide. Killing a slave

219
 The Peculiar Institution
in the act of rebellion or when resisting legal arrest was al¬
ways “justifiable homicide.” South Carolina permitted a
white person to “apprehend and moderately correct” a
slave who was at large without a pass and refused to sub¬
mit to examination; “and if any such slave shall assault and
strike such white person, such slave may be lawfully
killed.” The South Carolina law against cruelty concluded
with a nullifying clause: “nothing herein contained shall
be so construed as to prevent the owner or person having
charge of any slave from inflicting on such slave such pun¬
ishment as may be necessary for the good government of
the same.” Southern courts, by their interpretations of the
laws, in effect added further qualifications. Thus the North
Carolina Supreme Court ruled that a homicide upon a
slave did not require as much provocation as a homicide
upon a white to make it justifiable.
Under most circumstances a slave was powerless to de¬
fend himself from an assault by a white man. According to
the Tennessee Supreme Court, severe chastisement by the
master did not justify resistance. If a master exercised his
right to punish, “with or without cause, [and] the slave re¬
sist and slay him, it is murder . . . because the law cannot
recognize the violence of the master as a legitimate cause of
provocation.” According to the Georgia Supreme Court,
even if the owner should “exceed the bounds of reason
... in his chastisement, the slave must submit . . . un¬
less the attack ... be calculated to produce death.” 6
On rare occasions a court refused to convict a bondsman
for killing a brutal overseer (never a brutal master) while
resisting an assault that might have caused his death. In
1834, the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed the de¬
cision of a lower court which had sentenced a slave to be
hanged for the homicide of an overseer under these circum-

® Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 549-50; III, pp. 35-36.

220
V: Chattels Personal

stances. Though the slave’s “general duty” was uncondi¬

tional submission, he nevertheless had the right to defend
himself against “an unlawful attempt ... to deprive him
of life.” But Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin, in a similar case,
expressed the apprehension many Southerners felt when a
slave was exonerated for an assault on a white man. To hold
that slaves could decide when they were entitled to resist
white men was a dangerous doctrine, said Ruffin. It might
encourage them to denounce “the injustice of slavery itself,
and, upon that pretext, band together to throw off their
common bondage entirely.” 7
In a few notable cases the courts enforced the laws against
the killing of slaves. A North Carolinian was sentenced to
death for the murder of his own female chattel. Over a pe¬
riod of months he had “beat her with clubs, iron chains,
and other deadly weapons, time after time; burnt her; in¬
flicted stripes . . . which literally excoriated her whole
body.” The court held him “justly answerable” for her
death, though he did not “specially design it.” The Virginia
Court of Appeals, in approving a similar conviction, ex¬
plained precisely how far a master could go before the law
would intervene. For the sake of securing “proper subordi¬
nation and obedience” the master would not be disturbed
even though his punishment were “malicious, cruel and ex¬
cessive.” But he “acts at his peril; and if death ensues in
consequence of such punishment, the relation of master
and slave affords no ground of excuse or palliation.” In
Mississippi, too, a white man was hanged for killing an¬
other man’s slave. “In vain,” argued the state Supreme
Court, “shall we look for any law passed by the . . . phil¬
anthropic legislature of this state, giving even to the master,
much less to a stranger, power over the life of a slave.” 8
Decisions such as these were exceptional. Only a handful

7 Ibid., II, pp. 70-71, 132-34.

» Ibid., I, pp. 223-25; II, pp. 85-86; III, pp. 283-84.

821
 The Peculiar Institution
of whites suffered capital punishment for murdering slaves,
and they were usually persons who had committed the of¬
fense upon slaves not their own. When a master was con¬
victed, it was generally for a lesser crime, such as killing in
“sudden heat or passion” or by “undue correction.” And a
convicted killer, whether or not the master, rarely received
as heavy a penalty as he would have for a homicide upon a
white.
Actually, the great majority of whites who, by a reason¬
able interpretation of the law, were guilty of feloniously
killing slaves escaped without any punishment at all. Of
those who were indicted, most were either acquitted or
never brought to trial. For several reasons this was almost
inevitable.
One major reason was that neither slaves nor free Ne¬
groes could testify against whites. There were, as one South¬
erner observed, “a thousand incidents of plantation life
concealed from public view,” witnessed only by slaves,
which the law could not reach. One of slavery’s “most vul¬
nerable points,” a defender of the institution agreed, was
the “helpless position of the slave” when his master was
“placed in opposition to him.” His “mouth being closed as
a witness,” he had to depend upon whites to testify in his
behalf.9
But here was the second major obstacle in the way of con¬
victions: white witnesses were reluctant to testify against
white offenders. Most white men were obsessed with the
terrible urgency of racial solidarity, with the fear that the
whole complex mechanism of control would break down if
the master’s discretion in governing slaves were questioned.
It took a particularly shocking atrocity to break through
this barrier—to enable a white man to win the approval of

® Henry, Police Control, p. 79; Thomas R. R. Cobb, An Inquiry into

the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America (Philadel¬
phia, 1858), pp. 97-98.

222
V: Chattels Personal

his neighbors for giving evidence against another white. A

North Carolinian knew of “a number” of instances in
which “nobody in the neighborhood had any doubt that
the death of the slave was caused by the severity of his treat¬
ment,” but no guilty party was indicted or brought to trial.
Frederick Douglass cited the case of a Maryland woman
who murdered a slave with a piece of firewood. A warrant
was issued for her arrest, but it was never served.1
There was still a third obstacle. Even when whites agreed
to testify, there remained the problem of getting a white
jury to convict. A Louisiana planter made a terse notation
in his diary: “Went to town[.] man tried for Whipping a
negro to Death, trial will continue till tomorrow—deserves
death—Cleared!” A South Carolinian reported that two
whites who had murdered a slave “were cleared by a dirty
ragged-JUI7> the only reason I have heard for it was
that a former jury had cleared men of . . . murder who
were as guilty as these.” The foreman of a South Carolina
jury declared frankly that he “would not convict the de¬
fendant, or any other white person, of murdering a slave.” 2
This was the feeling of most jurymen.
In Maryland, Frederick Douglass remembered hearing
white men say that it was “worth but half a cent to kill a
nigger, and half a cent to bury him.” 3 This surely was not
the attitude of the average Southerner, but it did indicate
how lightly all too many of them regarded the laws against
the killing of slaves. It would be too much to say that the
codes gave slaves no protection at all. But it would also be
too much to say that they extended equal justice and pro¬
tection to slaves and freemen. If they had, there would

1 Bassett, Slavery in North Carolina, pp. 91-9*; Douglass, My Bondage,

pp. 125-26.
2 Davis (ed.), Diary of Bennet H. Barrow, p. 148; Gavin Diary, entries
for November 4, 16, 1857; Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, p. 343.
• Douglass, My Bondage, p. 127.

223
 The Peculiar Institution
unquestionably have been fewer felonious assaults upon
slaves.
“There are many persons,” complained a Mississippi edi¬
tor, “who think they have the same right to shoot a ne¬
gro . . . that they have to shoot down a dog, but there are
laws for the protection of slaves as well as the master, and
the sooner the error alluded to is removed, the better it will
be for both parties.”4 Slavery and the racial attitudes it en¬
couraged caused this “error” to persist throughout the
ante-bellum period.

7
The fate of a slave who was the principal, rather than the
victim, of an alleged misdemeanor or felony was highly un¬
certain. The state codes established regular judicial pro¬
cedures for the trial of slaves accused of public offenses, but
probably most minor offenses, such as petit larceny, were
disposed of without resort to the courts. For instance, when
an Alabama slave was caught stealing from a neighboring
plantation, the proprietor agreed not to prosecute if the
overseer punished the slave himself. The state Supreme
Court sanctioned the informal settlement of such cases.
Even though an offense was “criminally punishable,” said
the court, so far as the public was concerned it was better
to have the punishment “admeasured by a domestic tri¬
bunal.” 8
Nevertheless, many bondsmen who violated the law were
given public trials. In colonial days they were always ar¬
raigned before special “Negro courts,” which were usually
less concerned about the formalities of traditional English
justice than about speedy verdicts and certain punishments.
A slave accused of a capital offense, according to the South

* Quoted in Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, pp. 250-51.

6 Catterall (ed.) , Judicial Cases, III, pp. 158-59.

224
V: Chattels Personal

Carolina code of 1740, was to be tried “in the most sum¬

mary and expeditious maner’’; on conviction he was to
suffer death by such means as would be “most effectual to
deter others from offending in the like maner.” Justice in
the “Negro courts” was at best capricious.
For misdemeanors, and in some states for crimes not pun¬
ished capitally, the summary processes of “Negro courts”
survived until the abolition of slavery. Louisiana tried
slaves for noncapital felonies before one justice and four
slaveholders, Mississippi before two justices and five slave¬
holders, and Georgia before three justices. Alabama tried
slaves for minor offenses before a justice (who could assign
a maximum penalty of thirty-nine lashes), and for non¬
capital felonies before the judge of the probate court and
two justices of the peace. The states of the Upper South
generally subjected slaves accused of misdemeanors to simi¬
lar informal and summary trials.
In the nineteenth century, most states gave slaves jury
trials in the regular courts when accused of capital crimes;
some went further and gave them this privilege when ac¬
cused of any felony. The Missouri Constitution of 1820
and the Texas Constitution of 1845 provided that in crim¬
inal cases slaves were to have an impartial trial by jury. On
conviction, a Missouri slave was to suffer “the same degree
of punishment, and no other, that would be inflicted on a
free white person for a like offense.” North Carolina slaves
accused of capital offenses were tried in the superior courts,
and the law required the trials to be conducted as the trials
of freemen. In Alabama, they were tried before the circuit
court of the county, “in the mode provided by law for the
trial of white persons,” except that two-thirds of the jurors
had to be slaveholders. In Georgia, capital crimes contin¬
ued to be tried before three justices until 1850, when the
superior courts were given jurisdiction.
A few states never granted jury trial or abandoned the

225
 The Peculiar Institution
informal courts and summary procedures even in capital
cases. The Virginia code declared that the county and cor¬
poration courts, consisting of at least five justices, “shall be
courts of oyer and terminer for the trial of negroes charged
with felony. . . . Such trials shall be . . . without a jury.”
Louisiana tried slaves for capital offenses before two jus¬
tices and ten slaveholders, and South Carolina tried them
for all offenses before a justice and five freeholders without
a jury.
Many Southerners trained in the law recognized the pos¬
sibilities for miscarriages of justice in the “Negro courts.”
A South Carolina judge called these courts “the worst sys¬
tem that could be devised.” In his message to the legisla¬
ture, in 1833, Governor Robert Y. Hayne acknowledged
that reform was “imperiously called for.” “Capital offenses
committed by slaves, involving the nicest questions of the
law, are often tried by courts composed of persons ignorant
of the law.” An editor affirmed that the life of the slave and
the property of the master were in jeopardy “from the ig¬
norance and malice of unworthy magistrates.” 6 However,
criticism such as this produced few reforms.
In practice, the quality of justice slaves received from
juries and regular courts was not consistently better than
the justice they received from “Negro courts.” When ten¬
sion was great and the passions of white men were running
high, a slave found it as difficult to get a fair trial before a
jury in one of the superior courts of North Carolina or Ala¬
bama as he did before the justices in one of the informal
courts of South Carolina or Virginia. Nowhere, regardless
of constitutional or statutory requirements, was the trial of
a bondsman apt to be like the trial of a freeman. Though
counsel was guaranteed, though jurors might be chal¬
lenged, though Negroes could testify in cases involving

* Henry, Police Control, pp. 58-61, 63-64; letter from Albert Rhett in
Charleston Courier, January 27, 1842.

226
V: Chattels Personal

members of their own race, the trial of a slave was never

the trial of a man by his peers. Rather, it was the trial of a
man with inferior rights by his superiors—of a man who
was property as well as a person. Inevitably, most justices,
judges, and jurors permitted questions of discipline and
control to obscure considerations of even justice.
A slave accused of committing violence upon another
slave, rather than upon a white, had a better chance for a
fair trial. Here the deeper issues of discipline and racial
subordination were not involved, and the court could hear
the case calmly and decide it on its merits. Moreover, the
penalty on conviction was usually relatively light. Slaves
were capitally punished for the murder of other slaves al¬
most as rarely as whites were capitally punished for the
murder of slaves. A bondsman in Rapides Parish, Louisi¬
ana, accused of beating another bondsman to death, was
found guilty of “misbehavior” and sentenced to receive one
hundred lashes on four successive days and to wear a ball
and chain for three months. A slave in Clay County, Mis¬
souri, convicted of murdering another slave, received
thirty-nine lashes and was sold out of the state.7
The southern codes did not prescribe lighter penalties
for slaves who murdered other slaves than for slaves who
murdered whites. The theory of the law was that one of¬
fense was as serious as the other. But the white men who
applied the law usually thought otherwise.

8
When a Louisiana slave accused of murdering a white
man (not his master) had the benefit of two mistrials, an
overseer wrote in disgust: “there are some slave owners
who think that a white man’s life is worth nothing in com-

i Alexandria (La.) Red River Republican, January 8, 1848; Trexler,

Slavery in Missouri, p. 79.

227
 The Peculiar Institution
parison with that of a slave.” 8 For some, such as this over¬
seer, the wheels of justice even in the “Negro courts”
turned all too slowly; and critics often held the masters re¬
sponsible for it.
Fortunately for the slave, his lack of civil rights and help¬
lessness in the courts was mitigated somewhat by either the
master’s self-interest or paternalism, or both. Sometimes
bondsmen had the help of their masters in escaping con¬
viction for legal offenses or were sheltered from the harsh¬
est features of the slave codes. On a Mississippi plantation
a field-hand once “rose upon” the overseer and “came near
killing him.” His master kept him in irons for a few days,
but when the overseer recovered, the slave was sent back
to work. Though he had committed a capital crime, this
slave was never prosecuted for it.9 On a Louisiana planta¬
tion a female domestic, while resisting punishment, threw
her mistress down and “beat her unmercifully on the head
and face.” At her trial before a “Negro court,” her mistress
“plead so hard for the girl’s life to be spared” that she was
sentenced to life imprisonment.* 1 Thus a slave escaped capi¬
tal punishment because a “Negro court” indulged the
whim of her mistress.
Some good-natured masters winked at other regulations
in the codes. They permitted slaves to gather in illegal as¬
semblies, to go at large without passes, to trade without per¬
mits, to purchase liquor, and to hunt with guns. Despite the
laws, they allowed slaves to hire their own time and were
seldom prosecuted for it. Sometimes they encouraged slaves
to learn to read and write. A small Mississippi planter re¬
ported that one of his slaves had taught all the rest to read

8 Moore Rawls to Lewis Thompson, n.d., Lewis Thompson Papers.

» Newstead Plantation Diary, entries for June 8-n, i860.
1 Rachel O'Connor to A. T. Conrad, May 26, 1836; id. to Mary C.
Weeks, June 5, 1836, Weeks Collection.

228
V: Chattels Personal

and that he had not objected. When told that there was a
law prohibiting this, he claimed never to have heard of it.2
The southern press complained incessantly about viola¬
tions of the codes and demanded more rigorous enforce¬
ment.
Though slaves were not legally permitted to live inde¬
pendently, a few masters nevertheless gave them virtual
freedom. The North Carolina Supreme Court noted a cus¬
tom that had developed, “particularly among that class of
citizens who were opposed to slavery, of permitting persons
of color, who, by law, are their slaves, to go at large as
free,—thereby introducing a species of quasi emancipation,
contrary to the law, and against the policy of the State.”
Quakers frequently owned slaves “having nothing but the
name, and working for their own benefit.” Free Negroes
with titles to slaves usually made their bondage nominal.
Maryland doubtless contained more Negroes living in an
“intermediate status between slavery and freedom” than
any other southern state.3
Masters softened the state codes not only by evading
them but also by going beyond the mere letter of the law
in recognizing their slaves as human beings. No slaveholder
needed to respect the marital ties of his slaves; yet a Ten¬
nesseean purchased several slaves at a public sale, not be¬
cause he needed them, but because of “their intermarriage
with my servants and their appeals to me to do so.” A Ken¬
tucky mistress tried to buy the wife of her slave before mov¬
ing to Missouri. Another Kentuckian, when obliged to sell
his slaves, gave each an opportunity to find a satisfactory

2 Olmsted, Back Country, pp. 143-44.

s Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 161-62; John Hope Franklin,
“Slaves Virtually Free in Ante-Bellum North Carolina,” Journal of
Negro History, XVIII (1943), pp. 284-310; Richard B. Morris, “Labor
Controls in Maryland in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of South¬
ern History, XIV (1948), pp. 385-87.

229
 The Peculiar Institution
purchaser and refused to sell any to persons residing out¬
side the neighborhood.*
Finally, a few slaveholders tempered the codes by refus¬
ing to bequeath their human chattels as they did ordinary
property. True, wills showing solicitude for slaves were un¬
usual; they often singled out just one or two from the rest
for special consideration; and the favored ones were nearly
always being rewarded for loyalty and obedience. Even so,
these expressions of gratitude were touching reminders
that some masters could never completely forget the hu¬
man qualities in their “people.”
When Mary Weems, of Prince Georges County, Mary¬
land, wrote her will in 1840, she devoted a clause to one of
her female slaves. This woman, she instructed her heirs, was
not to be separated from her daughter, was to be given the
choice of working in the field or in the house, and was to
be “well and kindly treated, these wishes being expressed
in behalf of one who has been ever faithful and kind to me
and attentive to my wants when I have been sick.” In 1846,
John Armstrong, of Fairfield District, South Carolina,
willed that a “favorite negro woman” was to be kept with
her children and not required to “perform the duties of a
slave.” Instead, she was to “work for her own support alone,
and her time be allowed her as a free person, so far as by
the laws of this State it can be done.”
Some testators made more general provisions for the wel¬
fare of all their slaves. In cases where slaves had to be sold
they prohibited the division of families, restricted sales to
purchasers within the county or state, or permitted slaves
to select their own masters. In 1837, Joseph Martin, of Tal¬
bot County, Maryland, realizing that his property would be
sold to pay his debts, ordered his executor to sell the slaves

* Bills Diary, entry for January 22, 1850; Sarah G. Yeates to her brother,
February 1, 1857, Buckner Family Papers; W. F. Bullock to Isaac P.
Shelby, December 21, 1850, Shelby Family Papers.

230
V: Chattels Personal

within the state and to “exercise the utmost humanity . . .

by disposing of them in families as far as practicable.” His
son was “to take care of and tenderly treat” two old slaves
“and furnish them with comfortable lodging and clothing
and wholesome food, so long as they shall respectively live.”
In 1832, Elizabeth Carver, of Cumberland County, North
Carolina, charged two of her children “with the mainte¬
nance and support of all my old and faithful Negro
Slaves . . . during [their] natural lives.”
John Clark, a small, obscure slaveholder who lived in
Abbeville District, South Carolina, provided a striking
example of inconspicuous paternalism. Clark, a childless
widower, resided on his estate “without the society of white
persons.” To his slaves, twelve in number, he was “indul¬
gent to a degree hurtful to his pecuniary interest and he re¬
garded them as objects of care and regard.” His will stipu¬
lated that his slaves were to be kept together on his land,
the proceeds from their labor used for their comfort and
support, and his household furniture divided among them.
Clark’s heirs contested the will on the ground that its pur¬
pose was to emancipate the slaves illegally, but the probate
court denied that it violated state law.6
This decision was as unique as the will that precipitated
it. Masters who ignored the demands of discipline by fla¬
grantly violating the slave codes, who elevated their slaves
to virtual freedom, who treated them with utter disregard
for their status as property, and who strictly regulated their
use when bequeathing them to heirs, are justly celebrated
in the folklore of slavery. But they are celebrated because
their conduct was so abnormal. Had other masters imitated
them, the slave system would have disintegrated—and a na¬
tion might have been spared a civil war.
» Abbeville District, South Carolina, Judge of Probate Decree Book,
1839-1858.

231
 The Peculiar Institution

9
“A free African population is a curse to any country,”
the Chancellor of the South Carolina Court of Appeals once
flatly affirmed. “This race, ... in a state of freedom, and
in the midst of a civilized community, are a dead weight to
the progress of improvement.” Free Negroes became “pil¬
ferers and maurauders,” “consumers, without being pro¬
ducers . . . governed mainly by the instincts of animal
nature.” 6 Racial attitudes such as these, the fear of free Ne¬
groes as a social menace, and respect for the rights of prop¬
erty caused the southern states to adopt constitutional pro¬
hibitions against the legislative emancipation of slaves
without the consent of their owners.
But the state constitutions put few obstacles in the way
of masters who wished to manumit their own slaves. In the
border states of Delaware, Maryland (until i860), Ken¬
tucky, and Missouri, the sole legislative restrictions were
that creditors’ claims must be respected and that a manu¬
mitted slave must not become a burden to the public be¬
cause of age or infirmity. Virginia added the further condi¬
tion that a manumitted slave was not to remain in the state
for more than a year “without lawful permission.” A
county or corporation court might grant this permission if
it had evidence that the freedman was “of good character,
sober, peaceable, orderly and industrious.” In North Caro¬
lina an emancipated slave had to leave the state within
ninety days, unless a superior court made an exception be¬
cause of “meritorious service.” In Tennessee a slave freed
after 1831 had to be sent beyond her borders immediately;
after 1854 he had to be sent to the west coast of Africa.
In the Deep South the trend was toward increasingly se¬
vere legislative restrictions. In Louisiana (for many years
the most liberal of these states) an act of 1807 limited the
« Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, p. 442.

232
V: Chattels Personal

privilege of manumission to slaves who were at least thirty

years old and who had not been guilty of bad conduct dur¬
ing the previous four years. In 1830, Louisiana required
emancipated slaves to leave the state within thirty days;
after 1852, they had to leave the United States within
twelve months. Five years later, Louisiana entirely prohib¬
ited private emancipations within the state.
The remaining states of the lower South had outlawed
private emancipations early in the nineteenth century, ex¬
cept when granted by a special act of the legislature as a re¬
ward for “meritorious service.” The Georgia legislature
once approved a request a master inserted in his will:
“Whereas, from the fidelity of my negro man Joy, and my
negro woman Rose, who not only saved and protected a
great part of my property during the time the British occu¬
pied St. Simons, but actually buried and saved a large sum
of money, with which they might have absconded and ob¬
tained their freedom; it is therefore my will, and I direct
my executors to petition the Legislature to pass an Act for
the manumission of my said negroes.” The South Carolina
legislature purchased the freedom of two slaves and granted
them annual pensions of fifty dollars for betraying insur¬
rection plots. The Louisiana legislature emancipated a
slave and gave him a reward of five hundred dollars for the
same “meritorious service.” 7
The laws prohibiting private emancipations did not in
themselves prevent a testator from directing in his will that
his slaves be removed from the state and freed elsewhere.
But the court might scrupulously examine the wording of
such a bequest. The Georgia Supreme Court invalidated
wills specifying that slaves be “manumitted and sent to a
free state,” because “the emancipation . . . was to take ef-

r Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, p. 21; Henry, Police Control, pp.
17-18; Taylor, ‘‘Negro Slavery in Louisiana," pp. 203-204. In i860,
Maryland also prohibited private emancipations within the state.

233
 The Peculiar Institution
feet in Georgia.” However, if the verbs were transposed, if
the slaves were to be “sent to a free state and manumitted,”
the will was valid, because it was not unlawful to direct
emancipation outside the state. Judge Joseph H. Lumpkin
urged the Georgia legislature to remedy this “defect” in the
law. “I have no partiality for foreign any more than domes¬
tic manumission,” he confessed. “Especially do I object to
the colonization of our negroes upon our northwestern
frontier. They facilitate the escape of our fugitive slaves. In
case of civil war, they would become an element of strength
to the enemy.” 8
Several states in the Deep South took the step Judge
Lumpkin suggested and prohibited emancipation by last
will and testament. South Carolina acted as early as 1841,
when it voided all deeds and wills designed to free slaves
before or after removal from the state. Mississippi, Geor¬
gia, Arkansas, and Alabama adopted similar laws during
the next two decades.
Occasionally a testator attempted to circumvent the stat¬
utes against emancipation, but almost invariably the court
invalidated his will. “This is another of those cases,” the
South Carolina Court of Appeals once complained, “in
which the superstitious weakness of dying men, proceed¬
ing from an astonishing ignorance of the solid moral and
scriptural foundations upon which the institution of slav¬
ery rests, . . . induces them, in their last moments, to
emancipate their slaves, in fraud of the . . . declared pol¬
icy of the State.” A Charleston editor thought it was sheer
hypocrisy for an “old sinner” who had “enjoyed the profits
of the labor of his slaves, during his life time” to emanci¬
pate them on his death bed.9
The truth was, of course, that living masters in all the
southern states—even in those which prohibited manumis-

8 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, pp. 1-3, 61.

Ibid., II, p. 392; Charleston Courier, September 7, 1857.

234
V: Chattels Personal

sion by last will and testament—always had the right to re¬

move their slaves to a free state and there release them from
bondage. Though no slave state could deprive them of this
right, few made use of it.
Moreover, only a handful of slaveholders wrote wills
providing for manumissions in states where this continued
to be legal. An even smaller number would have done so
in the Deep South had the privilege remained open to
them. In no slave state, early or late in the ante-bellum pe¬
riod, were the total yearly emancipations more than a small
fraction of the natural increase of the slave population. For
example, in 1859, only three thousand slaves were emanci¬
pated throughout the entire South. At that time both Vir¬
ginia and Kentucky permitted manumissions by deed or
will. Yet Virginia, with a slave population of a half million,
freed only two hundred and seventy-seven; Kentucky, with
a slave population of nearly a quarter million, freed only
one hundred and seventy-six.
Clearly, if the decline of slavery were to await the volun¬
tary acts of individuals, the time of its demise was still in
the distant future. The failure of voluntary emancipation
was evident long before the 1830’s when, according to
Judge Lumpkin, “the blind zealots of the North” began
their “unwarrantable interference.” 1 James H. Hammond
got at the crux of the matter when he asked whether any
people in history had ever voluntarily surrendered two
billion dollars worth of property.
One of the minority, a North Carolinian, who willed the
unconditional emancipation of his slaves gave four reasons
for his action: “Reason the first. Agreeably to the rights of
man, every human being, be his or her colour what it may,
is entitled to freedom. . . . Reason the second. My con¬
science, the great criterion, condemns me for keeping them

1 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, pp. 1-2.

235
 The Peculiar Institution

in slavery. Reason the third. The golden rule directs us to

do unto every human creature, as we would wish to be done
unto; and sure I am, that there is not one of us would agree
to be kept in slavery during a long life. Reason the fourth
and last. I wish to die with a clear conscience, that I may
not be ashamed to appear before my master in a future
World. ... I wish every human creature seriously to de¬
liberate on my reasons.” 2

2 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 49-50.

236
 [ 237 ]
CHAPTER SIX

Slavemongering

T he power of conveyance, inseparable from any species

of private property, was a fundamental attribute of
chattel slavery. Since titles to slaves were transferable, since
slaves were not bound to the land like medieval serfs, they
formed a reasonably mobile labor supply.
Much of the traffic in slaves involved private transactions
between neighbors, in which sellers negotiated directly
with buyers. Local sales were also arranged through news¬
paper advertisements or through the services of commission
merchants, auctioneers, or brokers. In these ways many
bondsmen changed hands within a neighborhood as mas¬
ters, for one reason or another, found it necessary to dis¬
pose of all or part of their labor force.
The right of conveyance was significant not only because
it made local transfers of ownership possible but also be¬
cause slaves could be moved to new areas as they were
opened to settlement. Among the ante-bellum Southerners
who left the impoverished lands of the Southeast for the
fresh lands of the Southwest—among those who cut down
the forests, grubbed the stumps, cleared the cane brakes,
drained the swamps, and broke the virgin soil—were Ne¬
gro slaves as well as white pioneers. Hundreds of thousands
of bondsmen were in the stream of settlers who filled the
hemp and tobacco districts west of the Appalachians and ex-
 The Peculiar Institution

panded the Cotton Kingdom from the Georgia piedmont

to the Texas prairies. Whenever the prices of southern
staples were good, wherever the yield per acre was high,
there arose an urgent demand for labor, and the slave
coffles were on the move.
The Atlantic and border states, with Virginia constantly
ranking first among them, were the exporters of slaves. In
the three decades between 1830 and i860, Virginia ex¬
ported nearly three hundred thousand—almost the whole
of her natural increase. Maryland and Kentucky each ex¬
ported about seventy-five thousand, North Carolina about
one hundred thousand, South Carolina about one hundred
and seventy thousand, and Missouri and Tennesee smaller
numbers. Total annual slave exports from these states av¬
eraged approximately twenty-five thousand. By the 1850’s,
Georgia’s exports slightly exceeded her imports. The ex¬
ports of Arkansas and the Gulf states remained negligible
and were always greatly exceeded by imports.1
How did slaves become a part of this westward move¬
ment of population? Some of them were sent to new cotton
and sugar lands by planters who did not themselves leave
their family estates in the Southeast. Edward Lloyd, of Tal¬
bot County, Maryland, moved part of his force of several
hundred slaves to a cotton plantation in Mississippi. Lewis
Thompson, of Bertie County, North Carolina, put a large
gang to work on a profitable sugar plantation in Rapides
Parish, Louisiana. The Wade Hamptons, of South Caro¬
lina, increased their wealth from huge cotton and sugar
plantations in Louisiana and Mississippi. These and other
absentee owners shipped thousands of slaves to the South¬
west and placed them under the control of their sons or of
hired overseers.
More commonly, however, the master sold his old lands
and accompanied his bondsmen. In the Southwest lived
1 Bancroft, Slave-Trading, pp. 382 ff.

238
VI: Slavemongering

colonies of Virginians and Carolinians who had been

driven from their old homes by economic necessity, or
lured away by the irresistible prospect of large profits.
Early in the nineteenth century the bulk of this migration
was toward Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Georgia pied¬
mont; after the War of 1812 it was toward Missouri, Ala¬
bama, Mississippi, and Louisiana; and during the prosper¬
ous 1850’s it was increasingly toward Arkansas and Texas.
Travelers in the Old South frequently encountered both
large and small slaveholders driving their slaves, livestock,
and wagonloads of other movable property to some prom¬
ised land.
But a large proportion of the slaves who were trans¬
ferred to the Southwest—perhaps a majority of them—-
reached their new homes through the facilities of the inter¬
state slave trade.2 They were usually moved by professional
traders who purchased them from masters in the exporting
states and sold them to masters in the importing states.
This merchandising of bondsmen gave them their great
mobility—made possible the transportation of much of the
relatively abundant labor in the less prosperous older re¬
gions to the flourishing new districts where labor was
scarce. The trader was therefore a key figure in the slave sys¬
tem; and many masters at one time or another utilized his
services, either as sellers or buyers. Without him the slave
economy of, say, Virginia or Mississippi, could not have
functioned efficiently. Indeed, without him many slave¬
holders could not have survived.
However essential it was, this traffic in slaves—the most
overtly commercialized aspect of the peculiar institution—-
was offensive not only to abolitionists but also to many of
slavery’s stanchest defenders. The more conscientious slave¬
holders made great financial sacrifices to avoid dealing with
“speculators.” Some patriarchal masters in Virginia and
2 Ibid., p. 398.

239
 The Peculiar Institution

elsewhere lived on the edge of bankruptcy rather than seek

solvency through the sale of all or part of their “people.”
Other masters, more concerned about social prestige than
about economic prosperity, feared to lose rank by market¬
ing bondsmen.
When necessity dictated sales, masters often gave con¬
vincing evidence of the distress this misfortune caused
them. A North Carolinian, informing his brother that
some of the family slaves must be disposed of, wrote: “Fa¬
ther will not sell them himself, you know his nature in that
respect. But he has intimated that he would be willing to
give them to some of us, and that he would be satisfied if
we chose to sell them.” Another North Carolinian, after
parting with some of his slaves, lamented: “I did not know
until the time came what pain it would give me.” “I ear¬
nestly pray,” wrote an unhappy South Carolina mistress
before the marketing of her slaves, that “the people may be
fortunate in being owned by a good master.” 3
The majority of slaveholders agreed that only the most
calamitous circumstances could justify dealings with pro¬
fessional traders. In fact, it was hard to find a master who
would admit that he sold slaves as a deliberate “specula¬
tion”—a business transaction whose object was a profit—
rather than as an unhappy last resort. Perhaps only a few
masters wished to regard slaves as marketable commodities,
though some certainly did so, but most of them had in their
lexicons an extremely broad definition of “necessity.”
Somehow their necessities kept the auctioneers busy and
enabled the traders to conduct a brisk traffic in human
flesh.4
While some masters would not sell “surplus” slaves, i.e.,

s Walter W. Lenoir to Thomas I. Lenoir, July 2, 1850, Lenoir Family

Papers; Taylor, Slaveholding in North Carolina, p. 70; Easterby (ed.) ,
South Carolina Rice Plantation, p. 29.
* Bancroft, Slave-Trading, pp. 202-204.

240
VI: Slavemongering

the excess above the number they could use economically,

most of them felt that the possession of a surplus created
one of those fortuitous situations that necessitated sales.
Farmers and planters whose slave stock increased beyond
their labor needs often elected to sell the surplus rather
than expand their agricultural operations. Many urban
slaveholders marketed the surplus from their staffs of do¬
mestics.
Selling slaves to facilitate the division of an estate among
heirs was also regarded as an involuntary transaction. So
was an administrator’s sale or an execution sale to satisfy
the claims of creditors. If a master used his slaves as se¬
curity for a loan and was later obliged to sell them to repay
the loan, that was an unanticipated misfortune. In such
cases the line between a speculative sale and an involuntary
sale was a thin one, but it was nevertheless important to
those who drew it.
The owner’s moral right to sell trouble makers within
his slave force was almost universally recognized. If a mas¬
ter were to remain a master, he could hardly be expected to
retain slaves he could not manage, or to consider their sale
as a matter within his control. Slaveholders in the border
states saw the necessity of seeking out the trader when
bondsmen gave evidence of contemplating escape to the
free states. Accordingly, a North Carolina mistress sold two
slaves, one because of his “insubordination and the appre¬
hension . . . that he designed an escape into Canada,” the
other “on account of [her] bad qualities.” Another North
Carolinian discovered in his slave force two families who
were “an injury to the others and to the farm to retain; and
now seems to be the judicious time to let them go.” “It is
a melancholy fact,” wrote a South Carolinian, “that a large
proportion of our ablest and most intelligent slaves are an¬
nually sent out of the State for misconduct.” 6
<> Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 118-19; Walter W. Lenoir to

241
 The Peculiar Institution

Sometimes a master in financial straits used the transgres¬

sions of a slave as an excuse for selling him, when under
happier circumstances he would not have considered such
a sale. His rationalization protected him from loss of pub¬
lic esteem, but it did not always satisfy his troubled con¬
science. Such was the plight of a Maryland slaveholder who
sold Eliza, a refractory slave mother, to a trader who in turn
sold her to a Louisiana planter. Eliza compounded her old
master’s distress when she begged him (through a letter
written by her new mistress) to restore her daughter Jen¬
nie to her. The transparent cant of his reply concealed nei¬
ther his feelings of guilt nor the genuine pathos of his pre¬
dicament:

... As to letting Jennie go to live with you I can hardly

make up my mind what to say. I would be reluctant to
part with her. She has a good disposition, ... is very
useful for her services in the house, . . . and I should
miss her very much. . . .
However I profess to be a Christian and have the happy
and comforting assurance that I am . . . what I profess
to be. ... I think you will acknowledge that I was to
you a kind and forbearing master and that you were an
ungrateful servant, and I think you feel assured that if
you had conducted yourself faithfully, no offer would
have tempted me to part with you. . . . But situated as I
was after the death of [my] dear beloved and still la¬
mented wife, the only alternative presented to me was to
quit housekeeping or part with you—a painful one. . . .
. . . Let me advise you as your former Master ... to
cease to do evil and learn to do well, to live up to the
precepts of the gospel. . . . Serve your heavenly Master
and your present owners faithfully, and be assured that I
greatly regret the occasion that resulted in the separation
of you from your child.

Thomas I. Lenoir, July 2, 1850, Lenoir Family Papers; Southern Ag¬

riculturist, II (1829), p. 575.

242
VI: Slavemongering

Though refusing her request, he extended to Eliza his “un¬

feigned benevolence and charity.” 6
A numerous minority of masters contributed slaves to
the interstate trade under circumstances which their neigh¬
bors could hardly have considered creditable. Doubtless the
slave-selling masters either professed to have legitimate rea¬
sons or hoped to conceal their actions from others. One
such transaction came unexpectedly into the open when a
slave trader sued a North Carolinian for fraud in the sale
of a slave child who was physically “unsound.” Speculators
were frequently implicated with masters in covert or open
attempts to dispose of “sickly” slaves. In an article on “Ne¬
gro consumption,” a southern doctor advised slaveholders
to learn the symptoms of this affliction, because slaves suf¬
fering from it were often put on the market. A few specu¬
lators made a practice of purchasing diseased slaves at low
prices with the expectation of good profits from those who
recovered. A “Dr. J. King,” of New Orleans, advertised
that he would give “immediate attention” to communica¬
tions from owners who had “slaves rendered unfit for labor
by . . . diseases, and who wish to dispose of them on rea¬
sonable terms.” T
An indignant Georgia editor pointed to another source
from which traders drew their supplies. “We allude to
... the introduction into our State, of the negro felons
and desperadoes of all the other states. It is a common prac¬
tice, for instance, for our sister State South Carolina, when
they get hold of some desperate villain of a negro, who is
convicted of crime, after the infliction of some punishment,
to make it imperative that he shall be carried out of the
State.” In 1849, a court of freeholders and magistrates in
Charleston confirmed this when it convicted four slaves of

« T. D. Jones to Eliza, September 7, i860, Butler Family Papers.

1 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, p. 26; De Bow’s Review, XI (1851) ,
pp. 212-13; Lexington Kentucky Gazette, July 4, 1839.

243
 The Peculiar Institution

riot and insubordination and sentenced them to six months

of solitary confinement, fifteen lashes on the first day of
each month, “and then to be placed in solitary confinement
for five years, unless sent without the limits of the State.”
Owners occasionally tried secretly to dispose of slaves ac-
cused of felonies. A North Carolinian “secreted” one under
suspicion of homicide and sold him to a trader with the
understanding that he was to be taken out of the state.
Slaveholders in all the states of the Deep South frequently
echoed the protest of a Georgian who asked, “Is Georgia
the Botany Bay, for the black criminals of the South?” 8
Although the interstate slave trade had few defenders
and found no place in romanticized versions of the ante¬
bellum South, it was nevertheless a crucial part of her eco¬
nomic life. How vital this traffic was to the economies of
the exporting states was apparent in the fall of i860 when
the secession crisis disrupted it. “Money matters are tighter
in Kentucky than ever I saw them,” wailed a Lexington
merchant, “and no one seems to know when they will
change for the better. If we could get our usual supply of
exchange from the South, at this season of the year, we
might get along better, but the planters are not buying ne¬
groes, mules, horses nor anything else. . . . Asa Collins has
been in Natchez ten or twelve days with forty-one negroes
and sold nothing. . . . There are some negroes offering
here, . . . but . . . hardly any selling.” 9 A condition
such as this brought distress to the entire commercial com¬
munity.
s Milledgeville Southern Recorder, February 18, 1851; Charleston Cour¬
ier, July 31, 1849; Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, p. 229; Bancroft,
Slave-Trading, p. 270.
» F. G. Murphy to George - [?], September 26, i860, Buckner
Family Papers.

244
VI: Slavemongering

2
The magnitude of the interstate slave trade caused some
critics to charge that many of those who supplied the spec¬
ulators with merchandise were engaged in “slave breeding”
—in raising slaves for the specific purpose of marketing
them. In Virginia, Olmsted remarked, most “gentlemen of
character seem to have a special disinclination to converse
on the subject. ... It appears to me evident, however,
from the manner in which I hear the traffic spoken of in¬
cidentally, that the cash value of a slave for sale, above the
cost of raising it from infancy to the age at which it com¬
mands the highest price, is generally considered among the
surest elements of a planter’s wealth. . . . That a slave
woman is commonly esteemed least for her laboring quali¬
ties, most for those qualities which give value to a brood¬
mare is, also, constantly made apparent.” 1
Slaveholders intensely resented this accusation, and pro¬
slavery writers vigorously denied its truth. A Virginian
published an essay, entitled “Estimates of the Expenses and
Profits of Rearing Slaves,” to prove that holding them ex¬
clusively for breeding purposes yielded meager returns and
was therefore never done. Post-bellum Southerners af¬
firmed that those who made this charge had “adduced no
shred of supporting evidence.” 2
The evidence of systematic slave breeding is scarce in¬
deed, not only because it is unlikely that many engaged in
it but also because written records of such activities would
seldom be kept. But if the term is not used with unreason¬
able literalness, if it means more than owner-coerced mat¬
ings, numerous shreds of evidence exist which indicate that
slaves were reared with an eye to their marketability—that

1 Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 55-56.

2 Farmers' Register, II (1834), pp. 253-55; Trexler, Slavery in Missouri,
p. 45; Phillips, American Negro Slavery, pp. 361-62.

245
 The Peculiar Institution

the domestic slave trade was not “purely casual.” 3 Many

masters counted the fecundity of Negro women as an eco¬
nomic asset and encouraged them to bear children as rap¬
idly as possible. In the exporting states these masters knew
that the resulting surpluses would be placed on the market.
Though few held slaves merely to harvest the increase or
overtly interfered with their normal sexual activity, it nev¬
ertheless seems proper to say that they were engaged in
slave breeding.
For instance, a Virginia planter boasted to Olmsted that
his slave women were “uncommonly good breeders; he did
not suppose that there was a lot of women anywhere that
bred faster than his.” Every infant, he exulted, was worth
two hundred dollars at current prices the moment it was
born. “I have been making enquiries,” wrote another Vir¬
ginian to a friend who was selling slaves in Mississippi, “in
regard to the prices of Negroes in our section and have
attended several sales lately. . . . From what I observed
healthy young women sell almost as well as men. ... It
has occurred to me that negro men would sell better in
’Orleans perhaps than here, but that women would bring
more in Virginia.” He advised his friend to bring his slaves
back to Virginia—“or perhaps the men could be disposed
of and the women brought back.” 4
A Tennessee court once protected the heirs to an estate
by prohibiting the sale of a slave woman who had given
birth to several children. To sell this slave, “so peculiarly
valuable for her physical capacity of child-bearing,” the
court believed would have been an “enormous sacrifice.”
In fact, the modest profit gained from the labor of a gang

» See Gray, History of Agriculture, II, pp. 662-63, for an excellent analy¬
sis of this problem. See also Bancroft, Slave-Trading, pp. 67-87.
* Olmsted, Seaboard, p. 57; A. S. Dillon to William C. Powell, Wil¬
liam C. Powell Papers.

246
VI: Slavemongering

of slaves in Tennessee made “an increase of the stock an

object” of their owners.3
Late in the eighteenth century a South Carolinian ad¬
vertised that he wished to sell fifty “prime orderly Ne¬
groes.” He had, “with great trouble and expence, selected
them out of many for several years past. They were pur¬
chased for stock and breeding Negroes, and to any Planter
who particularly wanted them for that purpose, they are a
very choice and desirable gang.” Many years later, in 1844,
another South Carolinian tried to sell two female slaves be¬
cause they were afflicted with a malady which he thought
“rendered them unprofitable as breeding women.”
James H. Hammond bemoaned the heavy mortality on his
plantation: “Other people consider the . . . increase [of
slaves] one of the greatest sources of profit to them. If they
can make out to pay their way they expect to accumulate
at a fair rate by course of nature.” 6
Even in Mississippi there is a record of a small planter
who was “an unsuccessful farmer, generally buying his corn
and meat,” but who “succeeded very well in raising young
negroes.” And one of the early propagandists for Florida
proclaimed: “The climate is peculiarly adapted and fitted
to the constitution of the Negro. It is an excellent and
cheap climate to breed and raise them. The offal of the
Sugar House fattens them like young pigs.” 7
Masters who prized prolific Negro women not only tol¬
erated but sometimes came close to promoting sexual
promiscuity among them. A few sanctioned the breakup of
marriages when one or the other partner gave evidence of

* Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 504-505, 579.

« Phillips (ed.), Plantation and Frontier, II, pp. 57-58; Catterall (ed.) ,
Judicial Cases, II, p. 392; Hammond Diary, entry for November 2,
1841.
r Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, p. 356; Southern Cultivator, XVIII
(i860),p. 324.

247
 The Peculiar Institution

sterility. Some owners in the Upper South maintained an

amazing imbalance of the sexes in their holdings. The will
of a master in Caroline County, Virginia, for example,
showed that he owned one adult male and eight adult fe¬
males; and the inventory of a Maryland estate revealed a
holding of fifty-six slaves, “mostly women and children.”
An advertisement in a Fredericksburg, Virginia, newspa¬
per was inserted by someone who wished “to purchase 10
or 12 negroes, chiefly young females.” 8
In both the exporting and importing states, slaveholders
almost inevitably made slave rearing a part of their busi¬
ness. Every child born to a slave woman became the mas¬
ter’s property, and usually the child’s ultimate capital value
far exceeded the cost of raising him. A sagacious master,
therefore, was solicitous about the natural increase of his
slaves, whether he marketed the increase or used it to ex¬
pand his own economic operations. Here was a situation
in which humanity and self-interest both enjoined mas¬
ters to bless motherhood—to give reasonable care to
pregnant slave women and to the “sucklers” and their off¬
spring.
Seldom did female chattels disappoint their owner. After
all, sexual promiscuity brought them rewards rather than
penalties; large families meant no increased responsibili¬
ties and, if anything, less toil rather than more. Slave
women, Fanny Kemble observed on her husband’s Georgia
plantation, understood distinctly what it was that gave
them value as property. “This was perfectly evident to me
from the meritorious air with which the women always
made haste to inform me of the number of children they
had borne, and the frequent occasions on which the older
slaves would direct my attention to their children, exclaim-

* Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, IV, p. 104; Bancroft, Slave-Trading,

p. 26.

248
VI: Slavemongering

ing, ‘Look missis! little niggers for you and massa; plenty
little niggers for you and little missis!’ ” 9
Slaveholders were often remarkably candid about their
desire to exploit the procreative talents of their slaves.
“Your negroes will breed much faster when well clothed,
fed and housed,” advised a Virginia planter in an agricul¬
tural periodical, “which fact, offers an inducement to those
slave owners, whose hearts do not overflow with feelings of
humanity.” In demonstrating the superiority of slave labor
over free, a Georgian observed that capital invested in
bondsmen yielded a substantial return from the offspring
of the women alone. “It is certain that multitudes of men
have accumulated largely, merely by the increase of their
slaves.” Fecund slave women, argued a Mississippian, “if
properly taken care of, are the most profitable to their own¬
ers of any others. ... It is remarkable the number of
slaves which may be raised from one woman in the course
of forty or fifty years with the proper kind of attention.” * 1
An Alabama planter felt cheated when a female he pur¬
chased as a “breeding woman” proved to be “incapable
of . . . bearing children,” and he sued the vendor for
fraud. The Alabama Supreme Court agreed that any jury
“would place a higher value on a female slave promising
issue, than on one of a contrary description.” A Tennessee
planter wished that his agricultural enterprises were more
remunerative but thought that he “ought perhaps be satis¬
fied” because of the numerous births among his slaves. “We
have the prospect of a pretty fair increase now, and if the
children are not any thing but consumers in our day they
will be of some value to our children.” 2
Planters usually ordered their overseers to be attentive
8 Kemble, Journal, pp. 59-61.
1 Farmers’ Register, V (1837), p. 302; North Carolina Planter, II
(1859), p. 163; Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, pp. 136-37.
8 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, pp. 138, 195; Gustavus A. Henry to
his wife, November 28, December 3, 1846, Henry Papers.

249
 The Peculiar Institution
to expectant mothers, to women with nursing babies, and
to small children. “The children must be particularly at¬
tended to,” wrote a Mississippian in his plantation rules,
“for rearing them is not only a duty, but also the most
profitable part of plantation business.” The printed in¬
structions in Thomas Affleck’s plantation record book
warned overseers to “bear in mind that a fine crop con¬
sists, first, in an increase in the number, and a marked im¬
provement in the condition and value of the negroes.” Re¬
sponding to a similar warning, a Georgia overseer assured
his employer that he used “every means” to promote an in¬
crease of the slave force. “I consider every child raised as
part of the crop. . . . my ambition is to do better and bet¬
ter not to retrograde so if I fail do not blame me. blame
Luck.” 3
Some owners tempted their slave women to be fruitful
by rewarding them for each baby they bore. In an essay on
plantation management one master recommended his pol¬
icy to others: “No inconsiderable part of a farmer’s profits
being in little negroes he succeeds in raising; the breeding
women, when lusty, are allowed a great many privileges
and required to work pretty much as they please. When
they come out of the straw, a nice calico dress is presented
each one as a reward and inducement to take care of their
children.” The mistress of a Louisiana plantation ordered
some gay calico from her business agent. “I have all ways
given a dress of such to every woman after having a young
child,” she explained. “I am now in debt to four, that has
young babes, and fine ones too—they do much better, by
being encouraged a little, and I have ever thought they de¬
served it.” 4
* Andrew Flinn Plantation Book; R. King, Jr., to Thomas Butler, Feb¬
ruary 13, 1831, Pierce Butler Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylva¬
nia, Philadelphia (copy in possession of Prof. Ralph W. Haskins).
* American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, I (1857), p. 375;
Rachel O’Conner to A. T. Conrad, April 12, 1835, Weeks Collection.

250
VI: Slavemongering

The slaveholder’s intervention in the process of procrea¬

tion was usually limited to providing slave women with
favorable conditions and attractive incentives such as these.
If this was not slave breeding, at least it was slave rearing,
which was inseparable from slavery. Owners calculated the
natural increase as part of the profit upon their invested
capital. They might realize this profit by putting additional
acres under cultivation, or they might realize it by doing
business with the slave traders.

3
In so far as the domestic slave trade was interstate com¬
merce it was subject to Federal control. Antislavery groups
tried repeatedly to persuade Congress to exercise its consti¬
tutional power to abolish this traffic, but they never suc¬
ceeded. Only a few minor Federal regulations in any way
affected it. A clause in the act which outlawed further im¬
portations from Africa after January 1, 1808, barred ships
of less than forty tons burden from transporting slaves in
the coastwise trade. As soon as Congress established its juris¬
diction over the District of Columbia, it closed the District
as a slave market; and in 1850 it closed the District as a
depot for the collection of slaves to be sold elsewhere. In
all other respects Congress left control of the trade to the
individual states.
State regulation was sporadic and, for the most part, in¬
effective. A curious blend of self-interest and humani-
tarianism motivated such restraining legislation as was
adopted. Unquestionably the chief objectives were to pro¬
tect the interests of purchasers and to maintain the security
of the white community; but a few states gave some thought
to the plight of the bondsmen who were the victims of the
traffic.

