I

Coming to Terms with Slavery in

Twenty-First-Century America
Ira Berlin

A merican racial history is marked by unexpected twists and turns,

and the latest bend in the road is no more surprising than most. In-
terest in African American slavery-an institution put to rest in a mur-
derous civil war almost a century and a half ago--has reappeared in a
new guise. The last years of the twentieth century and the initial years of
the twenty-first have witnessed an extraordinary engagement with slav-
ery, sparking a rare conversation on the American past-except, of
course, it is not about the past. The intense engagement over the issue of
slavery signals-as it did in the 1830s with the advent of radical abolition-
ism and in the 1960s with the struggle over civil rights-a search for social
justice on the critical issue of race.
The new interest in slavery has been manifested in the enormous place
of slavery in American popular culture as represented in movies (Glory,
Amistad, and Beloved), TV documentaries (PBS's Africans in America,
HBO's Unchained Memories, WNET's Slavery and the Making ofAmerica),
Five generations of a black family born in slavery on the J.J. Smith plantation in Beaufort, radio shows (Remembering Slavery), monuments, indeed entire museums,
South Carolina, taken by Civil War photographer Timothy H. O'Sullivan, who visited
along with hundreds of roadside markers and thousands of miles of free-
the plantation in 1862. COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
dom trails-and, of course, Web sites, CDs, and books. Slavery has been
on the cover of Time and Newsweek, above the fold in the Washington Post,
and the lead story in the "Week in Review" section of the Sunday New
York Times. 1
All of this marks the entry of slavery into American politics, as with
arguments ovet apologies, the establishment of federal and state commis-
sions on race, the filing of numerous lawsuits, and presidential visits to

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COMING TO TERMS WITH SLAVERY • 3

slave factories on the west coast of Africa. Slavery has sparked debates nance of slaveholders in the nation's leadership, gave it a large hand in
over flags and songs in some half dozen states, transformed a graveyard in shaping American culture and the values central to American society. It is
New York and the site of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia into contested no accident that a slaveholder penned the founding statement of Ameri-
terrain, and