251
 The Peculiar Institution
In the Upper South, Delaware alone refused to become
a source of supply for speculators. The preamble to an act
of 1787 noted that slaves were being “exported and sold
into other States, contrary to the principles of humanity
and justice, and derogatory to the honor of this State.” This
act prohibited even the master from exporting a slave with¬
out a permit; and a subsequent act gave freedom to any
slave illegally exported. No other state, however, interfered
with either masters or traders who wished to ship chattels
beyond its boundaries.
Nor did any other state forbid masters to separate hus¬
bands and wives when put on the market. In Louisiana,
slave children under ten were not to be sold or imported
apart from their mothers. Alabama and Georgia placed
rather slight restrictions on the breakup of families when
slaves were sold to satisfy creditors, but neither these states
nor the others applied the restrictions to masters who sold
slaves voluntarily. In the chief exporting states owners le¬
gally could separate children of any age from their mothers.
Certain regulations the importing states enforced were
clearly of a protective character. For example, they re¬
quired vendors to give a written warrant of clear title and
physical soundness. Louisiana and Mississippi also re¬
quired sellers to prove the slave’s good character with affi¬
davits from two freeholders and the clerk of the county in
which the slave had lived. All these states tried to prevent
the importation of bondsmen who had been convicted of
felonies. Cities which became major slave marts adopted
ordinances designed to protect the community from dis¬
ease. New Orleans required traders to keep their mer¬
chandise in clean, well-ventilated buildings at least two
stories high, to report the outbreak of any contagious dis¬
ease, and to send sick slaves to Charity Hospital (at the
traders’ own expense). During a cholera epidemic, in

252
VI: Slavemongering

1833, the town of Washington, Mississippi, entirely stopped

slave trading within its limits.5
In the nineteenth century, at one time or another, the
majority of southern states tried to prevent the specula¬
tors from marketing their merchandise within their bor¬
ders. Most of the state constitutions contained clauses au¬
thorizing the legislature to “prohibit the introduction of
any slave for the purpose of speculation, or as an article of
trade or merchandise.” Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and
Florida were the only states never to pass such laws. Until
1849, Kentucky even prohibited residents—but not immi¬
grants—from importing slaves for their own use, unless
they were acquired by inheritance. Elsewhere both resi¬
dents and immigrants were always free to bring in slaves
for personal use, although they were sometimes required
to take an oath that their purpose was not to sell them.
With few exceptions, the laws against the introduction
of slaves by professional traders remained in force for only
short periods of time. Virginia and North Carolina re¬
pealed their laws early in the nineteenth century, South
Carolina in 1848, Maryland in 1850, and Tennessee in
1855. Georgia barred the speculators briefly on three differ¬
ent occasions before 1850; Alabama from 1827 to ^29 an^
for a few months in 1832; Louisiana from 1826 to 1828 and
from 1831 to 1834; and Mississippi from 1833 to 1846. But
during the last ante-bellum decade none of the importing
states had any such restriction, and the gates were thus
again wide open to the slave traders.
Though humanitarianism was not the crucial force be¬
hind the adoption of these laws, it was never altogether
absent even in the Deep South. Mississippi, explained an at¬
torney before the state Supreme Court, had been “pecul-

* Taylor, "Negro Slavery in Louisiana," p. 64; Washington Mississippi

Gazette, May 18, 1833.

25S
 The Peculiar Institution
iarly the theatre ... of the unfeeling cruelty” of slave
traders, ‘‘until all good men no doubt had become dis¬
gusted and possessed of a strong wish to exclude . . . this
class of speculators.” Mississippians, the Court agreed, “had
seen and deplored the evils connected with it. The bar¬
barities, the frauds, the scenes so shocking in many in¬
stances to our feelings of humanity and the sensibilities of
our nature, which generally grew out of it, they, therefore,
determined to prohibit in the future.”6 Yet here, as else¬
where, the trade eventually was reopened and the shock¬
ing scenes re-enacted.
One of the basic reasons for the attempts to close the
trade was the alarm many whites in the importing states
felt because of the rapid increase of the slave population.
This, they feared, threatened their security. It was not a
coincidence that Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, the
major importing states, outlawed the trade immediately
after the Nat Turner rebellion—a time of more than nor¬
mal fear that irresponsible speculators would introduce
dangerous rebels from the Upper South. The traders
wanted maximum profits, explained a Mississippian; hence
they were tempted to buy the most “wicked” slaves because
they were the cheapest. Mississippi was being “inundated”
by “the insurgents and malefactors, the sweepings of the
jails of other states.” A Natchez newspaper reported that
after the Turner rebellion Virginia was “swarming with
Negro traders.” Many rebels who had been “directly or
indirectly engaged in the work of murder” would be
brought to Mississippi “to instil in our slaves the poison
of discontent.” 7
Some whites in the Deep South suspected that masters

a Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, p. 289; Sydnor, Slavery in Missis¬

sippi, pp. 157-58.
t Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, pp. 289-90, 534-35; Natchez Ga¬
zette, October 5, 1831.

254
VI: Slavemongering

in the Upper South were disposing of their property in an¬

ticipation of the abolition of slavery. “We are actually of¬
fering them inducements to become free States by allow¬
ing them to bring their slaves amongst us and paying them
large prices for them,” warned a Georgian. By closing this
trade, “we will force them to keep their slaves, as well as
make it their interest to protect the institution.” Missis¬
sippi adopted her restriction, in part, “to compel these
border States to stand firm by the institution ... by cut¬
ting off their market. ... It was feared that if these bor¬
der States were permitted to sell us their slaves, . . . they
too would unite in the wild fanaticism of the day, and ren¬
der the institution . . . thus reduced to a few Southern
States, an easy prey to its wicked spirit.”8
The manner in which Mississippi applied her proscrip¬
tion of the trade seriously compromised her slave interest.
The state Constitution of 1832 prohibited this traffic after
May 1, 1833. But during the following four years the state
made no serious effort to enforce this provision, and specu¬
lators continued to sell slaves in violation of it. Not until
after the Panic of 1837, when the slave market collapsed,
did the legislature take action and impose penalties upon
professional traders. Then Mississippi slaveholders refused
to honor the notes they had given to local speculators for
slaves purchased on credit between 1833 and 1837. The
slaveholders argued that all such transactions had been il¬
legal—and the state courts upheld them. Thus, protested
the counsel for an indignant speculator, Mississippians
were “protected in the enjoyment of thousands of slaves,
imported from different portions of the republic without
paying for them.” 9

8 Savannah Republican, January 22, 1849; Vicksburg Weekly Whig,

July 30, 1845; Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, p. 361.
® Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, pp. 161-71; Catterall (ed.), Judicial
Cases, III, pp. 295-96.

255
 The Peculiar Institution
Actually, none of the laws against the introduction of
slaves as merchandise were ever effectively enforced, for
the speculators found numerous ways to evade them. Some¬
times speculators imported slaves, held them on a farm for
a short time, and then sold them. After the Mississippi legis¬
lature stopped the traffic in 1837, purchasers crossed the
river at Natchez or Vicksburg and dealt with the traders in
Louisiana. In Georgia, complained an editor, “the law is
constantly evaded by corrupt speculators, and hundreds of
negroes are annually introduced and sold. It is a practice
among these speculators, after having agreed with their
several purchasers upon the price to be paid, to take the
Rail-Road or stage to the nearest point in Alabama or
South Carolina, and there make out and sign their bills of
sale. . . . All this is a corrupt violation of the law;
and ... we hope it will not longer be permitted.” 1
But the Georgia law was repealed rather than strength¬
ened, and the introduction of slaves as merchandise re¬
mained legal to the end of the slave regime. Ultimately the
convenience of the traffic to residents of both exporting and
importing states outweighed the evils about which so many
complained.

4
If most slaveholders condoned slave trading under con¬
ditions they accepted as unavoidable, few had a good word
to say for the slavemongers themselves. Daniel R. Hundley
reflected the attitude of most articulate Southerners when
he wrote a defense of his section’s institutions. The “hard¬
hearted Negro Trader” was “preeminent in villainy and a
greedy love of filthy lucre.” This “Southern Shylock,”
Hundley claimed, was usually “a coarse ill-bred person,
provincial in speech and manners, with a cross-looking
1 Savannah Republican, January 30, 1849.

256
VI: Slavemongering

phiz, a whiskey-tinctured nose, cold hard-looking eyes, a

dirty tobacco-stained mouth, and shabby dress.”
After drawing this contemptuous caricature of the typi¬
cal speculator, Hundley catalogued his sins. He habitually
separated mothers from their children, husbands from
their wives, and brothers from their sisters; he generally
dealt in “vicious” slaves “sold for crimes or misdemeanors,
or otherwise diseased ones sold because of their worthless¬
ness as property.” He “dresses them up in good clothes,
makes them comb their kinky heads into some appearance
of neatness, rubs oil on their dusky faces to give them a
sleek healthy color, gives them a dram occasionally to make
them sprightly, and teaches each one the part he or she has
to play. ... At every village of importance he sojourns a
day or two, each day ranging his ‘gang’ in a line on the most
busy street; and whenever a customer makes his appear¬
ance, the oily speculator button-holes him immediately,
and begins to descant in the most highfalutin fashion upon
the virtuous lot of darkies he has for sale.” 2
Many speculators engaged in these and other unseemly
practices which gave their profession its ill repute. They
often purchased slaves in family groups and promised not
to divide them, or pretended to buy them for personal use
or for some kindly planter who wanted whole families.
They made these promises to win good will or to quiet the
consciences of the sellers. But a Louisianian observed that
it was a “daily occurrence” for these slaves to be sold indi¬
vidually upon reaching the Deep South. For example, the
sheriff of Chicot County, Arkansas, advertised that he had
in his jail two fugitives, husband and wife, who had been
“purchased by ... a negro trader ... in the State of
Virginia, and taken to New Orleans.” There the husband
had been sold separately “to a gentleman whose name he

* Hundley, Social Relations, pp. 139-4*.

257
 The Peculiar Institution
does not know, as he runaway immediately on learning that
he was sold from his wife.” Traders frequently gave public
notice that they had children under ten for sale apart from
their mothers. One trader in North Carolina advertised
that he would pay “fair prices . . . for young negroes,
from 8 to 12 years old.” 3
The speculators sometimes made purchases from masters
on the condition that the slaves were not to be removed
from the state—then ignored the condition. They bought
slaves accused of felonies and sold them with false warrants
of good character. They acquired slaves sentenced to be
transported beyond the limits of the United States and se¬
cretly disposed of them in the Deep South. A New Orleans
trader was indicted for having imported from Virginia
twenty-four slaves convicted of murder, burglary, rape,
arson, manslaughter, and attempted insurrection.4
The least scrupulous of the traders obtained part of their
supply from thieves and kidnappers. Throughout the
South gangs of slave stealers—the Murrell gang, which
operated in the Southwest during the lSgo’s, being the most
notorious—were a constant source of concern to owners of
slave property. Some of the thieves persuaded bondsmen
to run away, permit themselves to be sold, and then run
away again. They promised to reward the bondsmen ulti¬
mately with freedom, but more often they ended the sordid
business with murder. Others kidnapped free Negroes in
the Upper South or in the free states and sold them in the
Deep South.
Speculators fraudulently trafficked in habitual runaways
and in insubordinate, diseased, and senile slaves. A former
slave recalled how he helped a St. Louis trader prepare the

s Bancroft, Slave-Trading, pp. 32, 208; Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases,

III, pp. 599-600; Little Rock Arkansas State Gazette, January 6, 1845;
Raleigh North Carolina Standard, August 4, 1836.
* Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, pp. 558-59.

258
VI: Slavemongering

stock for market en route to New Orleans. “I was ordered

to have the old men’s whiskers shaved off, and the gray
hairs plucked out, where they were not too numerous, in
which case we had a preparation of blacking to color it, and
with a blacking brush we would put it on. . . . These
slaves were also taught how old they were . . . and after
going through the blacking process, they looked ten or fif¬
teen years younger.” When some of Isaac Franklin’s slave
merchandise contracted cholera while awaiting sale in
Natchez, his agent secretly dumped those who died in the
swamp, hoping thus not to discourage potential purchasers.
But local planters discovered this deception and indig¬
nantly threatened legal action against Franklin for expos¬
ing their slaves to this terrible disease.5
A trader in Lexington, Kentucky, who paid $1600 and
$1700 for two young slave women obviously had the market
for “fancy girls” in mind, because these prices were consid¬
erably above current prices for female field-hands or domes¬
tics, even when they were promising “breeding women.”
Lewis C. Robards, Lexington’s best-known trader in the
1850’s, had special quarters on the second floor of his “Ne¬
gro jail” for his “choice stock” of quadroon and octoroon
girls. “In several rooms,” reported a visitor, “I found very
handsome mulatto women, of fine persons and easy gen¬
teel maners, sitting at their needlework awaiting a pur¬
chaser. The proprietor made them get up and turn around
to show to advantage their finely developed and graceful
forms—and slaves as they were, this I confess, rather
shocked my gallantry.” New Orleans was known to be a
good market for “fancy girls,” but traders found purchasers
elsewhere too.*

» Brown, Narrative, pp. 42-43; Washington Mississippi Gazette, May 4,

1833.
« Coleman, Slavery Times in Kentucky, pp. 158-59; Bancroft, Slave-
Trading, pp. 328-30.

259
 The Peculiar Institution
The vulgarity of the inspections of Robard’s “choice
stock” was only one illustration of the dehumanization of
the slave by the slave trade. Prospective purchasers usually
examined the trader’s merchandise minutely to make sure
that there were no physical defects or whip marks to indi¬
cate bad character. Buyers could hardly have been expected
to invest in an expensive piece of property without this
precaution; and anyone who had a mind to purchase, or
pretended to have, was free to satisfy his curiosity. Though
the spectacle was seldom edifying, an inspection and the
accompanying sale never failed to attract a crowd of spec¬
tators. A visitor in Louisville attended a public auction
where a pregnant slave woman was offered to the highest
bidder: “the auctioneer standing by her side, indulged him¬
self in brutal jests upon her thriving condition, and sold
her for four hundred dollars.” 7
Most of the traders operated on a small scale with limited
capital. In the exporting states they attended estate and
execution sales and sought out private owners who wished
to dispose of a slave or two. After purchasing a few dozen
slaves they organized them into a coffle and drove them
southward to the cotton and sugar districts. But a few of
the traders operated on a large scale with substantial capi¬
tal and elaborate business organizations. They employed
agents to comb the countryside of the Upper South for
merchandise; they maintained their own private depots in
such trading centers as Baltimore, Alexandria, Richmond,
Louisville, Lexington, and St. Louis; and they established
their own facilities for displaying and vending their mer¬
chandise in the chief distribution centers of the Deep
South.
The traders gave evidence of the nature and size of their
enterprises through their advertisements in the southern
t Coleman, Slavery Times in Kentucky, p. n8n.; Bancroft, Slave-Trad¬
ing, pp. 106-108.

260
VI: Slavemongering
press. Thus a small speculator notified slaveholders around
Jefferson City, Missouri, that he would stop there for a
short time “for the purpose of purchasing a few negro
slaves. Persons having young slaves for sale, will find this a
favorable opportunity to sell.” In Baltimore, Austin Wool-
folk, a large trader, announced his desire to obtain three
hundred slaves “from the ages of 13 to 25 years. Persons
having such to sell shall have cash, and the highest
prices. . . . Liberal commissions will be paid to those
who will aid in purchasing for the subscriber.” In Lynch¬
burg, Seth Woodroof offered to buy slaves between the ages
of ten and thirty. “His office is a newly erected brick build¬
ing . . . where he is prepared . . . [to] keep them as se¬
cure as if they were placed in the jail of the Corporation.”
Hart &: Davis, also of Lynchburg, were “anxious to pur¬
chase about 50 Negroes of both sexes, to complete our last
shipment, for this season, and will pay the full Richmond
prices if application be made shortly.” Richmond’s busi¬
ness directory of 1852 listed twenty-eight persons who were
engaged in slave trading, and there were doubtless more;
probably no city in the Upper South had as many involved
in this business.8
The firm of Franklin & Armfield, organized in 1828, was
the South’s largest slave-trading enterprise during the pe¬
riod of great expansion before the Panic of 1837. John
Armfield directed affairs at their headquarters in Alexan¬
dria, Virginia, and collected and shipped slaves to Isaac
Franklin who supervised their marketing agencies at New
Orleans and Natchez. Representatives of the firm were lo¬
cated at Richmond and Warrenton, Virginia, and at Fred¬
erick, Baltimore, and Easton, Maryland. A visitor to their
establishment in Alexandria found Armfield to be “a man
of fine personal appearance, and of engaging and graceful

* Bancroft, Slave-Trading, pp. 95-96.

261
 The Peculiar Institution

manners.” Although this visitor was a severe critic of Arm-

field’s profession, he reported that the quarters for the
slaves were spacious and clean and the food “wholesome
and abundant.” In the yard he saw nearly a hundred slaves,
most of them between the ages of eighteen and thirty,
“neatly and comfortably dressed.” Armfield treated the
firm’s property with care and tried to send it to his partner
in good condition and ready for the market.9
Slaves were usually exported to the Deep South between
October and May, the period when they could be most
easily acclimatized and prepared for the next growing sea¬
son. Many of them were transported on coastwise vessels
from such shipping points as Baltimore, Alexandria, Rich¬
mond, Norfolk, and Charleston. Franklin & Armfield oper¬
ated their own “slavers,” and when their business was at
its peak they shipped cargoes of as many as a hundred slaves
every fortnight. Kentucky and Missouri slaves were often
sent “down the river” on flatboats and steamers.* 1
But most of the slave merchandise was transported over¬
land in coffies. A former Maryland slave remembered how
a trader to whom he had been sold organized a coffle of
more than fifty slaves for the long journey. The women
were tied together with a rope that was fitted like a halter
around their necks; the men were fettered by a long chain
attached to iron collars which were fastened with padlocks.
“In addition to this, we were handcuffed in pairs, with iron
staples and bolts, with a short chain about a foot long unit¬
ing the handcuffs and their wearers.” 2 Thus secured they
marched along the roads leading south, bivouacking in the

® Wendell H. Stephenson, Isaac Franklin: Slave Trader and Planter of

the Old South (Baton Rouge, 1938) , passim; Andrews, Slavery and
the Domestic Slave Trade, pp. 135-43.
1 Charles H. Wesley, “Manifests of Slave Shipments along the Water¬
ways, 1808-1864," Journal of Negro History, XXVII (1942), pp. 155-
74; Stephenson, Franklin, pp. 42-44.
2 Phillips (ed.), Plantation and Frontier, II, p. 59.

262
VI: Slavemongering
woods and fields at night, until several weeks later they
reached their destination. Here they rested a while and re¬
ceived new clothing before being offered for sale.
Traders who used the land routes often stopped briefly
in the towns along their line of travel to display their stock.
But they took most of it to large trading centers such as New
Orleans and Natchez. Here the dealers issued public invita¬
tions to buyers to visit them and examine their merchan¬
dise. In New Orleans, John E. Smith gave notice that he
had “Just arrived, with a choice lot of VIRGINIA and
CAROLINA NEGROES, consisting of Plantation hands,
Blacksmiths, Carpenters, Cooks, Washers, Ironers and
Seamstresses, and will be receiving fresh supplies during
the season.” A. Wiesemann announced: “Having perma¬
nently established myself in this city, I shall keep con¬
stantly on hand a full supply of negroes, selected for this
market. . . . My stock already purchased is large, and will
be added to as required during the season.” In Houston,
Walter L. Campbell advertised that he had for sale “a
large supply of all classes of negroes . . . imported from
Virginia, Maryland and Georgia. Hereafter during the
whole season, the supply shall be kept good by the receipt
of large lots of the choicest negroes to be had from the
above States.” s
At a crossroads on the outskirts of Natchez a visitor and
his planter companion found the mart where the slave trad¬
ers conducted their business. Entering a narrow courtyard,
they saw a line of about forty slaves, neatly dressed, stand¬
ing along the side. “With their hats in their hands . . .
they stood perfectly still, and in close order, while some
gentlemen were passing from one to another examining
for the purpose of buying. With the exception of display¬
ing their teeth when addressed, and rolling their great
» New Orleans Picayune, January 4, 1860; Houston Weekly Telegraph,
October 12, 1859.
 The Peculiar Institution

white eyes about the court—they were so many statues of

the most glossy ebony.” The planter joined in the scrutiny
of the merchandise, “giving that singular look, peculiar to
the buyer of slaves as he glances from head to foot over
each individual.” Now and then a sale was closed and one
of the slaves left the line to follow his new master. The
countless tragedies of the slave market were not always evi¬
dent to the casual visitor, for many of the slaves outwardly
seemed to be quite indifferent to the whole business, and
some wore a cheerful air as they passed the time in idle
waiting. The traders usually took pains to keep them com¬
fortable and in good spirits.* * 4
But tragedy was never far beneath the surface—to be
caught in this traffic was one of the fears that haunted
southern slaves. An unfavorable turn in the master’s eco¬
nomic fortunes, a death and the subsequent settlement of
an estate could at any time wrench a slave away from his
family and friends, away from familiar places, and send
him to a new life made dreadful by its uncertainties. Ulti¬
mately, of course, most of the slaves who were traded as
merchandise recovered from this unsettling experience, but
not always with ease. The slave Josephine, sold to a Missis-
sippian in the New Orleans market, indicated that she was
“a good deal dissatisfied by the purchase” by “crying and
taking on considerably”; she no longer moved about “with
the life and sprightliness” she had shown in the past.6
Only a few of the professional traders amassed great
wealth; some lost money and failed. This business, engaged
in by hundreds of small entrepreneurs, was highly competi¬
tive and speculative. Besides bearing the costs of transport¬
ing the slaves and supporting them until they were sold,
the vendors risked losses through sickness, death, escapes,

4 [Ingraham], South-West, II, pp. 192-94, 202; Bancroft, Slave-Trading,

pp. 113-14.
4 Catterall (ed.) , Judicial Cases, III, p. 373.

264
VI: Slavemongering

and fluctuating prices; more, they had to contend with the

methods of the least ethical members of their profession,
and meet the expenses of lawsuits instituted by dissatisfied
purchasers. The records of one small trader, who gathered
his merchandise in Virginia and North Carolina during
the 1850’s, show that the sales which netted him unusually
large profits were offset by sales which netted him no profits
at all. His most lucrative transaction involved a slave
woman and her child whom he purchased for $1275 and
sold for $1700; his least fortunate transaction involved an¬
other slave woman whom he purchased for $700 and sold
some months later for the same price. He sold most of his
merchandise for $200 to $300 more than he paid, a markup
of around 30 per cent. This brought him an average net
profit of well over $100 on each sale.* 6
Among the minority of large-scale traders were some of
the wealthiest businessmen of the Old South. Nathan Bed¬
ford Forrest, who later won fame as a Confederate cavalry
commander, was the largest slave trader in Memphis dur¬
ing the late 1850’s; he was reputed to have made a profit of
$96,000 in a single year. But probably no trader ever ex¬
ceeded the returns enjoyed by the firm of Franklin & Arm-
field. Before retiring from the business each of the partners
accumulated fortunes in excess of a half million dollars.7
Few who exploited slave labor, rather than trading in it,
profited that much.

5
“This trade is a sore subject with the defenders of slav¬
ery,” observed a critical English traveler. “It is difficult to
weave it handsomely in among the amenities of the patri-

« A. and A. T. Walker Ms. Account Book; Phillips, American Negro

Slavery, p. 201.
7 Bancroft, Slave-Trading, pp. 263-64; Stephenson, Franklin, p. 93.

265
 The Peculiar Institution

archal institution. They fain would make a scape-goat of

the ‘Trader,’ and load all the iniquities of the system on his
unlucky back.” This, the Englishman thought, was unjust.
“If slavery and the slave trade which it necessitates be in
themselves right and proper, it is a wrong to visit with ig¬
nominy the instruments of the system.”8 The injustice of
making scapegoats of these men was compounded by the
element of social snobbery in it—the attitude of contempt
for petty traders with their customary lack of the social
graces, which Hundley’s description of the “Negro trader”
made so evident.
Moreover, slaveholders who did business with the specu¬
lators often deserved to share responsibility for practices
for which the latter received the entire blame. Slaveholders
themselves put in the hands of speculators the dangerous
or “sickly” slaves who were offered to buyers in the Deep
South. A lawyer whose planter client commissioned him to
sell a slave explained how it was done: “Finding that I
should not probably succeed in making an advantageous
sale of the boy myself, so unpromising was he[,] I procured
the services of a Broker whose business it is to do such
things. He had his hair carded and his person washed and
a supply of clothes was procured to set him off. After which
you would hardly have known your own boy. A few days
training improved his air and manner much and a sale was
effected.” 9
If the dissolution of families was one of the cardinal sins
of the traffic, masters merited some of the opprobrium that
was heaped upon the traders. They frequently sold their
slaves knowing full well that families would be broken
whenever the traders found it to their advantage to do so.
Sometimes the masters themselves agreed to dissolve fami-

s Stirling, Letters, pp. 292-93.

» Henry Watson, Jr., to Dr. J. W. Carrigan, November 27, 1852, Watson
Papers.

266
VI: Slavemongering

lies. A Kentuckian advertised a slave woman and her four

children whom he would sell “together or separately”; a
Virginian agreed to sell a slave woman “with one or
more Children, to suit the purchaser”; and another Vir¬
ginian offered a reward for his runaway Nat who was “no
doubt attempting to follow his wife, who was lately sold to
a speculator.” A mistress in Nelson County, Virginia, sent
a female slave to an agent in Lynchburg with instructions
“to see her sold.” After being sold to a trader, this slave
twice escaped and returned to her husband at her former
home.1 These were not isolated cases.
Purchasers in the Deep South selected from the trader’s
supply whatever slaves best satisfied their needs, occasion¬
ally whole families but usually not. For instance, an Arkan¬
sas planter visited the slave market in Memphis and bought
five women with their children but not a single husband.
In fact, when a trader or purchaser spoke of a “family” of
slaves he was ordinarily referring only to a mother and her
children. Thus a planter who thought of buying some
slaves from a trader noted that the lot included “a family”
consisting of “a woman 27 years old, five children and an¬
other hourly expected.” The mother was “stout and
healthy”; the children were “very likely, sprightly and
smart” and seemed to be “all one man’s children”; but the
father was not part of the trader’s stock.2
The southern gentry’s traditional contempt for traders
was directed chiefly against the more unsavory elements in
the business. Substantial and trustworthy dealers often
maintained cordial relations with members of the planter
class. Peter Stokes and William H. Hatchett, slave traders

1 Coleman, Slavery Times in Kentucky, p. 119; Bancroft, Slave-Trading,

p. 27 n.; Richmond Enquirer, April 1, 1834; Thos. Massie to Wm. H.
Hatchett, December 15, 1845, William H. Hatchett Papers.
2 Leak Diary, entry for October 8, 1859; I. T. Lenoir to Albert S.
Lenoir, November 4, 1847, Lenoir Family Papers.

267
 The Peculiar Institution

in Lunenburg County, Virginia, were on friendly terms

with neighboring lawyers and planters and probably re¬
ceived financial support from local businessmen. Indeed,
it was not at all uncommon for merchants or bankers in
the towns of the Upper South to act as silent partners of
the speculators. Moreover, many respectable commission
merchants, factors, general agents, and lawyers engaged in
a little slave trading as a side line.3
A few traders—for example, Thomas Norman Gadsden
and Louis D. DeSaussure, of South Carolina—belonged to
distinguished southern families whose social positions were
firmly established. Others whose origins were humbler used
slave trading as an avenue to ultimate membership in the
planter class. Such men may never have been able entirely
to escape the stigma of their earlier profession; but in the
Southwest, with its great social fluidity, they had reason to
believe that their children would. By the 1840’s, Isaac
Franklin had retired from trading and invested his fortune
in slaves and plantations in Tennessee and Louisiana.
James D. Ware, a Virginia trader who for many years mar¬
keted slaves in Natchez, used his profits to buy a Missis¬
sippi plantation. Finally, in 1848, Ware informed a planter
friend: “I leave in a few days for Va. on the same old errand
and for the last time. This trip result as it may closes my
trading operations. So far a kind providence has sustained
and prospered my undertakings. I have made a compe¬
tency. I wish to stay at home [in Mississippi] and enjoy
it ... in such a manner as becomes a rational and ac¬
countable being.”4
Many slaveholders by-passed the professional speculators

s Hatchett Papers, passim; Thomas D. Clark, “The Slave Trade between

Kentucky and the Cotton Kingdom,” Mississippi Valley Historical Re¬
view, XXI (1934), p- 342; Bancroft, Slave-Trading, pp. 368-69.
* Bancroft, Slave-Trading, pp. 167-69, 186-90; James D. Ware to Wil¬
liam M. Waller, April 11, 1848, William M. Waller Papers.

268
VI: Slavemongering

and participated directly in the interstate trade. Planters in

the Deep South themselves often visited Virginia to pur¬
chase slaves for personal use. Masters in the Upper South
often arranged for the marketing of their own bondsmen.
Thus, John H. Anthony, of Halifax County, North Caro¬
lina, sent thirteen slaves to a relative in Mississippi who
promised to sell them for him.5 Virginians were frequently
seen in the Southwest seeking buyers for slaves they had
transported from their private estates.
William M. Waller, a planter in Amherst County, Vir¬
ginia, left a full record of one such slave selling expedition.
In 1847, Waller and his neighbor James Taliaferro decided
they must sell some of their slaves to escape from heavy
debts. Though electing to handle the sales themselves,
they consulted an experienced speculator who informed
them that Natchez was the most promising market and that
early October was the best time to begin the trip.
After selecting twenty of his choicest slaves, Waller
joined Taliaferro for the long overland journey to Missis¬
sippi. That his mission was distasteful and disquieting,
Waller left no doubt. Compassion for his slaves, concern
about the morality of his action, and a touch of self-pity
caused him to brood over the matter incessantly while he
was away from home. Only a “sense of duty” to his family,
he repeatedly told his wife, supported him “in a trip that
under any other consideration would be intolerable. I
have already seen and felt enough to make me loath the vo¬
cation of slave trading.” A few weeks later, after reaching
Mississippi, Waller wrote: “I still think it was my duty. . . .
I care not for my exposure, nor for my absence from home
or for the privation of my usual comforts if I can effect my
purpose—if I can return to you all freed from my bondage

s James Gordon to John H. Anthony, February 8, 1837, Lewis Thomp¬

son Papers.

269
 The Peculiar Institution

[of debt] which has been for some years more awfully gall¬
ing to my feelings, vastly more so, than the world sup¬
poses.” Still later he referred apprehensively to a report
that a Virginia friend had been “threatened by the church
for his supposed participation in the negro trade—is there
any thing of it and what?”
Waller suffered many disappointments, for in the fall of
1847 slave prices in Mississippi declined and purchasers
could not be found. After a month in northern Mississippi,
he related sadly: “As yet neither Mr. Taliaferro or I have
sold one nor does there appear the least prospect of our
doing so in any short time.” In December, the two Vir¬
ginians separated, and Waller took his merchandise to the
Hinds County plantation of his friend, Thomas S. Dabney,
who promised to help him find purchasers. “I have taken
away the most valuable portion of my slave property,” he
wrote in despair, “and if now parted with without effecting
my purpose what will become of our children[?]”
Early in January, 1848, Waller made his first sale—a
slave woman for $675—to one of Dabney’s neighbors. By
February he had sold seven, one of them in New Orleans.
He then took the remaining thirteen to Natchez where the
Virginia trader, James D. Ware, offered to assist him. To¬
gether they looked for a buyer who would agree to take the
entire lot. At last, on March 2, he rejoiced: “I have sold
out all my negroes to one man for eight thousand dol¬
lars. ... I have not obtained as much as I expected, but
I try and be satisfied—the whole amount of the sales for
the twenty is $12,675.” In April he was home again in Am¬
herst County, confident that the proceeds of his expedition
would emancipate him from his bondage of debt.
Waller offered to compensate Ware for his help, but the
latter indignantly refused to accept it. Ware expected no
commission for what he regarded as a “mere act of cour-

270
VI: Slavemongering

tesy.” This trader, who was about to retire to his Missis¬

sippi plantation, knew how a gentleman was expected to
behave.6

6
In the eighteenth century the slave trade between Africa
and America yielded fabulous profits to many European
and American merchants. By 1803, however, only South
Carolina’s ports were still open to this traffic, and after
January 1, 1808, Federal law closed them too. But during
the next half century planters who needed additional la¬
borers, and merchants who remembered the rich returns,
sometimes questioned the wisdom of this act.
In practice the prohibitory laws were never sufficiently
effective to wipe out the illicit trade that continued—and
at times flourished. The Federal statute of 1807 provided
fines and imprisonment for persons convicted of transport¬
ing and selling Africans, and fines for those who knowingly
bought them. But in the absence of special enforcement
machinery the law was violated with impunity; various es¬
timates of slave importations between 1810 and 1820 run
as high as sixty thousand. Not until 1819 did Congress au¬
thorize the use of armed cruisers to patrol the coasts of the
United States and West Africa. A year later, another statute
made participation in the African trade piracy and im¬
posed a death penalty.
Thereafter the Federal government made fitful efforts at
enforcement, but its patrol system was always inadequate,
and the executive department often showed little real inter¬
est in more vigorous action. During the 1850’s, the illicit
commerce reached such proportions as almost to constitute
“a reopening of the slave-trade.” Many of the slavers were

• Correspondence from July, 1847, to April, 1848, relating to this expe¬

dition is in the Waller Papers.

271
 The Peculiar Institution

fitted out in New York City, and some of their cargoes were
unloaded with scarcely any attempt at secrecy. When, occa¬
sionally, African traders were brought to trial, southern
juries refused to convict. Indeed, the first conviction and
execution for piracy under the law of 1820 occurred after
the outbreak of the Civil War.7
On the eve of the Civil War, some defenders of slavery
in the Deep South argued that self-interest and moral con¬
sistency required Southerners to seek the repeal of these
hostile laws. If slavery were a positive good, if it were a
kindness to the Negro to rescue him from Africa for labor
in the South, then the means by which this was accom¬
plished were surely not immoral. Southerners, asserted a
Texan, could not “eulogize slavery and denounce the slave
trade in the same breath, without stultifying themselves
with the grossest and most suicidal inconsistency.”
The Federal law defining this trade as piracy, according
to a Texas editor, had “subverted every principle of jus¬
tice, . . . slandered the memories of our honored ances¬
tors, and . . . trampled upon the common sentiment of
the Southern States.” More, it violated the southern doc¬
trine of free trade. “The same reason which would induce
us to oppose a high protective tariff . . . leads us to pro¬
test against the fanatical laws passed to prohibit the Afri¬
can slave trade. We can distinguish no great difference be¬
tween the trade in African negroes, and the trade in any
other article of property. Nothing but sectional malice and
narrow bigotry prevents the trade in slaves from being left
to the great laws of commerce, which can best adjust the
relation between supply and demand.” To the argument
that the trade was cruel, the answer was that the illegal

t DuBois, Suppression of the African Slave-Trade, passim; Harvey

Wish, "The Revival of the African Slave Trade in the United States,
1856-1860,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXVII (1941) , pp.
569-88; Gray, History of Agriculture, II, p. 650.

278
VI: Slavemongering

trade was more cruel. If the trade were recognized and reg¬
ulated by law, steps could be taken “to compel the humane
treatment of slave emigrants.” Legalization would thus be
“a measure of humanity.” 8
In their reckless but devastating criticism of southern in¬
consistencies, advocates of the renewal of the African trade
attacked slaveholders in the Upper South for opposing it.
Though for the past half century Virginians had monopo¬
lized the domestic trade, they had no “vested right to per¬
petuate that monopoly.” If the importing states could buy
more cheaply in Africa than in Virginia, they had a “na¬
tural right” to do so. Why was it immoral to import from
Africa if it was moral to import from Virginia?9
Moreover, if the peculiar institution were to be pre¬
served, masters in the Upper South had to be forced to hold
their slaves. The current high prices and great demand
tempted them to send their human chattels to the Deep
South at an unprecedented rate, and thus the “circle of
slave labor and southern institutions” was gradually con¬
tracting. Unless this were stopped, one result would inevi¬
tably follow: “Free labor will necessarily take the place of
slave labor, and when [it] preponderates . . . they will be¬
come anti-slavery States.” To prevent this, labor had to be
imported from Africa to drive the slaves of the Upper
South out of the market.* 1
There was no denying that during the 1850’s the South¬
west suffered from an acute labor shortage. Arkansas plant¬
ers complained that the resulting exorbitant slave prices
prevented most of the good cotton lands from being culti-

8 Little Rock Arkansas Gazette and Democrat, December 4, 1858; Austin

Texas State Gazette, December 18, 1858; Jackson Mississippian, Sep¬
tember 17, 1858; Southern Cultivator, XVI (1858), pp. 233-36.
» Austin Texas State Gazette, January 1, 1859; Southern Cultivator,
XVI (1858), pp. 233-36.
1 Montgomery Advertiser, quoted in Jackson Mississippian, January 28,
1859.

273
 The Peculiar Institution

vated. “To remedy this evil African slaves should be im¬

ported into the country,” advised a Little Rock editor.
“Otherwise our resources may never be developed.” Tex¬
ans made the same complaint; one advocate of the African
trade estimated that Texas needed at least six million more
Negroes. Even South Carolinians complained about the
high price of labor, because few of them could outbid
Southwestemers for male field-hands. “A young girl, who
would breed like a cat would tell differently,” explained a
South Carolina planter, “but such hands cannot do the
heavy labor of mine or any other plantation. Then where
am I to get laborers? I say, emphatically, import them from
Africa.” 2
Many Southerners believed that the inadequate labor
supply was responsible for the wasteful, extensive system
of agriculture which was rapidly wearing out their lands.
In the South “the natural balance between land and la¬
borers has been wantonly destroyed,” and “one of the most
obvious effects has been a continuous effort to make the
most of a comparatively little labor by extending it over
too much surface of soil.” Unless the slave supply were in¬
creased, “our present practice of skinning and bleeding
the soil will not be abandoned for many years. The public
interest demands more laborers in the planting States.” 3
Proslavery leaders also feared that, unless there was an
increase in the supply of slaves, ownership would be lim¬
ited to a dangerously small proportion of the southern
whites. If a small group monopolized this form of labor, the
foundation of the institution would be weak; if slaveown-
ership were diffused “more generally among the people,”

2 De Bow’s Review, XXV (1858), pp. 491-506; Little Rock Arkansas Ga¬
zette and Democrat, October 2, 1858; Austin Texas State Gazette, De¬
cember 18, 1858; January 15, February 19, 1859; American Cotton
Planter and Soil of the South, III (1859), pp. 75-76.
8 De Bow’s Review, XXIV (1858), pp. 202-203; Southern Cultivator,
XVI (1858), pp. 233-36.

274
VI: Slavemongering

the foundation would be strong. Every white family should

own at least a household servant—in fact, “we do not wish
to see the white man of the South act as a boot-black, a
cook, a waiter, or as one of a gang of laborers in the sugar
and cotton fields.” The small farmers were the ones most
grievously wronged by the closing of the African trade. Un¬
able to buy slaves, they were compelled to toil in their
fields and to put their young sons to work “when they
should either be at school or at play.” 4
The introduction of free white farm hands to solve the
South’s labor problem, it was said, would merely create a
new evil. “To hire white men,” explained a South Caro¬
lina planter, “will be to bring about an association between
my negroes, and a set of drinking, vagabondish foreigners;
for native born white laborers are never to be seen for hire
in this country.” Fill the South with immigrant laborers,
“and you will have voters enough among these new comers
to abolish slavery in every State where it exists.” Too many
had come already. “It would be a happy riddance if they
were not among us—they are the only opposing element to
slave labor in the South.” 5
Finally, the reopening of the African slave trade would
help to restore the political balance between North and
South. “Every five slaves,” the argument ran, “gives us the
equivalent in the basis of federal representation which the
North claims for three whites.” Why debate the right of
slavery to expand into the territories when there were not
enough slaves to satisfy the labor needs of the existing
southern states? If the South were to match the North in
territorial growth, “the labor system of the South must

* De Bow’s Review, XXV (1858) , pp. 491-506; Austin Texas State Ga¬
zette, July 17, December 18, 1858; January 15, 1859.
» American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, III (1859), pp. 75-
76; Southern Cultivator, XVI (1858), pp. 233-36; Little Rock Ar¬
kansas Gazette and Democrat, October 2, 1858.

275
 The Peculiar Institution

have the same access to the labor markets of the world that
the labor system of the North has.” There was only one
way to “expand the area of slavery, ... to enlarge the
circle of slaves States,” and to establish southern equality
within the Union: “In plain terms [the South] must have
slave emigration—the slave trade.” 6
This was the cry that went up from some southern poli¬
ticians in Congress and in the state legislatures. In 1857, a
southern commercial convention, meeting at Knoxville,
appointed a committee to investigate the subject. The next
year the chairman of this committee, L. W. Spratt, of South
Carolina, an ardent advocate of the African trade, submit¬
ted a report to another commercial convention at Mont¬
gomery. Spratt’s report urged the adoption of a resolution
declaring that since slavery was right “there can be no
wrong in the natural means to its formation,” and that “it
is expedient and proper [that] the foreign slave trade
should be re-opened.” The Convention took no action.7
Almost everyone who favored the renewal of this trade
realized that there was not the remotest chance of getting
Congress to pass such a measure; hence they proposed that
the states evade Federal law through some form of subter¬
fuge. The Louisiana legislature several times considered an
“African Apprentice Bill” which would have authorized
the importation of Negro laborers under fifteen-year inden¬
tures. In 1858, this measure passed the lower house of the
legislature but failed in the upper house. A year later, some
of the most active supporters of the apprentice scheme or¬
ganized the African Labor Supply Association and elected
J. B. D. De Bow, of New Orleans, as its president. Mean¬
while, a group of Mississippians considered forming an

8 Austin Texas State Gazette, June 26, December 18, 1858; Wilmington
(N.C.) Journal, June 25, 1858; Little Rock Arkansas Gazette and Dem¬
ocrat, October 2, 1858; De Bow’s Review, XXV (1858), pp. 491-506.
t De Bow’s Review, XXIV (1858), pp. 473-91. 576-606.

276
VI: Slavemongering

African Labor Immigration Company to bring in inden¬

tured Negro apprentices, but the project never materialized.
An impatient Florida editor openly invited the African
traders to land their cargoes in his state without waiting for
friendly legislation. Commenting on the high slave prices,
he reported that “advocates for the re-opening of the trade
in ‘wool’ are increasing. An investment in a ship load to be
landed on the coast of Florida would be profitable. Who’ll
take stock?” 8
Not many would. In spite of all the talk, advocates of
reopening the African slave trade were in the minority
even in the states of the Southwest. “We are fully aware
that our position is not a popular one,” confessed one of
the most clamorous members of this group in Arkansas.
Two months later the Arkansas Senate overwhelmingly de¬
feated a resolution favoring the repeal of the Federal law
which made it piracy to import Africans. No such resolu¬
tion ever passed a southern legislative body.9
There were several practical reasons for this. Slavehold¬
ers in the Upper South feared the competition of the Afri¬
can traders in the markets of the slave importing states.
Masters with an adequate supply of labor opposed a meas¬
ure that would inevitably depress the price of slaves and (in
the long run by increasing production) the price of south¬
ern staples as well. Moderates throughout the South knew
that agitation for reopening the African slave trade would
merely intensify sectional bitterness, and they regarded its
sponsors as disunionists.
There were moral reasons too. It may have been incon¬
sistent, as some contended, to defend slavery and the do-

8 Taylor, "Negro Slavery in Louisiana,” pp. 73-76; De Bow's Review,

XXIV (1858) , pp. 421-24; XXVII (1859) , pp. 231-35: Jackson Missis-
sippian, January 12, 1858; Tallahassee Floridian and Journal, Febru¬
ary 19. 1859.
» Little Rock Arkansas Gazette and Democrat, October 2, December 4,
1858; New Orleans Picayune, March 21, 1858.
 The Peculiar Institution

mestic slave trade while condemning further importations

from Africa. But most Southerners preferred to waive con¬
sistency, for on this point there was “a healthy moral feel¬
ing.” Few of them, according to a Georgian, were willing
“to roll back the tide of civilizaton and Christianity of the
nineteenth century, and restore the barbarism of the dark
ages.” 1

r Milledgeville Southern Recorder, January 11, 1859.

278
 [ 279 ]
CHAPTER SEVEN

Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality

lhe proprieties of a slaveholding society, explained a

-L Virginian, obligated the bondsman to labor diligently
and to respond “submissively and honestly” to his master’s
commands. In return, he was “entitled to an abundance of
good plain food; to coarse but comfortable apparel; to a
warm but humble dwelling; to protection when well, and
to succor when sick.” Defenders of slavery believed that
common sense and self-interest, as well as justice and hu¬
manity, caused the master to provide adequately for his
slave’s material needs. The master knew that “men, like
animals, cannot work unless there is furnished them the
necessary comforts which by nature they require.” 1
Seldom did a planter fail to refer to this subject when he
prepared a body of instructions for his overseer. “See that
their necessities be supplied, that their food and clothing
be good and sufficient, their houses comfortable, and be
kind and attentive to them in sickness and in old age,” ad¬
monished Joseph Acklen, of Louisiana. In a written con¬
tract, John Ambler, of Virginia, imposed the following ob¬
ligations upon his overseer: “To make the negroes keep
their houses clean and tightly covered. ... To attend to
the clothing of the negroes—and to have them well nursed

i Farmers' Register, IV (1836), p. 180; Farmer’s Journal, II (1853),

p. 5*.
 The Peculiar Institution

and taken care of when they are sick.” 2 Masters who did
not employ overseers looked to these matters themselves.
Expenditures for food, clothing, shelter, and medical
care were, in a sense, the wages paid a slave for his labor;
but the master usually thought of them as maintenance
costs—expenditures necessary for the upkeep of slave prop¬
erty. How much he spent for these necessities, the quality
and quantity he believed essential, depended upon a num¬
ber of things. First, it depended upon how well informed
the master was upon such subjects as diet, hygiene, and the
causes and treatment of disease. Even a well-intentioned
master could, from sheer ignorance, cause his bondsman
much misery. Second, it depended upon where the master
lived. In new regions, where semi-frontier conditions still
prevailed, the master himself enjoyed few of the amenities;
as late as 1848, a visitor described the “big house” of a
wealthy Mississippi planter as “nothing better than a log
one of four rooms,” in which the white family ate from
“common pine tables” and sat upon “split bottom chairs.” 3
Under these circumstances the slave perforce endured the
crudest, most meager comforts. Third, it depended upon
the slave’s status. A domestic, a skilled artisan, or a fore¬
man was usually the recipient of more of the master’s
bounty than a common field-hand. Fourth, and most im¬
portant, it depended upon the master’s disposition—upon
how close to the margin of subsistence he chose to keep his
workers. Except for the few who hired their own time,
slaves seldom had much control over their own well-being.
The master determined what part of his annual revenues
he would appropriate for their maintenance.
A young North Carolinian described conditions on his
father’s plantation illustrating the maximum living stand¬
ard which the most fortunate slaves might enjoy. Here
2 De Bow’s Review, XXII (1857), pp. 376-79; Ambler Family Papers.
a William M. Waller to his wife, January 3, 1848, Waller Papers.

280
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality

they ate what the white family ate, lived in well-built

houses, had plenty of firewood, and received good shoes and
ample clothing. When ill they were treated by the best doc¬
tors in the neighborhood; the “breeding women” were
never overstrained. “When any of the slave children were
very sick they were brought into the [master’s] house . . .
and there attended as one of the white children.” Every
adult slave had “a ‘patch of ground’ and the time to work
it, in order that each might have some money of his own
to spend as he chose.” 4 If the relative advantages of slavery
and freedom were measured exclusively in terms of the ma¬
terial comfort of the worker, the ante-bellum free laborer
could not always have boasted that he was better off than
the slaves of this North Carolina master.
Few freemen would have accepted this simple criterion,
but surely the comparative standard of living of free and
slave laborers was not altogether irrelevant. Proslavery
writers frequently contended that northern workers suf¬
fered greater privation than southern slaves. They demon¬
strated this by contrasting the hardships of the lowest paid,
most heartlessly exploited factory hands with the comforts
of the best-treated bondsmen. They found abundant evi¬
dence of widespread poverty among new immigrants and
among unskilled or semi-skilled workers in the industrial
towns of the Northeast, especially during periods of eco¬
nomic depression.
But the typical ante-bellum northern “free laborer” was
not a half-starved hireling of a large, impersonal, industrial
corporation. Rather, he was a small farmer, a farm laborer,
a journeyman or master artisan, or an employee of a small
manufacturing enterprise managed by its owner. The great
mass of northern workers enjoyed, by and large, an income
that afforded them a reasonably comfortable standard of
* Quoted in John S. Bassett, Slavery in the State of North Carolina (Bal¬
timore, 1899), pp. 87-88

281
 The Peculiar Institution

living—a standard of living considerably higher than that

of the mass of southern slaves. For the average slave lived
in nothing like the material comfort which that philan¬
thropic North Carolina master provided his “people.”
Though one hears of slaves who were given opportuni¬
ties to earn a little money and who were indulged in other
ways, most of them were limited to the bare necessities and
lived at the subsistence level. Unlike the free laborer, the
average slave could not attain an appreciably higher living
standard, no matter how hard he strived. The slave’s labor
was controlled labor: his bargaining power was, by design,
severely circumscribed. His labor was cheap labor: his com¬
pensation was, also by design, kept at a minimum. The free
worker was, inevitably, more independent, more often suc¬
cessful in his efforts to increase his material comforts; and
as a rule his labor was therefore more expensive.6 In short,
one might dispute the proslavery argument on economic as
well as moral grounds: freedom was clearly a practical ad¬
vantage to the laborer himself.

2
A peck of corn meal and three or four pounds of salt
pork or bacon comprised the basic weekly allowance of the
great majority of adult slaves. These rations, to which were
frequently added a few supplementary items, usually pro¬
vided a diet of sufficient bulk but improper balance. The
slaves who consequently suffered from dietary deficiencies
were sometimes the victims of penurious masters, but prob¬
ably they were more often the victims of ill-informed mas¬
ters—of the primitive state of the science of dietetics. Even
the master and his family rarely had a balanced diet,
though they generally enjoyed a wider variety (and a

6 See below. Chapter IX. See also Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 686-711.

282
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality

higher quality) of foods than did the slaves. In any case,

the adequacy of the provisions furnished the slaves must be
judged in the light of what ante-bellum Southerners knew
about the principles of nutrition.
In 1859, Dr. John H. Wilson, of Columbus, Georgia,
published an essay on the feeding of Negroes, which illus¬
trated the confusing melange of science and quackery that
influenced the practices of even the best-informed slave¬
holders. Wilson divided all foods into two categories: “m-
trogenized or muscle-producing and non-nitrogenized or
heat-producing.” It was a common notion, he observed,
“that fat bacon and pork are highly nutritious; but almost
everything, even the lightest and most watery vegetables
contain more nutritive muscle-building elements. Yet these
fatty articles of diet are peculiarly appropriate on account
of their heat-producing properties; they generate sufficient
heat to cause the wheels of life to move glibly and smoothly,
. . . and hence negroes who are freely supplied with them
grow plump, sleek and shiny. . . . Corn, abounding as it
does in oily matter, is also a heat-producing agent, acting
precisely like fat meat; and in addition to this its other ele¬
ments render it a valuable muscle-producing food. How
fortunate that pork and corn, the most valuable of all ar¬
ticles of diet for negroes, may be so readily produced
throughout the whole region where slaves are worked!”
Wilson warned masters, however, that Negroes and whites
“are very different in their habits and constitutions, and
that while fat meat is the life of the negro, ... it is a pro¬
lific source of disease and death among the whites.” In ad¬
dition to corn and pork, “negroes should be liberally sup¬
plied with garden vegetables, and milk and molasses should
be given out occasionally at least. These afford an agree¬
able variety and serve as preventives to scurvy and other
diseases.” Among the fruits, he particularly recommended
figs because of their nutritiousness; among the vegetables,

283
 The Peculiar Institution

peas “on account of the large quantity of oil they con¬

tain.” 8
Few slaveholders knew more than Dr. Wilson about food
chemistry; none had heard of vitamins or of the connection
between vitamin deficiencies and certain diseases that puz¬
zled them; and none had any precise knowledge of the pro¬
portions of various foods in a balanced diet. Yet, those who
followed Wilson’s advice to add milk, molasses, vegetables,
and fruits to the allowances of corn and pork were seldom
troubled with slaves who suffered seriously from malnutri¬
tion. Some did provide a diet as varied as this; some went
further and added such items as Irish or sweet potatoes,
eggs and poultry, beef and mutton, perhaps even coffee and
sugar. In the coastal regions masters could easily furnish
fish, lobsters, crabs, clams, and oysters; almost everywhere
they could make it possible for their slaves to feast occa¬
sionally on wild game.
There seemed to be no appreciable difference in the
quality or variety of foods given slaves in the Upper South
and in the Deep South, or in the practices of large and
small slaveholders. The important difference was between
masters who assumed direct responsibility for supplying
their slaves with all the food they needed, and those who
merely supplied pork and corn and a plot of ground on
which slaves might produce some supplementary items if
they cared to. Too often the slaves lacked the time or en¬
ergy to cultivate their own plots in addition to performing
their other tasks.* 7 In either case, fresh vegetables were only
available “in season”; during the winter months few slaves
escaped the monotony of a “hog-and-hominy” diet.
Indeed, everywhere in the South a depressingly large
number of slaves lived on little else than this dismal fare
throughout the year. On countless farms and plantations
0 American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, III (1859)» P- 197-
7 Olmsted, Seaboard, p. 108.

284
 VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality

the laborers never tasted fresh meat, milk, eggs, or fruits,

and rarely tasted vegetables. “All that is allowed,” recalled
a former slave on a cotton plantation, “is corn and bacon,
which is given out at the corncrib and smoke-house every
Sunday morning. Each one receives, as his weekly allow¬
ance, three and a half pounds of bacon, and corn enough
to make a peck of meal.” No slave on this estate, he added
bitterly, was “ever likely to suffer from the gout, superin¬
duced by excessive high living.” 8
An experienced Louisiana physician claimed that the
diet of slaves on the majority of plantations was “mostly
salt pork, corn bread, and molasses—rarely . . . fresh
meat and vegetables.” An Alabamian reported that plant¬
ers in his region had the “erroneous impression . . . that
Pork—and the fatter the better—is the only proper sub¬
stance of animal food for Negroes.” A Virginian affirmed
that “corn meal, with little or no meat, and no vegetable
diet is extremely hard fare. I believe that there are ex¬
tremely few masters who starve their slaves to actual suf¬
fering, . . . [but] I have no doubt that the slow motion,
and thin expression of countenance, of many slaves, are
owing to a want of a sufficiency of nourishing food.” Olm¬
sted agreed that not many slaves were denied an adequate
quantity of food, but he claimed that the fare was generally
“coarse, crude, and wanting in variety.” 9 This condition
was by no means peculiar to the large plantations.
The minority of masters who gave their slaves an insuffi¬
cient supply even of corn and pork were usually so preoc¬
cupied with the staple crops that they neglected to produce
enough food. Such masters were obliged to purchase sup-

s Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, pp. 168-70.

» V. Alton Moody, “Slavery on Louisiana Sugar Plantations,” Louisiana
Historical Quarterly, VII (1924), p. 263; Southern Cultivator, VIII
(1850), p. 4; Farmers' Register, V (1837), p. 32; Olmsted, Seaboard,
p. 700.
 The Peculiar Institution

plies, and some of them tried to reduce operational costs

by issuing meager rations. This short-sighted policy caused
the mistress on a Louisiana plantation to hope certain mas¬
ters would learn that it was to their own advantage to give
slaves “more and better food,’’ so that self-interest might
effect “what humanity failed to secure.” A North Carolin¬
ian complained, “There are many farmers who feed their
negroes sparingly, believing that it is economy[,] that they
save by it, but such is not the fact.” 1 In times of economic
stringency masters who relied upon food purchases some¬
times lacked either the cash or credit to obtain what they
needed, and their slaves suffered accordingly.
“I practice on the plan, that all of us would be better to
be restrained, and that health is best subserved by not over¬
eating,” explained a small planter. There was much truth
in this, but some slaveholders seemed to underestimate the
amount of food that a hard-working field-hand needed.
Various slaves claimed that they sometimes consumed their
weekly rations within four or five days and then had to
make night raids on the hog pen or corn crib. Fanny Kem¬
ble noted that on her husband’s Georgia plantation slaves
approached her almost daily to beg for rice or meat.
James H. Hammond was convinced that his slaves were
“too well fed,” yet he complained that in one year they had
stolen and killed a hundred of his hogs.2 Much of this pilfer¬
ing was committed by slaves whose purpose was to trade
plantation supplies for whisky or tobacco; but some of it
was to enrich their diet. It indicated that the slaves them¬
selves were not always satisfied with the quality or quan-

1 William D. Postell, The Health of Slaves on Southern Plantations

(Baton Rouge, 1951), p. 78; Farmer’s Journal, II (1853), p. 53.
2 De Bow’s Review, XI (1851) , pp. 369-71; Drew, The Refugee, p. 155-
56; Kemble, Journal, passim; Hammond Diary, entry for October 22,
1843.

286
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality
tity of their rations—that they, like their masters, pre¬
ferred a fine ham to the cheaper cuts of pork. Most masters,
therefore, kept their smokehouses carefully locked.
The problem of slave sustenance involved not only the
need for an ample and balanced diet but also the need for
a practical system of food preparation. Usually the master
held each family of slaves responsible for cooking their
own food and paid little attention to how well they did it.
He required them to carry their noon meals to the fields in
the morning and to wait for their evening meals until
they returned to their cabins at night. In some cases he ex¬
pected the slaves to grind their own corn and gather their
own firewood, a great burden after a long day of toil. He
did not always provide cooking utensils. Without these,
cooking was a simple process, as a former slave recalled:
“When the corn is ground, and fire is made, the bacon is
. . . thrown upon the coals to broil. . . . The corn meal
is mixed with a little water, placed in the fire, and baked.
When it is ‘done brown,’ the ashes are scraped off, and be¬
ing placed upon a chip, which answers for a table, the ten¬
ant of the slave hut is ready to sit down upon the ground to
supper.” 3 The majority of masters provided iron pots, for
cooking vegetables and fat pork and “grits,” and frying
pans for preparing bacon and corn pone.
Many slaveholders vigorously condemned the practice of
requiring slaves to cook their own meals. “It encroaches
upon the rest they should have both at noon and at night,”
one planter explained. “The cooking being done in a
hurry, is badly done; being usually burnt on the outside
while it is still raw within; and consequently unhealthy.
However abundant may be the supply of vegetables, the
hands have no time to cook them, and consequently are

Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, pp. 168-70.

287
 The Peculiar Institution

badly fed, and have not the strength to do as much labor as

they could otherwise perform with comfort.” 4 Masters who
shared this point of view used slave cooks to prepare at least
breakfasts and dinners in a common kitchen or “cook
house,” though they might expect slave families to prepare
their own suppers. If communal cooking increased the reg¬
imentation of slave life and destroyed almost the last ves¬
tige of the family’s significance, it nevertheless resulted or¬
dinarily in a better diet.
On the smaller holdings the same cook often prepared
the food for both the white family and the slaves. The pro¬
prietor of a modest-sized Mississippi plantation told Olm¬
sted that he called his field-hands up to the house for their
dinners when they were within a reasonable distance. They
came to the master’s kitchen and ate the same food that he
ate, “right out of the same frying-pan.” The larger planta¬
tions had special cooks and kitchens, from which break¬
fasts and dinners were sent to the fields in buckets. In the
morning the hands customarily worked from sunrise until
about eight o’clock before having breakfast. At noon they
ate again, then rested for an hour or two.6
Some slaves were provided with tables and utensils that
enabled them to eat with reasonable decorum, but most of
them were obliged to eat in a primitive fashion. On one
Georgia plantation they had no chairs, tables, plates,
knives, or forks; “they sat . . . on the earth or doorsteps,
and ate out of their little cedar tubs or an iron pot, some
few with broken iron spoons, more with pieces of wood,
and all the children with their fingers.” On a Maryland
farm where Frederick Douglass was a child, “the corn-meal
mush . . . was placed in a large wooden tray. . . . This
tray was set down, either on the floor of the kitchen, or out

* De Bow’s Review, X (1851), pp. 325-26; XIII (1852), pp. 193-94;

Farmers' Register, IV (1836), p. 495.
» Olmsted, Back Country, p. 153; id.. Seaboard, pp. 108-10, 431-32.

288
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality

of doors on the ground; and the children were called, . . .

and like so many pigs would come, and literally devour the
mush—some with oyster shells, some with pieces of shin¬
gles, and none with spoons.” 6 In Africa the Negro had
rarely consumed his food with less dignity and grace than
this.

3
Examples of deliberate stinting of rations were fortu¬
nately few; and the imbalance of the average slave’s diet re¬
sulted from ignorance more often than penuriousness. But
cases of poorly clad slaves were far more numerous, and
the master’s ignorance was less often the cause. Careless¬
ness, indifference, and economy—a desire to reduce annual
expenditures for clothing which, unlike food, usually in¬
volved cash outlays—these were the chief reasons why a
large proportion of the slaves wore shabby and insufficient
apparel made from some variety of cheap “Negro cloth.”
During the long summers, ragged and meager clothing
merely added to the drabness of slave life; but during the
winters it caused real discomfort and posed a serious threat
to health.
The elegantly dressed slaves who promenaded the streets
of southern towns and cities on Sundays, the men in fine
linens and bright waistcoats, the women in full petticoats
and silk gowns, were usually the domestic servants of
wealthy planters or townspeople. Butlers, coachmen, maids,
and valets had to uphold the prestige of their white fami¬
lies. “My own are supplied without limit to insure a gen¬
teel and comfortable appearance,” wrote a South Carolina
rice planter. Wealthy Southerners, an English visitor noted,
“feel as natural a pride in having their personal attendants
to look well in person and in dress, when slaves, as they do

« Kemble, Journal, pp. 64-65; Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 132-33.

289
 The Peculiar Institution

when their servants are free.” *7 Accordingly, they furnished

domestics with good apparel, some of it from their own
wardrobes.
Many ordinary slaves acquired a little holiday finery as
gifts at Christmas, or with money earned from extra work
or from the sale of their small crops. A woman might own
some cheap jewelry, a printed calico dress, and a colorful
handkerchief for her head; a man might own a felt hat, a
fine cotton shirt, and a good pair of woolen trousers. Often
the master hoped to improve the morale of his slaves by
encouraging them to take pride in their appearance and
by permitting them to possess a few frills. ‘‘They should be
induced to think well of themselves,” advised a Georgia
planter, “so they should always be aided and encouraged in
dressing, and their own peculiar fancies indulged to a rea¬
sonable extent.” The clean, well-dressed slave who made “a
decent appearance in the eyes of others” also felt “the
touch of an honest pride in himself, and of friendship for
his master, which lightens his tasks and sweetens all his
toils.” Above all, good clothing was conducive to good
health; generous disbursements for an adequate supply was
money well spent.8
The clothing regularly allotted to the slaves was made
sometimes from homespun woven on the farm or planta¬
tion, sometimes from cloth manufactured in southern
mills, but most of it came from northern or English fac¬
tories. Southern merchants kept in stock numerous kinds
of “Negro cloth,” including calicoes, nankeens, osnaburgs,
tows, linsey-woolseys, cassimeres, ducks, kerseys, and Ken¬
tucky jeans. On large, well-managed plantations several
slave women might spend most of their time making cloth-

t Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, p. 347; Buckingham,

Slave States, I, p. 131.
8 De Bow’s Review, XVII (1854) , p. 424; James Ewell, The Planter's
and Mariner’s Medical Companion (Philadelphia, 1807), pp. 13-14.

290
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality

ing under the supervision of the plantation mistress or the

overseer’s wife. On smaller establishments the mistress of¬
ten made the clothing herself, but frequently each slave
family made its own. Although some slave forces included
a shoemaker, “Negro brogans” were customarily purchased
ready-made.
James H. Hammond’s plantation manual described the
clothing allowance that masters commonly provided:
“Each man gets in the fall 2 shirts of cotton drilling, a pair
of woolen pants and a woolen jacket. In the spring 2 shirts
of cotton shirting and 2 pr. of cotton pants. . . . Each
woman gets in the fall 6 yds. of woolen cloth, 6 yds. of cot¬
ton drilling and a needle, skein of thread and \ dozen
buttons. In the spring 6 yds. of cotton shirting and 6 yds. of
cotton cloth similar to that for men’s pants, needle thread
and buttons. Each worker gets a stout pr. of shoes every fall,
and a heavy blanket every third year.” Some masters also
gave socks and wool caps to the men, stockings and sunbon-
nets or kerchiefs to the women.
The children on Hammond’s plantation received two
shirts, “made very long,” each fall and spring; but like most
slave children they received no shoes. As a child in Mary¬
land, Frederick Douglass “was kept almost in a state of
nudity; no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trousers; noth¬
ing but coarse sack-cloth or tow-linen, made into a sort of
shirt, reaching down to my knees. This I wore night and
day, changing it once a week.” Douglass wore the usual cos¬
tume of slave children throughout the South. A visitor
pictured the children on a South Carolina plantation as
“ragged, dirty, shoeless urchins”—and this was an accurate
picture of most of them everywhere.9
Field-hands, who did rough outdoor work, could not
keep themselves comfortably clad throughout the year with

9 Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 101, 132; Russell, Diary, p. 126.

291
 The Peculiar Institution

the amount of clothing that was normally given to them.

Most of them lacked the time or inclination to keep their
meager apparel clean and mended, and so their garments
were in tatters before the next allotment was distributed.
Those who observed slaves working in the fields or loung¬
ing in the quarters often commented upon their shabby ap¬
pearance—so often, in fact, that this condition must have
been very common. Most of the slaves, both children and
adults, lacked sufficient clothing to keep warm when the
temperature dropped below freezing. Many of them went
barefoot even in winter weather, or wore out their shoes
before spring; hence they often limped about on frost¬
bitten feet.
A North Carolinian divided the masters in his state into
“two well-known classes.” One class owned slaves who were
“ragged” and “filthy”; the other owned slaves whose needs
were adequately filled.1 So it was throughout the South.

4
In the towns and on the farms each slave family had its
own cabin near the master’s house, as a rule; on the planta¬
tions the slaves lived in little villages, called the quarters,
within sight of the overseer’s cottage. The quarters con¬
sisted of a single or double row of cabins or multiple-unit
tenements for families and dormitories for unmarried men
and women. Since slave mothers and fathers both custom¬
arily labored full-time for the master, while their children
were supervised by the mistress or by an old slave woman,
their cabins merely served as places to sleep and as shelters
during inclement weather. Most of their dwellings were
obviously designed for these simple purposes, not as cen¬
ters of an active family life.

1 Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina, p. 526.

292
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality

Southern agricultural periodicals bristled with warn¬

ings to masters about the importance of furnishing good
houses for their laborers. They emphasized the need to el¬
evate the cabins at least two feet above the ground, to make
them weatherproof, and to provide plank flooring, glazed
windows, a hinged door, and a large fireplace. The cabins
should never be small and crowded: “One sixteen or eight¬
een feet square is not too large for a man and woman and
three or four small children.” They should be whitewashed
inside and out at least twice a year, and the ground under
and around them should be kept free of litter. Slave quar¬
ters should always be located on high ground where they
would be free from the “impurities of stagnant waters.”
They should be protected by shade trees and near a sup¬
ply of pure drinking water.2
A substantial minority of southern farmers and planters
observed these standards and built snug dwellings of logs
covered with weather-boarding, or frame houses of bricks,
clapboards, or shingles. On many of the farms the slave
cabins were not much inferior to the master’s cabin; on
some plantations they were nearly as comfortable as the
overseer’s cottage. A Louisiana sugar planter, Olmsted re¬
ported, provided slave houses “as neat and well-made ex¬
ternally as the cottages usually provided by large manufac¬
turing companies in New-England, to be rented to their
workmen.” On Colonel Acklen’s plantations the slaves
lived in “neat frame houses, on brick pillars, . . . fur¬
nished with good bedding, mosquito bars, and all that is
essential to health and comfort.” A South Carolina rice
planter built frame dwellings, boarded and whitewashed
on the outside and lathed and plastered on the inside. They
were forty-two feet long and twenty-one feet wide, di¬
vided into two family tenements, and each tenement parti-

* De Bow’s Review, III (1847), p. 419; X (1851), p. 6*3.

 The Peculiar Institution

tioned into three rooms. The tenements had brick hre-

places, cock-lofts, closets with locks, front and back doors,
and windows closed by hinged wooden shutters.3 Wealthy
planters provided dwellings as elaborate as these more of¬
ten than the smaller slaveholders.
But on units of all sizes housing of such quality was the
exception and not the rule. The common run of slave cab¬
ins were cramped, crudely built, scantily furnished, un¬
painted, and dirty. A resident of Liberty County, Georgia,
presented a picture of slave housing which he thought
would be “recognized by the well-informed as a fair aver¬
age” for the entire South. These “average” dwellings were
covered with crudely cut, loose-fitting clapboards. They
were not lined within, “so that only the thickness of a sin¬
gle board kept out the winter’s air and cold.” They were
warmed by a clay chimney; the windows were unglazed.4
That an appalling amount of slave housing was of a
quality far below this “average,” well-informed Southern¬
ers frequently admitted. Poor housing was at least as com¬
mon as insufficient clothing, and southern doctors lectured
incessantly to slaveholders about their shortsightedness.
“One of the most prolific sources of disease among ne¬
groes,” wrote an Alabama physician, “is the condition of
their houses. . . . Small, low, tight and filthy; their houses
can be but laboratories of disease.” According to a Missis-
sippian, “Planters do not always reflect that there is more
sickness, and consequently greater loss of life, from the de¬
caying logs of negro houses, open floors, leaky roofs, and
crowded rooms, than all other causes combined.” Occasion¬
ally a slaveholder learned the truth of this complaint from
his own experience. A Louisianian finally concluded that

s Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 422, 659-60; Southern Cultivator, X (1852),

p. 227.
* Robert Q. Mallard, Plantation Life before Emancipation (Richmond,
1892), pp. 29-30.

294
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality

most of the sickness among his slaves was “owing to work¬

ing all day without rest and then sleeping in crowded dirty
apartments.” He resolved to cover the dirt floors with
plank.5
On South Carolina and Georgia rice and cotton planta¬
tions visitors found houses “in the most decayed and de¬
plorable condition.” Some of them were not more than
twelve feet square, “built of logs, with no windows—no
opening at all, except the doorway, with a chimney of sticks
and mud.” The three slave cabins on a small plantation in
northern Mississippi were “small, diladpidated and dingy;
the walls were not chinked, and there were no windows—
which, indeed, would have been a superfluous luxury, for
there were spaces of several inches between the logs,
through which there was unobstructed vision. . . . Every¬
thing within the cabins was colored black by smoke.” On a
Maryland farm a former slave remembered houses that
were “but log huts—the tops partly open—ground floor—
rain would come through.” 6
Everywhere houses such as these were plentiful. The
dwellings of the great mass of southern slaves were drab
and cheerless, leaky in wet weather, drafty in cold. Like
their food and clothing, their housing usually did not
much exceed the minimum requirements for survival.

5
To slavery’s defenders it was axiomatic that Negroes
were peculiarly fitted for agricultural labor in the South.
Of course, white yeoman farmers produced a large propor¬
tion of southern crops, but proslavery writers had particu-

5 Southern Cultivator, VIII (1850), p. 66; De Bow’s Review, X (1851) ,

p. 623; Nutt Plantation Journal, entry for June 17, 1846.
« Bremer, Homes of the New World, I, pp. 288-89; Olmsted, Seaboard,
pp. 140-41, 386; Drew, The Refugee, p. 155.

295
 The Peculiar Institution

larly in mind the Deep South’s alluvial river bottoms

where the great cotton, sugar, and rice plantations were lo¬
cated and where the slaves heavily outnumbered the whites.
In these lowlands under the hot southern sun, it was ar¬
gued, white laborers would have perished “by the thou¬
sands,” whereas the Negroes flourished.7
In spite of the relatively salubrious climate of some re¬
gions, such as the piedmont plateau, the South as a whole
did have certain peculiarly difficult health problems. The
survival of frontier conditions, the inadequate medical fa¬
cilities typical of rural areas, the superabundance of un¬
drained swamps and ponds, and the long summers and mild
winters which enabled insects to thrive and increased the
difficulty of preserving foods, all helped to make Southern¬
ers exceptionally vulnerable to epidemic and endemic dis¬
eases.8 These, however, were the very conditions which Ne¬
groes presumably could endure without injurious effects;
and one would therefore expect to find much lower mor¬
bidity and mortality rates among them than among the
whites. The slave of tradition was a physically robust speci¬
men who suffered from few of the ailments which beset the
white man. A tradition with less substance to it has seldom
existed. In the South, disease did not discriminate among
men because of the color of their skins; wherever it was
unhealthful for whites to live it was also unhealthful for
Negroes.
Apart from the proslavery polemics, white Southerners
themselves gave overwhelming testimony on this point.
One doctor often heard planters say that “sickness amongst
negroes” gave them their “greatest trouble.” According to
a South Carolinian, the lowlands were “deleterious to the

1 De Bow's Review, XXI (1856), p. 467; XXIV (1858), p. 63.

s Richard H. Shryock, "Medical Practice in the Old South,” South At¬
lantic Quarterly, XXIX (1930) , pp. 160-63.

296
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality
constitutions of both” races. When Negroes were moved
from the Upper South to the Deep South they, like the
whites, had to be acclimatized, and this process took its
toll of human lives. “The hearse has been running regu¬
larly . . . bearing dead bodies from the negro Market to
the publick Cemetry,” wrote a resident of Natchez.9
In the rice districts of South Carolina and Georgia, Olm¬
sted observed how difficult it was to keep slaves in good
health and concluded that the “subtle poison of the mi¬
asma” was “not innocuous to them.” Few rice planters saw
their labor forces grow by natural increase; they did well if
they could prevent a decline in numbers; and many of them
were obliged to make periodic purchases to keep their
forces at full strength. A South Carolina master refused to
buy two hundred acres of tideland on the Savannah River
because of the “great mortality” among the Negroes there.
He learned “that it was never expected by the Planters on
that river that the number of their people should increase.
If they could keep up the force—which in very many cases
they could not do—it was all they hoped.” This, he
thought, was the chief reason why these fertile lands were
offered for sale at comparatively low prices.* 1 Clearly, labor¬
ing in the rice swamps had a decidedly unfavorable effect
upon the health of slaves.
The picture was essentially the same on the bottom lands
in the cotton districts of the Deep South. The overseer on a
Georgia cotton plantation reported to his employer that
“from the great loss of time from Sickness and the deaths
of so many fine Negroes . . . there can be but very little

» American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, II (1858), pp. 293-
94; Columbian Carolinian, quoted in Charleston Courier, September
6, 1855; Joseph T. Hicks to Samuel S. Downey, May 14, 1836, Downey
Papers.
1 Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 418-19; Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice
Plantation, p. 30; Grimball Diary, entry for June 6, 1832.

297
 The Peculiar Institution

profit.” James H. Hammond filled his diary with frightful

accounts of sickness at Silver Bluff Plantation, on the Sa¬
vannah River: “Great God what have I done. Never was a
man so cursed! Never has death been so busy in any spot
of earth.” “All the plagues [of] Egypt still infest these Ne¬
groes. I don’t believe there is a disease to which the human
family is subject that is not to be seen here in the run of
the year.” Yet Hammond insisted that he had done every¬
thing he could and that his plantation was “as healthy as
anywhere about here.” In spite of this, “The fact is my ne¬
groes decrease . . . and I am hampered and alarmed be¬
yond endurance by sickness.” One evening, another South
Carolina planter wrote a terse but significant entry in his
journal: “Not a negro sick to day!!!!!!!!!!” 2
To owners of river-bottom plantations in Alabama and
Mississippi reports of “a great deal of sickness among ne¬
groes” were distressingly familiar. In the Alabama Black
Belt a planter observed that “in a sickly year a man . . .
has his hands full.” On a plantation in the cane brakes of
Marengo County, “Every person, old and young, black and
white,” had been “prostrated”; eventually the proprietor
abandoned the place because he “had so much sickness and
lost so many negroes.” A slaveholder reported that in the
Mississippi lowlands between the Yazoo River and the Big
Black River “the negroes die off every few years”—it was a
“sickly country.” 3
The Louisiana Sugar Country was apparently “healthy
for neither whites nor blacks.” In 1840, the mistress of a

2 Stephen Newman to Mary Telfair, February 28, 1837, Telfair Planta¬

tion Records; Hammond Diary, passim; Gaillard Plantation Journal,
entry for May 31, 1856.
8 Henry Watson, Jr., to his mother, October 27, 1843, Watson Papers;
C. S. Howe to William Lenoir, January 8, 1844; Julia Howe to Lou¬
isa S. Lenoir, January 4, 1845, Lenoir Family Papers; J. G. de R. Ham¬
ilton (ed.), The Papers of Thomas Ruffin (Raleigh, 1918-20), II,
P- 77-

298
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality

cotton plantation in West Feliciana Parish wrote sadly that

slaves were “dying all round the neighborhood’’; for many
months she had been “constantly nursing sick negroes,”
while her neighbors were “in distress at the loss of so
many.” In the fall of 1833, the proprietor of a cotton plan¬
tation in eastern Texas noted that “we have done verry lit¬
tle since the middle of June as the Blacks were all sick as
well as ourselves.” 4
The cotton plantations which lined the banks of the Ar¬
kansas River took an especially heavy toll. The “whole
country” was “full of sickness,” according to the overseer
on a J efferson County estate. The absentee owner of a plan¬
tation near Pine Bluff, where the death rate was staggering,
was bedeviled by his brother who insisted that it was “mor¬
ally wrong to settle one’s negroes in any place where there
are good grounds for the belief that their lives will be
shortened thereby.” But slaveholders were resourceful in
solving moral problems. The owner’s pious answer was
that God must have created the river bottoms for a “wise
purpose”—He designed them to be cultivated by the Ne¬
gro. In reply the nagging brother suggested that the bot¬
toms were “intended for aligators,” and that “ten bales to
the hand,” rather than Providence, explained why slaves
were sent to these unhealthy lands. As if this were not
enough, the overseer also complained about the awful sick¬
ness and the numerous deaths. The harassed proprietor
scolded him for constantly looking on the dark side of
things, “an ugly habit which he ought to correct whilst he
is young.” Since the present overseer “harped upon the
cripples and invalids,” perhaps another should be employed

* Sitterson, Sugar Country, pp. 92-93; Rachel O’Conner to Frances

Weeks, October 2, 1840; id. to Mary C. Weeks, November 28, 1840,
Weeks Collection; Abigail Curlee, "The History of a Texas Slave
Plantation, 1831-63,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XXVI
(1922), p. 92.

299
 The Peculiar Institution

who was more “accustomed to the chills, mud, and water of

the Arkansas bottoms.” 5
Though the health problem was most acute in the low¬
lands of the Deep South, it was often serious even in areas
such as Middle Tennessee, the Kentucky bluegrass, and
the Virginia piedmont. In the Virginia tidewater, the
slaves on Hill Carter’s Shirley Plantation, on the James
River, suffered severely during the “sickly season” in late
summer. On the Pettigrew plantations in the swamplands
of Tyrrell County, North Carolina, considerable sickness
during August and September was taken as a matter of
course; the proprietor frequently observed that his slaves
were “as well as this season of the year will admit.” On Sep¬
tember 19, 1836, Ebenezer Pettigrew reported, “All the
country as far as I hear is little else than a hospital, and I
find the fevers among my negroes of the most obstinate
character.” 6
Slaveholders gave many different names to the “fevers”
to which Pettigrew alluded, among them, “ague,” “shakes,”
“chills and fever,” “bilious fever,” “remittent fever,” “in¬
termittent fever,” “miasmatic fever,” and “autumnal fe¬
ver.” In most cases these “fevers” were clearly some form of
malaria. The belief that Negroes were practically immune
to malaria was altogether incorrect, as ante-bellum doctors
and slaveholders knew all too well. “Fever,” asserted a
southern physician, “has always prevailed among the slave
population ... to a remarkable extent”; it was “the prin¬
cipal disease to which the race has been subject.” Malaria
may have been somewhat less severe and less often fatal
among Negroes than among whites, but even this is uncer¬
tain. Some doctors claimed that there was “but little, if
any difference, either in liability or fatality between the

5 Willie Empie to James Sheppard, August 29, 1858, Sheppard Papers;

Leak Diary, entries for January 27, 30, February 19, 26, June 7, 1859.
« Shirley Plantation Journal, passim; Pettigrew Family Papers, passim.

3°°
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality

two races under similar circumstances of exposure, regi¬

men, etc.” In 1849, according to the seventh census, the
proportion of deaths from “fever” in the total deaths was
substantially higher for Negroes than for whites. This can
be explained by the fact that so many slaves lived in the
malarial river bottoms, but it is still convincing evidence
that malaria found its victims among members of both
races.7
When masters enumerated the diseases which afflicted
their slaves, malaria often headed their lists. Year after year
they waited in bewildered resignation for the “sickly sea¬
son” to begin. In July and August, wrote a small planter in
South Carolina’s Colleton District, “the fever commenced
and almost every family and plantation were more or less
sick, and it was very fatal.” 8 Until the heavy frosts of fall,
the anopheles mosquitoes swarmed out of the swamps to
infect blacks and whites with the parasites that caused ma¬
laria—while men lived in dread of atmospheric “mias¬
mata” and night mists which they believed were the real
sources of this disease.
Like malaria, yellow fever baffled ante-bellum Southern¬
ers; epidemics took a fearful toll of the whites in port
towns such as Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans. The
Negroes seemed to have greater resistance to the toxin of
the yellow fever virus, but they were not immune to the
disease itself. Rather, they usually contracted it in a milder
form and suffered fewer fatalities. In 1855, more than a
score of slaves on an Adams County, Mississippi, planta-

7 Memphis Medical Recorder, quoted in De Bow's Review, XX (1856) ,

pp. 612-14; Richard H. Shryock (ed.), Letters of Richard D. Arnold,
M.D., 1808-1876 (Durham, 1929) , pp. 66-67; Felice Swados, “Negro
Health on the Ante-Bellum Plantations," Bulletin of the History of
Medicine, X (1941), pp. 463-64; Lewis, Biology of the Negro, pp.
192-96.
s Hammond Diary, entry for May 22, 1832; Gavin Diary, entry for No¬
vember 20, 1857.

301
 The Peculiar Institution

tion were “taken down with yellow fever,” but apparently

none died. During this same year, several hundred cases oc¬
curred among the slaves in Rapides Parish, Louisiana; all
the time of a local physician was “taken up with his Yellow
fever Negroes.” He reported only one death.9
The epidemics of Asiatic cholera, the first of which hit
the United States in 1832, were if anything more deadly to
the Negroes than to the whites. In the South, the cholera
epidemics were most severe in the Mississippi delta where
they spread from New Orleans to the plantations of Louisi¬
ana and Mississippi. Other regions suffered periodically
from this “scourge of nations.” In 1833, cholera caused
more than three hundred deaths in Lexington, Kentucky;
a year later, it produced “great consternation and alarm”
in Middle Tennessee and killed many slaves in the vicinity
of Savannah. Even a rumor that cholera was in a neighbor¬
hood was enough to cause masters to abandon their crops
and flee with their slave property. In each of the great epi¬
demics, cholera, which struck its victims with terrifying
suddenness and ran its course with dramatic speed, was fa¬
tal to thousands of slaves and reduced some of their owners
to financial ruin.* 1
In the long run, the “fevers” and other endemic diseases
which attacked the slaves steadily, year after year, caused
infinitely greater damage than the occasional ravages of
cholera. During the summer months, “bowel complaints,”
or the “bloody flux” (usually some form of dysentery or
diarrhea), matched the debilitating effects and mortality of

* Lewis, Biology of the Negro, pp. 210-14; Jenkins Diary, entries for
September 25 to October 6, 1855; Reuben Carnal to Lewis Thompson,
October 18, 1855; Kenneth M. Clark to id., November 2, 1855, Lewis
Thompson Papers.
1 Martha Carolyn Mitchell, “Health and the Medical Profession in the
Lower South, 1845-1860," Journal of Southern History, X (1944), pp.
450-31; Postell, Health of Slaves, pp. 5-6, 76; Washington Mississippi
Gazette, May 18, 1833.

302
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality

malaria. During the winter months, pleurisy, pneumonia,

and pleuropneumonia cut down the poorly clothed and im¬
properly housed field-hands who were too much exposed
during cold or wet weather. A Louisiana physician re¬
ported that pneumonia was “one of the most formidable
complaints,” “more fatal than any other.” Entries in the di¬
ary of a Mississippi slaveholder, during January, 1852, tell
a grim story. January 21: “A very cold morning. ... A
great deal of Sickness through the Country from Colds and
a great many deaths among the negroes.” January 23: “A
hard freeze and frost this morning. . . . great Complaint
among people . . . great many negroes dieing.” January
30: “There has been during the Cold weather a great deal
of Typhoid Neumonia and very fatal among negroes.” 2
Because both doctors and masters often made crude diag¬
noses and gave vague names to the diseases they treated,
one cannot always be sure what it was that caused a slave’s
death. According to their records, many suffered from “de¬
cline and debility,” “effusion on chest,” “inflammation of
lungs,” “congestion of brain,” “marasmus,” and “lingering
disease,” but each of these terms might have described sev¬
eral specific maladies. Even so, the records do identify
clearly other diseases that commonly afflicted slaves. Sore
throats, colds, thrush, measles, mumps, influenza, whoop¬
ing cough, dengue, scrofula, scarlet fever, rheumatism, ty¬
phoid, typhus, smallpox, diphtheria, and dropsy, all were
mentioned frequently. Tuberculosis, or “Negro consump¬
tion,” was prevalent, though it probably never reached the
proportions in the rural South that it did among post-
bellum Negroes in the cities of the North. Syphilis, origi¬
nally contracted from the whites, was present in the towns
and on scattered plantations, but it did not spread rapidly.
Diseases of the heart and arteries and malignant tumors
2 De Bow’s Review, XI (1851), p. 209; Postell, Health of Slaves, pp. 81-
82; Eli J. Capell Ms. Diary.
 The Peculiar Institution

accounted for few slave deaths—other afflictions were usu¬

ally fatal before these scourges of old age became a major
menace.
The mortality from tetanus was incredibly high among
slaves of all ages, but it was highest among newborn
infants who received the infection through improperly
dressed umbilical cords. Fanny Kemble observed that slave
babies often fell victim to “lockjaw” a week or two after
birth—and confessed that she was “utterly incapable” of
explaining it. A North Carolina doctor wrote: “I am now
. . . attending a Boy, with that terrible disease, Tetanus—
he had his leg severely lacerated ten days ago and Lock jaw
has supervened. I have little hope of his recovery.” Teta¬
nus, which occurred even after minor injuries, and whose
cause remained a mystery, was nearly always fatal.®
Cachexia Africana (dirt-eating), another malady which
puzzled masters and physicians, appeared with particular
frequency on the plantations of the Southwest. According
to a Louisiana physician, several slaves on almost every
large plantation were addicted to eating such substances as
clay, mud, sand, chalk, and ashes. Masters usually thought
this to be merely a vile habit and tried to cure it by forcing
the victims to wear wire masks or iron gags. But dirt-eating
was a symptom of disease—in most cases it was probably a
symptom of hookworm infection. A few southern doctors
suggested that it might have resulted from severe treatment
or from a “deficiency of suitable nutriment.” Certainly
many slaves did show other signs of such dietary-deficiency
diseases as pellagra, beriberi, and scurvy.4
The image of the Negro whose broad grin revealed two

3 Swados, “Negro Health,” loc. cit., pp. 464-65; Kemble, Journal, p. 39;
W. C. Warren to Ebenezer Pettigrew, August 7, 1831, Pettigrew Pa¬
pers.
* Moody, "Slavery on Louisiana Sugar Plantations,” loc. cit., p. 272 n.;
Swados, “Negro Health,” loc. cit., pp. 467-68; Postell, Health of
Slaves, p. 85.

3°4
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality

even rows of glistening white teeth needs drastic modifica¬

tion, unless it can be demonstrated that slaves with dental
caries had a special inclination to run away. For a very
high proportion of the advertisements for fugitives de¬
scribed bondsmen with teeth “much rotten” or “somewhat
decayed.” Few slave children enjoyed the kind of diet that
helped to produce good teeth; few received dental care;
and, as a result, most adults suffered from tooth decay and
kept the doctors busy making extractions.
Contrary to tradition, slaves also suffered from mental
and nervous disorders. The census of 1840 seemed to indi¬
cate that the number of mentally defective and insane was
proportionally higher among whites than among Negroes,
and this presumably proved the psychic serenity of the
unharried slaves. Actually, it only proved that psychotic
bondsmen, unlike whites, were rarely institutionalized un¬
less they were dangerous. Most of them could still be em¬
ployed profitably, and in any case it was less expensive to
support them at home than to pay their expenses in an asy¬
lum. Many masters owned slaves whom they described as
“mentally unsound,” “demented,” suffering from “brain
fever,” “laboring under an aberration of mind,’ or afflicted
with epilepsy.5 Moreover, the occurrence of various mild
and acute forms of neurosis almost certainly exceeded the
rate in twentieth-century urban populations. “Surly,” “sul¬
len,” “grum,” “speaks quick,” “stammers,” “stutters,” eas¬
ily frightened,” “easily excited”—terms such as these
hardly fitted the gay, carefree clowns of legend; yet masters
often used such terms when they attempted to describe or
identify their slaves.
Finally, slaves were the victims of numerous occupa-

6 Albert Deutsch, "The First U. S. Census of the Insane (1840) and Its
Use as Pro-Slavery Propaganda," Bulletin of the History of Medicine,
XV (1944), pp- 469-82; Lewis, Biology of the Negro, p. 266; Postell,
Health of Slaves, pp. 86-87.

305
 The Peculiar Institution

tional disorders. “Female complaints” belong in this cate¬

gory, because slave women were troubled with them a great
deal more than white women. “Reasoning a priori,” wrote
a Georgia physician, “one would suppose that the delicate
white female should have a much oftener demand for the
physician, than the coarse muscular negress,—but such is
not the fact. . . . This tendency on the part of the slaves
to womb diseases, originates, I doubt not, from two causes,
—their great exposure and severe labor, and their vicious
habits,—and not, as many planters suppose, from an un¬
natural tendency in the mother to destroy her offspring.”
Painful or irregular menses, suppurative infections of the
generative tract, and prolapsus uteri were extremely com¬
mon; sterility, spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and death
in childbirth occurred two or three times as frequently
among slave women as among white. “Eliza had a child
born dead last night,” a South Carolina master noted.
“This makes five miscarriages this Spring and but two live
births.” 6
A Savannah physician believed that a Philadelphian who
had developed an improved truss would find a good market
in the South, because hernia was “a very common disease
among Negroes.” (Unfortunately, slaveholders generally
preferred “the penny wisdom of buying the common and
cheap trusses at the Apothecaries.” 7) Hernia was an occu¬
pational affliction of slaves who performed heavy labor.
Similarly, round shoulders resulted from constant bending,
and sore and infected fingers from picking cotton. In the
dust-laden air of hemp factories slaves contracted diseases
of the lungs. On the railroads and in the mines, mills, and
factories they were crippled and maimed through indus-

« Charleston Medical Journal, VII (1852), p. 455; Postell, Health of

Slaves, pp. 117-18; Swados, "Negro Health,” loc. cit., pp. 468-70; Ham¬
mond Diary, entry for March 31, 1834.
1 Shryock (ed.), Letters of Richard D. Arnold, pp. 13, 19.

3°6
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality

trial accidents. Few were without a scar or two somewhere

on their bodies.

6
Not many masters left the treatment of disease to the un¬
tutored slave himself. When a bondsman was reputed to be
a gifted healer, then sometimes they did give a trial to his
"charms” or brews of root and bark. Thus a Virginian sent
one of his hands to "the Old Man Doer. Lewis,” a slave, “to
be cured of being poisoned,” and the treatment (a “decoc¬
tion of herbs”) was successful.8 But masters generally
agreed that ministering to the sick was their own responsi¬
bility.
Unfortunately, the state of ante-bellum medical science
made it uncertain that even the most conscientious master
would invariably prescribe better remedies than the super¬
stitious slave healer. For example, Dr. James Ewell’s Plant¬
er’s and Mariner’s Medical Companion, which went
through several editions and guided many slaveholders, ad¬
vised that cancer of the breast be treated by “wearing a
hare or rabbit skin over the part affected.” For “remittent
fevers,” Dr. Ewell prescribed “bleeding, cathartics, emetics
and diluents, with such medicines as have a tendency to
solicit the circulation of the fluids to the surface.” For pro¬
lapsus uteri, a Mississippian administered cream of tartar,
calomel pills, rhubarb, and aloes. For dropsy, a Virginian
recommended a brew made from juniper berries, black
mustard seed, and ashes of grape vine mixed in a gallon of
hard cider—“to which add half a pound of rusty nails.’
Sore throats and “fall complaints,” according to a Geor¬
gian, responded to doses of red pepper which created “a
glow over the whole body” and produced “general arterial
excitement.” When a woman was about to miscarry. Hill

» John Walker Diary, entry for July 19, 1833.

3°7
 The Peculiar Institution

Carter had her “copiously bled” and gave her a grain of

opium and three grains of sugar of lead.9
Diseased slaves who received remedies such as these could
have counted themselves fortunate if the remedies did not
retard recovery or hasten death. Some were not this fortu¬
nate. A Louisiana slave took a dose of a “Tonic Mixture”
prescribed by a respected physician; an hour later he told
his master “that he felt very strange, as if his insides were
coming up, as if the top of his head was coming off.” He
soon died.* 1
Prior to i860, such heroic remedies as bloodletting and
violent purging were still popular. Physicians, masters, and
overseers frequently used the lancet and administered huge
doses of castor oil, calomel, jalap, Glauber salts, and blue
mass. They were also generous patrons of the patent medi¬
cine manufacturers whose tonics, elixirs, and panaceas
promised miraculous cures for every malady from carbun¬
cles to cancer. Many still believed that various diseases
were caused by atmospheric “miasmata” resulting from de¬
caying animal and vegetable matter; few fully understood
the hygienic value of a piece of soap. Add to this surviving
mass of ignorance the shortage of properly trained physi¬
cians and the profusion of quacks—hydropaths, eclectics,
and botanies, among others—and the picture of medical
practice in the Old South is a depressing one for both
whites and blacks.2
Another sign of the state of southern medicine was the
common (though not universal) belief that the physical

» Franklin L. Riley (ed.), “Diary o£ a Mississippi Planter,” Publica¬

tions of the Mississippi Historical Society, X (1909) , p. 331; John Am¬
bler to John Jacquelin Ambler, March 29, 1831, Ambler Family Pa¬
pers; De Bow’s Review, XVII (1854), p. 426; Shirley Plantation Jour¬
nal, volume dated “1828-1839."
1 William J. Minor Ms. Plantation Diary, entry for September 24, 1857.
2 Postell, Health of Slaves, passim; Shryock, "Medical Practice," loc. cit.,
pp. 171-72; Mitchell, "Health and the Medical Profession,” loc cit,
pp. 425, 437-39-

308
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality

and emotional differences between Negroes and Caucasians

were too great to permit the same medical treatment for
both races. Dr. John S. Wilson, of Columbus, Georgia, af¬
firmed that “the peculiarities in the diseases of negroes are
so distinctive that they can be safely and successfully
treated . . . only by Southern physicians.” Dr. Samuel
Cartwright, of Louisiana, the most distinguished advocate
of this viewpoint, repudiated the “abolition theory that the
negro is only a lamp-blacked white man.” The Negro, said
Cartwright, was sensual rather than intellectual; he nor¬
mally suffered from a “deficiency of red blood in the pul¬
monary and arterial systems” and from a “defective atmos-
pherization or arterialization of the blood in the lungs.”
The “seat” of “Negro consumption,” he wrote, was not in
the lungs but in the mind; it was caused by “bad govern¬
ment on the part of the master, and superstition or dissat¬
isfaction on the part of the negro.” “Facts” such as these
caused Cartwright to urge medical schools to give special
study to “Negro diseases,” and to warn doctors that reme¬
dies which would cure a white man might injure or even
kill a Negro.3
Most southern doctors did not actually put Cartwright’s
theories into practice, and a few of them ridiculed the the¬
ories. “Grant that the Negro is black to the bone,” pro¬
tested a South Carolina medic. “Admit that his shins are
curved, his nose flat, his lips thick; still, we see no ground
here on which to base the idea that he is governed by sep¬
arate and distinct physiological laws.” No good would re¬
sult from Cartwright’s “mixture of medicine and poli¬
tics.” * *
This plea for professional integrity, for the scientific

s American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, II (1858), p. 293;

III (1859), pp. 228-29; De Bow’s Review, XI (1851), pp. 65-69, 209-
>3. 331-36, 504-508.
* Charleston Medical Journal, VII (1852) , pp. 89-98.

309
 The Peculiar Institution

spirit in medicine, won the support of the South’s best phy¬

sicians. Like the leaders of their profession everywhere,
they questioned more and more sharply many of the tradi¬
tional ideas about the cause and treatment of disease—to
the benefit of slaves and masters alike. Empirical observa¬
tion caused a few to suggest that the use of pure water
would prevent cholera and numerous other diseases, to
doubt that all “fevers” were merely varieties of one, and to
see dimly a connection between malaria and the mosquito,
or at least between the prevalence of the disease and the
presence of stagnant water. As early as 1842, a doctor wrote:
“So far from musketoes being regarded as an evil, they
should be viewed as kind messengers sent to warn the agri¬
culturist against the danger of suffering stagnant pools of
impure water to be about his premise.” In the lowlands of
the Deep South some planters gave their slaves mosquito
bars, and many more learned the value of locating the
quarters on high ground away from the swamps. From
“long observation and suffering” a planter in eastern North
Carolina concluded that stagnant water was “the great
cause of most of our sickness in this country.” “If I knew
anything that would induce me to accept the dictatorship
of a country it would be that of having the power to con¬
strain the inhabitants in the bilious fever region to remove
all stagnant waters from it.” 6
Late in the ante-bellum period trained physicians began
to doubt the therapeutic value of bleeding and purging. In
1859, a Georgia doctor deplored the application of these
remedies to “fever” patients before giving quinine. It was
a mistake, he affirmed, to think that Negroes could “bear
almost any amount of puking, purging and bleeding. The
fact is, excessive physic[k]ing is a very common error in do-

» Shryock, "Medical Practice," loc. cit., pp. 163-65; Mitchell, "Health

and the Medical Profession,” loc. cit., p. 437; American Agriculturist,
I (1842), p. 216; Farmers' Register, VIII (1840), p. 141.

310
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality
mestic practice, both among whites and negroes, and thou¬
sands are thus hurried to the grave annually." 0
One of the most hopeful signs was the gradual apprecia¬
tion of the value of cleanliness as a disease preventive. Doc¬
tors warned slaveholders about the tragic results of over¬
crowding in the quarters, of permitting filth to accumulate
in or around the cabins, and of the failure to require slaves
to bathe and to keep their clothing and blankets clean. The
best informed, most humane, and most efficient slavehold¬
ers responded to these admonitions. “The people,” wrote
a North Carolina master, “are at present too much
crowded, and it is my intention ... to afford them more
room; thereby, they will be enabled to keep their houses
more cleanly, which . . . will conduce much towards
health.” Some masters conducted weekly inspections to
make sure that the slaves had bathed, washed their cloth¬
ing, aired their blankets, swept their houses, and scoured
their cooking utensils. Each spring and fall James H. Ham¬
mond appointed a day for a thorough cleaning of the quar¬
ters. The houses were completely emptied and everything
was exposed to the sun; the floors and walls were washed,
the mattresses filled with fresh hay, the yards cleaned, and
the trash burned. Once a year the houses were whitewashed
inside and out.7 These sanitary measures were worth all the
time and expense they entailed.
To treat their sick sla ves, many masters employed trained
physicians, often the same ones who treated the white fami¬
lies. A few large planters retained resident doctors on their
estates; occasionally several small planters together con¬
tracted with a doctor for his full-time service. More com¬
monly a slaveholder made a yearly contract with a physi-

» American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, III (1859), pp. 2* *8-
*9-
t William S. Pettigrew to James C. Johnston, September 1, 1849, Petti¬
grew Family Papers; Hammond Plantation Manual.

311
 The Peculiar Institution

cian who agreed to charge a fixed amount for each visit.

“Bargained today with Dr. Trotti to practice at the planta¬
tion.” Hammond noted in his diary. “He agrees to charge
only $2.50 a visit without reference to the number of sick
prescribed for.” Another planter cautioned his overseer,
“Strong medicines should be left to the Doctor; and since
the Proprietor never grudges a Doctor’s bill, however large,
he has a right to expect that the Overseer shall always send
for a Doctor when a serious case occurs.” Slaveholders, both
large and small, sometimes spent generous sums for skilled
medical treatment for their “people.” To prove that there
was “no class of working people in the world better cared
for,” one southern physician declared that he had often re¬
ceived large fees for attending even senile and worthless
slaves.8
This statement was much too optimistic, but it did give
recognition to a class of humane masters whose expendi¬
tures for medical service went far beyond the simple dic¬
tates of self-interest. In mourning the death of an old slave
woman, a North Carolinian noted that his physician had
given the case “asiduous attention” for six months, “devot¬
ing to it more reflection and research than he had (as he
informs me) to any case within ten years.” 9 This thought
might lighten a little the moral burden which weighed so
heavily upon a sensitive slaveholder.
A few masters patronized hospitals which were built and
maintained especially for the care of sick slaves. During the
1850’s, three Savannah physicians ran a slave hospital for
“lying-in” women as well as for medical and surgical cases;
similar institutions existed in Charleston, Montgomery,
Natchez, and New Orleans. But plantation proprietors usu-

8 Hammond Diary, entry for October 19, 1833; De Bow’s Review, XXI
(1857), pp. 38-44; XXIV (1858), pp. 321-24.
9 William S. Pettigrew to Ann B. Pettigrew, November 2, 1850, Petti¬
grew Family Papers.
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality
ally established their own hospitals where the sick could be
attended by physicians or slave nurses. “All sick persons
are to stay in the hospital night and day, from the time
they first complain to the time they are able to go to work
again,” a South Carolinian instructed his overseer. “Hope-
ton,” James Hamilton Couper’s Georgia rice plantation,
contained a model hospital where ailing slaves received the
best medical attention the South could provide. The hos¬
pital was well ventilated and steam heated; it contained
an examining room, medicine closet, kitchen, bathing
room, and four wards, all of which were swept every day
and scrubbed once a week.1
Wise and humane masters gave proper attention to slave
women who were either expectant or nursing mothers. A
Mississippian ordered his overseer to treat them with “great
tenderness.” A South Carolinian required “lying-in
women” to remain at the quarters for four weeks after par¬
turition, because their health might be “entirely ruined by
want of care in this particular.” Hammond gave the “suck-
lers” lighter tasks near the quarters and insisted that they
be cool and rested before nursing.2
Some masters were equally solicitous about the care of
slave children. On the smaller establishments they ap¬
pointed an old woman to watch the children while the
mothers worked in the fields. On the plantations they built
nurseries where the plantation nurse cooked for the chil¬
dren, mended their clothing, and looked after them during
illness. “My little negroes are consequently very healthy,”
boasted a South Carolina planter, “and ... I am confi¬
dent that I raise more of them, than where a different sys-

1 Charleston Medical Journal, VII (1852), p. 724; XII (1857), p. 134;

Postell, Health of Slaves, pp. 129, 138-40; De Bow’s Review, XXI
(1857), pp. 38-44; Southern Agriculturist, VI (1833), p. 574.
2 Flinn Plantation Book; De Bow’s Review, XXI (1857), pp. 38-44;
Hammond Plantation Manual.
 The Peculiar Institution

tern is followed.” A rice planter maintained a summer

house on high ground for his slave children “as a retreat
from the bad summer climate of our rice fields.” 3
Conscientious masters and mistresses gave close per¬
sonal attention to their diseased slaves, not only because
they feared to lose valuable property but also because they
felt that they owed this to their “people.” In the North
men and women of the leisure class devoted time and
money to charities; in the South the gentry did their “set¬
tlement work” among their own slaves. “When people talk
of my having so many slaves, I always tell them it is the
slaves who own me,” sighed a South Carolina mistress.
“Morning, noon, and night, I’m obliged to look after them,
to doctor them, and attend to them in every way.” During
a siege of “fever” a Louisiana plantation mistress com¬
plained that the slaves scarcely let her “set half an hour at
a time.” On another occasion she reported that “poor lit¬
tle Isaac has been sick, three or four days. ... I keep him
and his mother in my room, with me at night.” 4 These
touching scenes were enacted on farms and plantations
scattered throughout the South.

7
But masters who maintained efficient medical regimes for
the protection of health and the treatment of disease—who
enforced sanitary regulations, established clean hospitals
and nurseries, and employed trained physicians regularly—-
were the exception and not the rule. The average slave¬
holder was more or less unaware of the importance of these

» Farmers’ Register, IV (1836), p. 495; Phillips (ed.), Plantation and

Frontier, I, p. 148.
* Russell, Diary, p. 141; Rachel O’Connor to David Weeks, August 4,
1831; id. to Mary C. Weeks, September 1, 1833, Weeks Collection.

3>4
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality
measures, or was not sufficiently concerned about his patri¬
archal obligations, or tried to economize by keeping down
his medical costs. Unquestionably, slaves were attended by
trained physicians and received good medical care less often
than whites.
Though some slaveholders spared neither time nor ex¬
pense in ministering to their “people,” others were guilty
of astonishing neglect. Often they possessed neither a sense
of duty nor a practical concern for the protection of their
property. They misused their lands, tools, and livestock as
well as their human chattels with a singular disregard for
the dictates of self-interest. Indeed, economic self-interest
did not always impel a calloused master to give medical aid
to an ailing slave, for it might tempt him to withhold this
aid either because the case seemed hopeless or because the
slave was worthless. For this reason one southern doctor op¬
posed insuring the lives of slaves lest the “Almighty Dol¬
lar” silence the “soft, small voice of humanity” still more.5
Whatever the reason, neither humanity nor self-interest in¬
duced the generality of masters to protect the health of
their bondsmen as well as they might have done.
Except in the most “obscure” or “desperate” cases, the
master or overseer usually made his own diagnoses and pre¬
scribed remedies without the aid of a doctor. According to
a Georgian, “ ‘To send for the doctor’ was, in plantation
belief, to give up the case.” A standard set of instructions
to overseers declared, “A great majority of the cases you
should yourself be competent to manage, or you are unfit
for the place you hold.” From personal experience one
overseer included among the “qualifications and duties”
of a man in his profession “a tolerable knowledge of physic,
that he may be able to administer medicine properly,” and
B Shryock, "Medical Practice,” loc. cit., pp. 174-75: De Bow’s Review,
IV (1847) , pp. 286-87.

315
 The Peculiar Institution

sufficient skill in surgery “that he may be able with safety

to open a vein, extract a tooth, or bandage a broken limb.”8
In their records or in their instructions to overseers,
slaveholders often inserted prescriptions for all the com¬
mon diseases—and thus clearly indicated that they em¬
ployed doctors as infrequently as possible. A Georgian re¬
quired his overseer to sign the following agreement:
“There being no Physician engaged on the place I [the
overseer] will provide myself with a good book of medical
instruction and be careful to have at hand the few requisite
Plantation Medicines and I will attend myself to mixing
and instructing the nurses how to administer them.” An¬
other Georgian told his overseer that a certain slave woman
was the “Doctress of the Plantation. In case of extraordi¬
nary illness, when she thinks she can do no more for the
sick, you will employ a Physician.” Subsequently his over¬
seer boasted, “I have generally attended the Sick . . . with
as good Success as I could Expect and have been so fortu¬
nate as to keep clear of the Doctors bills.” 7
Slave midwives commonly handled obstetrical cases.
There was a prevalent notion that Negro women “were not
subject to the difficulty, danger, and pain which attended
women of the better classes in giving birth to their off¬
spring.” Moreover, most of them received improper pre¬
natal and post-natal care. Too often, complained one ob¬
server, “nothing but actual confinement releases them from
the field; to which the mother soon after returns, leaving
an infant a few days old at the ‘quarters.’ ” 8
Some, thinking more of saving a crop than of guarding

8 Shryock, “Medical Practice,” loc. cit., p. 174; Mallard, Plantation Life,

pp. 33-34; Affleck, Plantation Record and Account Book', Charleston
Courier, November 15, 1839.
r Phillips (ed.), Plantation and Frontier, I, pp. 124, 126-28; Elisha
Cain to Alexander Telfair, October 10, 1829; January 16, 1830, Telfair
Plantation Records.
s Olmsted, Back Country, p. 78; pngraham], South-West, II, p. 125.

316
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality
health, kept their Negroes out of doors in the most inclem¬
ent weather. One sugar planter forced his slaves to cut and
haul cane on a “dreadful stormy day” when it was so cold
they “could scarcely stay in the field,” and another em¬
ployed them for six weeks “constantly in the water” drain¬
ing fields and repairing levees until they began to “fail very
fast from sore feet and swelled legs.” This was “bad econ¬
omy,” warned a critic. “The loss of time, and sometimes of
life, from such causes, together with the doctor’s bill, dou¬
bles the amount of gain that can ever accrue from such
means.” 9 But it was painful to lose a crop, and some gam¬
bled with the lives of Negroes to prevent it.
That most overseers neglected ailing slaves was one of
the major complaints of employers. After visiting their Ala¬
bama plantation, the wife of an absentee owner wrote: “I
begin very much to fear that the children are neg¬
lected. ... I almost wish that we were living down there
when I see how much they might be relieved by a little at¬
tention and care.” But doctors scolded masters too for fail¬
ing to provide hospitals and for “tampering with their sick
negroes for one, two, or more days before applying for
medical aid.” Slaveholders would employ a skilled me¬
chanic to put a spoke in a cart wheel, “but of the intricate
mechanism of man . . . their knowledge is . . . suffi¬
cient, in their own estimation.” * 1
Fanny Kemble’s description of the hospitals on Pierce
Butler’s rice and cotton plantations was an accurate de¬
scription of the hospitals on many other plantations as
well. The floors were “merely the hard damp earth itself,”
most of the windows were unglazed, the rooms were dirty
and malodorous, and the inmates “lay prostrate on the

0 McCollam Diary, entry for November 30, 1845; Sitterson, Sugar Coun¬
try, p. 22; Southern Cultivator, II (1844) , p. 180.
1 Sophia Watson to Henry Watson, Jr., June 26, 1848, Watson Papers;
Swados, “Negro Health,” loc cit., pp. 466-67.
 The Peculiar Institution

floor, without bed, mattress, or pillow, buried in tattered

and filthy blankets.” Sick and well alike were “literally en¬
crusted with dirt” and infested with “swarms of fleas.”
Slave mothers were dismayed at the suggestion that they
wash their babies. A condition of more complete indiffer¬
ence toward the invalids and disregard for the most ele¬
mentary rules of sanitation could scarcely be imagined.2
Hired slaves doubtless suffered most from lack of medi¬
cal care. Owners frequently sued hirers for damages when
there was evidence that a slave had died from neglect. In
Virginia, according to an agent who handled the hiring of
slaves, it was “well known” that hired slaves were “much
neglected” and that their owners had “sustained heavy
losses in consequence.” 3
The combination of lower living standards, greater ex¬
posure, heavier labor, and poorer medical care gave slaves
a shorter life expectancy and a higher mortality rate than
whites. The census of 1850 reported average ages of 21.4
for Negroes and 25.5 for whites at the time of death. In
i860, 3.5 per cent of the slaves and 4.4 per cent of the whites
were over sixty; the death rate was 1.8 per cent for the
slaves and 1.2 per cent for the whites. Ante-bellum mor¬
tality statistics were not very reliable, but slave deaths went
unreported more often than white. If anything, the dis¬
parity between slave and white death rates was greater and
not less than recorded in the census returns.
These statistics discredit one of the traditions about slav¬
ery days: that a substantial number of aged “aunties” and
“uncles” spent their declining years as pensioners living
leisurely and comfortably on their masters’ bounty. A few
did, of course, but not enough reached retirement age to
be more than a negligible expense to the average owner.

2 Kemble, Journal, pp. 23-24, 32-34, 63-64, 133, 214-15.

s Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 541-42; Richmond Enquirer,
December 6, 1836.

318
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality
Doubtless most Negroes in their sixties were not very pro¬
ductive, but they usually did enough work at least to pay
for their support. Even slaves over seventy were not always
an absolute burden, though it may be assumed that most
were. In i860, however, only 1.2 per cent were over sev¬
enty; thus the owner of as many as a hundred seldom had
more than one or two senile slaves to support.
The percentage of aged Negroes was somewhat higher
in the older districts of the Southeast than in the newer dis¬
tricts of the Southwest. In 1842, Edward Lloyd, of Talbot
County, Maryland, owned 211 slaves, of whom 11 were
over seventy. This was far above average—in fact, it would
be hard to find a master anywhere with a larger proportion
of senile slaves. In the Southwest, plantations often con¬
tained none at all. In i860, Francis T. Leak had a force of
93 slaves on his estate in Tippah County, Mississippi; the
oldest was sixty-two, and only 5 were over fifty. In 1855,
Thomas W. Butler listed 109 slaves on his sugar plantation
in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, the oldest of whom was
sixty-seven.
A study of life expectancy in ante-bellum Mississippi in¬
dicates that twenty-year-old Negroes “could, on the aver¬
age, look forward to a somewhat shorter life” than whites
of the same age. The life expectancy of slaves at this age
was 17.5 years, of whites 19.2 years.4 But in Mississippi,
as in all the slave states, the difference between slave and
white life expectancy widened considerably when infants
were included in the statistics. Among white infants the
mortality was distressingly high; among slave infants it was
fantastic. In 1850, the white and Negro populations of
Charleston were almost equal, but deaths among infants
under five numbered 98 for the whites and 201 for the Ne¬
groes. In Mississippi, where the Negro population only
* Charles S. Sydnor, “Life Span of Mississippi Slaves,” American His¬
torical Review, XXXV (1930), pp. 566-74.
 The Peculiar Institution

slightly exceeded the white, Negro infant deaths numbered

2,772 and white infant deaths numbered 1,315. In Virginia,
the Negro population was only half the size of the white,
but there were nearly 500 more deaths among Negro in¬
fants than among white infants. Everywhere the Negro in¬
fant mortality rate was more than double the white.
Slaveholders who kept their own vital statistics produced
grim documentation of these conditions. William J. Minor
had one of the least disheartening records on his Louisi¬
ana sugar plantation, “Waterloo,” where out of 209 live
births between 1834 and 1857, onty 44 (21 Per cent) died
before the age of five. In Bertie County, North Carolina,
Stephen A. Norfleet listed 24 births during the 1850’s, of
whom sixteen (67 per cent) died in infancy. In Charleston
District, South Carolina, Keating S. Ball recorded 111
births during an eleven-year period, of whom 38 died be¬
fore the age of one and 15 more between the ages of one
and four. On St. Simon Island, Georgia, Fanny Kemble in¬
terviewed 9 slave women who together had had 12 miscar¬
riages and 55 live births; 29 of their children were dead.5
These infants were the victims of the ignorance that made
tetanus such a killer, of neglect by slave mothers whose days
were spent in the fields, and of “mismanagement” by their
masters.6
In spite of the high mortality, the southern slave popula¬
tion, between 1830 and i860, grew by natural increase at a
rate of about 23 per cent each decade. The director of the
seventh census gave the only possible explanation: “The
marriages of slaves . . . take place, upon the average,
much earlier than those of the white or free colored, and
are probably more productive than either.”7 Though

5 Kemble, Journal, pp. 190-91.

« American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, III (1859), p. 228.
1 Compendium of the Seventh Census, p. 92.

320
VII: Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality
ante-bellum white families also were large, slave women
had to bear many more children than white women to
make this natural increase possible. For a slave mother
gave birth to two or three babies in order that one might
grow to be a “prime hand” for her master.

321
 [ 322 ]
CHAPTER EIGHT

Between Two Cultures

T he evil that confounds men in the present often causes
them to look nostalgically to the good they think they
see in some misty past. For example, the racial tension that
followed emancipation fostered a legend of racial harmony
under slavery. Among white Americans the popular tradi¬
tion about slavery days emphasizes the love that united
benevolent “massas” and pampered servants, not the hos¬
tility that divided harsh overseers and disgruntled field-
hands. After a century, few remember that southern slavery
was not so much a patriarchal institution as a practical la¬
bor system. Few recall that slaveholders were more often
ambitious entrepreneurs than selfless philanthropists. And
few ask what the slaves themselves thought of bondage.
The legend tells of a good time long ago when Negroes
and whites abided happily together in mutual understand¬
ing. Slaveholders themselves created the legend, giving it
both its kernel of fact (by their numerous kindnesses to¬
ward slaves) and its texture of fancy (in their proslavery
polemics). The kernel of fact—the reality of ante-bellum
paternalism—needs to be separated from its fanciful sur¬
roundings and critically analyzed. How much paternalism
was there? Under what circumstances did it occur? What
was its nature?
A South Carolinian once described the kinds of slaves
VIII: Between Two Cultures
who aroused paternalistic impulses in their owners. There
was the “faithful and kind old nurse’’ who watched over
her master in his infancy; the body servant who cared for
him during sickness and anticipated all his wants; and the
“faithful and devoted” field-hand who earned his regard
“by implicit obedience to all his commandjs].” These cases
were not imaginary but arose “out of real life.” Harriet
Martineau wasted little of her charity upon slaveholders,
but she did acknowledge that some showed deep gratitude
for such services from bondsmen. ‘ Nowhere, perhaps, can
more touching exercises of mercy be seen than here, she
confessed. “The thoughtfulness of masters, mistresses, and
their children about, not only the comforts, but the indul¬
gences of their slaves, was a frequent subject of admiration
with me.” A former slave, in recalling his life on a Louisi¬
ana plantation, thought it was but simple justice to
observe that his owner had been a “kind, noble, candid,
Christian man, ... a model master, walking uprightly,
according to the light of his understanding. 1
Visitors often registered surprise at the social intimacy
that existed between masters and slaves in certain situa¬
tions. A Northerner saw a group of Mississippi farmers
encamped with their slaves near Natchez after hauling then
cotton to market. Here they assumed “a ‘cheek by jowl
familiarity . . . with perfect good will and a mutual con¬
tempt for the nicer distinctions of colour. Domestics
moved freely among the whites at social functions and sat
with them in public conveyances. On a train in Virginia
Olmsted saw a white woman and her daughter seated with
a Negro woman and her daughter. The four of them talked
and laughed together, while the girls munched candy out
of the same bag “with a familiarity and closeness” which

1 Abbeville District, South Carolina, Judge of Probate Decree Book,

1839-58, May term, 1841; Martineau, Society in America, II, p. 107.
Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, p. 90.

323
 The Peculiar Institution

would have astonished and displeased most Northerners.

As an infant a master might have been nourished at the
breast of one of his female chattels. A young South Caro¬
linian noted in his diary: “Meta has nursed sister’s baby
as well as her own for three days—but she cant support it—
and they intend making Tibbi nurse it.” Olmsted con¬
cluded, “When the negro is definitely a slave, it would seem
that the alleged natural antipathy of the white race to asso¬
ciate with him is lost.” * 2
From such close associations an owner might develop a
deep affection for a slave. An Alabama mistress wrote with
great tenderness about the death of a nurse who had been
the playmate of all her children: “When I saw that Death
had the mastery, I laid my hands over her eyes, and in tears
and fervor prayed that God would cause us to meet in hap¬
piness in another world. I knew, at that solemn moment,
that color made no difference, but that her life would have
been as precious, if I could have saved it, as if she had been
white as snow.” A South Carolinian mourned the loss of
his “old man Friday” who had known three generations of
his family: “He seemed like a connecting link between me
and grand-father and grand-mother . . . for he could . . .
tell me of the actings and doings of them and others of the
olden time.” A Louisiana mistress confessed that her heart
was “nearly broke” when she “lost poor Leven, one of the
most faithful black men, ever lived.” And a North Caro¬
linian sent his brother the sad news of the death of “our
faithful old servant William.” This event deprived their
family “of a friend over whom they should weep,” and it
cast over him “a feeling of solitude and desolation.” 3

2 pngraham], South-West, II, p. 26; Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 17-18; Grim-

ball Diary, entry for May 23, 1832.
2 Gayle Journal, entry for May 4, 1834; Gavin Diary, entry for Septem¬
ber 13, 1856; Rachel O’Conner to Mary C. Weeks, September 4, 1840,
Weeks Collection; William S. Pettigrew to Charles L. Pettigrew, Sep¬
tember 28, 1844, Pettigrew Family Papers.

324
VIII: Between Two Cultures
These were the facts “out of real life" from which grew
the legend of racial harmony in the Old South -the facts
which proslavery writers enlarged into a generalized pic¬
ture of bondage as a patriarchal institution. Many of the
best illustrations of paternalism were drawn from small
establishments where absentee ownership was rare, where
overseers were seldom employed, and where contacts be¬
tween masters and slaves were numerous. Here the disci¬
pline tended to be less severe and the system generally less
rigid. Olmsted described the “great difference in the mode
of life of the slaves when living on the large plantations,
and when living on larrns or in town establishments, or on
such small plantations that they arc intimately associated
with white families.” * Only a minority of the slaves, how¬
ever, lived in holdings so small that the master was more or
less constantly in close association with them. Moreover,
while there were numerous exceptions, most small slave¬
holders tried to operate their agricultural enterprises in an
efficient, businesslike way and not as easygoing patriarchs.
On the plantations the master's intimate personal con¬
tacts were confined almost exclusively to household serv¬
ants; rarely did he have more than a casual acquaintance¬
ship with the mass of common held hands, for instance,
when a personal attendant died, a South Carolina planter
wrote a sentimental tribute to him and affirmed that his
loss was "irreparable." But he recorded the deaths of more
than a hundred other slaves with no comment at. all. In
James 11. I Iammond was saddened by the loss of his
gardener and plantation “patriate h” who had been a “faith¬
ful ft iend" and “one of the best of men.” But the deaths of
two other slaves in the same year stirred no deep emotions:
“Neither a serious loss. One valuable mule has also died.”
A Mississippi planter grieved at the death of a slave child,

* Olmsted, Hath Country, |>|>. 15(t, 158.

325
 The Peculiar Institution

whom his whole family had loved, as if he “had lost some

dear relative.” More commonly, however, his grief seemed
to arise from the loss of property. “Dick died last night,
curse such luck,” he wrote. And again: “Mary’s son, Rich¬
ard, died tonight. Oh! my losses almost make me crazy.” 5
Even the most benevolent masters usually did not hold
all their slaves in equal esteem; being human, they de¬
veloped affections for some and animosities for others. A
Virginian gave evidence of the mixed attitudes that plant¬
ers often exhibited. He described the deaths of Sam and
Delph as great tragedies, for Sam had been “the very best
servant I ever knew” and Delph had been “faithful and
affectionate, and a great favorite with all our white family”;
but he regarded the death of Betsy, if anything, as a relief,
for she had been a “worthless lazy thing . . . good for
nothing from the time I bought her.” 6
Plantation paternalism, then, was in most cases merely a
kind of leisure-class family indulgence of its domestics. In
these households, an English visitor observed, “there are
often more slaves than are necessary for the labor required
of them, many being kept for state, or ostentation.” Since
the domestics were continually in the presence of the mas¬
ter and mistress and their guests, they were usually treated
with great liberality.7
A planter sometimes whimsically selected a slave or two
for special pets. He pampered them, consulted them with
mock gravity about large matters, and permitted them to
be impertinent about small. In Charleston a visitor went
for a drive with a mistress who asked her coachman to take
them down a certain street. But the coachman ignored all
her pleas and took them a different way. The guest of a
6 Keating S. Ball Ms. Record of Births and Deaths; Hammond Diary,
entries for April 29, June 22, 1844; Riley (ed.), “Diary of a Mississippi
Planter,” loc. cit., pp. 334, 450, 469.
• William Massie Ms. Slave Book,
f Buckingham, Slave States, I, p. 200.

326
VIII: Between Two Cultures
Georgia planter told of another coachman who suddenly
stopped the carriage and reported that he had lost one of
his white gloves and must go back to find it. “As time
pressed, the master in despair took off his own gloves,
and . . . gave them to him. When our charioteer had de¬
liberately put them on, we started again.” A neighbor told
Fanny Kemble “with great glee” that his valet had asked
him for his coat as a loan or gift. This, she thought, fur¬
nished a good example of the extent to which planters
“capriciously permit their favorite slave occasionally to
carry their familiarity. ... I had several of these favorite
slaves presented to me, and one or two little negro chil¬
dren, who their masters assured me were quite pets.”8
This kind of paternalism (Fanny Kemble likened it to
“that maudlin tenderness of a fine lady for her lapdog”),
which often arose from the master’s genuine love for his
slave, gave its recipient privileges and comforts but made
him into something less than a man. The most generous
master, so long as he was determined to be a master, could
be paternal only toward a fawning dependent; for slavery,
by its nature, could never be a relationship between equals.
Ideally it was the relationship of parent and child. The
slave who had most completely lost his manhood, who had
lost confidence in himself, who stood before his master with
hat in hand, head slightly bent, was the one best suited to
receive the favors and affection of a patriarch. The system
was in its essence a process of infantilization—and the
master used the most perfect products of the system to
prove that Negroes were a childlike race, needing guidance
and protection but inviting paternal love as well. “Oh,
they are interesting creatures,” a Virginian told Olmsted,
“and, with all their faults, have many beautiful traits. I

» Sir Charles Lyell, Travels in North America in the Years 1841-18./2

(London, 1845) , I, pp. 169-70; Bremer, Homes of the New World, I,
pp. 391-92; Kemble, Journal, pp. 67-68.

327
 The Peculiar Institution

can’t help being attached to them, and I am sure they love

us.” This Virginian’s manner toward his slaves was “fa¬
miliar and kind; and they came to him like children who
have been given some task, and constantly are wanting to
be encouraged and guided.” 9
It was typical of an indulgent master not to take his
slaves seriously but to look upon them as slightly comic
figures. He made them the butt of his humor and fair
game for a good-natured practical joke. He tolerated their
faults, sighed at their irresponsibility, and laughed at their
pompous pretensions and ridiculous attempts to imitate
the whites. This amiable attitude was evident in a South¬
erner’s jocose description of old “family Negroes.” These
“plantation oracles,” he wrote, usually possessed a “very
sage, sober look,” shook their heads “with utmost gravity,”
and loved “a wee drop too much of the ‘critter’ on all holi¬
day occasions.” They thought they knew “much more than
their masters, whom they always looked upon as young,”
and they advised him “with all oracular dignity” on how to
run his estate. They were generally pious and “great on
quotations from ‘scripter,’ ” and many of them were preach¬
ers or exhorters—though sometimes their manner of ex¬
pression was “a little ludicrous, thus giving rise to many
amusing anecdotes.” 1
Even the most sensitive master called adult slave men
“boys” and women “girls,” until in their old age he made
them honorary “aunties” and “uncles.” In addressing them,
he never used courtesy titles such as “Mr.,” “Miss,” and
“Mrs.”; except in Maryland he seldom identified them by
family names. But in selecting given names the master
often let his sense of humor have full play. If familiar with
the classics, he found a yard full of Caesars, Ciceros, Pom-
peys, Catos, Jupiters, Venuses, and Junos deliciously ludi-
8 Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 45-46.
1 Hundley, Social Relations, pp. 88-89.

328
VIII: Between Two Cultures
crous; and he saw to it that every distinguished soldier and
statesman had his slave namesake. When a clergyman vis¬
ited a Mississippi plantation to baptize forty slave chil¬
dren, he could “scarcely keep his countenance” as he ad¬
ministered the sacrament to “Alexander de Great,”
“General Jackson,” “Walter Scott,” “Napoleon Bona¬
parte,” and “Queen Victoria,” among others. This “scan¬
dalous naming” originated in the “merry brain” of the
planter’s sister, and the white visitors found “the whole
scene irresistible.” 2
The weddings, balls, and other social functions which a
generous master arranged for his slaves were equally “irre¬
sistible.” The white family found it a pure delight to watch
a bride and groom move awkwardly through the wedding
ceremony, to hear a solemn preacher mispronounce and
misuse polysyllabic words, or to witness the incredible
maneuvers and gyrations of a “shakedown.” A Tennessee
planter once noted in his diary that he gave his slaves a
holiday and took a group of white children to the quarters
to “enjoy the Negro dance and Barbecue.” 3 In the senti¬
mental recollections of the whites, these gay times in the
quarters gave plantation life much of its charm. But these
affairs were as much performances for the whites as cele¬
brations for the slaves.
Clearly, to enjoy the bounty of a paternalistic master a
slave had to give up all claims to respect as a responsible
adult, all pretensions of independence. He had to under¬
stand the subtle etiquette that governed his relations with
his master: the fine line between friskiness and insubordi¬
nation, between cuteness and insolence. A nurse might
scold the white child under her care; a cook might be a
petty tyrant in her kitchen; an old servant might gravely
advise on family affairs; a child pet might crawl on mas-
2 Ingraham (ed.), Sunny South, pp. 68-70.
* Bills Diary, entry for July 4, i860.

329
 The Peculiar Institution

ter’s lap and sleep in his bedroom; a field-hand and a small

farmer might work together and eat from the same frying
pan. But between master and slave there was still a for¬
midable barrier, a barrier that prevented either from being
entirely candid with the other. A slave was always reticent,
never entirely at ease, except in the company of other
slaves.
Plantation domestics, as a rule, enjoyed their privileges
and basked in the affection of their masters. And yet some
of them occasionally felt isolated and lonely in the “big
house” and looked wistfully to the relative privacy of the
quarters. Though the domestics were expected to remain
aloof from the field-hands, they sometimes went to the
quarters for company and relaxation. “You have no idea
of the corruption to house servants to have a gang of ne¬
groes in the yard,” a plantation mistress complained. Olm¬
sted believed that the field-hands preferred the “compara¬
tively unconstrained life of the negro-settlement” and
disliked “the close control and careful movements required
of house-servants.” 4 Living intimately with even a paternal
master was not in all respects as completely satisfying as
the whites liked to think.
This raises a question about the benefits, from the slave’s
point of view, of being owned by a small slaveholder. It is
by no means certain that the bondsman thought that the
advantages of living on a farm in close association with his
master outweighed the disadvantages of living on a planta¬
tion remote from his master. In the first place, there is rea¬
son to doubt that the slaves invariably desired and enjoyed
these intimate contacts. In the second place, the modest
slaveholdings were usually located in regions where Ne¬
groes were a small minority of the population—where the
slave groups were like tiny islands in a sea of suspicious
* Ann Pettigrew to Ebenezer Pettigrew, January 23, 1830, Pettigrew
Family Papers; Olmsted, Seaboard, p. 421,

330
VIII: Between Two Cultures
and unfriendly whites. Here the bondsmen could have no
social milieu of their own, no relief from the constant scru¬
tiny of white men, no escape from the consciousness of in¬
ferior status. For instance, a former slave on a Tennessee
farm recalled that he ate in the same room with the white
family, but at a separate table. The arrangement made him
extremely uncomfortable, and his ardent wish was to get
away by himself.5 6
On the large plantations the field-hands were often
worked harder and disciplined more severely; but there
were compensations. Here they found conditions which
made it easier for some to achieve, with advancing years,
the kind of inward serenity that comes when one is recon¬
ciled to his earthly lot. For here they lived together in their
own substantial communities in regions where the ma¬
jority of people were of their own race and status. Thus
they had fewer humiliating contacts with the whites; and
in their free time they could be at ease, express their
thoughts and feelings with less restraint, and find their di¬
versions amid a wide circle of friends. Above all, they
played less at the game which etiquette demanded even
when master and slave were showing affection for each
other.

2
The ante-bellum South had a class structure based to
some extent upon polite breeding but chiefly upon the
ownership of property. Superimposed upon this class struc¬
ture was a caste system which divided those whose appear¬
ance enabled them to claim pure Caucasian ancestry from
those whose appearance indicated that some or all of their
forebears were Negroes. Members of the Caucasian caste,
regardless of wealth or education, considered themselves
5 Jermain W. Loguen, The Rev. ]. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Free¬
man: a Narrative of Real Life (Syracuse, 1859), pp. 164-66.

331
 The Peculiar Institution

innately superior to Negroes and “mulattoes” and there¬

fore entitled to rights and privileges denied to the inferior
caste. They believed in “white supremacy,” and they main¬
tained a high degree of caste solidarity to secure it.
The slaves were “caste conscious” too and, despite the
presence of some “white man’s Negroes,” showed remark¬
able loyalty toward each other. It was the exception and
not the rule for a slave to betray a fellow slave who “took”
some of the master’s goods, or shirked work, or ran away.
In Tennessee, for example, Jim killed Isaac for helping to
catch him when he was a fugitive; and he clearly had the
sympathy of the other slaves. At Jim’s trial the judge ob¬
served that “Isaac seems to have lost caste. ... He had
combined with the white folks ... no slight offense in
their eyes: that one of their own color, subject to a like
servitude, should abandon the interests of his caste,
and . . . betray black folks to the white people, rendered
him an object of general aversion.” Former slaves testified
that when a newly purchased chattel was sent to the quar¬
ters he was immediately initiated into the secrets of the
group. He was told what he “had better do to avoid the
lash.” 6
In the quarters the bondsman formed enduring friend¬
ships. He became attached to the community—to the soil
on which he labored and to the people who shared his hard¬
ships and fears, his hopes and joys. Between the slaves on a
plantation there developed, one Southerner observed, “a
deep sympathy of feeling” which bound them “closely to¬
gether.” It was back to old friends and familiar places that
the runaway often fled. As a Kentucky slave began a dash
for freedom, he “took an affectionate look at the well-
known objects” on his way and confessed that sorrow was
mingled with his joy. The slave, explained Frederick
a Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 522-23; Douglass, My Bondage,
p. 269; Drew, The Refugee, p. 199.

332
VIII: Between Two Cultures
Douglass, had “no choice, no goal, no destination; but is
pegged down to a single spot, and must take root there or
nowhere.” 7
This was why estate and execution sales were such trage¬
dies; for each of them involved, besides the breakup of
families, the disintegration of a community, the dispersion
of a group of people who might have lived together for a
generation or more. After the death of a Tennessee planter,
one of the heirs noted that the slaves were “much opposed
to being broken up.” While Fanny Kemble resided on her
husband’s Georgia plantation, slaves came to her to express
their gratitude that she had had children. They regarded
the children as security “against their own banishment
from the only home they knew, and separation from all ties
of kindred and habit, and dispersion to distant planta¬
tions.” 8 These fears might have caused a group of slaves to
grieve at the death of even a severe master.
Although slaves were generally loyal to their caste and
fond of their communities, they, like the whites, had their
own internal class structure. Their masters helped to create
a social hierarchy by giving them specialized tasks for the
sake of economic efficiency, and by isolating domestics and
artisans from the field-hands as a control technique. But
the stratification of slave society also resulted from an im¬
pelling force within the slaves themselves—a force which
manifested itself in their pathetic quest for personal pres¬
tige. Slaves yearned for some recognition of their worth as
individuals, if only from those in their own limited social
orbit; for to them this wholly human aspiration was, if
anything, more important than it was to the whites. Each

7 Harrison, Gospel Among the Slaves, p. 102; Josiah Henson, Father

Henson’s Story of His Own Life (Boston, 1858), p. 107; Douglass, My
Bondage, p. 176.
s Allen Brown to Hamilton Brown, December 7, 1834, Hamilton Brown
Papers; Kemble, Journal, pp. 165-66.

333
 The Peculiar Institution

slave cherished whatever shreds of self-respect he could

preserve.
The bondsmen, of course, were cut off from the avenues
which led to success and respectability in white society. The
paragon of virtue in materialistic nineteenth-century
America—at least in its white middle-class segment, both
urban and rural—was the enterprising, individualistic,
freedom-loving, self-made man. Ideally he was the head of
a family which he provided with the comforts and luxuries
that symbolized his material success. He sought through
education to give his children culture and social poise; he
emancipated his wife from household drudgery; and he
subscribed to the moral code of the Victorian age. South¬
ern masters more or less conformed to this pattern and
thus gained dignity and prestige; but the white caste’s
whole way of life was normally far beyond the reach of
slaves. In slave society, therefore, success, respectability,
and morality were measured by other standards, and pres¬
tige was won in other ways. The resulting unique patterns
of slave behavior amused, or dismayed, or appalled the
whites and convinced most of them that Negroes were in¬
nately different.
Many domestics did adopt part of the white pattern of
respectability, were proud of their honesty and loyalty to
the white family, and frowned upon disobedient or rebel¬
lious behavior. Some bondsmen at times seemed to fear or
disapprove of a trouble-maker lest he cause them all to
suffer the master’s wrath. But most of them admired and
respected the bold rebel who challenged slave discipline.
The strong-willed field-hand whom the overseer hesitated
to punish, the habitual runaway who mastered the tech¬
nique of escape and shrugged at the consequences, each
won personal triumphs for himself and vicarious triumphs
for the others. The generality of slaves believed that he
who knew how to trick or deceive the master had an en-

334
VIII: Between Two Cultures
viable talent, and they regarded the committing of petit
larceny as both thrilling and praiseworthy. One former
slave recalled with great satisfaction the times when he had
caught a pig or chicken and shared it with some “black fair
one.” These adventures made him feel “good, moral, [and]
heroic”; they were “all the chivalry of which my circum¬
stances and condition of life admitted.” 8
The unlettered slaves rarely won distinction or found
pleasure in intellectual or esthetic pursuits. Theirs was an
elemental world in which sharp wits and strong muscles
were the chief weapons of survival. Young men prided
themselves upon their athletic skills and physical prowess
and often matched strength in violent encounters. Having
to submit to the superior power of their masters, many
slaves were extremely aggressive toward each other. They
were, insisted a Georgian, “by nature tyrannical in their
dispositions; and if allowed, the stronger will abuse the
weaker; husbands will often abuse their wives, and mothers
their children.” Slave foremen were notoriously severe
taskmasters and, when given the power, might whip
more cruelly than white masters. Fanny Kemble discerned
the brutalizing effects of bondage in the “unbounded
insolence and tyranny” which slaves exhibited toward
each other. “Everybody, in the South, wants the privi¬
lege of whipping somebody else,” wrote Frederick Doug¬
lass.* 1
Each community of slaves contained one or two members
whom the others looked to for leadership because of their
physical strength, practical wisdom, or mystical powers. It
was a “notorious” fact, according to one master, “that on
almost every large plantation of Negroes, there is one

» Henson, Story, pp. 21-23.

1 Southern Cultivator, XII (1854), p. 206; Drew, The Refugee, p. 45;
Kemble, Journal, p. 239; Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 69-72, 74-75,
129-32.

335
 The Peculiar Institution

among them who holds a kind of magical sway over the

minds and opinions of the rest; to him they look as their
oracle. . . . The influence of such a Negro, often a
preacher, on a quarter is incalculable.” A former slave on a
Louisiana plantation remembered “Old Abram” who was
“a sort of patriarch among us” and was “deeply versed in
such philosophy as is taught in the cabin of the slave.” On
a Mississippi plantation everyone stood in awe of “Old
Juba” who wore about his neck a half dozen charms and
who claimed to have seen the devil a hundred times. On
Pierce Butler’s Georgia plantation Sinda prophesied the
end of the world, and for a while no threat or punishment
could get the hands back to work. A Louisiana planter
noted angrily that “Big Lucy” was the leader who “cor¬
rupts every young negro in her power.” 2 These were the
self-made men and women of slave society.
Slaves who lacked the qualities which produce rebels or
leaders had to seek personal gratification and the esteem of
their fellows in less spectacular ways. They might find these
things simply by doing their work uncommonly well. Even
some of the field-hands, though usually lacking the incen¬
tive of pecuniary gain, were intrigued by the business of
making things grow and enjoyed reputations as good farm¬
ers. To be able to plow a straight furrow, to master the
skills required in cultivating one of the southern staples,
to know the secrets of harvesting and preparing it for mar¬
ket—these activities brought personal rewards which might
not be completely lost because all was done for another
man’s profit. Patsy, for example, was “queen of the field”
on a small Louisiana plantation, since the “lightning-like
motion” of her fingers made her the fastest cotton picker.
Whatever she thought of bondage, Patsy was absorbed in

2 Southern Cultivator, IX (1851), p. 85; Northup, Twelve Years a

Slave, pp. 186-87; Ingraham (ed.), Sunny South, pp. 86-87; Kemble,
Journal, p. 84; Davis (ed.), Diary of Bennet H. Barrow, p. 191.

336
VIII: Between Two Cultures
rer work and found pleasure in her own special kind of
:reativeness.3 4
This was still more true of slave artisans whose work
pften won great admiration. An English visitor affirmed
:hat their aptitude for the mechanical arts should “encour-
ige every philanthropist who has had misgivings in regard
;o the progressive power of the race.” Again it was pride in
:raftsmanship, not monetary rewards, which gave most car¬
penters, blacksmiths, coopers, cobblers, and wheelrights
;heir chief incentive. The carpenters on a North Carolina
plantation must have gained additional satisfaction from
he knowledge that a white laborer had asked for permis-
;ion to work with them “for the sake of Instruction.” In
Louisiana, a white engineer who was training a slave gave
he master a favorable report: “I have seldom met with a
'vfegro who shewed more anxiety to learn everything per-
aining to a Steam Engine . . . and I have no hesitation
n saying that with a little more practice, he will make a
:ompetent careful Engineer.” *
The well-trained domestic also obtained a pleasant feei¬
ng of self-importance from the tactful performance of his
ervices. A first-rate plantation cook wallowed in admira-
ion; a personal servant who could humor his master and
pandy innocuous pleasantries with him possessed the rare
alent of a diplomat. Most domestics were proud of their
positions of responsibility, of their fine manners and cor¬
ed speech, and of their handsome clothing and other
padges of distinction. They were important figures in their
ittle world.
Indeed, the domestics, artisans, and foremen constituted
he aristocracy of slave society. “I considered my station a

3 Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, pp. 188-89.

4 C. P. Phelps to Ebenezer Pettigrew, March 2, 1831, Pettigrew Papers;

Lyell, Second Visit, I, p. 360; John B. Clarkson to Phanor Prudhomme,
February 3, 1854, Phanor Prudhomme Papers.

337
 The Peculiar Institution

very high one,” confessed an ex-slave who had been his

master’s body servant. Many visitors to the South com¬
mented on how the domestics flaunted their superiority
over “the less favored helots of the plough”—“their as¬
sumption of hauteur when they had occasion to hold inter¬
course with any of the ‘field hands.’ ” And former slaves
described the envy and hatred of the “helots” for the “fu¬
glemen” who “put on airs” in imitation of the whites.5
Thus, ironically, a slave might reach the upper stratum
of his society through intimate contact with the master, by
learning to ape his manners, and by rendering him personal
service, as well as by being a rebel or a leader of his people.
And a bondsman, in his own circle, was as highly sensitive
to social distinctions as ever was his master. In a society of
unequals—of privileged and inferior castes, of wealth and
poverty—the need to find some group to feel superior to is
given a desperate urgency. In some parts of Virginia even
the field-hands who felt the contempt of the domestics
could lavish their own contempt upon the “coal pit nig¬
gers” who were hired to work in the mines.5
Everywhere, slaves of all ranks ridiculed the nonslave¬
holders, especially the poor whites—the dregs of a stratified
white society—whom they scornfully called “po’ buckra”
and “white trash.” Those who belonged to a master with
great wealth and social prestige frequently identified them¬
selves with him and looked disdainfully upon those who be¬
longed to humbler masters. “They seemed to think that the
greatness of their masters was transferable to them,” wrote
Frederick Douglass. “To be a slave, was thought to be bad
enough; but to be a poor man’s slave, was deemed a dis¬
grace, indeed.” Another former slave criticized the “foolish
pride” which made them love “to boast of their master’s

» Thompson, Life of John Thompson, pp. 24-25; IngTaham (ed.),

Sunny South, p. 35; Steward, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, pp. 30-32.
* Bancroft, Slave-Trading, pp. 153-55.

338
VIII: Between Two Cultures

wealth and influence. ... I have heard of slaves object to

being sent in very small companies to labor in the field, lest
that some passer-by should think that they belonged to a
poor man, who was unable to keep a large gang.” A north¬
ern visitor described the house servant of a wealthy planter
as “full of his master’s wealth and importance, which he
feels to be reflected upon himself.” A domestic on a Louisi¬
ana sugar plantation was once asked to attend a sick over¬
seer. “What do you think he says,” reported the irritated
mistress, “he aint used to waiting on low rank people.” 7
Many whites also heard slaves boast of the prices their
masters had paid for them, or of the handsome offers their
masters had rejected from would-be purchasers. A thou-
sand-dollar slave felt superior to an eight-hundred-dollar
slave. “When we recollect that the dollars are not their
own,” wrote an amused traveler, “we can hardly refrain
from smiling at the childlike simplicity with which they
express their satisfaction at the high price set on them.”8
But this attitude was not as simple as it seemed. Seeing the
master exhibit his wealth as evidence of his social rank, the
slave developed his own crass measure of a man’s worth and
exhibited his price tag.
But the most piteous device for seeking status in the slave
community was that of boasting about white ancestors or
taking pride in a light complexion. In the eyes of the
whites the “mulatto” was tainted as much as the “pure”
Negro and as hopelessly tied to the inferior caste; but this
did not prevent some slaves of mixed ancestry (not all)
from trying to make their Caucasian blood serve as a mark
of superiority within their own caste. Fanny Kemble told
of a slave woman who came to her and begged to be re-

t Douglass, My Bondage, p. 118; Steward, Twenty-Two Years a Slave,

p. 101; [Ingraham], South-West, II, p. 248; Sitterson, Sugar Country,
p. 91.
s Lyell, Travels, I, pp. 182-83.

339
 The Peculiar Institution

lieved from field labor “on ‘account of her color.’ ” This

slave made it evident that, “being a mulatto, she consid¬
ered field labor a degradation.” 9 Such an attitude may
have been sheer opportunism, or it may have indicated that
some slaves had been effectively indoctrinated with the idea
of their racial inferiority. But in many cases it was merely
another example of the bondsman’s search for dignity and
self-respect.

3
In Africa the Negroes had been accustomed to a strictly
regulated family life and a rigidly enforced moral code. But
in America the disintegration of their social organization
removed the traditional sanctions which had encouraged
them to respect their old customs. Here they found the
whites organized into families having great social and eco¬
nomic importance but regulated by different laws. In the
quarters they were usually more or less encouraged to live
as families and to accept white standards of morality.
But it was only outwardly that the family life of the mass
of southern slaves resembled that of their masters. In¬
wardly, in many crucial ways, the domestic regimes of the
slave cabin and of the “big house” were quite different. Be¬
cause the slaves failed to conform to the white pattern, the
master class found the explanation, as usual, in the Negro’s
innate racial traits. Actually, the differences resulted from
the fact that slavery inevitably made much of the white
caste’s family pattern meaningless and unintelligible—and
in some ways impossible—for the average bondsman. Here,
as at so many other points, the slaves had lost their native
culture without being able to find a workable substitute
and therefore lived in a kind of cultural chaos.
The most obvious difference between the slave family
and the white family was in the legal foundation upon
9 Kemble, Journal, pp. 193-94.

340
VIII: Between Two Cultures

which each rested. In every state white marriages were

recognized as civil contracts which imposed obligations on
both parties and provided penalties for their violation.
Slave marriages had no such recognition in the state codes;
instead, they were regulated by whatever laws the owners
saw fit to enforce.
A few masters arbitrarily assigned husbands to women
who had reached the “breeding age”; but ordinarily they
permitted slaves to pick their own mates and only required
them to ask permission to marry. On the plantations most
owners refused to allow slaves to marry away from home
and preferred to make additional purchases when the sexes
were out of balance. Thus an Alabama overseer informed
his employer that one slave was without a wife and that he
had promised to “indever to git you to Bey a nother woman
sow he might have a wife at home.” 1 Still, it did frequently
happen on both large and small estates that husbands and
wives were owned by different masters. Sometimes, when a
slave wished to marry the slave of another owner, a sale
was made in order to unite them.
Having obtained their master’s consent, the couple might
begin living together without further formality; or their
master might hastily pronounce them man and wife in a
perfunctory ceremony. But more solemn ceremonies, con¬
ducted by slave preachers or white clergymen, were not un¬
common even for the field-hands, and they were customary
for the domestics. The importance of the occasion was
sometimes emphasized by a wedding feast and gifts to the
bride.
After a marriage many masters ignored the behavior of
the couple so long as neither husband nor wife caused any
loud or violent disturbances. Others insisted that they not
only live together but respect their obligations to each
i J. B. Grace to Charles Tail, April 25, 1835, Charles Tait and Family
Papers.

341
 The Peculiar Institution

other. A Louisianian made it a rule that adultery was to be

“invariably punished.” On a Mississippi plantation, the
husband was required to provide firewood for his family
and “wait on his wife”; the wife was to do the family’s
cooking, washing, and mending. Failure to perform these
duties was “corrected by words first but if not re¬
formed ... by the whip.” According to a Georgian, “I
never permit a husband to abuse, strike or whip his
wife. ... If the wife teases and provokes him . . . she is
punished, but it sometimes happens that the husband peti¬
tions for her pardon, which I make it a rule not to refuse,
as it imposes a strong obligation on the wife to ... be
more conciliating in her behavior.” 2 Some masters ap¬
parently ran domestic relations courts and served as family
counselors.
Divorce, like marriage, was within the master’s jurisdic¬
tion. He might permit his slaves to change spouses as often
and whenever they wished, or he might establish more or
less severe rules. A Louisiana master granted a divorce only
after a month’s notice and prohibited remarriage unless a
divorcee agreed to receive twenty-five lashes. James H.
Hammond inflicted one hundred lashes upon partners who
dissolved their marriage and forced them to live singly for
three years. One day in 1840, Hammond noted in his diary:
“Had a trial of Divorce and Adultery cases. Flogged Joe
Goodwyn and ordered him to go back to his wife. Dito
Gabriel and Molly and ordered them to come together
again. Separated Moses and Anny finally. And flogged Tom
Kollock . . . [for] interfering with Maggy Campbell, Sul¬
livan’s wife.” * * * 8 While one master might enforce divor
laws as rigid as these, his neighbor might tolerate a veri-
8 lie Bow's Review, XXII (1857), pp. 376-79; Plantation Rules in Wil¬
liam Erwin Ms. Diary and Account Book; Southern Agriculturist, IV
(183O. P- 35'•
8 Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 58; Hammond Plantation Manual; Ham¬
mond Diary, entry for December 26, 1840.

342
VIII: Between Two Cultures

table regime of free love—of casual alliances and easy sepa¬

rations. Inevitably the rules on a given estate affected the
family life of its slaves.
Not only did the slave family lack the protection and the
external pressure of state law, it also lacked most of the
centripetal forces that gave the white family its cohesive¬
ness. In the life of the slave, the family had nothing like the
social significance that it had in the life of the white man.
The slave woman was first a full-time worker for her owner,
and only incidentally a wife, mother, and home-maker. She
spent a small fraction of her time in the house; she often
did no cooking or clothes making; and she was not usually
nurse to her husband or children during illness. Parents
frequently had little to do with the raising of their chil¬
dren; and children soon learned that their parents were
neither the fount of wisdom nor the seat of authority. Thus
a child on a Louisiana farm saw his mother receive twenty-
five lashes for countermanding an order his mistress had
given him.4 Lacking autonomy, the slave family could not
offer the child shelter or security from the frightening
creatures in the outside world.
The family had no greater importance as an economic
unit. Parents and children might spend some spare hours
together in their garden plots, but, unlike rural whites,
slaves labored most of the time for their masters in groups
that had no relationship to the family. The husband was
not the director of an agricultural enterprise; he was not
the head of the family, the holder of property, the provider,
or the protector. If his wife or child was disrobed and
whipped by master or overseer, he stood by in helpless hu¬
miliation. In an age of patriarchal families, the male slave’s
only crucial function within the family was that of siring
offspring.

* Marston Diary, entry for June 12, 1829.

343
 The Peculiar Institution

Indeed, the typical slave family was matriarchal in form,

for the mother’s role was far more important than the fa¬
ther’s. In so far as the family did have significance it in¬
volved responsibilities which traditionally belonged to
women, such as cleaning house, preparing food, making
clothes, and raising children. The husband was at most his
wife’s assistant, her companion, and her sex partner. He
was often thought of as her possession (“Mary’s Tom”), as
was the cabin in which they lived.5 It was common for a
mother and her children to be considered a family without
reference to the father.
Given these conditions—the absence of legal marriages,
the family’s minor social and economic significance, and the
father’s limited role—it is hardly surprising to find that
slave families were highly unstable. Lacking both outer
pressures and inner pulls, they were also exposed to the
threat of forced separations through sales. How dispersed
a slave family could be as a result of one or more of these
factors was indicated by an advertisement for a North Caro¬
lina fugitive who was presumed to be “lurking in the
neighborhood of E. D. Walker’s, at Moore’s Creek, who
owns most of his relations, or Nathan Bonham’s who owns
his mother; or, perhaps, near Fletcher Bell’s, at Long
Creek, who owns his father.” A slave preacher in Kentucky
united couples in wedlock “until death or distance do you
part.” When Joshua and Bush asked for permission to
marry, their Virginia master read them a statement warn¬
ing that he might be forced to separate them, “so Joshua
must not then say I have taken his wife from him.” 6 Thus
every slave family had about it an air of impermanence, for

5 Johnson, Sea Islands, pp. 135, 137-38; id., Ante-Bellum North Caro-
lina, p. 535.
® Wilmington (N.C.) Journal, May 2, 1851; Coleman, Slavery Times in
Kentucky, pp. 58-59; Massie Slave Book, entry tor September 24, 1847.

344
VIII: Between Two Cultures

no master could promise that his debts would not force

sales, or guarantee that his death would not cause divisions.
If the state did not recognize slave marriages, the
churches of the Protestant South might have supplied a
salutary influence, since they emphasized the sanctity of the
home and family. The churches did try to persuade their
own slave members to respect the marriage sacrament and
sometimes even disciplined those who did not. But they
were quite tolerant of masters who were forced by “neces¬
sity” to separate husbands, wives, and children. For exam¬
ple, in 1856, a committee of the Charleston Baptist Associa¬
tion agreed that slave marriages had “certain limitations”
and had to be “the subject of special rules.” Hence, though
calling these marriages “sacred and binding” and urging
that they be solemnized by a religious ceremony, the com¬
mittee raised no objection to the separation of couples
against their wills. Apparently the only sinful separation
was one initiated by the slaves themselves.7
The general instability of slave families had certain logi¬
cal consequences. One was the casual attitude of many
bondsmen toward marriage; another was the failure of any
deep and enduring affection to develop between some hus¬
bands and wives. The South abounded in stories of slaves
who elected to migrate with kind masters even when it
meant separation from their spouses. “Ef you got a good
marster, foller him,” was the saying in Virginia, according
to an ex-slave. An equally common story, which was often
true, was that chattels were not severely disturbed by
forced separation and soon found new husbands or wives
in their new homes. All who were familiar with the Negro,
wrote a South Carolinian, understood how difficult it was
“to educate even the best and most intelligently moral of

* Charleston Courier, August 5, 1857.

345
 The Peculiar Institution

the race to a true view and estimation of marriage.” 8 Here,

presumably, was proof that separations through the slave
trade caused no real hardship.
Still another consequence was the indifference with
which most fathers and even some mothers regarded their
children. An angry Virginian attributed the death of a slave
infant to “the unnatural neglect of his infamous mother”;
he charged that another infant was “murdered right out by
his mother’s neglect and barbarous cruelty.” Fanny Kemble
observed the stolid reaction of slave parents to the death of
their children. “I’ve lost a many; they all goes so,” was the
only comment of one mother when another child died; and
the father, “without word or comment, went out to his en¬
forced labor.” 0 Many slaveholders complained that moth¬
ers could not be trusted to nurse their sick children, that
some showed no affection for them and treated them
cruelly. This, of course, was not a manifestation of Negro
“character” as masters seemed to think. How these cal¬
loused mothers could have produced the affectionate slave
“mammies” of tradition was never explained. But one
master spoke volumes when he advocated separating chil¬
dren from their parents, because it was “far more humane
not to cherish domestic ties among slaves.” * 1
The final consequence of family instability was wide¬
spread sexual promiscuity among both men and women.
The case of a Kentucky slave woman who had each of her
seven children by a different father was by no means
unique. This was a condition which some masters tried to
control but which most of them accepted with resignation,
or indifference, or amusement. As to the slave’s moral hab¬
its, wrote one discouraged owner, “I know of no means

8 Smedcs, Memorials, p. 48; Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 556-57; Charleston

Courier, September 15, 1857.
0 Massie Slave Book; Kemble, Journal, p. 95.
1 Lyell, Travels, I, p. 184.

346
VIII: Between Two Cultures

whereby to regulate them, or to restrain them; I attempted

it for many years by preaching virtue and decency, . . .
but it was all in vain.” Olmsted cited numerous instances of
masters who regarded the whole matter with complete un¬
concern; and masters themselves rarely gave any sign of
displeasure when an unmarried slave woman became preg¬
nant. A Virginia planter kept a record of the fathers of his
slave children when he knew who the fathers were, but
often he could only guess—and sometimes he suggested
that the child was sired ‘‘by the Commonwealth,” or “by
the Universe,” or “God knows who by.” Overseers were
generally even less concerned; as one overseer explained,
the morals of the slaves were “no business of his, and he did
not care what they did.” Nor was the law concerned. In
Mississippi, when a male slave was indicted for the rape of
a female slave, the state Supreme Court dismissed the case
on the ground that this was not an offense known to com¬
mon or statute law.2
If most slaves regarded the white man’s moral code as
unduly severe, many whites did too. Indeed, the number of
bastardy cases in southern court records seems to confirm
the conclusion that women of the poor-white class “carried
about the same reputation for easy virtue as their sable sis¬
ters.” Marriage, insisted Frederick Douglass, had no exist¬
ence among slaves, “except in such hearts as are purer and
higher than the standard morality around them.” His con¬
solation was that at least some slaves “maintained their
honor, where all around was corrupt.” s
That numerous slaves did manage somehow to surmount
the corrupting influences everywhere about them, their

2 Brown, Narrative, p. 13; De Bow’s Review, X (1851), p. 623; Olmsted,

Back Country, pp. 89, 113, 154; Massie Slave Book; Catterall (ed.), Ju¬
dicial Cases, II, pp. 544-45; III, p. 363.
s Avery O. Craven, "Poor Whites and Negroes in the Ante-Bellum
South," Journal of Negro History, XV (1930), pp. 17-18; Douglass,
My Bondage, p. 86.

347
 The Peculiar Institution

masters themselves freely admitted. A South Carolinian

admired the slave mother’s “natural and often ardent and
endearing affection for her offspring”; and another de¬
clared that “sound policy” as well as humanity required
that everything be done “to reconcile these unhappy beings
to their lot, by keeping mothers and children together.”
The majority of slave women were devoted to their chil¬
dren, regardless of whether they had been sired by one or
by several fathers. Nor was sexual promiscuity a universal
trait of southern Negroes even in bondage. Many slave
couples, affirmed a Georgian, displayed toward each other
a high degree of “faithfulness, fidelity, and affection.” 4
Seldom, when slave families were broken to satisfy cred¬
itors or settle estates, was a distinction made between those
who were indifferent to the matter and those who suffered
deeply as a consequence. The “agony at parting,” an ex¬
slave reminded skeptics, “must be seen and felt to be fully
understood.” A slave woman who had been taken from her
children in Virginia and sent to the Southwest “cried many
a night about it; and went ’bout mazin’ sorry-like all day, a
wishing I was dead and buried!” Sometimes the “derange¬
ment” or sudden rebelliousness of a slave mother was at¬
tributed to “grief at being separated from her children.”
Often mothers fought desperately to prevent traders from
carrying off their children, and often husbands and wives
struggled against separation when they were torn apart.5
But the most eloquent evidence of the affection and de¬
votion that bound many slave families together appeared in
the advertisements for fugitives. A Virginian sought a run-

* De Bow’s Review, XVII (>854) , pp. 425-26; Abbeville District, South

Carolina, Judge of Probate Decree Book, 1839-1858, May term, 1841;
Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, p. 314.
6 Henson, Story, pp. 10-11; Ingraham (ed.), Sunny South, p. 439; Cat¬
terall (ed.), Judicial Cases, I, p. 298; III, p. 632; V, p. 229-30; Loguen,
Narrative, pp. 112-20; Andrews, Slavery and the Domestic Slave
Trade, pp. 128-33.

348
VIII: Between Two Cultures

away whose wife had been transported to Mississippi, “and

I understand from some of my servants, that he had been
speaking of following her.” A Maryland master was con¬
vinced that a female fugitive would attempt to get back to
Georgia “where she came from, and left her husband and
two children.” Even when fugitives hoped to reach the free
states, husbands often took their wives and parents their
children, though this obviously lessened their chance of a
successful escape. Clearly, to many bondsmen the fellow¬
ship of the family, in spite of its instability, was exceedingly
important.
Some of the problems that troubled slave families, of
course, had nothing to do with slavery—they were the trag¬
ically human problems which have ever disturbed marital
tranquillity. One such domestic dilemma involved a slave
whose wife did not return his devotion. “He says he loves
his wife and does not want to leave her,” noted the master.
“She says she does not love him and wont live with him.
Yet he says he thinks he can over come her scruples and
live happily with her.”6 For this slavery was not the cause
nor freedom the cure.
But other kinds of family tragedies were uniquely a part
of life in bondage. A poignant example was the scene that
transpired when an overseer tied and whipped a slave
mother in the presence of her children. The frightened
children pelted the overseer with stones, and one of them
ran up and bit him in the leg. During the ruction the cries
of the mother were mingled with the screams of the chil¬
dren, “Let my mammy go—let my mammy go." 1
e Gustavus A. Henry to his wife, December 11, 1839, Henry Papers.
? Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 92-95.

349
 The Peculiar Institution

4
Everywhere in the ante-bellum South marriages between
whites and Negroes or “mulattos,” whether free or unfree,
were prohibited. The prohibition against marriages, how¬
ever, did not prevent other forms of interracial sexual con¬
tacts. Sometimes these extra-legal alliances were remark¬
ably open and durable, but usually they were clandestine,
casual, and brief—a simple matter of a white using a Ne¬
gro to satisfy an immediate sexual urge. All adult slaves
must have been aware of the reality of miscegenation; and
they doubtless detected the element of hypocrisy in white
criticism of their moral laxity.
The failure of the color barrier to prevent miscegena¬
tion in the Old South is hardly surprising, for this has al¬
ways been the case when two races have intermingled. The
English, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese had mixed their
blood with the Africans long before black laborers were
brought to the North American colonies. Only in the
mythology of race can one find biological “proof” of the
evils of miscegenation—for example, “proof” that chil¬
dren of mixed ancestry are likely to be mentally or physi¬
cally inferior to children of racially “pure” ancestry. The
real evils of miscegenation were purely social; they were
evident in the opprobrium heaped upon both parents and
offspring, in the emotional disturbances resulting from
prejudice, and, above all, in the fact that the slaves did not
ordinarily have an altogether free choice in the matter.
To measure the extent of miscegenation with precision
is impossible, because statistical indexes are crude and pub¬
lic and private records fragmentary. But the evidence nev¬
ertheless suggests that human behavior in the Old South
was very human indeed, that sexual contacts between the
races were not the rare aberrations of a small group of de¬
praved whites but a frequent occurrence involving whites

350
VIII: Between Two Cultures

of all social and cultural levels. It was a practice, a Ken¬

tucky judge avowed, “but too common, as we all know”; a
practice, Olmsted was told, that pervaded the “entire soci¬
ety.” “How many have fallen before this temptation!”
wrote a Virginian. “So many that it has almost ceased to
be a temptation to fall!” Many parents traced the moral
ruin of their sons “to temptations found in female slaves in
their own or neighbour’s households.” With this in mind,
one slaveholder advised white families to use “elderly serv¬
ants only” and to put all young slaves to work in the fields.
Permitting them to grow up in the house, he warned, was
“fraught with evil.” 8
The result of miscegenation, of course, was the emerg¬
ence of a racially mixed group which constantly increased
in size and which contained every shade of color. Accord¬
ing to the census of i860, more than a half million (about
twelve per cent) of the colored people in the slave states
were “mulattoes.” This was certainly an underestimate, be¬
cause the census takers classified each individual entirely
on the basis of his appearance. Persons whose complexions
were very dark were listed as Negroes, though they might
have had some white ancestors.9 Others whose complex¬
ions were very light were listed as whites, though they
might have had some Negro ancestors. (The practice of
“passing over” had already begun in the ante-bellum
South.) The judicial records of South Carolina describe a
family with remote Negro ancestors whose members were
nevertheless recognized as whites, “received into society,
. . . and married into respectable families.”* 1 Clearly, the
“taint of the inferior race” was more widely diffused and

8 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, I, p. 318; Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 601-

602; James H. Johnston, Miscegenation in the Ante-bellum South
(Chicago, 1939), pp- 1-2; Southern Agriculturist, VIII (1835), p. 8.
* For example, in the manuscript census returns of i860, a slave mother
was often listed as a "mulatto” and her children as "black.”
i Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, pp. 358-59.
 The Peculiar Institution

miscegenation more common than slavery’s defenders cared

to concede. Nor is it necessary to take seriously James H.
Hammond’s assertion that the “chief offenders” were “na¬
tives of the North or foreigners,” for Hammond knew very
well the frailties of native southern whites.2
Though white women were less involved in interracial
sexual contacts than men, their role, especially in the colo¬
nial period when slaves and indentured servants worked
on the same estates, was never entirely negligible. A Mary¬
land statute of 1663 noted that “divers freeborn English
women, forgetful of their free condition, and to the dis¬
grace of our nation, do intermarry with negro slaves”; but
the penalties provided in this and other southern statutes
did not put an end to the practice. “There must always be
women of the lower class of whites, so poor that their fa¬
vors can be purchased by the slaves,” a Southerner told
Olmsted.3
But these women were not all paupers or prostitutes. In
New Orleans a “seemingly respectable” white female was
arrested on a charge of having been in an “indecent com¬
panionship” with a slave. Numerous white men attempted
to divorce their wives for allegedly having had sexual rela¬
tions with slaves. In one such case the wife not only admit¬
ted her intimacy with a slave but confessed that he had
made her love him “better than any body in the world, and
she thought he must have given her something.” In some
cases, after having intercourse with a slave the white
woman claimed that she had been raped, but the evidence
was not always very convincing. Occasionally a white fe¬
male who loved her colored paramour lived with him as a
common-law wife.* *
2 De Bow’s Review, VII (1849) , p. 494.
s Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 508-509,
* New Orleans Picayune, September 9, 1851; Catterall (ed.), Judicial
Cases, I, p. 357; II, pp- 63-64, 117, 119, 167; Johnson, Ante-Bellum
North Carolina, pp. 588-91.

352
VIII: Between Two Cultures

Most miscegenation, however, involved white males and

slave females. To be sure, many white men abstained alto¬
gether and few of them wallowed in lechery; but it would
contradict neither the evidence nor the realities of south¬
ern life to say that a large proportion of them, particularly
in the cities and plantation districts, had one or more sex¬
ual contacts with slave women. If it cannot be said that
this practice ever won social approval, neither can it be
said that detection carried severe penalties. The white fe¬
male who was known to have cohabited with a Negro ir¬
retrievably lost the respect of society, but the white male
paid no such price. There might be some clucking of
tongues, a few crude jokes, but more than likely it would
soon be forgotten. Besides, with a little caution the chance
of detection was not great.
Men of the nonslaveholding class were responsible for
much of the miscegenation. Masters often complained that
whites in the neighborhood interfered with their slave
women. “Cato born of Dinah, by some white chap on the
commons,” a Virginian noted in his records. Another Vir¬
ginian affirmed that one of his slave women had all of her
children “by whoredom most of them gotten by white
men” at a neighbor’s house. For years, he wrote, these men
had been sending for his women “to whore it with” when¬
ever he was away. Female slaves were quite accessible to
both rural and urban nonslaveholders who desired casual
sexual partners. Sometimes, however, the intentions of
these men were what under other circumstances might
have been called “honorable,” for they sought more perma¬
nent union in defiance of law and property rights. For ex¬
ample, a Florida master advertised that a white man had
stolen one of his slave women with the intention of having
her “answer the place of a wife.” 6
o Massie Slave Book, entry for May 25, 1858; Walker Diary, entries for
July 5, 8, 1834; Pensacola Gazette, August 11, 1838.

353
 The Peculiar Institution

Overseers often succumbed to the temptations surround¬

ing them. Though many of the planters seemed to be quite
indifferent about it, some complained that the tendency of
overseers to “equalize” with slave women resulted in “evils
too numerous to be . . . mentioned.” One master pointed
to a specific evil when he noted that his overseer was caus¬
ing his “negro men [to] run away by interfering with their
wives.” In his instructions to overseers a Louisiana planter
warned that “intercourse with negro women” W'ould not
be tolerated, because it bred “more trouble ... on a plan¬
tation than all else put together.” For this reason, the au¬
thor of an essay on overseers advised, “let him be a married
man.” 9
On a Louisiana plantation, an overseer, named Patrick,
caused his employer no end of trouble because of his habit
of “sneaking about after . . . negro girls”; and when he
was discharged he left behind a brood of mulatto children.
The new overseer, named Mulkey, was married but proved
to be “nearly as bad as Patrick in the same way.” Mulkey’s
dismissal came after a “great fuss” which occurred when a
slave told Mrs. Mulkey about her husband’s escapades in
the quarters. During her search for still another overseer
the plantation mistress refused to hire an unmarried appli¬
cant, because “he would soon be like the others,” and have
a harem of “six or seven ladies.” Instead she employed a
man who was “too fond of his wife” to behave “as over¬
seers commonly did amongst the negroes.” This time she
was not disappointed, and two years later she rejoiced that
her overseer had “no favorite misses to fight and abuse the
boys about.” He was the first one she had ever employed
who was innocent of such “meanness.” 7
• Memorandum Book for 1836 in Tait Papers: Nutt Journal of Araby
Plantation; American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, II (1858) ,
P- 197-
t Rachel O'Conner to David Weeks, July 8, 1832; October 23, Novem¬
ber 16, 20, 1833; id. to A. T. Conrad, April 12, 1835, Weeks Collection.

354
VIII: Between Two Cultures
The lower-class whites, however, were by no means the
only Southerners who had sexual relations with slave
women and fathered the mulatto population. Unmarried
slaveholders and the young males who grew up in slave¬
holding families, some bearing the South’s most distin¬
guished names, played a major role. Indeed, given their
easy access to female slaves, it seems probable that misce¬
genation was more common among them than among the
members of any other group.
Again, most of the relationships between slave women
and males of the slaveholding class were the casual adven¬
tures of adolescents engaged in sexual experimentation, of
college students on concupiscent larks, and of older bach¬
elors or widowers periodically demanding the favors of one
of their female chattels.8 But some of the relationships de¬
veloped into forms of concubinage which lasted until mar¬
riage and occasionally through life. Though the cases of
concubinage involving young Louisiana Creoles and quad¬
roon women are familiar, these alliances were confined nei¬
ther to persons of French or Spanish descent nor to the
state of Louisiana. Men with Anglo-Saxon names such as
Turner and Crocker acknowledged having slave mistresses.
A South Carolinian “lived for many years in a state of il¬
licit intercourse’’ with a slave woman “who assumed the
position of a wife”; another permitted a female slave "to
act as the mistress of his house” and control his domestic
affairs. A Kentuckian owned a woman who was his concu¬
bine and “possessed considerable influence over him.” And
a Virginian, his colored mistress, and their mulatto chil¬
dren lived “as a family upon terms of equality, and not as
a master with his slaves.” 8

» Gavin Diary, entries for September 29, December 24, 1855; July 9,
1856.
» Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, I, pp. 227-28, 302; II, pp- 375, 451; HI.
PP- 655-56-

355
 The Peculiar Institution

These sexual relationships with slaves did not always end

when the master married; and others actually began after,
rather than before, his marriage. When the husband’s infi¬
delity was casual and infrequent he doubtless managed of¬
ten to conceal it from his wife. But when it was repeated
frequently and indicated either that he had tired of his
wife or desired a polygamous arrangement, the facts did
not long remain a secret. Such cases sometimes found their
way into the courts in the form of divorce actions or dis¬
putes over property settlements. Thus a Louisiana woman
separated from her husband because he “had more regard
for” a female domestic than for her. In Texas a wife di¬
vorced her husband for his “improper intimacy with the
negress Jane” and for “obstinately persisting continuously
to live in a negro house with his negro woman.” A North
Carolina divorce case involved a husband who had not only
“bedded with . . . negro Lucy” but placed her in full con¬
trol of his household.1 When the aggrieved wife did not
leave her husband, his relationship with the slave woman
was sooner or later broken off or gradually lost its ardor.
Southern white women apparently believed that they
suffered most from the effects of miscegenation. “Under
slavery we live surrounded by prostitutes,” one of them
wrote bitterly. “Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all
in one house with their wives and their concubines; and
the mulattoes one sees in every family partly resemble the
white children. Any lady is ready to tell you who is the
father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household
but her own. These, she seems to think, drop from the
clouds. My disgust sometimes is boiling over.” A Virginia
woman grieved for the “white mothers and daughters of
the South” who had “seen their dearest affections tram¬
pled upon—their hopes of domestic happiness destroyed”

1 Catterall (ed.) , Judicial Cases, II, p. 139; III, p. 491; V, p. 297.

356
VIII: Between Two Cultures
by husbands, sons, and brothers who gratified their pas¬
sions with female slaves.2
Southern males who venerated white womanhood were
hit in a sensitive spot by charges such as these. Some of
them denied the charges; others argued disingenuously
that miscegenation was a boon to white women because it
protected their chastity. In the South, various male South¬
erners explained, young men found carnal pleasure with
Negro females rather than white; thus slavery gave south¬
ern women their high reputation for virtue.3 But white
women were not comforted by special pleading such as
this. They watched their men suspiciously, because they
knew much and doubtless suspected more.
White women, however, were not the only Southerners
who were in some way distressed by miscegenation, for
white men were not always able to indulge in it without
personal complications. There were, of course, insensitive
males who had sexual relations with slave women without
concern about the effects upon others, without emotional
involvement, and without feelings of guilt. Some felt no re¬
sponsibility for the offspring of these unions and could for¬
get the mothers when it seemed convenient. Some could
brazenly sell their former mistresses to get them out of the
way, as well as their own children to remove a further
source of embarrassment.4 But for many white men the
problem was not so simple. Often the matter weighed heav¬
ily upon their consciences long after the affair had ended.
Others suffered because they felt a deep attachment for

1 lien Ames William* * (ed.) , A Diary from Dixie (Boston, 1949), pp.
21-42; Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 601-602.
» De How's Review, IX (1850) , pp. 498-502; XX (1856), p. 656; Charles¬
ton Courier, October 17, 1849.
* Catterall ted.), Judicial Cases, III, p. 199; Brown, Narrative, pp. 46-
48; Buckingham, Slave Slates, II, pp. 213-14. By some strange logic, to
many it seemed morally more reprehensible to sell one's own children
than to sell someone else’s.

357
 The Peculiar Institution

some slave women arid knew that marriage was impossi¬

ble For them the alternatives were a painful separation, a
secret alliance, or a life beyond the pale of respectable
white soi irty.
A man who was not necessarily troubled by an enduring
love might still feel obligated to care for his slave mistress
and her children. This explains many of the emancipating
clauses in wills, though they did not always openly ac¬
knowledge the relationship. For instance, a master in
Southampton County, Virginia, freed Hannah for “meri¬
torious service” and gave her fifty acres of land, a house,
and an annual pension of fifty dollars. Others frankly ad¬
mitted their transgressions, as did a Baltimore slaveholder
who devised most of his estate to his "natural daughter
Louisa Gooding . . . born of a certain colored woman
known by the name of Clara.” Many times masters who
waited until death had their wishes frustrated by unsympa¬
thetic heirs who contested their wills, or by state laws pro¬
hibiting the bequeathing of freedom or property to slaves.
Thus the offspring of the deceased father remained in
bondage.
Fearing such an outcome, some masters took care of these
matters before they died. A Virginian who petitioned for
the freedom of a mulatto boy, acknowledged "with blushes
and contusion” that lie was the boy's father and felt "great
sola itttde for his future welfare and liberty." After an un¬
successful attempt to educate his mulatto son in a local
school, a South Carolinian sent him to Indiana "where he
had him settled, and provided him, from time to time with
considerable sums of money.” 6 A distinguished southern
planter and statesman who had children by two slave
women com luded that it would be cruel to free them and
send them to the North. Instead, he gave the children and
n Johnston, Miscegenation, p. 3; CaUerall (eel.), Judicial Cases, II,
P'm-
VIII: Between Two Cultures

their mothers to a legitimate son (who also seemed to have

been involved with one of the women) with instructions
that they be treated well and never be sold to strangers.
Keeping them as slaves within the family, the father be¬
lieved, was the best that could be done for them.6 This tan¬
gled situation doubtless caused the father as much anguish
as it did the white women of his family.
It requires a special variety of obtuseness to be able to
overlook the fact that miscegenation also had a sharp psy¬
chological impact upon the Negroes. A devoted slave hus¬
band who was unable to protect his wife from the master
or overseer, or whose wife willingly submitted to the ad¬
vances of a white man, faced a personal crisis of major pro¬
portions. Occasionally the husband ignored the conse¬
quences and retaliated violently against a white man for
taking liberties with his wife. On the other hand, a male
bondsman might incur the master’s hostility if he won the
affection of a female in whom the master also had an inter¬
est. Thus an Alabama slave found himself in trouble when
the master “became jealous” of him for “running after one
of his women.” 7
Slave women did not always regard a sexual contact with
a white male as a privilege which was in no case to be re¬
jected. Many whose sexual behavior was altogether pro¬
miscuous doubtless gave their favors without restraint to
whites and Negroes alike. Others who were less promiscu¬
ous and would have rejected most whites, out of sheer op¬
portunism willingly submitted to the master or overseer
with the hope that special privileges—perhaps even free¬
dom-—would be their reward.8 But some slave women, be-

* The author was unable to obtain permission to cite the document con¬
taining this information.
T Henson, Story, pp. 2-7; Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, pp. 228,
362-63; Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 85-88.
* Cf. Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, p. 65; Phillips and Glunt (eds.),
Florida Plantation Records, pp. 156-57.

359
 The Peculiar Institution

cause of devotion to their husbands, or because of a belief

that it was morally wrong, or for some other inhibiting rea¬
son, did not voluntarily have sexual relations even with
their masters. If they submitted, it was only under coer¬
cion. Indeed, some miscegenation was little more than rape,
though no such offense against a slave woman was recog¬
nized in law. The Louisiana Supreme Court regretfully
confessed that the female slave was “peculiarly exposed
. . . to the seductions of an unprincipled master.” 9
When the effects of miscegenation upon all groups in
southern society have been measured, one can hardly es¬
cape the conclusion that the principal victims were the col¬
ored females who were directly involved in it. There is no
way to gauge precisely the psychological consequences of
sexual promiscuity for slave women, but it is certain that
few escaped without serious damage to their psyche. The
concubine suffered profoundly if she became emotionally
involved with her white paramour, for sooner or later the
relationship would probably be broken off. The shock to
an inhibited slave female whose submission was more or
less coerced is obvious enough. Moreover, the woman who
entered a prolonged alliance, willingly or unwillingly, was
bound to feel the resentment of other slaves—to find her¬
self isolated from her own people and yet unable to gain
access to white society. If she did not share her master’s
passion, or affection, she was exposed to his wrath. Finally,
miscegenation exposed her to the jealous anger of the white
wife. For this reason, a Texas judge was sympathetic when
a master conveyed his slave mistress and two mulatto chil¬
dren to a relative, in order to separate them from his “in¬
furiated wife, who would possibly, yea, probably, inflict
severity, cruelty and hardship on them.” * 1
Miscegenation under slavery, then, was above all an in-
9 Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, III, p. 613.
1 Ibid., V, p. 294.

360
VIII: Between Two Cultures
dignity to Negro women. It was an indignity to them, first,
because they were rarely in a position freely to accept or re¬
ject the advances of white men; second, because those who
enslaved them took advantage of the sexual promiscuity
that slavery itself encouraged; and last, because the venera¬
tion of white womanhood combined with the disrespect for
Negro womanhood was a peculiarly cynical application of
a double standard.

5
What else was there in the lives of slaves besides work,
sleep, and procreation? What filled their idle hours? What
occupied their minds? What distinguished them from do¬
mestic animals? Much will never be known, for surviving
records provide only brief glimpses into the private life of
the slave quarters. But much can be learned from Negro
songs and folklore, from the recollections of former slaves,
and from the observations of the more perceptive and sen¬
sitive whites.
The average bondsman, it would appear, lived more or
less aimlessly in a bleak and narrow world. He lived in a
world without schools, without books, without learned
men; he knew less of the fine arts and of aesthetic values
than he had known in Africa; and he found few ways to
break the montonous sameness of all his days. His world
was the few square miles of earth surrounding his cabin—
a familiar island beyond which were strange places (up
North where people like him were not slaves), frightening
places (“down the river’’ where overseers were devils), and
dead places (across the ocean where his ancestors had lived
and where he had no desire to go). His world was full of
mysteries which he could not solve, full of forces which he
could not control. And so he tended to be a fatalist and
futilitarian, for nothing else could reconcile him to his life.

361
 The Peculiar Institution

When they left Africa the Negroes carried with them a

knowledge of their own complex cultures. Some elements
of their cultures—or at least some adaptations or variations
of them—they planted somewhat insecurely in America.
These surviving “Africanisms” were evident in their
speech, in their dances, in their music, in their folklore,
and in their religion. The amount of their African heritage
that remained varied with time and place. More of it was
evident in the eighteenth century when a large proportion
of the slaves were native Africans, than in the mid-nine¬
teenth century when the great majority were second- and
third-generation Americans. Field-hands living on large
plantations in isolated areas, such as the South Carolina
and Georgia sea islands, doubtless preserved more “Afri¬
canisms” than slaves who were widely dispersed in rela¬
tively small holdings or who lived in their master’s houses
as domestics. How substantial and how durable the African
heritage was is a question over which students of the Amer¬
ican Negro have long disagreed.2
But the disagreement has been over the size of what was
admittedly a fragment; few would deny that by the ante¬
bellum period slaves everywhere in the South had lost most
of their African culture. In bondage, the Negroes lacked
cultural autonomy—the authority to apply rigorous sanc¬
tions against those who violated or repudiated their own
traditions. Instead, they were exposed to considerable pres¬
sure to learn and accept whichever of the white man’s cus¬
toms would help them to exist with a minimum of friction
in a biracial society. Before the Civil War, American Ne¬
groes developed no cultural nationalism, no conscious
pride in African ways. At most they unconsciously pre-

2 The literature on this subject is vast, but for the two points of view
see Robert E. Park, "The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures with Spe¬
cial Reference to the Negro,” Journal of Negro History, IV (1919),
pp. 111-33; Melville J. Herskovits, “On the Provenience of New
World Negroes,” Social Forces, XII (1933), pp. 247-62.
VIII: Between Two Cultures

served some of their old culture when it had a direct rele¬

vance to their new lives, or they fused it with things taken
from the whites.
If anything, most ante-bellum slaves showed a desire to
forget their African past and to embrace as much of white
civilization as they could. They often looked with contemp¬
tuous amusement upon newly imported Africans. When a
Tennesseean attempted to teach a group of slaves a dance
he had witnessed on the Guinea coast, he was astonished by
their lack of aptitude and lack of interest. In fact, the feel¬
ings of these slaves were “hurt by the insinuation which
his effort conveyed.” 3 Thus the “Africanisms” of the slaves
—even of the Gullah Negroes of the South Carolina sea is¬
lands—were mere vestiges of their old cultures. For exam¬
ple, a few African words remained in their speech; the rest
was the crude and ungrammatical English of an illiterate
folk.
There was an element of tragedy in this. The slaves, hav¬
ing lost the bulk of their African heritage, were prevented
from sharing in much of the best of southern white culture.
There were exceptions, of course. Occasionally a gifted
slave overcame all obstacles and without formal education
became a brilliant mathematician or a remarkable linguist.
A few showed artistic talents of a high order. Others
learned to read and write, or, in the case of house servants,
manifested polite breeding which matched—and some¬
times surpassed—that of their masters. But the life of the
generality of slaves, as a visitor to South Carolina observed,
was “far removed from [white] civilization”; it was “mere
animal existence, passed in physical exertion or enjoy¬
ment.” Fanny Kemble saw grown slaves “rolling, tum¬
bling, kicking, and wallowing in the dust, regardless alike
of decency, and incapable of any more rational amuse-

s Ingraham (ed.), Sunny South, pp. 146-47.

365
 The Peculiar Institution

ment; or lolling, with half-closed eyes, like so many cats

and dogs, against a wall, or upon a bank in the sun, dozing
away their short leisure hour.” *
This was essentially the way it had to be as long as the
Negro was held in bondage. So far from slavery acting as a
civilizing force, it merely took away from the African his
native culture and gave him, in exchange, little more than
vocational training. So far from the plantation serving as a
school to educate a “backward” people, its prime function
in this respect was to train each new generation of slaves.
In slavery the Negro existed in a kind of cultural void. He
lived in a twilight zone between two ways of life and was
unable to obtain from either many of the attributes which
distinguish man from beast. Olmsted noted that slaves ac¬
quired, by example or compulsion, some of the external
forms of white civilization; but this was poor compensa¬
tion for “the systematic withdrawal from them of all the
usual influences which tend to nourish the moral nature
and develop the intellectual faculties, in savages as well as
in civilized free men.” 6
What, then, filled the leisure hours of the slaves? The
answer, in part, is that these culturally rootless people de¬
voted much of this time to the sheer pleasure of being
idle. Such activities as they did engage in were the simple
diversions of a poor, untutored folk—activities that gave
them physical pleasure or emotional release. Slaves prob¬
ably found it more difficult to find satisfying amusements
on the small farms where they had few comrades, than in
the cities and on the plantations where they could mix
freely with their own people.
“I have no desire to represent the life of slavery as an ex-

* Harrison, Gospel Among the Slaves, p. 245; [Ingraham], South-West,

II, p. 194; Kemble, Journal, p. 66.
« Olmsted, Back Country, pp. 70-71.

364
VIII: Between Two Cultures
pericnce of nothing but misery,” wrote a former bonds¬
man. In addition to the unpleasant things, he also remem¬
bered “jolly Christmas times, dances before old massa s
door for the first drink of egg-nog, extra meat at holiday
times, midnight visits to apple orchards, broiling stray
chickens, and first-rate tricks to dodge work.” Feasting, as
this account suggested, was one of the slave’s chief pleas¬
ures, one of his “principle sources of comfort.” The feast
was what he looked forward to not only at Christmas but
when crops were laid by, when there was a wedding, or
when the master gave a reward for good behavior. “Only
the slave who has lived all the year on his scanty allowance
of meal and bacon, can appreciate such suppers,” recalled
another ex-bondsman. Then his problems were forgotten
as he gave himself up “to the intoxication of pleasurable
amusements.” Indeed he might when, for example, a Ten¬
nessee master provided a feast such as this: “ I hey Barbe¬
cue half a small Beef and two fat shoats and some Chickens
—have peach pies—Chicken pies, beets[,] Roasting Ears
and potatoes in profusion.” "
Occasions such as Christmas or a corn-shucking were
times not only for feasting but also for visiting with slaves
on nearby establishments. In Virginia a visitor observed
that many bondsmen spent Sundays “strolling about the
fields and streets” finding joy in their relative freedom of
movement. They dressed in bright-colored holiday clothes,
which contrasted pleasantly with their drab everyday ap¬
parel. The slaves seemed to welcome each holiday with
great fervor, for they found in it an enormous relief from
the boredom of their daily lives. “All are brushing up, put¬
ting on their best rigging, and with boisterous joy hailing

a Henson, Story, pp. i(j-20, 56; Northup, / waive Years a Slave, pp. 213-
16; Steward, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, pp. 28-31; Bills Diary, entry
for July 24, 1858.

365
 The Peculiar Institution

the approach of the Holy days,” noted an Arkansas master

at the start of the Christmas season.* 7
Dancing was one of the favorite pastimes of the slaves,
not only on special holidays but on Saturday nights as well.
A few pious masters prohibited this diversion, as did a
Virginian who was shocked when neighborhood slaves at¬
tended a dancing party: “God forbid that one of my Fam¬
ily either white or colored should ever be caught at such an
abominable wicked and adulterous place.” But most mas¬
ters, too wise to enforce a regime so austere, permitted a
shuffle at least occasionally. “This is Saturday night,” wrote
a Louisianian, “and I hear the fiddle going in the Quarter.
We have two parties here among the Negroes. One is a
dancing party and the other a Praying party. The dancers
have it tonight, and the other party will hold forth to¬
morrow.” 8
The kinds of jigs and double shuffles that slaves indulged
in were once described as “dancing all over”; they revealed
an apparent capacity to “agitate every part of the body at
the same time.” Such dances were physical and emotional
orgies. Fanny Kemble found it impossible to describe “all
the contortions, and springs, and flings, and kicks, and
capers” the slaves accomplished as they danced “Jim
Crow.” A visitor at a “shake-down” in a Louisiana sugar
house found the dancers in a “thumping ecstasy, with loose
elbows, pendulous paws, angulated knees, heads thrown
back, and backs arched inwards—a glazed eye, intense so¬
lemnity of mien.” 9 Slaves danced to the music of the fiddle
or banjo, or they beat out their rhythm with sticks on tin
pans or by clapping their hands or tapping their feet.

i Emerson Journal, entry for September ig, 1841; John W. Brown Di

ary, entry for December 25, 1853.
8 Walker Diary, entry for February 13, 1841; H. W. Poynor to Wil¬
liam G. Harding, March 22, 1850, Harding-Jackson Papers.
® De Bow’s Review, XI (1851), p. 66; Kemble, Journal, pp. 96-97;
Russell, Diary, pp. 258-59.

366
VIII: Between Two Cultures

These ancestors of twentieth-century “jitterbugs” devel¬

oped their own peculiar jargon too. In Virginia a skilled
dancer could “put his foot good”; he was a “ring-clipper,”
a “snow-belcher,” and a “drag-out”; he was no “bug-eater,”
for he could “carry a broad row,” “hoe de corn,” and “dig
de taters.” 1
Other holiday amusements included hunting, trapping,
and fishing. In spite of legal interdictions, slaves gambled
with each other and with “dissolute” whites. But some
found both pleasure and profit in using their leisure to
pursue a handicraft; they made brooms, mats, horse col¬
lars, baskets, boats, and canoes. These “sober, thinking and
industrious” bondsmen scorned those who wasted time in
frivolities or picked up the white man’s vices.2
A few things in the lives of slaves belonged to them in a
more intimate and personal way; these were things which
illustrated peculiarly well the blending of African tradi¬
tions with new experiences in America. For instance, folk¬
lore was important to them as it has always been to illiter¬
ate people. Some of it preserved legends of their own past;
some explained natural phenomena or described a world
of the spirits; and some told with charming symbolism the
story of the endless warfare between black and white men.
The tales of Br’er Rabbit, in all their variations, made vir¬
tues of such qualities as wit, strategy, and deceit—the weap¬
ons of the weak in their battles with the strong. Br er Bear
had great physical power but was a hapless bumbler; Br er
Fox was shrewd and crafty as well as strong but, nonethe¬
less, was never quite a match for Br’er Rabbit. This was a
scheme of things which the slave found delightful to con¬
template.3 _
1 Farmers’ Register, VI (1838), pp. 59-61.
2 Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina, pp. 555-57; Douglass, My
Bondage, pp. 251-52.
3 Crum, Gullah, p. 120; Benjamin A. Botkin (ed.) , Lay My Burden
Down, p. 2.

367
 The Peculiar Institution

The bondsmen had ceremonial occasions of their own,

and they devised special ways of commemorating the white
man’s holidays. At Christmas in eastern North Carolina,
they begged pennies from the whites as they went “John
Canoeing” (or “John Cunering”) along the roads, wear¬
ing masks and outlandish costumes, blowing horns, tin¬
kling tambourines, dancing, and chanting

Hah! Low! Here we go!

Hah! Low! Here we go!
Hah! Low! Here we go!
Kuners come from Denby!

Virginia slaves had persimmon parties where they inter¬

spersed dancing with draughts of persimmon beer and
slices of persimmon bread. At one of these parties the banjo
player sat in a chair on the beer barrel: “A long white cow-
tail, queued with red ribbon ornamented his head, and
hung gracefully down his back; over this he wore a three-
cocked hat, decorated with peacock feathers, a rose cock¬
ade, a bunch of ripe persimmons, and . . . three pods of
red pepper as a top-knot.” On some Louisiana sugar plan¬
tations, when the cutters reached the last row of cane they
left the tallest cane standing and tied a blue ribbon to it.
In a ceremony which marked the end of the harvest, one of
the laborers waved his cane knife in the air, “sang to the
cane as if it were a person, and danced around it several
times before cutting it.” Then the workers mounted their
carts and triumphantly carried the last cane to the master’s
house where they were given a drink.4
Rarely did a contemporary write about slaves without
mentioning their music, for this was their most splendid
vehicle of self-expression. Slave music was a unique blend
of “Africanisms,” of Protestant hymns and revival songs,
4 Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina, p. 553; Farmers’ Register, VI
(1838), pp. 59-61; Moody, “Slavery on Louisiana Sugar Plantations,"
loc. cit., p. 277 n.

368
VIII: Between Two Cultures
and of the feelings and emotions that were a part of life
in servitude.5 6 The Negroes had a repertory of songs for al¬
most every occasion, and they not only sang them with in¬
numerable variations but constantly improvised new ones
besides. They sang spirituals which revealed their concep¬
tions of Christianity and professed their religious faith.
They sang work songs (usually slow in tempo) to break
the monotony of toil in the tobacco factories, in the sugar
houses, on the river boats, and in the fields. They sang
whimsical songs which told little stories or ridiculed hu¬
man frailties. They sang nonsense songs, such as “Who-zen-
John, Who-za” sung by a group of Virginia slaves as they
“clapped juber” to a dance:

Old black bull come down de hollow.

He shake hi’ tail, you hear him bellow;
When he bellow he jar de river,
He paw de yearth, he make it quiver.
Who-zen-John, who-za.e

Above all, they sang plaintive songs about the sorrows

and the yearnings which they dared not, or could not, more
than half express. Music of this kind could hardly have
come from an altogether carefree and contented people.
“The singing of a man cast away on a desolate island,
wrote Frederick Douglass, “might be as appropriately con¬
sidered an evidence of his contentment and happiness, as
the singing of a slave. Sorrow and desolation have their
songs, as well as joy and peace.’’ 7 In their somber and
mournful moods the bondsmen voiced sentiments such as
these: “O Lord, O my Lord! O my good Lord keep me
from sinking down”; “Got nowhere to lay my weary head ;
“My trouble is hard”; “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve

5 The most recent collection of slave songs is Miles Mark Fisher, Negro
Slave Songs in the United States (Ithaca, 1953).
6 Farmers’ Register, VI (1838), pp. 59-61.
1 Douglass, My Bondage, pp. 99-100.

369
 The Peculiar Institution

seen”; and ‘‘Lawd, I can’t help from cryin’ sometime.” The

Gullah Negroes of South Carolina sang:

I know moon-rise, I know star-rise.

Lay dis body down.
I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight,
To lay dis body down.
I’ll walk in de graveyard. I’ll walk through de graveyard,
To lay dis body down.
I’ll lie in de grave and stretch out my arms;
Lay dis body down;
I go to de judgment in de evenin’ of de day,
When I lay dis body down;
And my soul and your soul will meet in de day
When I lay dis body down.8

One final ingredient helped to make pleasant the leisure

hours of numerous slave men and women: alcohol in its
crudest but cheapest and most concentrated forms. To be
sure, these bibulous bondsmen merely indulged in a com¬
mon vice of an age of hard liquor and heavy drinkers; but
they, more than their masters, made the periodic solace of
the bottle a necessity of life. In preparing for Christmas,
slaves somehow managed to smuggle “fresh bottles of rum
or whisky into their cabins,” for many thought of each
holiday as a time for a bacchanalian spree. Indeed, re¬
called a former bondsman, to be sober during the holidays
was “disgraceful; and he was esteemed a lazy and improvi¬
dent man, who could not afford to drink whisky during
Christmas.” 9 No law, no threat of the master, ever kept
liquor out of the hands of slaves or stopped the illicit
trade between them and “unscrupulous” whites. Some mas¬
ters themselves furnished a supply of whisky for holiday oc-

8 Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment (Bos¬

ton, 1870), p. 209.
e Hundley, Social Relations, pp. 359-60; Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 75,
101-102; Adams Diary, entry for December 29, 1857; Douglass, My
Bondage, pp. 251-52.

37°
VIII: Between Two Cultures

casions, or winked at violations of state laws and of their

own rules.
There was little truth in the abolitionist charge that mas¬
ters gave liquor to their slaves in order to befuddle their
minds and keep them in bondage. On the other hand,
many bondsmen used intoxicants for a good deal more
than an occasional pleasant stimulant, a mere conviviality
of festive occasions. They found that liquor provided their
only satisfactory escape from the indignities, the frustra¬
tions, the emptiness, the oppressive boredom of slavery.
Hence, when they had the chance, they resorted to places
that catered to the Negro trade or found sanctuaries where
they could tipple undisturbed. What filled their alcoholic
dreams one can only guess, for the dreams at least were
theirs alone.

6
Most slaves took their religion seriously, though by the
standards of white Christians they sinned mightily. In Af¬
rica the Negro’s world was inhabited by petulant spirits
whose demands had to be gratified; his relationship to these
spirits was regulated by the rituals and dogmas of his pa¬
gan faith. Some of this was in the corpus of “Africanisms”
brought to America. But most of it was lost within a gen¬
eration, not only because of the general decay of Negro
culture but also because new problems and experiences
created an urgent need for a new kind of religious expres¬
sion and a new set of beliefs. What the slave needed now
was a spiritual life in which he could participate vigor¬
ously, which transported him from the dull routine of
bondage and which promised him that a better time was
within his reach. Hence, he embraced evangelical Protes¬
tantism eagerly, because it so admirably satisfied all these
needs.
“The doctrine of the Savior comes to the negro slaves

371
 The Peculiar Institution

as their most inward need, and as the accomplishment of

the wishes of their souls,” explained a visitor to the South.
“They themselves enunciate it with the purest joy. . . .
Their prayers burst forth into flame as they ascend to
heaven.” On many plantations religious exercises were al¬
most “the only habitual recreation not purely sensual,”
Olmsted noted; hence slaves poured all their emotions into
them “with an intensity and vehemence almost terrible to
witness.” A former slave recalled the ecstasy he felt when
he learned that there was a salvation "for every man" and
that God loved black men as well as white. “I seemed to
see a glorious being, in a cloud of splendor, smiling down
from on high,” ready to “welcome me to the skies.” 1
Like the whites, many slaves alternated outbursts of in¬
tense religious excitement with intervals of religious calm
or indifference, for both races participated in the revivals
that periodically swept rural America. At the emotional
height of a revival, most of the slaves in a neighborhood
might renounce worldly pleasures and live austere lives
without the fiddle, without dancing, and without whisky.
But this could not last forever, and gradually they drifted
back to their sinful ways.2 And their masters often drifted
with them; for although many used religion as a means of
control, many others neglected it between revivals.
Of the Protestant sects, the Baptists and Methodists pros¬
elytized among the slaves most vigorously and counted
among their members the great majority of those who
joined churches. The decorous Episcopalians were ineffec¬
tual in their missionary work; even masters who adhered
to this sect seldom managed to convert their own slaves.
The Presbyterians had greater success than the Episco-

1 Bremer, Homes of the New World, II, p. 155; Olmsted, Sack Coun¬
try, p. 106; Henson, Story, pp. 28-29.
2 Smedes, Memorials, pp. 161-62; Henry Watson, Jr., to his mother,
July 7, 1846, Watson Papers.

372
VIII: Between Two Cultures

palians but far less than the Baptists or Methodists. Indeed,

Presbyterian clergymen who preached to the slaves were
advised to write out their sermons in advance and to dis¬
courage “exclamations,” “outcries,” and “boisterous sing¬
ing.” As a result, explained a Methodist, while the Presby¬
terian parson was composing his sermon the Methodist
itinerant traveled forty miles and gave “hell and damna¬
tion to his unrepentant hearers.” According to an ex-slave,
the Methodists “preached in a manner so plain that the
way-faring man, though a fool, could not err therein.” 3
So did the Baptists—and, in addition, their practice of
baptism by immersion gave them a special appeal.
In the North, Negroes organized their own independent
churches; in the South, except in a few border cities, the
laws against slave assemblies prevented them from doing
this before the Civil War. Many slaves attended the white-
controlled churches or were preached to by white minis¬
ters at special services. This inhibited them and limited
both the spiritual and emotional value of their religious ex¬
perience, because there was an enormous gap between a
congregation of slaves and even the most sympathetic white
clergyman. As one missionary confessed, “The pastor will
meet with some rough and barren spots, and encounter
tardiness, indifference, heaviness of eyes and inattention—
yea, many things to depress and discourage.” 4
Yet it was from white preachers that the slaves first re¬
ceived their Christian indoctrination. To many bondsmen
affiliation with a white church was a matter of considerable
importance, and they did not take lightly the penalty of
being “excluded from the fellowship” for immorality or
“heathenism.” Some white clergymen preached to them

s Jones, Suggestions on the Religious Instruction of the Negroes, pp.

14-15; Carter G. Woodson, The History of the Negro Church (Wash¬
ington, D.C., 1921) , pp. 97-98; Thompson, Life, p. 18.
* Jones, Suggestions on the Religious Instruction of the Negroes, p. 17.

373
 The Peculiar Institution

with great success. Nor was it uncommon to see whites and

slaves “around the same altar . . . mingling their cries for
mercy” and together finding “the pearl of great price.” 5
Even so, most bondsmen received infinitely greater sat¬
isfaction from their own unsupervised religious meetings
which they held secretly or which their masters tolerated
in disregard of the law. In these gatherings slaves could ex¬
press themselves freely and interpret the Christian faith to
their own satisfaction, even though some educated whites
believed that their interpretation contained more heathen
superstition than Christianity. The slaves, observed Olm¬
sted, were “subject to intense excitements; often really
maniacal,” which they considered to be religious; but “I
cannot see that they indicate anything but a miserable sys¬
tem of superstition, the more painful that it employs some
forms and words ordinarily connected with true Christian¬
ity.” 6
Not only the practice of voodooism which survived
among a few slaves in southern Louisiana, but the wide¬
spread belief in charms and spirits stemmed in part from
the African past. Frederick Douglass learned from an old
African (who had “magic powers”) that if a slave wore the
root of a certain herb on his right side, no white man could
ever whip him. Slave conjurers accomplished wondrous
feats with “root work” and put frightful curses upon their
enemies. A Louisiana master once had to punish a slave
because of “a phial which was found in his possession con¬
taining two ground puppies as they are called. The negroes
were under some apprehension that he intended to do mis¬
chief.” 7

5 Flat River Church Records (Person County, North Carolina) ; Harri¬

son, Gospel Among the Slaves, pp. 199-201.
* Olmsted, Seaboard, p. 114.
t Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 102; Douglass, My Bondage, p. 238; Ham¬
mond Diary, entry tor October 16, 1835; Marston Diary, entry for No¬
vember 25, 1825.

374
VIII: Between Two Cultures

But slave superstitions did not all originate in Africa,

and it would even be difficult to prove that most did. For
the slaves picked up plenty of them from “the good Puri¬
tans, Baptists, Methodists, and other religious sects who
first obtained possession of their ancestors.” (Indeed, more
than likely Negroes and whites made a generous exchange
of superstitions.) There is no need to trace back to Africa
the slave’s fear of beginning to plant a crop on Friday, his
dread of witches, ghosts, and hobgoblins, his confidence in
good-luck charms, his alarm at evil omens, his belief in
dreams, and his reluctance to visit burying grounds after
dark. These superstitions were all firmly rooted in Anglo-
Saxon folklore. From the whites some slaves learned that it
was possible to communicate with the world of spirits: “It
is not at all uncommon to hear them refer to conversations
which they allege, and apparently believe themselves to
have had with Christ, the apostles, or the prophets of old,
or to account for some of their actions by attributing them
to the direct influence of the Holy Spirit, or of the devil.”
During the 1840’s, many slaves heard about Millerism and
waited in terror for the end of the world.8 The identifica¬
tion of superstition is, of course, a highly subjective proc¬
ess; and southern whites tended to condemn as supersti¬
tion whatever elements of slave belief they did not happen
to share—as they condemned each other’s sectarian beliefs.
The influence of Africa could sometimes be detected in
the manner in which slaves conducted themselves at their
private religious services. In the sea islands, for example, a
prayer meeting at the “praise house” was followed by a
“shout,” which was an invigorating group ceremony. The
participants “begin first walking and by-and-by shuffling
around, one after the other, in a ring. The foot is hardly
taken from the floor, and the progression is mainly due to
* Olmsted, Back Country, p. 105; Davis (ed.) , Diary of Bennet H. Bar-
row, pp. 283-85.

375
 The Peculiar Institution

a jerking, hitching motion, which agitates the entire

shouter, and soon brings out streams of perspiration. Some¬
times they dance silently, sometimes as they shuffle they
sing the chorus of the spiritual, and sometimes the song it¬
self is sung by the dancers.” This, a white witness believed,
was “certainly the remains of some old idol worship.” Olm¬
sted reported that in social worship the slaves “work them¬
selves up to a great pitch of excitement, in which they yell
and cry aloud, and, finally, shriek and leap up, clapping
their hands and dancing, as it is done at heathen festivals.” 9
But again it is not easy to tell how much of their “hea¬
thenism” the slaves learned in the white churches and at
white revival meetings. One Sunday morning, in Accomac
County, Virginia, a visitor attended a Methodist church
where the slaves were permitted to hold their own services
before the whites occupied the building. “Such a medley of
sounds, I never heard before. They exhorted, prayed, sung,
shouted, cryed, grunted and growled. Poor Souls! they
knew no better, for I found that when the other services
began the sounds were similar, which the white folks made;
and the negroes only imitated them and shouted a little
louder.” * 1
A camp meeting in South Carolina provided an equally
striking illustration of this point. When the services be¬
gan, a great crowd assembled around a wooden platform,
the Negroes on one side and the whites on the other. On
the platform stood four preachers, and between the sing¬
ing of hymns two of them exhorted the Negroes and two
the whites, “calling on the sinners ... to come to the
Savior, to escape eternal damnation!” Soon some of the
white people came forward and threw themselves, “as if
overcome,” before the platform where the ministers re-
9 Johnson, Sea Islands, pp. 149-51; Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 449-50.
1 Emerson Journal, entry for September 26, 1841.

376
VIII: Between Two Cultures
ceived their confessions and consoled them. Around a
white girl, who had fallen into a trance, stood a dozen
women singing hymns of the resurrection. “In the camp of
the blacks is heard a great tumult and a loud cry. Men roar
and bawl out; women screech like pigs about to be killed;
many, having fallen into convulsions, leap and strike about
them, so that they are obliged to be held down.” The Ne¬
groes made more noise and were more animated than the
whites, but the behavior of the two races did not differ in
any fundamental way. Except for condemning a “holy
dance” which some Negro women engaged in for a new
convert, the whites did not appear to think that the Ne¬
groes acted in an outrageous or unchristian fashion.2 *
In short, the religion of the slaves was, in essence, strik¬
ingly similar to that of the poor, illiterate white men of
the ante-bellum South.

V
Since the masters kept diaries and wrote letters, books,
and essays, it is relatively easy to discover their various at¬
titudes toward slaves. What the slaves thought of their mas¬
ters (and of white people generally) is just as important to
know but infinitely more difficult to find. Not only did
slaves and ex-slaves write a good deal less but most of them
seemed determined that no white man should ever know
their thoughts. As Olmsted observed, the average slave
possessed considerable “cunning, shrewdness, [and] reti¬
cence.” 8
Several points, however, are clear: (1) slaves did not
have one uniform attitude toward whites, but a whole
range of attitudes; (2) they gave much attention to the
2 Bremer, Homes of the New World, I, pp. 306-315.
s Olmsted, Back Country, p. 384.

377
 The Peculiar Institution

problem of their relationship with whites; and (3) they

found the “management of whites” as complex a matter as
their masters found the “management of Negroes.” Every
slave became conscious of the “white problem” sometime
in early childhood; for in a society dominated by whites,
N egro children have always had to learn, more or less pain¬
fully, the meaning of caste and somehow come to terms
with it.4 In bondage, they also had to learn what it meant to
be property.
During the first half dozen years of their lives neither
caste nor bondage had meaning to the children of either
race, and blacks and whites often played together without
consciousness of color. But it was not long before the black
child, in some way, began to discover his peculiar position.
Perhaps his mother or father explained his status to him
and told him how to behave around the master and other
whites. (“My father always advised me to be tractable, and
get along with the white people in the best manner I
could,” recalled a former slave.5) Perhaps the slave child
saw the white child begin to assume an attitude of superi¬
ority prior to their separation. Perhaps he first encoun¬
tered reality when the master or overseer began to super¬
cede parental authority—or, in a more shocking way, when
he saw the master or overseer administer a reprimand or
corporal punishment to one of his parents. Thus the young
slave became conscious of the “white problem,” conscious
that the white man was a formidable figure with preten¬
sions of omniscience and omnipotence. As he became in¬
volved with white men, the slave gradually developed an
emotional attitude toward them.
His attitude, while perhaps seldom one of complete con¬
fidence, was frequently one of amiable regard, sometimes of

* Cf. E. Franklin Frazier, Negro Youth at the Crossways (Washington.

D.C., 1940), passim.
6 Drew, The Refugee, p. 358.

378
VIII: Between Two Cultures

deep affection. A slave who lived close to a warm, generous,

and affectionate master often could not help but recipro¬
cate these feelings, for the barriers of bondage and caste
could not prevent decent human beings from showing sym¬
pathy and compassion for one another—slave for master as
well as master for slave. The domestic’s proverbial love for
the white family was by no means altogether a myth. But
it should be remembered that a slave’s love for the good
white people he knew was not necessarily a love of servi¬
tude, that a slave could wish to be free without hating the
man who kept him in chains. A Negro woman who escaped
from bondage in Missouri remembered fondly her master
and many other whites she had known.6
Some slaves, in dealing with whites, seemed to be coldly
opportunistic; they evidently had concluded that it was
most practical to use the arts of diplomacy, to “keep on the
right side” of their masters, in order to enjoy the maximum
privileges and comforts available to them in bondage. So
they flattered the whites, affected complete subservience,
and behaved like buffoons. When Olmsted was introduced
to a slave preacher he shook the Negro’s hand and greeted
him respectfully; but the latter “seemed to take this for a
joke and laughed heartily.” The master explained in a
“slightly humorous” tone that the preacher was also the
driver, that he drove the field-hands at the cotton all week
and at the Gospel on Sunday. At this remark the preacher
“began to laugh again, and reeled off like a drunken man
—entirely overcome with merriment.” Thus, remarked
Olmsted, having concluded that the purpose of the inter¬
view was to make fun of him, the preacher “generously”
assumed “a merry humor.” 7 This slave, like many others,
seemed willing enough to barter his self-respect for the
privileges and prestige of his high offices.
« Ibid., pp. 299-300.
’ Olmsted, Seaboard, p. 451.

379
 The Peculiar Institution

Other slaves exhibited toward whites no strong emotion

either of affection or hatred, but rather an attitude of deep
suspicion. Many contemporaries commented upon their
“habitual distrust of the white race” and noted that they
were “always suspicious.” When this was the Negro’s basic
attitude, the resulting relationship was an amoral one
which resembled an unending civil war; the slave then
seemed to think that he was entitled to use every tactic of
deception and chicanery he could devise. Many ex-slaves
who spoke of their former masters without bitterness still
recalled with particular pleasure the times when they had
outwitted or beguiled them (“ ’cause us had to lie”) ,8
To a few slaves this civil war was an intense and serious
business, because they felt for their masters (sometimes for
all whites) an abiding animosity. In speaking of the whites,
such bondsmen used “the language of hatred and revenge”;
on one plantation the slaves in their private conversations
contemptuously called their master “Old Hogjaw.” Exter¬
nally these slaves wore an air of sullenness. “You need only
look in their faces to see they are not happy,” exclaimed a
traveler; instead, they were “depressed” or “gloomy.”
Field-hands often gave no visible sign of pleasure when
their master approached; some made clumsy bows, but oth¬
ers ignored him entirely.9
The poor whites were the one group in the superior caste
for whom the slaves dared openly express their contempt,
and the slaves did so in picturesque terms. Masters often
tolerated this and were even amused by it. However, it is
likely that some slaves were thereby expressing their opin¬
ion of the whole white race. A transparent example of the
s Olmsted, Back Country, p. 114; Bremer, Homes of the New World, I,
p. 292; Botkin, Lay My Burden Down, passim.
« Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, pp, 62-63, 197; Russell, Diary, pp.
133, 146-47, 258, 262; Stirling, Letters, p. 49; Buckingham, Slave States,
I, pp. 62-63.
VIII: Between Two Cultures
malice that a portion of the slaves bore the whites occurred
in St. Louis when a mob tarred and feathered a white man.
“One feature of the scene I could not help remarking,”
wrote a witness: “the negroes all appeared in high glee, and
many of them actually danced with joy.” 1
But the predominant and overpowering emotion that
whites aroused in the majority of slaves was neither love
nor hate but fear. “We were always uneasy,” an ex-slave
recalled; when “a white man spoke to me, I would feel
frightened,” another confessed. In Alabama, a visitor who
lost his pocketbook noted that the slave who found it “was
afraid of being whipped for theft and had given it to the
first white man he saw, and at first was afraid to pick it up.”
A fugitive who was taken into the home of an Ohio Quaker
found it impossible to overcome his timidity and appre¬
hension. “I had never had a white man to treat me as an
equal, and the idea of a white lady waiting on me at the ta¬
ble was still worse I ... I thought if I could only be al¬
lowed the privilege of eating in the kitchen, I should be
more than satisfied.” 2
The masters themselves provided the most vivid evi¬
dence of the frightening image that white men assumed in
the minds of many slaves. When they advertised for run¬
aways, the owners frequently revealed a distressing rela¬
tionship between the two races, a relationship that must
have been for these slaves an emotional nightmare. In their
advertisements no descriptive phrases were more common
than these: “stutters very much when spoken to”; “speaks
softly and has a downcast look”; “has an uneasy appearance
when spoken to”; “speaks quickly, and with an anxious ex¬
pression of countenance”; “a very down look, and easily

1 Drew, The Refugee, pp. 156-57; Benwell, Travels, p. gg.

2 Drew, The Refugee, pp. 30, 86; Watson Diary, entry for January 1,
1831; Brown, Narrative, pp. 102-103.

381
 The Peculiar Institution

confused when spoken to”; “stammers very much so as to

be scarcely understood.”
“I feel lighter,—the dread is gone,” affirmed a Negro
woman who had escaped to Canada. “It is a great heaviness
on a person’s mind to be a slave.” 3
3 Drew, The Refugee, p. 179.

382
 [383 ]
CHAPTER NINE

Profit and Loss

I n searching for evidence to justify their cause, southern

proslavery writers showed remarkable resourcefulness.
In persuasive prose their polemical essays spun out reli¬
gious, historical, scientific, and sociological arguments to
demonstrate that slavery was a positive good for both Ne¬
groes and whites—that it was the very cornerstone of south¬
ern civilization. But they rarely resorted to the most obvi¬
ous and most practical argument of all: the argument that
the peculiar institution was economically profitable to
those who invested in it. Rather, most of the polemicists
insisted that slaves were a financial burden and that the in¬
stitution continued to exist for noneconomic reasons.
They apparently thought that to admit that men could
make money from slave labor would seriously damage their
cause. “In an economical point of view,” wrote James H.
Hammond, “slavery presents some difficulties. As a gen¬
eral rule, I agree that . . . free labor is cheaper than slave
labor. . . . We must, therefore, content ourselves with
. . . the consoling reflection, that what is lost to us is
gained to humanity.” 1
Outside the South, doctrinaire liberals, with whom the
major tenets of Adam Smith were articles of faith, sup-

1 De Bow's Review, VII (1849) , pp. 495-96.

 The Peculiar Institution

ported the defenders of slavery on this point at least. The

liberals, to be sure, criticized slavery because they believed
in the moral goodness of a competitive society of free
men, a society in which labor is rewarded with the fruits
of its toil. But they also criticized slavery because they were
convinced that free labor was, for a number of reasons,
cheaper to employ. John E. Cairnes, the English econo¬
mist, could reason from his liberal assumptions that slav¬
ery was unprofitable. Olmsted, though his position was
somewhat ambiguous and his evidence conflicting, also
reached the general conclusion that slave labor was more
costly than free. Solon Robinson, a northern agricultural
expert, reported after a tour of the South that planters
were earning meager returns on their investments.2
Numerous historical treatises on slavery accept the ver¬
dict of these contemporaries; they agree that, except on the
fresh lands of the Southwest, slavery had nearly ceased to
be profitable by the close of the ante-bellum period—that
some masters made money “in spite of slavery rather than
because of it.” Indeed, a doubt has been raised about
whether slaves were a sound investment “year in and year
out” even in Mississippi.3
If the employment of slaves was unprofitable (or nearly
so), it must somehow be explained why slaves brought high
prices in the market and why masters continued to use
them. To say that no other form of labor was available
hardly answers the question, for slave labor could have
been converted into free labor by emancipation. And
would not an employer use no labor at all in preference to
a kind that gave him no return on his investment? Perhaps
it was the mere expectation of profit, though seldom or
2 Cairnes, Slave Power, passim; Olmsted, Seaboard, passim; Kellar (ed.) ,
Solon Robinson, II, pp. 240-45.
3 Phillips, American Negro Slavery, pp. 391-92; James D. Hill, "Some
Economic Aspects of Slavery, 1850-1860," South Atlantic Quarterly,
XXVI (1927), pp. 161-77; Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, pp. 199-201.

384
IX: Profit and Loss
never realized, that kept him going from year to year. Per¬
haps the slaveholder did not keep careful and accurate busi¬
ness records and therefore did not realize that he was on
an economic treadmill. Or perhaps slavery, having been
profitable in the past, survived now only because of cus¬
tom and habit—because of a kind of economic lethargy.
These are possible explanations, or partial explanations,
why an unprofitable labor system might survive for a con¬
siderable length of time.
Moreover, slavery in the ante-bellum South was not
purely or exclusively an economic institution: it was also
part of a social pattern made venerable by long tradition
and much philosophizing. One cannot assume that a South¬
erner would have promptly liquidated his investment in
land and slaves whenever he found some other form of in¬
vestment that promised him larger returns. For many slave¬
holders were emotionally and ideologically committed to
the agrarian way of life—to the Jeffersonian idea that those
who lived on the land were more virtuous than those who
engaged in commerce or industry. “To day Mr T L Pleas¬
ants came over to consult about breaking up and going into
a mercantile business,” wrote a small Virginia planter. “To
me it seems to be a wild idea, hope he will give it up and
be satisfied to Farm.” An Alabamian refused to abandon
farming to engage in mining operations, for “I believe
Farming is the safest and most honorable calling after
all.” 4
No other profession gave a Southerner such dignity and
importance as the cultivation of the soil with slave labor.
The ownership of slaves, affirmed Cairnes, had become “a
fashionable taste, a social passion”; it had become a symbol
of success like “the possession of a horse among the Arabs:
it brings the owner into connexion with the privileged
4 Adams Diary, entry for June 6, 1859; William A. Dickinson to Eben-
ezer Pettigrew, January 21, 1843, Pettigrew Papers.

385
 The Peculiar Institution

class; it forms the presumption that he has attained a cer¬

tain social position.” Slaves, therefore, were “coveted with
an eagerness far beyond what the intrinsic utility of their
services would explain.” Cairnes concluded that it would
be futile to propose compensated emancipation, for this
would be asking slaveholders to renounce their power and
prestige “for a sum of money which, if well invested, might
perhaps enable them and their descendants to vegetate in
peaceful obscurity!” 5
Southern merchants often put at least part of their sav¬
ings in slaves and plantations, as did lawyers, doctors, and
clergymen, without always considering whether this was
the most profitable investment. In 1834, Henry Watson,
Jr., of East Windsor, Connecticut, moved to Greensboro,
Alabama, and after the Panic of 1837 made a modest for¬
tune as a lawyer. Then, like numerous other Yankees in
the South, Watson sought admission to the gentry through
the purchase of land and Negroes.6 Since he bought wisely
at depression prices, his investment proved to be reward¬
ing economically as well as socially; but it would be hard to
say which reward he found more gratifying.
The desire for profits was no more the exclusive factor
in the use and management of slaves than it was in their
accumulation. Because masters enjoyed status from the
ownership of a large force, they sometimes supported more
field-hands and domestics than they could employ with
maximum efficiency. Nor did planters think only in eco¬
nomic terms when they debated leaving their exhausted
lands in the East for fresh lands in the West. One North
Carolinian refused to move because of his “local attach¬
ments”; another decided not to settle in Louisiana because
the country was “sickly” and lacked “good society.” “This
is a miserably poor place,” wrote James H. Hammond of
5 Cairnes, Slave Power, pp. 137-46.

6 Watson Papers, passim.

386
IX: Profit and Loss
his South Carolina plantation. Yet, “I have hung on here
. . . partly because I did not wish to remove from my na¬
tive state and carry a family into the savage semi-barbarous
west.” 7 Far from being strictly economic men, southern
masters permitted numerous other considerations to help
shape their decisions about the acquisition and utilization
of slave labor.
The proslavery writer’s favorite explanation for the sur¬
vival of an allegedly unprofitable labor system was that Ne¬
groes were unfit for freedom. Slavery existed because of the
“race problem”—because the presence of a horde of free
Negroes would pose an immense social danger and threaten
southern civilization. Slavery was, above all, a method of
regulating race relations, an instrument of social control.
The master kept possession of his slaves from a sense of
duty to society and to his “people.” To destroy the system,
according to the proslavery argument, would be a tragedy
for both races.
But surely there are limits beyond which it is unreason¬
able to credit noneconomic factors for the survival of slav¬
ery. One can concede that the desire for status stimulated
the acquisition of slave property, that fear of the free Ne¬
gro created a demand for a system of social control, and
that some masters had a paternalistic quality in their
make-up. Forces even as strong as these, however, could
not long prevent an archaic labor system from collapsing
of its own weight. There is no evidence that a substantial
number of masters held their human property chiefly to
gain status, or to help the South solve its “race problem,”
or from a patriarchal sense of duty to the Negroes. Had the
possession of slaves been a severe economic burden, it is
certain that the great mass of slaveholders would have
t William S. Pettigrew to J. Johnston Pettigrew, March 8, 1859, Petti¬
grew Family Papers; Henry Alexander to Ebenezer Pettigrew, Novem¬
ber 5, 1838, Pettigrew Papers; Hammond Diary, entry for March 31,
1841.

387
 The Peculiar Institution

thrown them on the market—or, if necessary, abandoned

them. Even Cairnes conceded that the survival of bondage
warranted the inference that the institution was at least
self-supporting.8
As long as slavery showed no sign of decline or decay,
the system was probably accomplishing a good deal more
than merely supporting itself. If slavery appeared to be
flourishing, it must have been justifying itself economically
and not simply surviving on the strength of a sentimental
tradition. And during the 1850’s slavery did in fact give
much evidence of continued vigorous growth. Slave prices
were higher than ever before, and everywhere in the South
the demand for Negro labor exceeded the supply. The rail¬
roads were just beginning to open new cotton lands which
had not previously been exploited for lack of transporta¬
tion. Even Virginians were complaining about a labor
shortage, and slavery was, if anything, more securely en¬
trenched in the Old Dominion than it had been a genera¬
tion earlier. Hence, the claim that slavery had “about
reached its zenith by i860” and was on the verge of col¬
lapse is far from convincing.9 It appears that the noneco¬
nomic factors involved in the survival of slavery have been
overemphasized; for the realities of i860 create a presump¬
tion that the institution was still functioning profitably.

2
If one is to investigate the profitability or unprofitability
of slavery, it is essential to define the problem precisely.
Profitable for whom? Bondage was obviously not very prof-

8 Cairnes, Slave Power, p. 64.

» Gray, History of Agriculture, II, pp. 641-42. For a different point of
view see Charles W. Ramsdell, "The Natural Limits of Slavery Ex¬
pansion," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XVI (1929), pp. 151-
7«-

388
IX: Profit and Loss
itable for the bondsmen whose standard of living was kept
at the subsistence level; but bondage was not designed to
enrich its victims. Nor was it introduced or preserved to
promote the general welfare of the majority of white South¬
erners, who were nonslaveholders. The question is not
whether the great mass of southern people of both races
profited materially from slavery.
Moreover, the question is not whether a Southerner
would have gained by selling his slaves, leaving his sec¬
tion, settling somewhere in the North, and investing in
commerce or industry. He might have, but this involves
the question of whether agriculture, in the long run, ever
yields profits equal to those gained from manufacturing
and trade. With or without slavery, planters and farmers
were the victims of uncontrolled and wildly fluctuating
prices, of insect pests, and of the weather. The year 1846,
mourned one Mississippi planter, “will ever be memorable
in the history of cotton planting from the ravages of the
army worm which has no doubt curtailed the crop ... at
least Six Hundred Thousand Bales, worth Twenty Mil¬
lions of Dollars.” A rice planter surveyed the ruin follow¬
ing a "violent gale accompanied by immense rain. . . .
The little that remained of the Crop after the two last
gales, may now be abandoned. Not even the fragments of
the wreck are left. Such is planting.” Time after time the
growers of southern staples saw their crops wither in se¬
vere droughts during the growing season—or rot. in heavy
rains at harvest time. Everything, concluded a discouraged
planter, “seems to be against Cotton, not only the Aboli¬
tionists: but frost, snow, worms, and water.” 1 These were
the hazards of husbandry in an age without crop insurance,
price supports, or acreage restrictions. But they have no

» JenWn* Diary, entry for NovemIter i, 1Grimball Diary, entry for

Septernl>er «, 1S37; H. W. Poyner to William G. Harding, April 14,
tflr/t, Harding Jaduon Paper*.

389
 The Peculiar Institution

bearing upon the question of whether those who chose to

risk them found it profitable to employ slave labor.
Here, then, is the problem: allowing for the risks of a
laissez-faire economy, did the average ante-bellum slave¬
holder, over the years, earn a reasonably satisfactory return
from his investment? One must necessarily be a little vague
about what constitutes a satisfactory return—whether it is
five per cent, or eight, or more—because any figure is the
arbitrary choice of the person who picks it. The slavehold¬
ers themselves drew no clear and consistent line between
satisfactory and unsatisfactory returns. In an absolute
sense, of course, anything earned above operating expenses
and depreciation is a profit. The question is whether it was
substantial enough to be satisfactory.
It may be conceded at the outset that possession of a sup¬
ply of cheap slave labor carried with it no automatic guar¬
antee of economic solvency, much less affluence. An incom¬
petent manager moved with steady pace toward insolvency
and the inevitable execution sale. Even an efficient man¬
ager found that his margin of profit depended upon the fer¬
tility of his land, proximity to cheap transportation, and
the ability to benefit from the economies of large-scale pro¬
duction. Moreover, nearly every slaveholder saw his profits
shrink painfully during periods of agricultural depression
such as the one following the Panic of 1837; and many who
had borrowed capital to speculate in lands and slaves were
ruined. In short, there were enormous variations in the re¬
turns upon investments in slave labor from master to mas¬
ter and from year to year. For the “average slaveholder” is,
of course, an economic abstraction, albeit a useful one.

3
The adversities that at some time or other overtook most
slaveholders, the anxieties to which their business opera-

390
IX: Profit and Loss

tions subjected them, and the bankruptcy that was the ul¬
timate reward of more than a few, have produced an un¬
common lot of myths about the economic consequences of
slavery for both the slaveholder and the South as a whole.
One of the most durable of these myths is that the system
unavoidably reduced masters to the desperate expedients
of carrying a heavy burden of mortgage indebtedness and
of living upon credit secured by the next crop. Actually,
the property of most slaveholders was not mortgaged; and
when they were troubled with debt, slavery was not neces¬
sarily the cause. Many of the debt-burdened planters gave
evidence not of the unprofitability of slavery but of mana¬
gerial inefficiency or of a tendency to disregard the middle-
class virtue of thrift and live beyond their means. “There
is a species of pride,” complained one Southerner, “which
prompts us to . . . imitate, if not exceed, the style of our
neighbors . . . and it very often occurs that the deeper we
are involved, the more anxious do we become to conceal it
from the world, and the more strenuous to maintain the
same showy appearance. . . . We cannot bear the thought
that the world should know that we are not as wealthy, as it
was willing to believe us to be, and thus lose the impor¬
tance attached to our riches.” Even during the depression
years of the early nineteenth century, thriftless Virginia
planters still hired tutors for their children, surrounded
themselves with an army of servants, and entertained on a
grand scale.2 It was not slavery itself but the southern cul¬
ture that required these extravagances.
Other slaveholders went into debt to begin or to enlarge
their agricultural operations. So long as their investments
were sound, there was nothing reckless about launching an

2 Southern Agriculturist, VII (1834), pp. 288; Larry Gara (ed.), “A

New Englander’s View of Plantation Life: Letters of Edwin Hall to
Cyrus Woodman, 1837,” Journal of Southern History, XVIII (1952),
PP- 343-54-

391
 The Peculiar Institution

enterprise or expanding it on borrowed capital. Indeed,

many of them deliberately remained in debt because their
returns from borrowed capital far exceeded the interest
charges. But the planter often was unable to resist the
temptation to overextend himself, especially in the thriv¬
ing regions of the Southwest. “This credit system is so fas¬
cinating,” confessed a Mississippian, that it entices “a man
[to] go farther than prudence would dictate.” A critic of
the Louisiana planters claimed that one of their “leading
characteristics” was “an apparent determination to be al¬
ways in debt; notwithstanding the sufficiency of their or¬
dinary incomes to support them in ease and affluence.” It
seemed to this conservative critic that a planter ought not
to become obsessed with “rearing up a mammoth estate, to
add to his cares and anxieties in this world”; rather, he
“should be satisfied with an income of 15 or $20,000”! 3
When a sudden decline of staple prices caused the specu¬
lative bubble to burst, the ambitious Louisianian, like the
extravagant Virginian, was the victim of forces that were
entirely unrelated to slavery. The frontier boomer and the
reckless speculator were in no sense evils spawned by the
South’s labor system.
The slaveholder who expanded his enterprise with his
own profits was obviously more fortunate and more secure
than those who borrowed for this purpose. A fall in prices
merely reduced his income but seldom threatened him
with bankruptcy. Yet the condition of even this thoroughly
solvent entrepreneur has been misunderstood. Such a
planter, it has often been said, was caught in a vicious cir¬
cle, because he “bought lands and slaves wherewith to grow
cotton, and with the proceeds ever bought more slaves to
make more cotton.” 4 Surely this was not the essence of eco-

s Baker Diary, entry tor September 28, 1855; E. G. W. Butler to Thomas

Butler, May 5, 1830, Butler Family Papers.
* Phillips, American Negro Slavery, pp. 395-98.

392
IX: Profit and Loss

nomic futility, for an entrepreneur could hardly be consid¬

ered trapped by a system which enabled him to enlarge his
capital holdings out of surplus profits. As long as the slave¬
holder earned returns sufficient to supply his personal
needs, meet all operating expenses, and leave a balance for
investment, he might count himself fortunate indeed!
The economic critics also blamed slavery for one of the
South’s chronic problems: the declining fertility of the
land. This form of labor, they argued, was only adaptable
to a one-crop system which used crude, unscientific meth¬
ods and led relentlessly to soil exhaustion. Slaves, wrote
Cairnes, were incapable of working with modern agricul¬
tural implements; lacking versatility, they could be taught
little more than the routine operations required in the
growth of a single staple. “Slave cultivation, therefore, pre¬
cluded the conditions of rotation of crops or skillful man¬
agement, tends inevitably to exhaust the land of a country,
and consequently requires for its permanent success not
merely a fertile soil but a practically unlimited extent
of it.” 6
The proof seemed to be everywhere at hand, not only in
the older tobacco and cotton districts on the Atlantic coast
but also, by the last two ante-bellum decades, in areas that
had not been settled until the nineteenth century. A Geor¬
gian described the “barren waste” into which parts of Han¬
cock County had been transformed by careless husbandry:
“Fields that once teemed with luxuriant crops . . . are
disfigured with gaping hill-sides, chequered with gullies,
coated with broom straw and pine, the sure indices of bar¬
renness and exhaustion—all exhibiting a dreary desola¬
tion.” In 1859, a Southerner noted that the process of soil
exhaustion was far advanced in Mississippi and Alabama,
and that the slaveholders were now ready “to wear out the

8 Cairnes, Slave Power, pp. 47-58.

393
 The Peculiar Institution

Mississippi bottom, . . . Arkansas, Texas and all other

slave soil in creation.” Even in Texas Olmsted often ob¬
served “that spectacle so familiar and so melancholy . . .
in all the older Slave States”: the abandoned plantation
with its worn-out fields. By way of explanation a northern
agricultural expert affirmed that “in many of the cotton
plantations, the most destructive system of farming is pur¬
sued that I ever saw.” 6
If slavery had been the cause of soil exhaustion, this
would provide convincing evidence that it was a general
economic blight upon the South; but even this would not
necessarily be relevant to the question of whether slavery
was profitable to individual masters. For many of them
found it highly rewarding to exhaust their lands within a
few years and then move on to fresh lands. However, there
was in reality little connection between slavery and the
extensive, soil-mining type of agriculture that characterized
the ante-bellum South. How else account for the fact that
many nonslaveholders, North and South, used the same
wasteful methods in the cultivation of their farms? The ex¬
planation in both cases was that land was relatively cheap
and abundant and labor relatively expensive and scarce;
and in an agricultural milieu such as this landowners were
reluctant to employ labor in the manuring of exhausted
fields to restore their fertility. The one-crop system pre¬
vailed throughout much of the South, because one or an¬
other of the great staples seemed to promise the largest re¬
turns on capital investments. The expectation of profits
from staple production, not the limitations of slavery, led
to specialization rather than diversification, and caused
some planters to fail to produce enough food for their own
needs. Nor can slavery be blamed for the managerial inef¬
ficiency of unsupervised overseers who introduced slovenly
6 Southern Cultivator, II (1844), p. 9; XVII (1859), p. 69; Olmsted,
Texas, p. xiv; Kellar (ed.), Solon Robinson, II, p. 27.

394
IX: Profit and Loss

agricultural methods on many estates. “Depend upon it

that it is not our negroes, but our white managers, who
stand in the way of improvement,” asserted a South Caro¬
linian.7 Finally, soil erosion was not the product of slavery
but of the hilly, rolling terrain, of heavy rains, and of the
failure to introduce contour plowing and proper drainage.
This trouble, too, afflicted slaveholders and nonslavehold¬
ers alike.
As conditions changed in the older parts of the South,
tillage methods also changed. Out of economic depression,
which resulted from declining staple prices and rising pro¬
duction costs on depleted lands, there appeared an increas¬
ingly obvious need for agricultural reform. “Formerly,
when lands were fresh and cotton high,” observed a South¬
erner, “planters had very little difficulty in getting along,
and with the least industry and economy, accumulated
property rapidly. . . . Twenty cents a pound for cotton
cured all defects in management, and kept the sheriff at
bay; but six cents a pound for cotton is quite another
thing.” Then, for the first time, some of those who had
been mining the southern soil began to show an interest
in conserving it.®
And wherever in the South improved methods were
adopted, the slaveholders usually took the lead. They pro¬
moted the organization of local agricultural societies, spon¬
sored essay contests on agricultural topics, and provided
most of the support for the numerous periodicals which
preached reform. They did most of the experimenting with
new crops, with systems of crop rotation, with new imple¬
ments and techniques, and with fertilizers. In Virginia,

r American Agriculturist, IV (1845), p. 319.

b Southern Cultivator, IV (1846) , p. 106. See also Gray, History of Ag¬
riculture, I, pp. 447-48, 458-59, 470; Craven, Soil Exhaustion, pp. 11-
24; Robert R. Russel, "The General Effects of Slavery upon Southern
Economic Progress," Journal of Southern History, IV (1938), pp. 35-
36-

395
 The Peculiar Institution

slaveholders such as Edmund Ruffin, Hill Carter, and John

Seldon abandoned tobacco culture, or at least rotated to¬
bacco with wheat and clover; they were the first to enrich
their lands with marl and with animal and vegetable ma¬
nures. In short, they were responsible for the agricultural
renaissance that Virginia enjoyed during the generation be¬
fore i860. “It is true,” admitted Ruffin, “that good farm¬
ing is rare here; and so it is elsewhere.” But, he added, “our
best farming in lower and middle Virginia is always to be
found in connection with . . . [the] use of slave labor.”9
In the Deep South, slaveholding planters such as
James H. Hammond, of South Carolina, and Dr. Martin W.
Phillips, of Mississippi, led similar movements to save the
soil. Throughout the South, most of the improved farming
was being done on lands worked by bondsmen; the “model”
farms and plantations were almost invariably operated
with their labor. Thus a substantial minority of the land-
owners demonstrated that slaves could be used efficiently
in a system of intensive, scientific, and diversified agricul¬
ture. It is a mistake, therefore, to attribute soil exhaustion
to slavery, or to assume that the institution was working
such general economic havoc as to be rushing headlong
toward destruction.* 1
But slavery was alleged to be economically injurious to
the South not only because it fostered one-crop agriculture
but also because it produced a generally unbalanced econ¬
omy. Southerners, according to this argument, had never
been able to accumulate capital for manufacturing, be¬
cause so much of their wealth was invested in their labor
force. Critics such as Cairnes insisted that slaves were,
“from the nature of the case, unskilled” and hence could

9 Farmers’ Register, VII (1839), pp. 235-38; Craven, Soil Exhaustion,

pp. 122-61.
1 Gray, History of Agriculture, I, pp. 449-50; Flanders, Plantation Slav¬
ery in Georgia, pp. 90-93; [Cellar (ed.), Solon Robinson, I, pp. 456-57.

396
IX: Profit and Loss

not “taxe part with efficiency in the difficult and delicate

operations which most manufacturing and mechanical
processes involve.” Slaves, concluded Cairnes, have “never
been, and can never be, employed with success in manufac¬
turing industry.” 2
It is doubtful, however, that slavery in any decisive way
retarded the industrialization of the South. After the Afri¬
can slave trade was legally closed, the southern labor sys¬
tem absorbed little new capital that might have gone into
commerce or industry. Then only the illegal trade carried
on by northern and foreign merchants drained off addi¬
tional amounts of the South’s liquid assets. The domestic
slave trade involved no further investment; it merely in¬
volved the transfer of a portion of the existing one between
individuals and regions. Obviously, when one Southerner
purchased slaves another liquidated part of his investment
in slaves and presumably could have put his capital in in¬
dustry if he cared to.3 To define the cost of raising a young
slave to maturity as a new capital investment is quite mis¬
leading. It would be more logical to call this a part of the
“wage” a slave received for his lifetime of labor; or to call
it—as most slaveholders did—a part of the annual operat¬
ing expense. Southerners did have capital for investment
in industry, and the existence of slavery was not the reason
why so few of them chose to become industrialists.
After innumerable experiments had demonstrated that
slaves could be employed profitably in factories, Southern¬
ers were still divided over the wisdom of such enterprises.
Some of the opponents were devoted to the agrarian tradi¬
tion and contended that industrialization was an evil un¬
der all circumstances. Others insisted that nonagricultural
occupations should be reserved for free white labor and

2 Cairnes, Slave Power, pp. 65-66.

s Gray, History of Agriculture, I, pp. 459-60; Russel, "General Effects
of Slavery,” loc. cit., pp. 52-53.

397
 The Peculiar Institution

that white men should not be degraded by slave competi¬

tion. In addition, many feared that removing slaves from
the farms and plantations and increasing their numbers in
the cities would undermine the peculiar institution.
“Whenever a slave is made a mechanic, he is more than
half freed,’’ argued one master. “Wherever slavery has de¬
cayed, the first step . . . has been the elevation of the
slaves to the rank of artisans and soldiers.” 4
Those who favored employing slaves in industry be¬
lieved that this was the most practical way for the South to
diversify its economy and to become more nearly self-
sufficient. They protested that the attempt to confine slaves
to agriculture was an attack upon slavery itself. It was the
work of abolitionists. To prohibit masters from training
slaves for any occupation “in which they may be profitably
employed . . . would be fatal to the institution of Slavery,
and an infringement on the rights of those on whom has
devolved the responsibility of taking care of dependents.”
Finally, promoters of industry pointed to the record of suc¬
cesses where slaves were being used in mines, cotton mills,
iron foundries, and tobacco factories.6
The appeal of such promoters had little effect, however,
for Southerners put only a small amount of capital into in¬
dustry before the Civil War. Many of those who sold slaves
to the traders used the money to support an extravagant
standard of living rather than for new investments. But in
the nineteenth century most of the South’s surplus capital
went into land and agricultural improvements; and the
reason for this was simply that in the competition for funds
agriculture was able to outbid industry. Men invested in
land not only because of the agrarian tradition and the

* Wesley, Negro Labor in the United States, pp. 71-73; De Bow’s Re¬
view, VIII (1850), p. 518.
» De Bow's Review, VIII (1850), p. 76; Flanders, Plantation Slavery in
Georgia, pp. 205-207.

398
IX: Profit and Loss

prestige derived from the ownership of real estate, but also

because the production of one of the staples seemed to be
the surest avenue to financial success. Besides, southern in¬
dustry faced the handicap of competition from northern in¬
dustry which enjoyed the advantages of greater experience,
more efficient management, more concentrated markets,
more numerous power sites, and better transportation.6 All
of these factors destined the South, with or without slavery,
to be a predominantly agricultural region—and so it con¬
tinued to be for many years after emancipation.
Another supposed disadvantage of the southern labor
system was that slaves were less productive than free work¬
ers and therefore more expensive to their employers.
Cairnes explained that since slaves could be offered no in¬
centives, “fear is substituted for hope, as the stimulus to
exertion. But fear is ill calculated to draw from a labourer
all the industry of which he is capable.” A second critic de¬
clared, “Half the population of the South is employed in
seeing that the other half do their work, and they who do
work, accomplish half what they might do under a better
system.” After visiting a number of plantations in Vir¬
ginia, Olmsted concluded that slaves “can not be driven by
fear of punishment to do that which the laborers in free
communities do cheerfully from their sense of duty, self-
respect, or regard for their reputation and standing with
their employer.” 7
To be sure, the slave’s customary attitude of indifference
toward his work, together with the numerous methods he
devised to resist his enslavement, sharply reduced the mas¬
ter’s potential profits. It does not follow, however, that a
slaveholder who was a reasonably efficient manager would

o Gray, History of Agriculture, II, pp. 933-34; Russel, “General Effects

of Slavery,” loc. cit., pp. 47-49.
t Cairnes, Slave Power, pp. 43-47; Lyell, Second Visit, II, pp. 84-85;
Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 44-47, 195-98, 203-205.

399
 The Peculiar Institution

have found free labor cheaper to employ. Slavery’s eco¬

nomic critics overlooked the fact that physical coercion, or
the threat of it, proved to be a rather effective incentive,
and that the system did not prevent masters from offering
tempting rewards for the satisfactory performance of as¬
signed tasks.
Besides, slave labor had several competitive advantages
over free white labor. In the first place, it was paid less:
the average wage of a free laborer exceeded considerably
the investment and maintenance costs of a slave. In the
second place, masters exploited women and children more
fully than did the employers of free labor. Finally, the
average bondsman worked longer hours and was subjected
to a more rigid discipline. Slaveholders were less troubled
with labor “agitators” and less obligated to bargain with
their workers. The crucial significance of this fact was dra¬
matically demonstrated by a Louisiana sugar planter who
once experimented with free labor, only to have his gang
strike for double pay during the grinding season.8 “Slave
labor is the most constant form of labor,” argued a South¬
erner. “The details of cotton and rice culture could not be
carried on with one less constant.” No conviction was more
firmly embedded in the mind of the planter than this.
Many employers “hire slaves in preference to other labor¬
ers,” explained a southern judge, “because they believe the
contract confers an absolute right to their services during
its continuation.” 9 These advantages more than compen¬
sated for whatever superiority free labor had in efficiency.
Indeed, some southern landowners who employed Irish
immigrants or native whites even doubted that they were
more diligent than slaves. One employer complained that

8 Gray, History of Agriculture, I, pp. 464, 471, 474-75; Phillips, Ameri¬

can Negro Slavery, p. 337.
» North Carolina Planter, II (1859), p. 163; Catterall (ed.), Judicial
Cases, V, pp. 188-89.

400
IX: Profit and Loss

no matter how well white workers were treated, “except

when your eyes are on them they cheat you out of the labor
due you, by lounging under the shade of the trees in your
field.” A Maryland planter assured Olmsted that “at hoe¬
ing and any steady field-work” his slaves accomplished
twice as much, and with less personal supervision, than the
Irish laborers he had used. North Carolina farmers told
him that poor whites were “even more inefficient and un¬
manageable than . . . slaves.”1 Clearly, the productivity
and efficiency of free labor was not so overwhelmingly su¬
perior as to make the doom of slavery inevitable.
Still another argument of the economic critics was that
owners of slaves had to bear certain costs that employers of
free labor did not bear. In a free labor system workers
were hired and fired as they were needed; in a slave labor
system workers had to be supported whether or not they
were needed. In a free labor system the employer had no
obligation to support the worker’s dependents, or the
worker himself during illness and in old age; in a slave
labor system the employer was legally and morally obli¬
gated to meet these costs. Thus, presumably, slavery was
at once more humane and more expensive.
This, too, is a myth. Employers of free labor, through
wage payments, did in fact bear most of the expense of sup¬
porting the children of their workers, as well as the aged
and infirm. Government and private charities assumed only
a small part of this burden. Moreover, the amount that
slaveholders spent to maintain these unproductive groups
was not a substantial addition to their annual operating
costs. The maintenance of disabled and senile slaves was a
trivial charge upon the average master; and the market
value of a young slave far exceeded the small expense of
raising him.
i American Farmer, VI (1850) , p. 171; Olmsted, Seaboard, pp. 10, 349-
50.

401
 The Peculiar Institution

Nor was the typical slaveholder faced with the problem

of feeding and clothing surplus laborers; rather, his per¬
sistent problem was that of a labor shortage, which became
acute during the harvest. Only a few masters had difficulty
finding work for all available hands throughout the year.
As for the need to support workers in time of economic de¬
pression, it must be remembered that the nineteenth-
century agriculturist (unlike the manufacturer) did not
ordinarily stop, or even curtail, production when demand
and prices declined. Instead, he continued his operations—
and sometimes even expanded them in an effort to aug¬
ment his reduced income. During the depression of the
1840’s, for example, both slaveholders and nonslavehold¬
ers strove for maximum production, and as a result there
were few unemployed agricultural workers. Slave prices
declined because nearly all prices declined, not because
masters deliberately flooded the market with Negroes for
whom there was no work. Rarely, then, did slaveholders
pay for the support of idle hands.
But were there not other costs burdening the employer
of slave labor which the employer of free labor escaped?
The slaveholder, said the critics, bore the initial expense
of a substantial investment in his laborers, the annual ex¬
pense of interest and depreciation upon his investment,
and the constant risk of loss through death by accident or
disease. The employer of free labor, on the other hand,
bore neither of these expenses and lost nothing when a
worker died or was disabled. Here, many thought, was the
most convincing evidence that slave labor was more costly
than free.2
It is true that the purchase of slaves (which involves the
capitalization of future income from their labor) increased
the size of the capital investment in a business enterprise—
2 Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, pp. 195-97; Flanders, Plantation Slav¬
ery in Georgia, p. **1.

402
IX: Profit and Loss

and that most southern whites lacked the cash or credit to

gain title to this form of labor. It is also true that an in¬
vestment in slaves entailed the risk of serious losses, espe¬
cially for the small slaveholder. Though most masters con¬
tinued to assume this risk, late in the ante-bellum period
a few began to protect themselves from such disasters by
insuring the lives of slaves. More important, however, is
the fact that in the general pricing of slaves these risks were
discounted. Such dangers as death, long illness, permanent
disability, rebelliousness, and escape were all weighed
when a purchaser calculated the price he was willing to
pay. Only an unfortunate minority, therefore, suffered se¬
vere losses from an investment in slaves.
Depreciation on slave capital was not an operational ex¬
pense for the average master. Not only were slave prices in¬
creasing, but with reasonable luck an investment in slaves
was self-perpetuating. As one Southerner observed,
“slaves . . . are not wasted by use, and if they are, that
waste is supplied by their issue.” Another added, “Their
perpetuation by natural increase bears a strong resem¬
blance to the permanency of Lands.” 3 Most slaveholders,
in fact, were more fortunate than this, for their slave forces
actually grew in size. With proper use, a master found his
investment in slaves (sometimes in land too), unlike his
investment in tools and buildings, appreciating rather than
depreciating. This natural increase was a significant part
of his profit.
The southern master’s capitalization of his labor force
has caused more confusion than anything else about the
comparative cost of free and slave labor. This capital in¬
vestment was not an added expense; it was merely the pay¬
ment in a lump sum of a portion of what the employer of

s Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases, II, p. 69; Abbeville District, South

Carolina, Judge of Probate Decree Book, 1839-1858, May term, 1841.

403
 The Peculiar Institution

free labor pays over a period of years. The price of a slave,

together with maintenance, was the cost of a lifetime claim
to his labor; it was part of the wage an employer could have
paid a free laborer. The price was what a master was will¬
ing to give for the right to maintain his workers at a sub¬
sistence level, and to gain full control over their time and
movements. The interest he expected to accrue from his
investment was not an operational expense to be deducted
from profits, as it has often been called, unless the slaves
were purchased on credit and interest therefore had to be
paid to someone else. To deduct from the master’s profit
an amount equal to interest on his own capital invested in
slaves is to create a fictitious expense and to underestimate
his total earnings. There would be less confusion if this
amount were called “profit on investment” rather than “in¬
terest on investment”; for as long as he earned it, this was
a portion of his reward for risking his capital and manag¬
ing his enterprise.4 With scarcely an exception, southern
slaveholders, like entrepreneurs generally, not only con¬
sidered interest earned on investment as part of their total
profit but lumped all sources of profit together without
artificial and arbitrary divisions.
Calculated on this basis, discounting the myths, there is
ample evidence that the average slaveholder earned a rea¬
sonably satisfactory return upon his investment in slaves.

4
Testimony concerning the profits derived from slave la¬
bor appears in the business records which many masters

* De Bow’s Review, VII (1849), pp. 435-37; Gray, History of Agricul¬

ture, I, pp. 473-74; II, pp. 941 et passim; Thomas P. Govan, "Was
Plantation Slavery Profitable?” Journal of Southern History, VIII
(>942), pp. 514-18.

404
IX: Profit and Loss

kept and in the reports which some prepared for southern

periodicals. These records and reports must be used with
care, however, because usually the slaveholder’s bookkeep¬
ing and accounting methods left much to be desired. Often
he overlooked certain legitimate costs such as depreciation
on mules, machinery, tools, and farm buildings. Almost al¬
ways he listed among operating expenses items which did
not properly belong there. Most commonly he included
personal expenditures and new capital investments among
the year’s production costs. For example, in the generally
well-kept accounts of John C. Jenkins’s two Mississippi
plantations, household bills, $350 for an artist, and $50
for a church pew were counted with business expenses.
James H. Hammond, of South Carolina, and Charles and
Louis Manigault, of Georgia, maintained as full and sys¬
tematic records as can be found; yet both added large sums
spent for expansion or permanent improvements, as well as
for household supplies, to their annual plantation costs.
Slaveholders frequently thought of the cash expended for
even such things as pianos, furniture, vacation trips, col¬
lege tuition for their children, and additional land and
slaves as charges against their business enterprises rather
than as part of the profit.
Yet these records of expenses are important, because they
indicate how modest the true costs of production were for
the average slaveholder. Only the sugar planters and a few
of the rice planters had heavy investments in machinery;
for the rest the cost of capital depreciation was a relatively
small item in proportion to the total capital investment. Di¬
rect taxes were so low as to be almost negligible. Masters
generally paid no state tax on slave children or on the aged
and infirm; the annual tax on able-bodied slaves was usu¬
ally between fifty and seventy-five cents. In 1833, a Georgia
planter paid a tax of $29.21 on 330 acres of land and 70

405
 The Peculiar Institution

slaves; in 1839, a South Carolina planter paid a tax of

$* 136.55 on 10,000 acres of land and 153 slaves.5 Freight was
the largest marketing cost, and this item varied with the lo¬
cation of the shipper. In 1852, an Alabamian paid a com¬
paratively high rate of two dollars a bale for shipping cot¬
ton by river from Florence to New Orleans. Other costs
included river and fire insurance, drayage, storage, weigh¬
ing, and the factor’s commission, and altogether amounted
to an additional two dollars a bale.6 The cotton grower
commonly spent about ten per cent of the gross proceeds
from his crop for bale rope, cotton bagging, and marketing
charges.
By far, the master’s greatest expense was the support of
his labor force. On the plantations this might include the
wages of an overseer, a cost which was proportionately
heavier for the small planters than for the large. Records of
yearly expenditures for the maintenance of individual
slaves demonstrate convincingly the cheapness of this form
of labor. “Negro shoes” could be purchased for a dollar or
less, hats and kerchiefs for a dollar, blankets for two dol¬
lars, and enough cloth for summer and winter clothing for
two or three dollars. “My medical bill for 1845,” wrote a
Tennesseean, “is $50.00 for about 50 persons—it has been a
very sickly year.” 7 Numerous estimates of the cost of feed¬
ing a slave ranged from $7.50 to $15.00 a year, the amount
depending upon how much pork and corn was produced
on the estate. Figured on an annual basis, five dollars
would easily cover the expense of housing a bondsman.
This means that the yearly charge for the support of an
adult slave seldom exceeded $35.00, and was often consid¬
erably less than this.
To give some specific examples: Edmund Ruffin’s yearly

5 Manigault Plantation Records; Account Book in Hammond Papers,

o Sales account, dated February 3, 1852, in John Coffee Collection.
1 Bills Diary, entry for January 16, 1846.

406
IX: Profit and Loss

maintenance costs for the slaves on his Virginia plantation,

Marlbourne, averaged less than $25.00 per slave during
the five years from 1844 to 1848. James Hamilton sup¬
ported each of the slaves on his Georgia sea-island cotton
plantation for $18.33 a year over a forty-year period. In
1851, James A. Tait, of Alabama, estimated his mainte¬
nance costs at $34.70 per slave, including food, clothing,
medical care, and taxes. In 1849, Thomas Pugh, of Louisi¬
ana, spent $23.60 per slave for all of these items, except
taxes.8 Maintenance was naturally more expensive in the
towns and on plantations which produced no food, but
slaves were then able to devote all of their time to other
labor.
There was a second flaw in the typical slaveholder’s busi¬
ness records, which caused him to underestimate the profit¬
ability of his enterprise. Rarely did he include all sources
of income other than the net proceeds from the sale of his
chief crop. Sometimes he neglected to list income from inci¬
dental crops and wood products, and from the occasional
hiring out of slaves. He almost never thought of the per¬
sonal services rendered by his domestics or of the food pro¬
duced for his own family as part of his profit. Nor did he
record his capital gains from the clearing and improvement
of land and from the natural increase of his slave property.
Yet a Virginian noted that in his state the chief profit of
many planters was from “raising slaves and the increase in
the value of their lands in consequence of improvements
from marling and increase of population.” A Georgian
agreed that slave children paid “a good interest upon the
amount of care and expense bestowed upon them.” In
Louisiana, an absentee cotton planter learned that his slaves
were increasing rapidly, “and when you come to calculat-

* American Farmer, V (1849), p. 5; Johnson, Sea Islands, p. 102; Da¬

vis, Cotton Kingdom in Alabama, p. 186; Kellar (ed.) , Solon Robin¬
son, II, p. 198.

407
 The Peculiar Institution

ing you will find your young negroes a figure in your fa¬
vor.” 9 This natural increase was often turned into cash
through sales.
After the necessary adjustments are made in costs and
total income, surviving business records reveal that during
the last ante-bellum decade slavery was still justifying itself
economically. Few masters, of course, enjoyed the bonanzas
which had made fortunes for Virginians in the seventeenth
century, South Carolinians in the eighteenth century, and
Alabamians and Mississippians in the early nineteenth cen-
ury. With the depression of the 1840’s, those lush days had
permanently ended for all but a minority of slaveholders
in the Southwest. Only in the Mississippi delta, the Louisi¬
ana bayous, the Red River and Arkansas River valleys, and
the Texas prairies were men still earning fabulous profits
during the 1850’s. In these flourishing districts, wrote Olm¬
sted, “I have been on plantations . . . whereon I was as¬
sured that ten bales of cotton to each average prime field-
hand had been raised.” At this level of production he cal¬
culated the profit per hand at a minimum of $250 a year.
“Even at seven bales to the hand the profits of cotton plant¬
ing are enormous. Men who have plantations producing at
this rate, can well afford to buy fresh hands at fourteen
hundred dollars a head.” In 1859, a Texan grew 254 bales
of cotton with 25 hands, and a planter on the Arkansas
River grew 366 heavy bales with 50 hands. Cotton growers,
observed a Louisianian, were “making oceans of money.”
Among them were a few who produced gigantic crops of
more than two thousand bales, and who, together with sev¬
eral of the great sugar planters, ranked with the wealthiest
men in the United States before the Civil War.* 1 Some of
» Hammond Diary, entry for February 12, 1841; De Bow's Review,
XVII (1854) , pp. 423-24; Kenneth M. Clark to Lewis Thompson, De¬
cember 17, 1854, Lewis Thompson Papers.
1 Frederick L. Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom (New York, 1861), I,
pp. 13-14; Leak Diary, entries for February 1, December 16, 1859;

408
IX: Profit and Loss

them amassed their fortunes entirely from investments in

virgin land and slave labor.
In the older cotton, sugar, and rice areas of the Deep
South slaveholders seldom reaped profits as dazzling as
these, but staple prices were high enough during the fifties
to make returns of seven to ten per cent on capital invest¬
ments common. In spite of inflated slave and land values,
sugar growing in Louisiana was still a “healthy economic
enterprise.” In 1855, a Mississippian attempted to give a
fair statement of the profits from cotton growing; he con¬
cluded that the planter earned about eight per cent on his
capital—but this was an estimate of the net proceeds from
the sale of cotton alone. Even the low prices of 1847 en¬
abled one Alabama planter to make a net profit of ten per
cent on his cotton crop. Six years later, another Alabamian
concluded, “I can think of no investment so sure as a plan¬
tation and negroes.” The prosperity of the decade before
i860 forced Olmsted to agree that the profit from slave
labor in Alabama and Mississippi was “moderately good,
at least, compared with the profit of other investments of
capital and enterprise at the North.” * 2
The rewards from agriculture in South Carolina and
Georgia were less, on the average, than in the Southwest,
but this does not mean that slavery had ceased to be profit¬
able. Hammond, like many others, complained incessantly
about meager earnings; yet by improving his methods he
was able to share in the prosperity of the fifties. A proper
balancing of expenses and income indicates that Louis
Manigault was making ten per cent on his rice plantation

Pugh Diary, entry for April 6, i860; Natchez Free Trader, quoted in
De Bow’s Review, XXVI (1859), p. 581.
2 Sitterson, Sugar Country, pp. 181-82; Southern Cultivator, XIII
(1855), p. 366; Gilmore & Co. to F. H. Elmore. March 18, 1847, El¬
more Papers; Catterall (ed.). Judicial Cases, III, p. 188; Olmsted,
Back Country, p. 294.

409
 The Peculiar Institution

in Georgia. In 1850, John B. Grimball, a South Carolina

rice planter, noted in his diary: “My pecuniary affairs al¬
though not flourishing are yet sufficiently easy to permit
us to enjoy all the comforts and many of the luxuries of
life.” This might express the sentiment of numerous other
rice growers, many of whom probably did not often net
much above five per cent on the current cash value of their
investments from the sale of their crops. A decade later,
however, Grimball was benefiting from the general pros¬
perity and earning well over ten per cent. Nearly all
of the rice planters, in common with Nathaniel Hey¬
ward who was the greatest of them before his death in
1851, made their money from the soil without mules or
machinery, “with only the Negro, the hoe, and the rice
hook.” 8
Even in the Upper South slavery was amply rewarding
those who took pains to preserve or restore the fertility of
their soil and who directed their enterprises with reason¬
able efficiency. There is little foundation for the belief
that the peculiar institution had ceased to be profitable for
the average master in this region. The growing of tobacco
and hemp with slave labor on medium-sized estates was
still paying satisfactory returns in certain districts—and,
indeed, the development of “Bright” tobacco in the Vir¬
ginia-North Carolina piedmont just before the Civil War
promised a new prosperity to those who possessed the thin,
sandy soil on which it grew. Improved methods and crop
rotation were once again making farming lucrative for
many other slaveholders who lived north of the cotton belt.
In Virginia, not only the competition of the Southwest but
also the increasing employment of slaves in mining, in¬
dustry, and internal improvements was forcing up slave

s Grimball Diary, entries tor March 10, 1850; May 23, September 30,
i860; February 16, 1861; Heyward, Seed from Madagascar, p. 74.

41O
IX: Profit and Loss
prices and creating the labor shortage about which so many
complained.4
The resulting rise in the capital value of slaves during
the fifties created a deceptive picture of the Virginia slave¬
holder’s plight, for inflated slave prices made him appear to
be earning a small return on the market value of his in¬
vestment. Actually these rising prices meant a substantial
capital gain, a portion of which those who dealt with slave
traders converted into money profits. No doubt the Vir¬
ginian would have been wise to sell his slaves when prices
reached their peak—but who could tell when the peak had
been reached? And meanwhile it hardly seemed to be to his
economic advantage to liquidate an investment whose value
was steadily rising.
Moreover, it must be remembered that the typical master
of the Upper South had inherited his slaves and had not
purchased them at the high prices of the late ante-bellum
period. When his profit is figured on the basis of the orig¬
inal cash investment, rather than at current slave prices, it
was substantially higher and usually quite adequate. To
some extent the inflated value of slaves on the market was
offset by the low cost of land. As one Virginian observed,
“So far as the prices for slaves have already exceeded the
profits of their labor in Virginia, so far that excess has al¬
ready checked the demand for investments in agriculture,
and must operate to reduce the price of land. And the more
that the price of slaves shall rise, still more, and in full pro¬
portion, will it operate further to reduce the price of land.’’
At existing prices, he admitted, most Virginians were un¬
able to make new investments in slaves. But for the man
who already owned a slave force and did not enter the
market as a buyer or seller, the commercial value of slaves

* Nannie May Tilley, The Bright-Tobacco Industry, 1860-1929 (Chapel

Hill, 1948) , pp. 3-36; Bruce, Virginia Iron Manufacture, pp. 244-45.

411
 The Peculiar Institution

had little meaning. The worth of his bondsmen depended

upon “the actual value of the net products of their la¬
bor . . . and there is no difference to his income or inter¬
ests whether his best slaves would sell for fifteen hundred
dollars, or for but five hundred dollars.” 5
In 1852, another Virginian sketched a justifiably opti¬
mistic picture of the agricultural prospects in the eastern
part of his state. Conceding the survival of “a great and
lamentable amount of indolence, apathy, heedlessness, im¬
providence and wastefulness,” he nevertheless affirmed that
opportunities for substantial returns from agriculture
existed once more. Hundreds of farmers “have derived and
continue to derive profits which surpass any purely agri¬
cultural profits that can be made in the northern states,
from free labor.” 6 Numerous Virginians demonstrated this
by earning more than ten per cent on their investments,
after fertilizing their lands and turning to diversified farm¬
ing. Their income from the production of corn, wheat,
fruits, and vegetables enabled some of them even to pur¬
chase additional slaves.7 This was the picture in other states
of the Upper South too, including border states such as
Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. A Fayette County,
Kentucky, slaveholder understood the economic realities
of slavery better than its critics when he wrote in his will:
“I would prefer the Surplus of my estate (after the pay¬
ment of my debts) Should continue in real estate and in
Slaves rather than in money Stocks etc for the use and bene¬
fit of my descendants prefering the certainty of Revenue
derivable therefrom to the chances of an increase by a re¬
sort to other means or pursuits.”
Other things being equal, the owner of a large slave

5 Southern Planter, XIX (185a) , pp. 472—77.

« Ibid., XII (1852), pp. 71-73.

r American Farmer, V (1849-50), pp. 2-11, 255-56; Massie Farm Jour¬
nal, passim; Edmund Ruffin, Jr., Plantation Diary, passim.

412
IX: Profit and Loss

gang earned a proportionately higher return on his invest¬

ment than the owner of a small gang. The large operator
saved by purchasing supplies in big lots; he was often able
to withhold his crop from the market and sell at the most
opportune time; and he could afford to experiment with
improved tools and new methods of cultivation. He
achieved a maximum of labor specialization and found the
cost of management relatively low. As Olmsted noted, “A
man can compel the uninterrupted labor of a gang of fifty
cotton-hoers almost as absolutely as he can that of a gang
of five.” 8 The ability of the large-scale staple producer to
cut costs and to survive at lower market prices encouraged
the ceaseless trend, in those parts of the South best suited
for commercial agriculture, toward the consolidation of
small units into big plantations.
But it must not be concluded therefore that the day of
the small slaveholder was passing. Far from it. Except in
the alluvial river bottoms, he was still an important figure
during the fifties; he produced a significant proportion of
the southern staples along with a great variety of other
farm products. Though the cotton farmer had to pay a toll
for the use of some planter’s cotton gin, though he was un¬
able to make a dozen economies that the planter made,
good management and a fair price still brought him a hand¬
some profit from his investment in slaves. Most tobacco
was produced on small plantations and farms which em¬
ployed only a few hands. In diversified farming the pro¬
prietor found that the ownership of a slave or two was an
enormous advantage; often it spelled the difference be¬
tween mere subsistence and a cash income. This fact is evi¬
dent in the inventories of estates preserved in southern
county records. These inventories show that the typical
master of one or two slaves lived in far greater comfort and

Olmsted, Back Country, p. 226; Gray, History of Agriculture, I, p. 479.

413
 The Peculiar Institution

died the possessor of far more worldly goods than the typi¬
cal nonslaveholding farmer. In short, on both large and
small estates, none but the most hopelessly inefficient mas¬
ters failed to profit from the ownership of slaves.

5
In the final analysis, the high valuation of Negro labor
during the 1850’s was the best and most direct evidence of
the continued profitability of slavery. Hiring rates varied
with economic conditions, with the danger of the occupa¬
tion, and with the slave’s skill; but the rate per year usually
ranged somewhere between ten and twenty per cent of the
slave’s market value, plus maintenance.9 In 1859, Missouri
field-hands hired for $225 for men and $150 for women. In
i860, a Virginian hired out 52 hands through an agent in
Mobile, 35 at the rate of $225 and 17 at the rate of $200,
the employer agreeing to pay for clothing, taxes, doctor
bills, and all other expenses. Between 1844 and 1852 a
group of Mississippi slaves were hired out at an annual rate
averaging almost twenty per cent of their appraised value.
Late in the 1850’s, Louisiana sugar planters paid as much
as 11.50 a day for hired slaves during the grinding season.
The skilled artisans, owned by urban and plantation mas¬
ters, often hired for twenty-five per cent of their cash value
and were almost always uncommonly profitable invest¬
ments.* 1 There was considerable danger in hiring out slaves
for labor in factories, mines, river boats, and internal im¬
provements, but the rates were correspondingly high. In

9 Bancroft, Slave-Trading, pp. 156-57.

1 St. Louis Missouri Republican, January 10, 1859; Memorandum dated
December 15, i860, in Morton-Halsey Papers; Sydnor, Slavery in Mis¬
sissippi, pp. 175-78; Sitterson, Sugar Country, pp. 61-62; Bassett,
Plantation Overseer, pp. 162-63.

414
IX: Profit and Loss

1858, slave deck hands on the steamers running between

Galveston and Houston were hired for $480 a year; in
1859, a North Carolina internal improvements company
offered to pay $312 a year for common laborers.2
These hiring rates brought masters excellent returns.
Yet the employers paid such rates only after carefully cal¬
culating the immediate profits they could make with hired
bondsmen. Thus a Kentucky hemp manufacturer estimated
that his labor costs were one-third less when he hired slaves
than when he employed free whites. In 1848, the Federal
Commissioner of Patents reported that in agriculture the
rates for hired slaves ranged from twenty to fifty per cent
less than the wages of free labor.3 Here was striking evi¬
dence of the competitive advantage of the slave system.
Slave prices were always influenced by staple prices and
by other economic conditions, but from the colonial period
to the Civil War the general trend was upward. In the
nineteenth century, the sharpest and longest reverse of this
trend came after the Panic of 1837 and lasted until the mid¬
dle of the forties. Then prices began to climb again and
during the prosperous fifties reached record highs. Between
1846 and 1859 the average value of slaves in Tennessee rose
from $413.72 to $854.65. In 1856, a Tennesseean attended a
sale in Hardeman County where “A.i” men sold for $1350
and women for $1200, “the highest point for negroes dur¬
ing my time.’’ The next year he purchased a fourteen-year-
old girl for $iooo.4 In 1857, a Richmond price list quoted
number one men, “extra,” at $i450-$i55o; number one
men “good,” at $1200-$ 1250; and number one men, “com-

* Houston Weekly Telegraph, December 29, 1858; Raleigh North Caro¬

lina Standard, August 13, 1859.
* Hopkins, Hemp Industry, pp. 135-37; Compendium of the Seventh
Census, p. 164.
* Mooney, "Some Institutional and Statistical Aspects of Slavery in Ten¬
nessee,” loc. cit., p. 199; Bills Diary, entries for February 29, 1856;
March 2, 1857.

4»5
 The Peculiar Institution

mon,” at $noo-$ii50. Women of corresponding grades

sold for $200 less.5
Louisiana sugar planters who had been able to purchase
prime field-hands in New Orleans for $600 during the
1820’s, paid from $1200 to $1500 for them and from $2000
to $3000 for skilled artisans during the middle fifties. By
1859, prices were even higher. During a visit to New Or¬
leans in February, a sugar planter “bought 14 head, 8
women and six men—the women from $1,325 to $1,400
men from $1,600 to $1,700—1 Blacksmith for $2,500.”
This was “very high,” he complained, but “it seems we
must have them at any price for fear they will go still
higher.” A month later his fear was realized when he pur¬
chased sixteen additional slaves: “four women for $1,500
each six for $ 1,600 each two for $ 1,650 each and one woman
and her boy 11 years old at $2,400 and one man for $1,700
cash and a Blacksmith for $2,500.” 6
These inflated slave prices were in part the result of a
speculative fever that swept through the Deep South dur¬
ing the fifties. “There is a perfect mania for Negroes here,”
wrote a Louisianian. Many feared that all would end in an
economic panic similar to that of 1837 which had termi¬
nated an earlier boom. A Mississippian predicted, in 1859,
that “a crash must soon come upon the country—just as
soon as cotton dropped below ten cents, as no price below
ten cents would be remunerative at the present price of
negroes, land, mules etc.” A Georgian warned that “in a
short time we shall see many negroes and much land offered
under the sheriffs hammer . . . and then this kind of
property will descend to its real value. The old rule of
pricing a negro by the price of cotton by the pound—that
is to say, if cotton is worth twelve cents, a negro man is

5 Newspaper clipping in Pr<i Aux Cleres Plantation Record Book.

* Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 61; Pugh Plantation Diary, entries for

February 4, 5, March 15, 1859.

416
IX: Profit and Loss

worth $1200.00 if at fifteen cents, then $1500.00—does not

seem to be regarded. . . . Men are demented upon the
subject. A reverse will surely come.” 7
In so far as this Negro “mania” produced an overcapitali¬
zation of slave labor in relation to net earnings, it is rea¬
sonable to assume that the inflation would have been tem¬
porary and that a contraction of slave prices would have
eventually occurred. But these rising prices were not en¬
tirely the result of speculation. They reflected, in addition,
the prosperity of the fifties, the generally satisfactory prices
of the southern staples, the agricultural renaissance in Vir¬
ginia, and the chronic labor shortage. They also reflected
increasing managerial efficiency and the increasing produc¬
tivity of slave labor. Finally, they reflected the ability of
the flourishing operators in the new bonanza regions of
the Southwest to bid high for Negroes.8 Eventually the
flush times in Texas would have ended, as they had earlier
in Alabama and Mississippi, and the gap between profit
margins there and in the older regions would have nar¬
rowed. Then a more rational relationship between profits
and slave prices would have been restored throughout the
South.
Still, the crucial fact of the fifties was that, in the main,
current hiring rates and sales prices were based on a solid
foundation: the slave was earning for his owner a substan¬
tial, though varying, surplus above the cost of mainte¬
nance. For this reason, the critics of slavery who argued
that the institution was an economic burden to the master
were using the weakest weapon in their arsenal. There was
no evidence in i860 that bondage was a “decrepit institu¬
tion tottering toward a decline”—and, indeed, if the slave-
1 Kenneth M. Clark to Lewis Thompson, January 14, 1853, Lewis
Thompson Papers; Leak Diary, entry for February 2, 1859; Phillips
(ed.), Plantation and Frontier, II, pp. 73-74.
® Gray, History of Agriculture, I, pp. 476-77; II, p. 667; Sitterson, Sugar
Country, pp. 127-28.

417
 The Peculiar Institution

holder’s economic self-interest alone were to be consulted,

the institution should have been preserved.9
Nor is there any reason to assume that masters would
have found it economically desirable to emancipate their
slaves in the foreseeable future. “When the demand for
agricultural labor shall be fully supplied,’’ predicted a
South Carolinian, “then of course the labor of slaves will
be directed to other employments and enterprises. . . .
As it becomes cheaper and cheaper, it will be applied to
more various purposes and combined in larger masses. It
may be commanded and combined with more facility than
any other sort of labor; and the laborer, kept in stricter
subordination, will be less dangerous to the security of so¬
ciety than in any other country, which is crowded and over¬
stocked with a class of what are called free laborers.” * 1
In other words, even when there was an abundant sup¬
ply of labor, the employer still enjoyed certain practical
economic advantages from keeping his workers in bondage.
The idea that free labor under any circumstances can be
employed more cheaply than slave is patent nonsense. For¬
tunately, the critics of slavery had at their command nu¬
merous arguments with more substance than this.

8 Cf. Gray, History of Agriculture, I, pp. 462-80; Govan, “Was Planta¬

tion Slavery Profitable?” loc. cit., pp. 513-35; Robert Worthington
Smith, "Was Slavery Unprofitable in the Ante-Bellum South?” Agri¬
cultural History, XX (1946), pp. 62-64; Russel, “General Effects of
Slavery . . . ,” loc. cit., pp. 34-54.
1 De Bow's Review, X (1851), p. 57.

.418
 C 419 ]
CHAPTER TEN

He Who Has Endured

T o-day is the annaversary of American independence,”

wrote an embittered South Carolina planter, in 1856.
“I have no doubt in many parts there will be pretensions
of great rejoicings, but I cannot really rejoice for a fredom
which allows every bankrupt, swindler, thief and scoun¬
drel, traitor and seller of his vote to be placed on an equal¬
ity with myself. . . . The Northern abolitionists are
threatening and planning to take away or destroy the value
of our Slave property, and the demon democracy by its
leveling principles, universal suffrage and numerous popu¬
lar elections, homestead laws, and bribery are sapping the
foundations of the rights of property in every thing.” 1
Southern slaveholders were not the only nineteenth-
century Americans who took a pessimistic view of the
“demon democracy” and questioned the value of their
birthright of liberal ideals. In the North, too, many con¬
servative men of property still nursed a Hamiltonian doubt
of the people’s capacity to govern themselves. But no other
group was so solidly dedicated, by interest and necessity, to
the proposition that men were created unequal as were the
slaveholders of the Old South. No other group was so
firmly rooted in a dying past, so fearful of change, so alien-

1 Gavin Diary, entry for July 4, 1856.

 The Peculiar Institution
ated from the spirit of the age. In contrast to the “almost
diseased activity” of the free North, boasted a defender of
bondage, “it is the manifest interest of a slaveholding com¬
munity to oppose social innovations, which, if not resisted,
might undermine and finally destroy their system of servi¬
tude. . . . Communities of this kind are slow to receive
new ideas in morals or politics, believing that stability bet¬
ter subserves their true interests than what is called prog¬
ress.” 2
Proslavery partisans viewed with displeasure “nonsensi¬
cal prating” about “abstract notions of human rights.” “It
is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the times,”
one complained, “that there is abroad a sickly sentimental¬
ism, which is constantly showing itself in impractical
schemes for the amelioration of the condition of the
world. . . . Sometimes their universal benevolence ex¬
pends itself upon negro abolitionism, sometimes in sympa¬
thy for the poor Indians, and sometimes these ambassadors
of the whole human race, condescend to level their influ¬
ence against abuses in the army and navy.” At present they
were demanding that the practice of punishing seamen by
whipping be abolished. “Nothing can be more chimeri¬
cal,” this slaveholder assured the “sentimentalists” whose
heads were so “filled with visions of equal rights.” 3
The equal-rights doctrine is nonsense, proclaimed
John C. Calhoun, the most distinguished of the South’s
proslavery statesmen. The truth is, affirmed George Fitz-
hugh, of Virginia, that some men are “born with saddles
on their backs and others booted and spurred to ride
them, and the riding does them good.” Both Calhoun and
Fitzhugh, along with various other southern conservatives,
concluded that the best way to protect property and prevent
proletarian revolution was to reduce the laboring popula-
2 De Bow's Review, XX (1856), p. 657.
3 Ibid., XVIII (1855), p. 713; Pensacola Gazette, March 21, 1840.

420
X: He Who Has Endured

tion to servitude. “In all countries,” one slaveholder ex¬

plained, “where ‘peculiar’ institutions like our own do not
exist, there is a conflict—a constant unremitting struggle
for the mastery between capital and labor . . . which not
unfrequently . . . [leads to] ‘strikes,’ mobs, bloodshed and
revolution. . . . But is there no remedy for this state of
things? . . . We answer yes, . . . [in] a system of labor
such as the South is blessed with—a system which pro¬
claims peace, perpetual peace, between the warring ele¬
ments. Harmonizing the interest betwixt capital and labor,
Southern slavery has solved the problem over which states¬
men have toiled and philanthropists mourned from the
first existence of organized society.” * 4
If all this ever were to change, it was not within human
power to tell when or how. “The institution of slavery,”
argued a Virginian, “is a fixed fact; and as wise and practi¬
cal men, it is our duty to so regard it. Emancipation is an
idle dream, beyond the reach of human power. . . . Let
us be content with our condition.” How, then, might the
condition of the slaves be mitigated? “We answer that such
mitigation is to be looked for only in the improvement of
their masters. Children, in this section of the Union, . . .
should be taught that it is their duty, to regard them with
benevolence, to administer to their wants, and to protect
them from injury.” One should not waste time “in silly
attacks upon institutions, that will die of themselves when
their prolonged mission is fulfilled, and which can not be
overthrown a day earlier.” 5 In short, one must acquiesce
in the status quo and leave the future to Providence.
Slavery, by its nature and influence, rendered the master
class unfit to live easily in a society of free men. “I will

* American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, III (1859), pp. 105-
106.
5 American Farmer, VII (1852), pp. 416-17; Southern Agriculturist,
VIII (1835), p. 8; Southern Cultivator, XII (1854), p. 105.

421
 The Peculiar Institution
only say,” confessed a young planter to his father, “that I
can never be too thankful to you for having situated me as
I am,—on a plantation with negroes that understand their
duty, and with but little necessity for dealing with whites,
who are, I believe, less disposed to conduct themselves as
they should than blacks who are properly raised and con¬
trolled.” The slaveholder, Olmsted noted, was able to
gratify, with little restraint, man’s “natural lust for au¬
thority”; he could not endure an employee who made de¬
mands upon him, who could legally refuse to obey him, and
who cherished his self-respect and personal dignity.6
Such was the impact of bondage upon the white masters.
An abolitionist’s feelings toward slaveholders were “greatly
modified” during a residence among them, because he dis¬
covered so much that was fundamentally “noble, generous
and admirable in their characters.” “I saw so many demor¬
alizing pro-slavery influences . . . brought to bear on their
intellects from their cradle to their tomb, that from hating
I began to pity them.” 7 Slaveholders asked for pity from
no one, least of all from abolitionists. Yet, who could with¬
hold it? Who could help but feel compassion for men who
found nothing more inspiring than the sterile rhetoric and
special pleading of the proslavery argument to justify the
institution upon which they lived? The pathos in the life of
every master lay in the fact that slavery had no philosophi¬
cal defense worthy of the name—that it had nothing to
commend it to posterity, except that it paid.
Some liked to pretend that this was enough; and for a
few, perhaps, it was. Impatient with theory, slaveholders
“never inquire into the propriety of the matter, but just do
as others do. Their ancestors owned slaves and they own
them; they see their neighbors buying slaves, and they buy

8 William S. Pettigrew to Ebenezer Pettigrew, March 26, 1847, Petti¬

grew Papers; Olmsted, Texas, pp. xvi-xvii.
1 Redpath, Roving Editor, p. 82.

422
X: He Who Has Endured

them. They invest their money in this sort of property, just

as they invest it in cattle or real estate, leaving to others to
discuss the right and justice of the thing.” Only maudlin
weaklings had “morbid sensibilities” about owning slaves
or thought of freeing them in their wills. “Let our women
and old men, and persons of weak and infirm minds, be
disabused of the false . . . notion that slavery is sinful,
and that they will peril their souls if they do not disinherit
their offspring by emancipating their slaves!” It was high
time masters “put aside all care or thought what Northern
people say about them. Let us be independent in this at
least!” 8
But in this they could be independent least of all; for it
was true, as one Southerner confessed, “that the world was
against” them. They were disturbed to have the world
against them—and what disturbed them even more (their
denials notwithstanding) was the suspicion that the world
might be right. A European traveler met few slaveholders
who could “openly and honestly look the thing in the face.
They wind and turn about in all sorts of ways, and make
use of every argument ... to convince me that the slaves
are the happiest people in the world, and do not wish to be
placed in any other condition.”9
They were trying to convince themselves, too. The pro¬
slavery argument was more than a reply to their critics; it
was also a reply to their own consciences. Masters recited it
to themselves and to each other, over and over, as if to still
their inward doubts. “My views respecting the responsi¬
bility under which the master of Negroes rests correspond
precisely with yours,” wrote a slaveholder to a fellow slave¬
holder. “That description of property is in our hands, and,

8 Charleston Courier, August 29, 1857; Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases,

III, pp. 58-59, 292 n.; Southern Agriculturist, II (1829), pp. 575-76.
» Charleston Courier, May 14, 1847; Bremer, Homes of the New World,
I, p. 275.

423
 The Peculiar Institution
I believe, by the will of providence; and the fact of possess¬
ing them, is justified by the example and language of Patri¬
archs, Prophets and Apostles, from the day of Abraham
to the period of St. John’s revelation.” The slaves were
“in a happier—far happier condition—than if they were
liberated.” And so, he added bravely, “my conscience is
clear.” 1
Of course, his conscience was not clear, or there would
have been no need to dwell on the matter so much. There
would have been no need for another troubled master to
vow that he would practice the most rigid economy in or¬
der not to squander what the slave produced “by the hard¬
est labor and . . . greatest deprivation.” Nor would there
have been need for still another to confess pathetically to
his wife that “I sometimes think my feelings unfit me for a
slaveholder.” 2
But the feelings of most masters drove them to rational¬
ize the system rather than escape it, and this is why they
were such tragic figures. They simply could not persuade
themselves to forego slavery’s rewards: its profits and con¬
veniences. During a residence on a Virginia plantation, a
Northerner discovered for himself what self-denial aboli¬
tionists were demanding of slaveholders—how easy it was
to be morally paralyzed in their situation. “Every night the
servant comes in and gets my boots and cleans them. Every
morning he comes in before I am up, brings me water to
wash, brushes my clothes, and builds a fire when one is nec¬
essary. At night when I am down to prayers the chamber¬
maid comes in and turns down the bed clothes and puts
things in order for me to go to bed. In fine everything is
done for me, I have nothing to do and I find it really con-

1 William S. Pettigrew to James C. Johnston, July ig, 1849; March 7,

1850, Pettigrew Family Papers.
2 Baker Diary, entry for February 13, 1849; Gustavus A. Henry to his
wife, December 2, 1837, Henry Papers.

424
X: He Who Has Endured

venient to be waited upon.” 3 It was a sign of their demor¬

alization that slaveholders should have used a weapon as
feeble as the proslavery argument to escape this dilemma.
For, of course, they never did escape it until they ceased to
be slaveholders. When, at last, they lost the profits and con¬
veniences of slavery, they won the chance to live in peace
with themselves and with their age. It was not a bad ex¬
change.

2
The great mass of southern whites, who were nonslave¬
holders, gained not even the profits and conveniences of
slavery to offset its baleful impact upon their lives. Some
proslavery leaders, uneasy because so few Southerners had
a direct interest in bondage, searched for a way to check the
concentration of this form of property and to encourage its
diffusion. One proposal was to exempt all or a part of a
master’s slaves from seizure for debt. This would “offer to
every man among us the strong inducement to become a
slave-owner,” and thus everyone “would have an interest,
direct and abiding, in the existence and perpetuity of do¬
mestic slavery.”4 Failing in this, the institution’s defenders
tried to convince nonslaveholders that Negroes, rather than
masters, were their mortal enemies. They painted fright¬
ening pictures showing how the poor man would fare if
abolitionists had their way—how slavery protected his wife
and children “from a state of horrors that he has never
dreamed of.” What would the white working man gain if
a horde of free Negroes were turned loose to compete with
his labor and reduce him to their social level? “It is Afri¬
can slavery that makes every white man in some sense a
lord—it draws a broad line of distinction between the two

3 Gara (ed.) , "A New Englander’s View of Plantation Life," loc. cit.,
P- 347-
* De Bow’s Review, XXXII (1857), p. 212.

425
 The Peculiar Institution
races, and color gives caste. . . . Here the division is be¬
tween white free men and black slaves, and every white is,
and feels that he is a MAN.” 5
That few nonslaveholders opposed slavery demonstrated
the success of appeals such as these. Most of them felt a
deep and abiding hatred of Negroes; they suffered from an
intense fear that free Negroes would claim equality with
them. As things stood, even in poverty they enjoyed the
prestige of membership in the superior caste and proudly
shared with slaveholders the burden of keeping black men
in their place. Nonslaveholders could demand respect from
other men’s slaves, they could arrest slaves who ran away,
and they could punish slaves when they rode on patrol. In
short, “The humblest white man feels, and the feeling
gives him a certain dignity of character, that where there
are slaves he is not at the foot of the social ladder, and his
own status is not the lowest in the community.” 6
For these prestige baubles the nonslaveholders paid a
heavy price. As slaves the Negroes were, in fact, more ruin¬
ous economic competitors of white labor than they were as
freemen. Everywhere, in nearly every occupation, white
workers found their bargaining power severely restricted
as long as employers were able to hire slaves and keep them
at subsistence levels. In i860, the average annual wage of
textile workers in New England was $205; in the South it
was $145. Even in industries that employed no slaves, the
threat to employ them was always there nonetheless. The
replacement of white labor with slaves after a strike in
Richmond’s Tredegar Iron Company was a dramatic illus¬
tration of the free worker’s weak position in the South. A
low standard of living for Negro labor meant a low stand¬
ard of living for white labor too.

5 Columbus (Ga.) Times, quoted in Memphis Tri-Weekly Appeal, Au

gust 24, 1850.
o De Bow’s Review, XX (1856), p. 662.

426
X: He Who Has Endured

White mechanics repeatedly demanded the passage of

laws excluding slaves from their trades. “Negro mechan¬
ics,” complained a petition to the Atlanta city council,
“can afford to underbid the regular resident city mechan¬
ics of your city, to their great injury.” 7 But the white me¬
chanics seldom succeeded in the face of almost solid oppo¬
sition from the slaveholders. Such laws, masters protested,
were a “monstrous invasion of the right of private prop¬
erty.” A supply of slave mechanics “is our bulwark against
extortion and our safeguard against the turbulence of white
mechanics, as seen in the great strikes, both in England and
in the North, and is the only protection we have in any pos¬
sible struggle between capital and white labor.” “God for¬
bid we should have any more white labor imported here
among us,” cried a master.8 Unable to get legal protection,
compelled to compete with slave artisans, the whites di¬
rected their resentment against the slaves more often than
against their owners—and sometimes tried futilely to drive
the black workers away with force.
Unquestionably the competition of slaves injured the
dignity and lowered the self-respect of the white manual
laborer. Both the skilled artisan and the unskilled wage
earner felt humiliated when they had to bid for work
against another man’s slaves. How much slavery encour¬
aged idleness and shiftlessness among the poor whites, how
much it put a stigma on all forms of physical toil, it is hard
to tell. Certainly the great majority of nonslaveholders la¬
bored diligently in order to survive, however degraded
they may have felt as a consequence. But there were limits
beyond which their pride would not let them go. They
would seldom work with slaves, unless there was a clear di-

1 Wesley, Negro Labor in the United States, pp. 71-73; Savannah Re¬
publican, May 26, 1851.
a Charleston Courier, December 12, 1840; Southern Cultivator, XVIII
(i860), pp. 204-205, 288-89.

427
 The Peculiar Institution

vision of labor. Nor would they perform menial tasks—

“nigger work”—as domestics. To render personal service
to a white employer—to cut his wood, cook his food, wait
his table, wash his clothes, or black his boots—was a form
of degradation that few white men would endure.
The yeoman farmer felt the economic effects of slavery
no less than the mechanic, for he too labored in competi¬
tion with slaves. The price a farmer could get for what he
had to sell depended less upon his own production costs
than upon those of the planter with his superior efficiency
and cheap labor. How the white yeoman was rewarded for
his toil, therefore, was directly affected by the meager
rewards the slaves received. Poverty was contagious. More¬
over, the slaveholder could usually outbid the nonslave¬
holder for the most fertile lands. By the end of the ante¬
bellum period relatively few of the nonslaveholders were
cultivating the lands best suited for staple crops and com¬
mercial agriculture. Most of those who possessed such lands
had either prospered and risen into the slaveholding class
or sold out to their more successful neighbors. Usually one
either went up or out. Slavery did not destroy the South’s
independent yeomanry; but to say that slavery did not ad¬
versely affect this class is to ignore one of the prime facts of
the South’s agricultural history.
And yet the majority of white farmers, like the white me¬
chanics, were indoctrinated by the proslavery argument
and defended the peculiar institution. They too vented
their frustrations and resentments chiefly against the Ne¬
groes and not the slaveholders. Like Southerners generally,
they resented outsiders who “tampered” with slaves, and
they lived in dread of a slave insurrection. They joined the
mobs which sporadically dealt summary justice to lawless
slaves, punished strangers suspected of being abolitionist
agents, smashed antislavery presses, dispersed antislavery
meetings, and drove into exile native-born Southerners

428
X: He Who Has Endured

guilty of heresy. As a group the nonslaveholders, urban and

rural, were passionate conformists and demanded ortho¬
doxy from their churches, their schools, and their public
men.
In this chilling atmosphere the southern intellectual
with an interest in social theory or moral philosophy played
a stultifying role. If he remained in the South, the barriers
raised by slavery circumscribed the areas of speculative
thought open to him. Behind the barriers he performed the
rituals which signified his loyalty to the South. He might
debate with his fellows the grounds upon which slavery was
to be justified: the scientist might speculate about whether
or not Negroes and whites belonged to separate species of
the genus, man; the clergyman might search the Scriptures
for pronouncements on the obligations of master and slave;
and the political economist might catalogue the weaknesses
of a free society. On such matters the intellectual might
speculate freely; but beyond them were the barriers, and
beyond the barriers the dangerous morass of heterodoxy
from which, once entered, there was no return.

3
Critics of slavery, certain white men think, err when they
assume that Negroes suffered as much in bondage as white
men would have suffered. One must remember, argue the
critics of the critics, that to the Negroes slavery seemed
natural; knowing no other life, they accepted it without
giving the matter much thought. Not that slavery was a
good thing, mind you—but, still, it probably hurt the Ne¬
groes less than it did the whites. Indeed, the whites were
really more enslaved by Negro slavery than were the Negro
slaves. This post-slavery argument, like the ante-bellum
proslavery argument, is based upon some obscure and baf¬
fling logic. It is not unlike James H. Hammond’s confident

429
 The Peculiar Institution

assertion that “our slaves are the happiest . . . human be¬

ings on whom the sun shines”; or his complaint that “into
their Eden is coming Satan in the guise of an abolition¬
ist.” 9
A former slave once pronounced a simple and chasten¬
ing truth for those who would try to understand the mean¬
ing of bondage: “Tisn’t he who has stood and looked on,
that can tell you what slavery is,—’tis he who has endured.”
“I was black,” he added, “but I had the feelings of a man as
well as any man.” * 1 One can feel compassion for the ante¬
bellum southern white man; one can understand the moral
dilemma in which he was trapped. But one must remember
that the Negro, not the white man, was the slave, and the
Negro gained the most from emancipation. When freedom
came—even the quasi-freedom of “second-class citizen¬
ship”—the Negro, in literal truth, lost nothing but his
chains.

» De Bow’s Review, VIII (1850), p. 123.

1 Drew, The Refugee, pp. 201-202.

430
 Manuscripts Consulted, and Their
Locations

Alabama State Department of Archives and History, Mont¬

gomery

John Coffee Collection.

William P. Gould, Rules and Regulations for the Man¬
agement of the Hill of Howth Plantation. (Photostats.)
Israel Pickens, and Family, Papers. (Typescripts and
some originals.)
Charles Tait, and Family, Papers.
James M. Torbert Plantation Diaries. (Typescripts.)
United States Census Bureau, Manuscript Census Returns
for i860. Schedule III for Alabama.

University of California Library, Berkeley

Peter Randolph Leigh Diary and Account Books. (Mi¬

crofilms.)

Library of Congress

Charles Bruce Plantation Accounts.

Stephen D. Doar Plantation Accounts.
Franklin H. Elmore Papers.
James H. Hammond Papers.
William B. Randolph Plantation Accounts and Letters.
Turner Reavis Account Book.
Edmund Ruffin Diaries.
Shirley Plantation Farm Journals.
Slave Narrative Collection. (W.P.A. Federal Writers'
Project.)

Duke University Library

William C. Adams Diary.

Alexander Robinson Boteler Diary.
 The Peculiar Institution

Clement C. Clay Papers.

E. A. Crudup Plantation Diary.
Samuel Smith Downey Papers.
J. Milton Emerson Journal.
William H. Hatchett Papers.
Duncan G. McCall Plantation Journal and Diary.
Peter C. and Hugh Minor Notebooks.
Haller Nutt Journal of Araby Plantation.
William C. Powell Papers.
William W. Renwick Papers.
James Sheppard Papers.
United States Census Bureau, Manuscript Census Re¬
turns for i860. Schedule III for Georgia, Kentucky,
Louisiana, and Tennessee.
Henry Watson, Jr., Papers.
F. L. Whitehead and N. Lofftus Accounts of Slave Trad¬
ing.
Samuel O. Wood Papers.

Fayette County Court House, Lexington, Kentucky

Fayette County Will Books, 1830-1860.

University of Kentucky Library

Buckner Family Papers.

J. Winston Coleman Papers on Slavery in Kentucky.
Shelby Family Papers.

Department of Archives, Louisiana State University

Butler Family Papers.
Thomas W. Butler Papers.
Eli J. Capell, and Family, Collection.
James A. Gillespie, and Family, Papers.
John C, Jenkins, and Family, Collection. (Typescripts
and some originals.)
St. John R. Liddell, and Family, Collection.
Henry Marston, and Family, Papers.
William J. Minor Collection.

432
Manuscripts Consulted, and Their Locations

Pr6 Aux Cleres Plantation Record Books.

Alexander Franklin Pugh Diaries. (Typescripts.)
David Weeks, and Family, Collection.

Maryland Hall of Records, Annapolis

Baltimore, Prince Georges, and Talbot County Will

Books, Inventories, and Administrator’s Accounts,
1830-1860. (Microfilms.)

Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore

Lloyd Family Papers.

Jacob Michael Papers.
Ridgely Family Papers.
James W. Williams Farm Books.
Otho Holland Williams Papers.

National Archives

United States Census Bureau, Manuscript Census Returns

for i860, Schedules I and II.

North Carolina Department of Archives and History,

Raleigh

Cumberland, Edgecombe, and Mecklenburg County Will

Books, Inventories, and Minute Books, 1830-1860.
Pettigrew Papers.
United States Census Bureau, Manuscript Census Re¬
turns for i860, Schedule III for North Carolina.

Southern Historical Collection, University of North Caro¬

lina
John D. Ashmore Plantation Journals.
James B. Bailey Papers.
Everard Green Baker Diaries and Plantation Notes.
Bayside Plantation Records.
John Houston Bills Diaries.
Hamilton Brown Papers.
John W. Brown Diary.

433
 The Peculiar Institution

Henry King Burgwyn Papers.

Burton-Young Papers.
Cameron Family Papers.
Church of Bethany Session Book, 1775-1872, Iredell
County, North Carolina. (Typescripts.)
Cole-Taylor Papers.
James Hamilton Couper Plantation Records.
Louis M. De Saussure Plantation Book.
William Erwin Diary and Account Book.
Flat River Primitive Baptist Church Records, Person
County, North Carolina.
John Edwin Fripp Journals and Slave Lists.
David Gavin Diary.
Sarah A. Gayle Journal. (Typescripts.)
Globe Baptist Church Records, Caldwell County, North
Carolina.
John Berkeley Grimball Diaries.
Peter W. Hairston Papers.
Harding-Jackson Papers.
William Hargrove Account Book and Slave Record.
Gustavus A. Henry Papers.
John Hill Plantation Diary.
Hubard Papers.
Franklin A. Hudson Diaries.
George J. Kollock Plantation Records.
Alexander K. Lawton Plantation Diary.
Francis Terry Leak Diaries.
Lenoir Family Papers.
Mrs. Andrew McCollam Diary.
Magnolia Plantation Journal.
Manigault Plantation Records.
Nicholas B. Massenburg Farm Journal.
Columbus Morrison Diary.
John Nevitt Plantation Journal.
Newstead Plantation Diary. (Microfilm.)
Stephen Andrews Norfleet Diaries.
Pettigrew Family Papers.
P. H. Pitts Diary and Account Book.

434
Manuscripts Consulted, and Their Locations

Phanor Prudhomme Papers.

Edmund Ruffin, Jr., Farm Journal and Plantation Diary.
Peter Evans Smith Papers.
Sparkman Family Papers.
William E. Sparkman Plantation Record.
John Thompson Plantation Book. (Microfilm.)
Lewis Thompson Papers.
A. and A. T. Walker Account Book.
John Walker Diaries. (Originals of first two volumes; re¬
mainder on microfilm.)

South Carolina Historical Commission, Columbia

Fairfield and Williamsburg District Will Books, 1830-

1860. (Typescripts.)
South Carolina Slavery Manuscripts Collection.
United States Census Bureau, Manuscript Census Re¬
turns for i860. Schedule III for South Carolina.

South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston

John Ball Plantation Books.

Thomas Aston Coffin Papers.
John B. Milliken Plantation Journals.

South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina

Abbeville and Union District Inventories and Appraise¬

ments, Guardian’s Accounts, Commissioner’s Minute
Books, and Judge of Probate Decree Books, 1830-1860.
(Typescripts.)
Keating S. Ball Record of Births and Deaths.
Caleb Coker Plantation Book.
Andrew Flinn Plantation Book.
S. Porcher Gaillard Plantation Journals.
Michael Gramling Record Book.
James H. Hammond Diary and Account Books.
William Gilmore Simms Plantation Book. (Photostats.)

Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, Savannah

Telfair Plantation Records.

435
 The Peculiar Institution
Virginia Historical Society, Richmond
William M. Waller Papers.
Bickerton Lyle Winston Slave Account Book.

Virginia State Library, Richmond

N. F. Cabell Collection of Agricultural Papers.
Caroline, Henrico, Nelson, and Southampton County
Minute Books, Order Books, and Will Books, 1830-
1860. (Microfilms.)
Jerdone Family Slave Book and Journal. (Photostats.)
William Massie Slave Book and Farm Journals. (Photo¬
stats.)
Virginia Legislative Petitions from Accomac, Albemarle,
Alexandria, Allegheny, Amelia, Amherst, Appomat¬
tox, Augusta, Barbour, Bath, and Bedford Counties.

University of Virginia Library

Ambler Family Papers.
Bruce Family of Berry Hill Papers.
Coleman Family Papers.
John B. Garrett Farm Journal. (Microfilm.)
Robert M. T. Hunter Papers.
Richard Irby Papers. (Microfilms.)
McDowell Family Papers.
Morton-Halsey Papers.
Pocket Plantation Papers.
Virginia Slavery Collection of Receipts, Bills of Sale, and
Lists and Evaluations of Slaves.
 [i]
INDEX

Abbeville District, S.C., 231 Alabama (continued)

Abolitionists, 20, 146, 207, 239, 371, 225, 226; restrictions on emanci¬
398, 419, 422, 425; on cruelty o£ pation in, 234; regulation of slave
slaveholders, 82, 180, 181, 187; and trade in, 252, 253, 254; sickness
aid to runaways, 121, 153; alleged among slaves in, 298; profits from
encouragement of rebellions by, slavery in, 408, 409
>37-8 “Alabama fever,” 27
Absentee ownership: among plant¬ Alabama, Florida, and Georgia Rail¬
ers, 43-4 road Company: employment of
Accomac County, Va., 376 slaves by, 62, 71
Acklen, Col. J.A.S., 279, 293; planta¬ Alexandria, Va.: slave trade in, 260,
tion operations of, 42-3 261-2
Adams County, Miss., 301-2 Ambler, John, 279-80
Administrators: hiring out of slaves American Colonization Society, 94
by, 69; sales of slaves by, 199-200, Amherst County, Va., 269
201 Anderson, Joseph R., 65
Adultery: among slaves, 198 Anglo-Saxons: alleged superiority
Affleck, Thomas, 173, 178, 250 of, 8
Africa: peoples of, 9; cultures of, 12- Anthony, John H., 269
13; slavery in, 17, 21 Arcadia Cotton Factory, 66
African Labor Supply Association, Arkansas, 26, 29, 85, 194, 198, 239,
276 253, 39T slaveholdings in, 30;
African slave trade: beginning of, slave population of, 32 n; run¬
17-18, 24; cruelty of, 24-5; aboli¬ away slaves in, 120; insurrection
tion of, 25, 81, 271, 397; illegal, panic in, 138; expulsion of free
271-2, 397; movement for reopen¬ Negroes from, 216; restrictions on
ing of, 272-8 emancipation in, 234; sentiment
“Africanisms": survival of, 362-3 for reopening African slave trade
Africans, see Negroes in, 273-4, 277; sickness among
Agriculture: southern advantages slaves in, 299-300; profits from
in, 4; inducements to use slaves slavery in, 408
in, 5, 400; southern white labor Arkansas River, 185, 299
in, 7; movement for diversification Armfield, John: slave trader, 261-2,
of, 51-2; risks of, 389-90; alleged 265
effects of slavery upon, 393-5; re¬ Armstrong, John, 230
vival of, in South, 27, 395-6 Arson: by slaves, 127-8; penalty for,
Alabama, 7, 26, 185, 210, 239, 393; 210
slaveholdings in, 30, 31; slave pop¬ Artisans, slave, 280; on small plan¬
ulation of, 32 n: legal position of tations, 37-8; on large plantations,
slaves in, 192-3; definition of mu¬ 41-2; services of, 58-9; urban em¬
latto in, 195; slave speculation in, ployment of, 63, 147; efficiency of,
202; penalty for aiding slave re¬ 63, 337; hiring of, 69, 167, 414;
bellion in, 211; patrol system in, "hiring own time” by, 72-3; as
214; penalty for killing slave in, runaways, no; role of, in control¬
219; penalty for cruelty toward ling slaves, 151, 333
slaves in, 219; trial of slaves in. Artisans, white, 29; employment of
 Index
Artisans, white (continued) Bushmen, 9
slaves by, 63, 69, 71; protests of, Butler, Pierce, 103, 152, 175, 317-18,.
against slave labor, 65; impact of 336
slavery on, 427 Butler, Thomas W., 319
Ashantis, 12
Athenians: slavery among, 15
Athens, Ga., 66 Cachexia Africana: among slaves,
Atkinson, James, 205 3<>4
Atlanta, 112 Caimes, John E.: on economics of
Augusta County, Va., 187, 216 slavery, 384, 385-6, 388, 393, 396-
7- 399
Bahamas: slaves escape to, 120, 121 Calhoun, John C., 132, 420
Bakehouses: slave employment in, Campbell, Walter L.: slave trader,
63 263
Ball, Keating S., 320 Canada: slaves escape to, 118, 122
Baltimore, 73, 119, 122, 358; slave Cape Fear and Deep River Naviga¬
trade in, 260, 261, 262 tion Company: employment of
Baltimore County, Md., 204 slaves by, 62
Bantus, 9 Caroline County, Va., 248
Baptist Church: antislavery senti¬ Carter, Hill, 52, 300. 307-8, 396
ment in, 157; slave members of, Cartwright, Dr. Samuel W.: and ra¬
160, 372-3 cial defense of slavery, 8; on “Ne¬
Barbados, 17, 206 gro diseases,” 102, 109, 309
Barksdale, Sherwood, 205 Carver, Elizabeth, 231
Barrow, Bennet H., 186, 189 Caste system, 22, 23, 33, 331-2
Bastardy: among slaves, 198 Cecil County, Md., 118
Bath County, Ky., 64 Central America, 26
Bath County, Va., 96 Charles County, Md., 118
Battle, James, 114 Charleston, 52, 88, 135, 173, 209,
Bell, Montgomery, 64-5 243, 262, 301, 312, 319, 326
Beriberi: among slaves, 304 Chase, Anthony, 122-3
Bermudas: slaves escape to, 138 Chattel slavery, see Slavery
Bertie County, N.C., 238, 320 Chattels, see Slaves
Big Black River, 298 Chicot County, Ark., 257
Binis, 12 Cholera: among slaves, 302
Black Belt, 4, 31, 185 Christians: revival of slavery by,
Bluegrass, 300; slave population of, 16-17
32; hemp production in, 49 Christmas: as holiday for slaves, 79,
Bondage, see Slavery 169-70, 365, 368; gifts to slaves at,
Bondsmen, see Slaves, Indentured 166, 290
servants Clark, John, 231
Boston: and slave trade, 18 Climate, southern: as alleged cause
Boswell, Elizabeth Ann, 205 of slavery, 3-5; white adjustment
Bourbon County, Ky., 32 to, 7, 297
Branding: of slaves, 188, 210 Clothing, slave, 289-92; domestic
Brazil, 17, 2t manufacture of, 58, 290-1
“Breaking in”: of slaves, 25, 144, Cocke, John H., 178
177, 187-8 Colleton District, S.C., 194, 301
British Empire: abolition of slavery Collins, Asa: slave trader, 244
in, 20 Columbia, S.C., 66
Brown, Hamilton, 68 Columbus, Ga., 114, 283
Brown, John, 137-8 Commercial agriculture: and need
Brunswick and Altamaha Canal: for labor, 4. See also Agriculture
employment of slaves on, 62 Compromise of 1850, 26
Brunswick County, N.C., 61 Concubines, slave, 196, 259, 355
Buckner, Richard, 120 Congo, 12
Burgess, John W., 8 Conspiracies, slave, 134-40

11
Index
Constitution, Federal: and legality Delaware (continued)
of slavery, 26 32; emancipation laws of, 232; and
Cotton, 27: and alleged dependence prohibition of slave exports,
upon Negro labor, 7: production 251-2
of, with white labor, 7; labor rou¬ Dengue: among slaves, 303
tine in production of, 45-6, 55; DeSaussure, Louis D.: slave trader,
growth of, by small farmers, 53; 268
acres of, per field-hand, 56; over¬ Diarrhea: among slaves, 302
working of slaves in production Diphtheria: among slaves, 303
of, 82, 84-5; profits from produc¬ "Dirt eating’’: among slaves, 304
tion of, 408-9 Diseases: among slaves, 296-307;
Cotton presses: employment of treatment of, 307-18
slaves in, 63, 71 Dismal Swamp, 61
“Cotton snobs,” 84, 185 District of Columbia: runaway
Couper, James Hamilton, 313 slaves in, 121; closing of slave
Courts, southern: on powers of mas¬ trade in, 251
ters, 141: on valuation of slaves, Divorce: among slaves, 342
142-3: role of, in control of slaves, Docks: employment of slaves on, 63
192; and enforcement of slave Dogs: use of, in tracking runaways,
codes, 193; litigation over slaves 189-90
in, 203-4; protection of slaves by, Domestics, slave, 77, 161, 172, 280,
220-4; trials of slaves in, 224-7 334, 363; on small plantations,
Craftsmen, see Artisans 37-8; on large plantations, 41-2,
Creole: slave mutiny on, 138 59; services of, 59; urban employ¬
Creoles, 70; and miscegenation, 355 ment of, 62-3; hiring of, 69, 71;
Crime: among slaves, 124-32, 190-1; as runaways, 110; and aid to run¬
death penalty for, 210-11; trials aways, n6; theft among, 125, 126;
for, 224-7 murder of whites by, 130-1; role
Cruelty: toward slaves, 111, 177-91, of, in controlling slaves, 151-3,
204; legal penalties for, 219 333; mulattoes as, 196; clothing
Cuba, 21 of, 289-90; paternalism toward,
Cumberland County, N.C., 205, 231 323-4, 325-6, 330; as slave aris¬
Cumberland Iron Works: employ¬ tocracy, 337-8, 339; devotion of,
ment of slaves in, 64-5 to whites, 379
Cumberland River, 64 Douglass, Frederick: on hiring own
Curasao, 17 time, 72-3; on slave’s desire for
freedom, 89, 90; on slave resist¬
Dabney, Thomas S., 74, 167, 270 ance, 101; on slave theft, 127; on
Dahomey, 12 slave impudence, 145; on slave’s
Dancing: among slaves, 168, 172, fear of whites, 146; on fears of
366-7 runaways, 154; on “breaking in”
Davis, Jefferson, 132, 151-2, 171-2 of slaves, 188: on murder of slaves,
De Bow, J. B. D., 276 223; on feeding of slaves, 288-9;
Deep South, 77, 78, 206, 210, 232, on slave clothing, 291; on life in
244; white labor in, 7: slavehold- quarters, 332-3; on brutalizing
ings in, 31-2: slave population of, effects of slavery, 335; on slave’s
32; large plantations in, 43; sugar search for prestige, 338; on slave
production in, 46-7; neglect of marriages, 347; on slave music,
food crops by planters in, 50; run¬ 369: on slave superstition, 374
away slaves in, 119; runaway Drapetomania: alleged Negro dis¬
slaves sold to, 154; slave fear of, ease, 109
154: and movement to reopen Dred Scott case, 26
African slave trade. 272-8: health Drivers, slave, see Foremen
problem in, 296, 297-300. 310 Dropsy: among slaves, 303
Delaware, 194: and prohibition of DuBose, Martha, 205
slave importations, 25; slavehold- Dutch: and slave trade, 17-18; and
ings in, 30; slave population of, miscegenation, 350
 Index
Dutch Guiana, 21 Florida (continued)
Dysaethesia /Ethiopica: alleged Ne¬ whites by slaves in, 130; conspira¬
gro disease, 102 cies and rebellions in, 135; en¬
Dysentery: among slaves, 302 slavement of free Negroes in, 216;
slave "breeding” in, 247; demand
Easton, Md., 261 for reopening African slave trade
Edgecombe County, N.C., 205 in, 277
Egyptians: slavery among, 15 Florida Railroad Company: hiring
Emancipation: of slaves, 94, 95, 197, of slaves by, 71-2
233, 234-6, 358; legal restrictions Floyd, John, 207
on, 198, 232-5 Folklore: among slaves, 367
Encomenderos, 17 Food: allotment of, to slaves, 282-9
England: bondage in, 15-16 Food crops: southern production of,
English: as indentured servants, 16; 50-4; acres per hand, 56
and slave trade, 17; and miscege¬ Foremen, slave, 34, 172; on small
nation, 350 plantations, 37; duties of, 40-1,
Enlightenment: and slavery, 19 44-5, 54; role of, in controlling
Ensor, John, 204 slaves, 151-2, 175, 335
Epilepsy: among slaves, 305 Fornication: among slaves, 198
Episcopal Church: slave member¬ Forrest, Nathan Bedford: slave
ship in, 372 trader, 265
Europeans: question of fitness of, Franklin, Isaac: slave trader, 259,
for labor in South, 7 261-2, 265, 268
Ewell, Dr. James, 307 Frederick, Md., 261
Executors: hiring out of slaves by, Fredericksburg, Va., 48
69; sale of slaves by, 199, 201 Free labor: working day of, 75-6, 77;
use of, by planters, 80; slavehold¬
Factories: employment of slaves in, ers’ fear of, 149-50, 275; capture
63-7. 72, 102. 147. l67- 397-9 of runaways by, 153; standard of
Fairfield District, S.C., 205, 230 living of, 281-2; comparison of,
Families, slave: breakup of, 112, 172, with slave labor, 399-404, 418; im¬
199-200, 242-3, 252, 257-8, 266-7, pact of slavery on, 426-8
333. 344-5. 348-9; slaveholders' Free Negroes, 71, 88, 135, 149, 150,
respect for, 229-30; nature of, 222, 387; kidnapping of, 74, 94,
340-9 258; voluntary enslavement of,
Fantis, 12 92, 216-17; hostility toward, 93,
Fayette County, Ky., 32, 138, 412 215-17, 232; and purchase of free¬
Fetters: use of, to punish slaves, 174 dom for slaves, 97; and aid to
Field-hands, 34, 36, 37, 41, 54, 280, runaways, 120-1, 122; and trade
323, 330-1, 362, 380; acres culti¬ with slaves, 126; as slaveholders,
vated by, 56; proportion of, in 194-5, 229; in criminal codes, 210;
slave gangs, 56-7; fractional, 57; laws governing, 215-16; and ef¬
skill and efficiency of, 59-60, 336- forts to expel, 216. See also Ne¬
7; hiring of, 70-1; as runaways, groes
110; theft among, 125; cruelty to¬ French: and slave trade, 17
ward, 185; clothing of, 291-2. See Fugitive-slave law, Federal, 119, 153
also Slaves Fugitive slaves, see Runaway slaves
Fisheries: employment of slaves in,
61 Gabriel conspiracy, 135
Fiske, John, 8 Gadsden, Thomas Norman: slave
Fitzhugh, George, 420 trader, 268
Florence, Ala., 406 Gambling: among slaves, 367
Florida, 26, 29, 85, 252; slavehold- "Gang system”: as method of em¬
ings in, 30; slave population of, ploying slave labor, 54-6
32 n; sugar production in, 46; Geography: as alleged cause of slav¬
runaway slaves in, 120; murder of ery, 4-5

IV
Index
Georgia, 27, 206, 239, 243, 244; be¬ Hatchett, William H.: slave trader,
ginning of slavery in, 18; closing 267-8
of African slave trade by, 25; Hausas, 12
slaveholdings in, 30, 31; slave Hayne, Robert Y.: on "Negro
population of, 32 n; sugar produc¬ courts,” 226
tion in, 46; rice production in, 47- Heathens: enslavement of, 16-17
8; employment of slaves on rail¬ Hemp: labor routine in production
roads in, 62; penalties for killing of, 49, 55; cultivation of, on small
slaves in, 218-19; law of, against farms, 53
cruelty, 219; trial of slaves in, Hemp factories: employment of
225; restrictions on emancipation slaves in, 64, 72, 415; profits from,
in, 233-4; slave exports of, 238; 410
regulation of slave trade by, 252, Henrico County, Va., 135
253, 256; sickness among slaves in, Hernia: among slaves, 306
297-8; profits from slavery in, Heyward, Nathaniel, 410
409-10 Hillsboro, N.C., 36
Germans: as indentured servants, 16 Hinds County, Miss., 74, 270
Gold Coast, 12 Hired slaves, see Slaves
Gramling, Michael, 47 n “Hiring own time”: by slaves, 72-3,
Great Valley of Virginia, 37; slave 90, 96, 147, 208, 228, 280
iron workers in, 65 Hoe-hands, slave, 41, 55. See also
Greensboro, Ala., 386 Field-hands
Grimball, John B., 410 Holidays: for slaves, 79, 365-6; as
Gristmills; employment of slaves in, labor incentives, 168-70, 172
61, 72 Hookworm: among slaves, 304
Guadeloupe, 17 Hotels: employment of slaves in, 63,
Gullah Negroes, 363 7>
Hottentots, 9
Haiti: slave rebellion in, 20 Housing, slave, 292-5
Halifax County, N.C., 269 Houston, George, 205
Hamilton, James, 407 Houston, Texas, 263
Hammond, James H., 42, 79, 202, Hundley, Daniel R.: on cruelty to¬
235, 325> 386-7, 405; on working ward slaves, 180; on slave traders,
day of slaves, 44-5; on carelessness 256-T, 266
of slave labor, 102; on slave re¬
sistance, 105; and problem of run¬ Indentured servants: in English
aways, 116; and techniques of colonies, 16, 18, 21-2, 24, 193
slave control, 146, 151, 157, 169, Indians, 71; as slaves, 17, 23; and
174, 175; on slave “breeding,” intermarriage with Negroes, 23;
247; on feeding of slaves, 286; on enslavement of, prohibited, 23-4
clothing of slaves, 291; on slave Indigo: abandonment of, 47
sickness, 298; and protection of Infant mortality: among slaves, 319-
slave health, 311, 312, 313; and 21
control of slave families, 342; on Infidels: enslavement of, 16
miscegenation, 352; on economics Influenza: among slaves, 303
of slavery, 383, 409; as agricultural Insurrections, slave, 132-40, 190,
reformer, 396; and defense of slav¬ 210; penalty for white aid to, 211
ery. 429-30 Internal improvements: employ¬
Hampton, Wade, 238 ment of slaves in, 61-2
Hancock County, Ga., 393 Iredell County, N.C., 161
Handicrafts: among slaves, 367 Irish: as indentured servants, 16
Hanover County, Va., 70, 78 Iron industry: employment of slaves
Hardeman County, Tenn., 415 in, 64-5, 72, 147
Harford County, Md., 36 Irons: use of, to punish slaves, 174,
Hart & Davis: slave traders, 261 186
Harvey, Thomas, 205-6 Issaquena County, Miss., 32

V
 Index
Jackson, Andrew, 188 Lalaurie, Madame, 182
I ails: confinement of slaves in, 172- Laundries: employment of slaves in,
3, 210 63, 71
Jamaica, 17 Lawyers: as absentee planters, 43-4;
James River, 52, 300 and investments in slaves, 386
Jefferson, Thomas, 19 Leak, Francis T., 319
Jefferson City, Mo., 261 Legislatures, southern: and power
Jefferson County, Ark., 2gg of master over slave, 141; and
Jenkins, John C., 405 slave codes, 192-236; and defini¬
Jones, Charles Colcock: on religious tion of mulatto, 195; and legal
instruction of slaves, 160 protection of slaves, 217-20
Jones, George Noble, 107 Lewis, Lilburne, 182
Jones County, N.C., 1x5 Lexington, Ky., 302; slave trade in,
"Just wars": enslavement of prison¬ 244, 259, 260
ers in, 19 Liberia, 94, 216
Liberty County, Ga., 294
Kansas-Nebraska Act, 26 Lincoln, Abraham, 26
Kemble, Frances Ann: on role of Liquor: slave use of, 126, 150, 169-
head driver, 152; on religion as 70, 211, 228, 370-1
control device, 158; on slave Livingston County, Ky., 182
“breeding," 248-9; on feeding of Lloyd, Col. Edward, 52, 238, 319
slaves, 286; on tetanus among Locke, John, 18
slaves, 304; on slave hospitals, Louisiana, 26, 27, 50, 185, 210, 239;
317-18; on slave infant mortality, slaveholdings in, 30, 31; slave
320; on paternalism, 327; on population of, 32 n; sugar pro¬
breakup of slave families, 333; on duction in, 46-7; use of slaves on
brutalizing effects of slavery, 335; internal improvements in, 62;
on mulattoes, 339-40; on callous¬ overworking of slaves in, 82, 85;
ness of slave mothers, 346; on murder of whites by slaves in,
slave diversions, 363-4; on slave 130; slave conspiracies and re¬
dancing, 366 bellions in, 135, 137, 138; slaves
Kentucky, 26, 174, 196, 206, 239; as property in, 197; slave code of,
slaveholdings in, 30, 31; slave pop¬ 207, 212; penalty for antislavery
ulation of, 32 n; tobacco produc¬ agitation in, 211; shooting of run¬
tion in, 48, 53; hemp production aways in, 213-14; prohibition of
in, 49, 53; mining in, 61; slave cruelty in, 219; slave trials in, 225,
employment in factories of, 64; 226; regulation of emancipation
runaway slaves in, 118, 120, 121; in, 232; regulation of slave trade
slave insurrection panic in, 138; in, 252, 253, 254; movement for
slave rebellion -in, 138-9; white reopening African slave trade in,
slaves in, 196; slaves as property 276; slave sickness in, 298-9, 302,
in, 197; rewards for capturing 304; voodooism in, 374; profits
runaways in, 213; penalty for cru¬ from slavery in, 408, 409
elty in, 219; regulation of emanci¬ Louisville: slave trade in, 260
pation in, 232; emancipation in, Lowell, Mass., 27
235; slave exports of, 238, 244, Lower South, see Deep South
262; regulation of slave trade in, Lumpkin, Joseph FI., 234, 235
253; sickness among slaves in, 300; Lunenburg County, Va., 268
profits from slavery in, 412 Lynchburg, Va., 64; slave trading
Key West, 120 in, 261, 267
Kincaid, Mary, 205 Lynching: of slaves, 190-1
King George County, Va., 194
King and Queen County, Va., 52 Macon County, Ala., 37
Knoxville, 276 Malaria: among slaves, 300-1, 302
Mammy Harriet, 73-4
Laborers, white unskilled, 29. See Manchester, England, 27
also Free labor Mandingos, 12

VI
Index
Manifest Destiny, 26 Mississippi (continued)
Manigault, Charles, 405 in, 298, 301-2; slave life expect¬
Manigault, Louis, 405, 409-10 ancy in, 319; slave infant mortal¬
Marengo County, Ala,, 298 ity in, 319-20; profits from slavery
Marriages, slave: restrictions on, in, 384, 408, 409
150; legal status of, 198, 341 Mississippi River, 61, 135, 202
Marshall, Andrew, 160 Missouri, 26, 206, 239, 253; slave-
Martin, Joseph, 230 holdings in, 30; slave population
Martineau, Harriet: on paternalism, of, 32 n; tobacco production in, 48,
323 53; hemp production in, 49, 53;
Martinique, 17 mining in, 61; runaway slaves in,
Maryland, 253, 328; fhrst Negroes in, 121, 213; slave insurrection panic
18; evolution of slavery in, 21-3; in, 138; and prohibition of anti¬
closing of African slave trade by, slavery agitation, 211; slave trials
25; slaveholdings in, 30; slave in, 225; regulation of emancipa¬
population of, 32 n; tobacco pro¬ tion in, 232; slave exports of, 238,
duction in, 48; runaway slaves in, 262; profits from slavery in, 412
118; regulation of emancipation Missouri Compromise, 26
in, 232, 233 n; slave exports of, Mobile, 68, 119, 414
238; miscegenation in, 352; profits Montgomery, 114, 276, 312
from slavery in, 412 Moors: enslavement of, 16
Masters, see Slaveholders, Planters Morton, Jeremiah, 68
Measles: among slaves, 303 Moslems: and slavery, 16-17
Mechanics, see Artisans Mulattoes, 194, 259, 332, 350; as
Mecklenburg County, N.C., 205 runaways, 110; southern defini¬
Memphis: slave trade in, 265, 267 tions of, 195; uses of, as slaves,
Mental diseases: among slaves, 305 196; as slave aristocracy, 339-40;
Merchants: as absentee planters, 43- number of, 351
4; and investments in slaves, 386 Mumps: among slaves, 303
Methodist Church: antislavery sen¬ Murder: of whites by slaves, 130-2,
timent in, 157; slave membership 190, 210, 220-1; of slaves by
in, 372-3 whites, 187, 218-19, 221-4; of
Mexico, 26: slaves escape to, 120, 213 slaves by slaves, 227
Middle Passage: cruelty of, 25 Murrell gang: slave stealers, 258
Militia: role of, in control of slaves, Music: among slaves, 368-70
192: and capture of runaways, 214 Mutilation: of slaves, 188, 210
Millerism: among slaves, 375
Mines: employment of slaves in, 61, Natchez, 31, 137, 209, 312, 323; slave
71, 84 trade in, 244, 259, 261, 263-4, 268,
Minor, William J., 320 269, 270, 297
Miscegenation: in colonial period, Natural rights: and slavery, 19, 89
22; legal prohibition of, 23; and “Negro courts,” 224-6, 228
status of persons of mixed ances¬ Negroes: alleged special fitness of,
try, 194-6; in ante-bellum South, for labor in South, 7-8, 295-6;
350-61 health of, in swamplands, 7-8,
Mississippi, 7, 26, 27, 29, 85, 185, 296-7; alleged race traits of, 8-10,
210, 239, 393; slaveholdings in, 30; 87. 92. 93. *44. 17*> 283. 327; Af¬
slave population of, 32 n; hiring rican origins of, 9; physical traits
of slaves in, 70; insurrection pan¬ of, 9; intellectual capacities of,
ics in, 136-7; slave speculation in, 10; alleged barbarism of, 11-12;
202; runaway slaves in, 213; slave and problems of adjustment in
trials in, 225; regulation of eman¬ America, 12, 13; African culture
cipation in, 234; slave “breeding" of, 12-13; similarity of, to whites,
in, 247; regulation of slave trade 13-14; involvement of, in south¬
in, 252, 253-4, 255, 256; demand ern tragedy, 14; Christian and
for reopening African slave trade Moslem enslavement of, 16-17;
in, 276-~7; sickness among slaves vague status of, in seventeenth

vii
 Index
Negroes (continued) North Carolina (continued)
century, 21; reduction of, to slav¬ slave trials in, 225, 226; regulation
ery, 22-3; and legal presumption of emancipation in, 232; slave ex¬
of slavery, 24, 193-4; alleged in¬ ports of, 238; sickness among
feriority of, 59, 195, 387; alleged slaves in, 300
peculiar diseases of, 102, 109, 308- Northup, Solomon, 74-5
9; alleged depravity of, 111; ma¬ Nott, Dr. Josiah C.: and racial de¬
laria among, 300-1; yellow fever fense of slavery, 8
among, 301-2; cholera among,
302; as inferior caste, 331-2; Octoroons, tg4, 195, 259
churches of, 373; impact of slav¬ Ohio River, 118, 121
ery on, 429-30. See also Free Ne¬ Olmsted, Frederick Law: on white
groes, Slaves labor in South, 7; on paternalism,
Nelson County, Va., 267 76, 327-8; on overworking of
Nervous disorders: among slaves, slaves, 85; on slave’s desire for
305 freedom, 90-1; on slave resistance,
Nevitt, John, 188 99, too, 102-3; on runaway slaves,
New England; slavery in, 18 tog, 111, 114; on slave’s fear of
New Hanover County, N.C., 213 whites, 146; on encouragement of
New Mexico, 26 slave dependence, 148; on mas¬
New Orleans, 29, 61, 135, 154, 182, ter’s distrust of slaves, 148; on re¬
243, 301, 302, 312, 352, 406; slave ligion among slaves, 157, 372, 374,
trade in, 246, 252, 259, 261, 263, 376; on slave life on small farms,
264, 416 164; on slave incentives, 165; on
New York City; and African slave cruelty in slavery, 178; on legal
trade, 272 position of slaves, 193; on slaves
Newport; and African slave trade, as property, 202; on slave “breed¬
18 ing,” 245, 246; on feeding of
Newton County, Ga., 200 slaves, 285, 288; on slave housing,
Nigeria, 12 293; on sickness among slaves, 297;
Night work; among slaves, 80, 167, on intimacy of slaves and masters,
172 323-4, 325; on sexual promiscuity
Nonslaveholders: proportion of, in among slaves, 347; on miscegena¬
South, 29-30; defense of slavery tion, 351, 352; on slavery as civi¬
by, 33; hiring of slaves by, 67, 71; lizing force, 364; on reticence of
and fear of slave rebellions, 139; slaves, 377; on slave subservience,
right of, to respect from slaves, 379; on economics of slavery, 384,
145; as patrollers, 215; slave con¬ 394- 399> 401< 408. 4<>9. 413; °n
tempt for, 338; miscegenation master’s love of power, 422
among, 353; and soil exhaustion, Orange County, Va., 68
394; impact of slavery on, 425-9. Orangeburg District, S.C., 47
See also Artisans, Poor whites, Ordinance of 1787, 26
Yeoman farmers Overseers, 29, 36, 279; on small
Norfleet, Stephen A., 320 plantations, 37; on large planta¬
Norfolk, 52, 262 tions, 38-40; duties of, 39, 149;
North: abolition of slavery in, 19-20 shortcomings of, 39-40, 394-5; im¬
North Carolina, 29, 85, 206, 253, pact of, on slaves, 44; overworking
292; closing of African slave trade of slaves by, 82-3; and problem
by, 25; slaveholdings in, 30; slave of slave control, 106-8, 124, 149,
population of, 32 n; tobacco pro¬ 150; whipping of slaves by, 175,
duction in, 48, 53; corn produc¬ 177, 178-9; cruelty of, 180-1, 183;
tion in, 52; turpentine production and neglect of diseased slaves,
in, 61; mining in, 61; slave con¬ 317; and miscegenation, 354
spiracies in, 136, 139; penalty in,
for aiding slaves to escape, 211; Panic of 1837, 255, 386, 390, 415
outlawing of runaways in, 213; Partus sequitur ventrem: applica¬
penalty in, for killing slaves, 218; tion of, to slaves, 193-4

Vlll
 Index
Passes, slave, 115, 149, 168, 170, 172; Presbyterian Church: slave mem¬
forging of, 117, 161, 208, 210, 211 bership in, 161, 372-3
Paternalism: toward slaves, 76, 96, Prince Georges County, Md., 205,
162-3, 228-31, 314, 322-30 230
Peculiar institution, see Slavery Prolapsus uteri: among slave wom¬
Pellagra: among slaves, 304 en, 306
Pemberton, James, 151-2 Proslavery argument, 134, 158, 181,
Pensacola, 66, 121 281, 383, 420-1, 423, 425, 429
Petersburg; 64 Prostitutes, slave, 196, 259
Pettigrew, Rev. Charles, 178 Providence: and African slave trade,
Pettigrew, Ebenezer, 40, 52, 95, 107, 18
300 Pugh, Thomas, 407
Pettigrew, William S., 152
Pettis, F. H.: slave catcher, 153 Quadroons, 194, 195, 259
Phillips, Dr. Martin W., 396 Quarries: slave labor in, 61
Phillips, Ulrich B.: quoted, 4, 5, 8- Quarters, slave, 292; life in, 332-3,
9, 11-12 361^71
Phrenology, 8
Piedmont, 4, 300 “Race problem,” 8, 9
Pine Bluff, Ark., 299 Racism: as defense of slavery, 8-9;
Plantation legend, 29, 43 lack of evidence to support, 10
Plantations: relation of, to slavery, Railroads: employment of slaves on,
5; as schools to civilize Negroes, 62, 71-2, 84
11-12, 364; distribution and size Rape: punishment for, 190-1, 210
of, 30-2; slave labor on, 36-44, Rapides Parish, La., 181, 238, 302
78-80; economic complexity of, "Rascality”: among slaves, 102
42; overworking of slaves on, 81- Rawhide: use of, in punishing
5; slave churches on, 161-2; cru¬ slaves, 175-6
elty on, 183-5; paternalism on, Red River, 74, 408
325-6; slave life on, 331 Redemptioners: in English colonies,
Planters: number and distribution 16
of, 30-2; relation of, with over¬ Redpath, James, 121
seers, 38-40, 77-8, 82-3, 150, 175, Religion: use of, as control tech¬
178-9, 183-5, 279, 315-16; as en¬ nique, 156-62; among slaves,
trepreneurs, 43; absentee owners 371_7
among, 43-4; production of food Republican party, 137
crops by, 50-2. See also Slavehold¬ Rheumatism: among slaves, 303
ers Rice: and use of forced Negro labor,
Pleurisy: among slaves, 303 7-8; labor routine in production
Plow-hands, 34, 41, 55. See also of, 47-8, 55; production of, on
Field-hands small farms, 53; acres of, per
Plymouth, N.C., 139 hand, 56; profits from, 409-10
Pneumonia: among slaves, 303 Richmond, 64, 68, 135, 147, 160,
Police: role of, in controlling slaves, 167, 2og, 212; slave trade in, 260,
192, 209 261, 262
Politicians: as absentee planters, Richmond County, Ga., 51-2
43-4 Rio Grande, 120
Poor whites, 29, 71, 151; capture of River boats: slave labor on, 61, 414
runaways by, 153; slave contempt Roane County, Tenn., 137
for, 338, 380. See also Nonslave¬ Roanoke River, 52
holders Robards, Lewis C.: slave trader, 259
Porto Rico, 21 Robinson, Solon: on economics of
Portuguese: and African slave trade, slavery, 384
17; and miscegenation, 350 Rolfe, John, 18
Potomac River, 121 Romans: slavery among, 15
Pratt, Daniel, 66 Ropewalks: employment of slaves
Prattsville, Ala., 66 in, 64

IX
 Index
Ross, Isaac, 94 Slave traders, 112, 142, 143, 203, 239,
Ruffin, Edmund, 396, 406-7 243; rebellious slaves sold to, 164-
Ruffin, Thomas, 221 5, 254; cruelty of, 253-4; unscru¬
Runaway slaves, 88, 109-24, 125, pulous practices of, 256-9; busi¬
129-30, 153-5, 174. 188-9, 2‘2-i4. ness operations of, 260-5; as scape¬
348-9 goats, 266; slaveholders as, 268-70
Slaveholders: proportion of, in
St. Eustatius, 17 southern population, 29-30; sizes
St. John the Baptist Parish, La., 135 of holdings of, 30-1; labor of, in
St. Landry Parish, La., 194 fields with slaves, 35-6; mana¬
St. Louis, 381; slave trade in, 258, gerial functions of, 35-7, 38, 54;
260 subsistence farming among, 52-3;
St. Mary Parish, La., 53 diversified farming among small,
St. Simon Island, Ga., 320 53; staple production among
Salem, Mass.: and African slave small, 53; and hiring of slaves to
trade, 18 others, 67—70; labor demands of,
Salisbury, N.C., 119 from slaves, 73-85; paternalism
“Salting”: as form of slave punish¬ among, 76-7, 162-3, 228-31, 322-
ment, 187 30; on “deceitfulness” of slaves,
Saluda Cotton Mill: employment of 87—8; and problem of control, 91,
slaves in, 66 97-109, 124-32,141-3, 144-8, 162-
Savannah, 112, 160, 173, 301, 302, 4, 171, 192-3; and emanci¬
312 pation by wills, 95, 233-6; and
Savannah River, 105, 297, 298 problem of runaways, 109-24,
Sawmills: employment of slaves in, 15$~5> *74. 188-9; and fear of in¬
61, 72 surrections, 134-40; rules of, for
Scarlet fever: among slaves, 303 governing slaves, 148-51; and use
Scotch-Irish: as indentured servants, of religion as control technique,
16 156-62; and use of incentives,
Scots: as indentured servants, 16 164—70; and methods of punishing
Scrofula: among slaves, 303 slaves, 171-7; cruelty of, toward
Scurvy: among slaves, 304 slaves, 177-90; obligations of, 192,
Sea islands, 31, 76, 362, 363, 375-6 217; treatment of slaves as prop¬
Seldon, John, 396 erty by, 197-206; compensation
Seminole Indians: and fugitive of, for executed slaves, 198-9; in¬
slaves, 120, 138 volvement of, in slave trade, 239-
Seminole War: fugitive slaves in, 44, 266-71; and slave “breeding,”
138 245-51; and maintenance of
Serfs, 15 slaves, 279-95; and medical care
Shackles: use of, to punish slaves, of slaves, 307-18; and miscegena¬
174 tion, 355-6; profits of, 383-5, 404-
Shipyards: employment of slaves in, 18; and noneconomic reasons for
.
63 71
Slave “breeding,” 245-51
owning slaves, 385-7; economic
problems of, 389-404; impact
Slave catchers, 153, 189 of slavery on, 419-25. See also
Slave codes: origin of, 22-3; in ante¬ Planters
bellum South, 192-236 Slavery: as root of southern tragedy,
Slave patrols, 134, 168, 214-15 3, 14; climate and geography as
Slave states: population of, 30 n alleged causes of, 3-5; relation of,
Slave trade, domestic, 397; disposal to plantation system, 5; and quest
of unmanageable slaves through, for profits, 5; role of Southerners
154-5; an<i local sales, 237; sources in developing, 5-6; as profitable
of supply for, 238, 239-44; Fed¬ labor system, 6, 383-5, 388-90,
eral regulation of, 251; state regu¬ 404-18; as social failure, 6; racist
lation of, 251-6; conduction of, defense of, 8-9; as device to con¬
256-65; role of slaveholders in, trol “barbaric” Negroes, 11; early
265-71 history of, 15-17; in colonial pe-

X
Index
Slavery (continued) Slaves (continued)
riod, 18-19, 21-25; decline of, ing of, 144-8; rules for governing
outside South, 19-21; westward of, 148-51; religion among, 156-
expansion of, 26; as a ‘‘positive 62, 371-7; labor incentives of,
good,” 28; rigidity of, 28; on small 164-70; legal position of, 192-231;
farms, 34-6, 325; on small planta¬ whites as, 194, ig6; mulattoes as,
tions, 36-8; on large plantations, 195-6; as prostitutes, 196; as con¬
38-44; need for tyranny in, 141, cubines, 196, 259, 355; as prop¬
177-8, 185-6; in southern law, erty, 196-206; prices of, 201-2,
192-236; and paternalism, 322-30; 388, 402, 414-17; trials of, 224-7;
noneconomic causes for survival trade in, 237-44, 251-71; “breed¬
of, 385-7; alleged economic con¬ ing” of, 245-51; compensation of,
sequences of, 390-404; impact of, 279-82; food allowances of, 282-
on slaveholders, 419-25; impact 9; clothing of, 289-92; housing of,
of, on nonslaveholders, 425-9; im¬ 292-5; sickness among, 295-307;
pact of, on Negroes, 429-30 medical care of, 307-18; mortality
Slaves; use of, in southern agricul¬ among, 318-21; paternalism to¬
ture, 5; importance of, in south¬ ward, 322-30; class structure
ern economy, 27; functions of, among, 333-40; family life among,
28; geographic distribution of, 340-9; and miscegenation, 350-
28-9, 31-2; proportions of, in 61; diversions of, 361-71; costs
large and small holdings, 31; in for maintenance of, 406-7. See
cities and towns, 31, 36; unsuper¬ also Negroes, Field-hands, Arti¬
vised labor of, 36; working day sans, Domestics
of, 44-5, 2i 8; labor of, in cotton Smallpox: among slaves, 303
production, 45-6; labor of, in Smith, John E.: slave trader, 263
sugar production, 47; labor of, South: tragedy in history of, 3, 6,
in rice production, 47-8; labor of, 14; and alleged dependence upon
in tobacco production, 48-9; labor Negro labor, 7-8; white labor in,
of, in hemp production, 4g; num¬ 7; “race problem” in, 8, 9; sur¬
ber of, employed in agriculture, vival of slavery in, 20, 28; evolu¬
49-50; use of, in production of tion of slavery in, 21-4; rural na¬
food crops, 50-4; organization ture of, 29; disease problem in,
of, for agricultural labor, 54-60; 296. See also Deep South, Upper
employment of children, 57-8; South
employment of diseased and se¬ South Carolina, 7, 11, 206, 210, 243,
nile, 58; and nonagricultural 253, 271, 376-7; beginning of slav¬
labor in rural South, 58-9; 60-2; ery in, 18; Indian slaves in, 23;
urban employment of, 62-7, 397- colonial slave population of, 24;
9; hiring of, 67-72, 84, 112, 185, and closing of African slave trade,
204, 318, 414-15; "hiring own 25; slaveholdings in, 30, 31; slave
time" by, 72-3, 90, 96, 147, 208, population of, 32; rice production
228, 280; amount of labor re¬ in, 47-8; slave textile workers in,
quired of, 73-85; overworking of, 66; paternalism in, 76; overwork¬
81-5; alleged contentment of, ing of slaves in, 81; runaways in,
86-7; deceptiveness of, 87-8; and 116; conspiracies and rebellions
desire for freedom, 88-92, 93-6; in, 134-5, 136, 138; definition of
resistance of, 91-2, 97-109, 124-32; Negro in, 195; slaves as property
suits of, for freedom, 94-5, 197; in, 196-7; control of free Negroes
and purchase of own freedom, in, 216; regulation of slave labor
96-7; runaways, 109-24, 125, 129- in, 218; laws against killing slaves
30. 153-5. 174. *88-9. 2i3->4: in, 218-19; law against cruelty in,
cruelty toward, 111, 177-91; pun¬ 220; slave trials in, 224-5, 226;
ishment of, 113-14. 171-7. 209-11; regulation of emancipation in,
conspiracies and insurrections 233, 234; slave exports of, 238;
among, 132-40; attitudes toward slave "breeding" in, 247; and de¬
whites of, 142, 146, 377-82; train- mand for reopening of African

XI
 Index
South Carolina (continued) Taylor, Stephen, 205
slave trade, 274; sickness among Tenant farmers, 29
slaves in, 297-8; profits from slave Tennessee: 26, 50, 206, 239, 253;
labor in, 408, 409-10 slaveholdings in, 30; slave popu¬
Southampton County, Va., 132-3, lation of, 32 n; mining in, 61;
.
157 358
Southerners, white: and responsi¬
slave iron workers in, 64; insur¬
rection panics in, 137, 138; pen¬
bility for slavery, 5-6; as victims alty in, for theft of slaves, 198;
of slavery, 6; and racist defense regulation of emancipation in,
of slavery, 8; and fear of Negro 232; slave exports of, 238; slave
“barbarism,” 11; isolation of, in “breeding" in, 246-7; sickness
nineteenth century, 19, 20-1; among slaves in, 300, 302; slave
slaveownership among, 29-30; and prices in, 415
fear of slave rebellions, 132-40; Terrebonne Parish, La., 319
contempt of, for cruel masters, Territories: opening of, to slavery,
179 26
Spanish: and African slave trade, Tetanus: among slaves, 304, 320
17; and miscegenation, 350 Texas, 26, 29, 130, 185, 239, 253,
Spanish America: abolition of slav¬ 393; slaveholdings in, 30; slave
ery in, 20 population of, 32 n; sugar pro¬
Spratt, L. W., 276 duction in, 46; runaway slaves in,
Staple crops: relation of, to slavery, 120; insurrection panics in, 138,
5. See also Cotton, Hemp, Rice, 190; white slaves in, 194; as haven
Sugar, Tobacco for debtors, 203; rewards for cap¬
Stewards: on large plantations, 42 turing runaways in, 213; slave
Stocks: use of, to punish slaves, 173, trials in, 225; demand for re¬
186 opening African slave trade in,
Stokes, Peter: slave trader, 267-8 274; sickness among slaves in, 299;
Stores: employment of slaves in, 63 profits from slavery in, 408
Sudan, 12 Textile mills: employment of slaves
Sugar: alleged dependence of, on in, 65-7, 72
Negro labor, 7; labor routine in Theft: among slaves, 125-7, 159.
production of, 47, 55; production 286. 3351 of slaves, 198, 258
of, on small farms, 53; acres of, Thompson, Lewis, 238
per hand, 56; overworking of Thrush: among slaves, 303
slaves in production of, 84, 85; Tippah County, Miss., 319
labor problem in production of, Tobacco, 18, 27, 396, 410, 413; labor
102, 113 routine in production of, 48-9, 55;
Suicide: among slaves, 128-9, 203 production of, on small farms, 53;
Sunday work: among slaves, 79, acres of, per hand, 56; labor prob¬
167, 172; prohibition of, 218 lem in production of, 103
Superstitions: among slaves, 374-5 Tobacco factories: employment of
Supreme Court: and slavery expan¬ slaves in, 64, 72, 90, 147, 167
sion, 26 Tobago, 17
Syphilis: among slaves, 303 Torbert, James M., 37
Toussaint L’Ouverture, 20
Tabb, P. M. & Son: agents for hiring Tredegar Iron Company: employ¬
slaves, 68 ment of slaves in, 65, 90, 167,
Tait, James A., 407 426
Talbot County, Md., 52, 230, 238, Tuberculosis: among slaves, 303
3*9 Tubman, Harriet, 122
Taliaferro, James, 269-70 Turner, Nat, rebellion, 132-4, 136,
Tanneries: employment of slaves in, 139-40. 157. '90, 207, 254
63 Turpentine: employment of slaves
“Task system”: as method of utiliz¬ in production of, 61, 71
ing slave labor, 54-6, 113, 168 Typhoid: among slaves, 303

Xll
Index
Typhus: among slaves, 303 “Virginia District" (continued)
Tyrrell County, N.C., 40, 52, 152, 48; employment of slaves in fac¬
300 tories of, 64
Voodooism, 374
Underground railroad, 122
Walker, David, 215
Upper South: 35, 72, 77, 78, 206,
Walker, Jonathan, 121
210, 225, 248, 255; slaveholdings
Waller, William M.: slave trading
in, 31-2; food crops on planta¬
of, 269-71
tions of, 50-1, 52; hired slaves in,
Ware, lames D.: slave trader, 268,
67; runaway slaves in, 118, 154
270
Utah, 26
Warrenton, Va., 261
Washington, Miss., 253
Vesey, Denmark, conspiracy, 135, Washington, N.C., 209
214 Washington County, Miss., 32
Virginia, 27, 124, 206, 253, 391; first Watering places: employment of
Negroes in, 18: antislavery debate slaves at, 63, 71
in, 20; evolution of slavery in, Watson, Henry, Jr., 386
21-3: prohibition of Indian slav¬ Weems, Mary, 230
ery in, 23-4; slave population of, Weld, Theodore Dwight, 180
24, 31-2; and closing of African Weldon brothers: employment of
slave trade, 25; agricultural im¬ slaves by, 62
provements in, 27, 395-6; slave- West Feliciana Parish, La., 42, 299
holdings in, 30; tobacco produc¬ West Indies, 17, 23, 25
tion in, 48, 53; diversification of Whipping: of slaves, 109, 114, 131,
agriculture in, 51; wheat produc¬ 174—7, 178-g, 186-7, 209-10
tion in, 52; mining in, 61; hired White, Charles, 96-7
slaves in, 68; paternalism in, 76; Whooping cough: among slaves, 303
heavy labor on plantations of, Wiesemann, A.: slave trader, 263
78-9, 85; conspiracies and rebel¬ Wilkes County, Ga., 119
lions in, 132-4, 135, 137, 138; Wilkes County, N.C., 68
white slaves in, 194; definition of Wills: disposal of slaves in, 199,
mulatto in, 195, 196; penalty in, 204-6, 230-1
for theft of slaves, 198; seizure of Wilson, Dr. John H.: on feeding
slaves for debt in, 200; penalty slaves, 283-4; on “Negro diseases,”
for antislavery agitation in, 211; 309
patrol system in, 214; enslavement Winston, Bickerton Lyle, 70
of free Negroes in, 216; prohibi¬ Wood products: slave production
tion of Sunday labor in, 218; pen¬ of, 61, 71
alty for killing slaves in, 218; Woodford County, Ky., 32
slave trials in, 226; regulation of Woodroof, Seth: slave trader, 261
emancipation in, 232; emancipa¬ Woolfolk, Austin: slave trader, 261
tion in, 235; slave exports of, 238,
239; slave "breeding” in, 245, Yazoo River, 31, 298
246; sickness among slaves in, Yellow fever: among slaves, 301-2
300; slave infant mortality in, Yeoman farmers, 29, 33, 295; impact
320; labor shortage in, 388; profits of slavery on, 428. See also Non¬
from slavery in, 408, 410-12 slaveholders
"Virginia District”: tobacco belt. Yorubas, 12

Xlll
A Professor of American History at the University of Cali¬
fornia (Berkeley), Kenneth M. Stampp is a native of Wiscon¬
sin. He was born in Milwaukee in 1912, and received his
higher education at the University of Wisconsin, from which
he won his doctorate in 1942. Mr. Stampp has been teaching
and writing ever since. Before his appointment at Berkeley in
1946, he taught at the universities of Wisconsin, Arkansas, and
Maryland, meanwhile rising to the rank of Associate Profes¬
sor. While at Wisconsin, Mr. Stampp was a President Adams
Fellow in History; he was a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow
in 1952-3.
A specialist in Civil War history, Mr. Stampp is the author
of Indiana Politics During the Civil War and And the War
Came. Articles by Mr. Stampp have been appearing regularly
in such journals as American Historical Review, Mississippi
Valley Historical Review, Journal of Negro History, North
Carolina Historical Review, and Journal of Southern History.
Mr. Stampp is married and has two children.
 VINTAGE HISTORY — AMERICAN

v-198 Bardolph, Richard The Negro Vanguard

v-42 Beard, Charles A. The Economic Basis of Poli¬
tics and Related Writings
v-60 Becker, Carl L. Declaration of Independence
V-17 Becker, Carl L. Freedom and Responsibility
in the American Way of Life
V-191 Beer, Thomas The Mauve Decade: American
Life at the End of the 19th
Century
V-199 Berman, H. J. (ed.) Talks on American Law
V-211 Binkley, Wilfred E. President and Congress
V-44 Brinton, Crane The Anatomy of Revolution
V-37 Brogan, D. W. The American Character
V-72 Buck, Paul H. The Road to Reunion, 1865-
1900
V-98 Cash, W. J. The Mind of the South
V-190 Donald, David Lincoln Reconsidered
V-264 Fulbright, J. William Myths and Realities in Amer¬
ican Foreign Policy and Do¬
mestic Affairs
V-31 Goldman, Eric F. Rendezvous with Destiny
V-183 Goldman, Eric F. The Crucial Decade—and
After: America, 1945-1960
V-95 Hofstadter, Richard The Age of Reform
V-9 Hofstadter, Richard American Political Tradition
V-120 Hofstadter, Richard Great Issues in American His¬
tory, Volume I (1765-1865)
V-121 Hofstadter, Richard Great Issues in American His¬
tory, Volume II (1864-1957)
V-242 James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins
V-102 Meyers, Marvin The Jacksonian Persuasion
V-189 Miers, Earl Schenck Robert E. Lee
V-84 Parkes, Henry B. The American Experience
V-2 1 2 Rossiter, Clinton Conservatism in America
V-52 Smith, Henry Nash Virgin Land
V-253 Stampp, Kenneth The Peculiar Institution
V-I79 Stebbins, Richard P. U. S. in World Affairs, 1959
V-2 04 Stebbins, Richard P. U. S. in World Affairs, i960
V-222 Stebbins, Richard P. U. S. in World Affairs, 1961
V-244 Stebbins, Richard P. U. S. in World Affairs, 1962
V-110 Tocqueville, Alexis de Democracy in America, Vol¬
V-111 umes I and II
V-103 Trollope, Mrs. Domestic Manners of the
Frances Americans
V-265 Warren, Robert Penn Legacy of the Civil War
V-208 Woodward, C. Vann Burden of Southern History

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 THE
PecuM$
Institm
KENNETH•M|
“A thoughtful, deeply moving bo!
wants to show specifically what sh..
it existed, and what it did to the All
There is a massive impact to this j
more effective by the fact that its ar'
dispassionate and scholarly objecj
to make it one of the most valuai;
books ever written in this field.”

“In ten sparkling chapters the bo‘

minates every aspect of slavery. .
not as a method of regulating race | .
arrangement that was in its essenc
as a practical system of controlli
labor. How the slaves worked, how i
age, how they were disciplined, he;,
lives in the quarters, and how the'
each other and toward their masters
receive full exploration_The ma|
with imagination and verve, the st .
factual evidence is precise and accu;
will disagree with the conclusions,
to disregard them.” —Fra
. America)

“The Peculiar Institution is one of tj

fS
and provocative works on Southerly
in our generation.” -David Dos

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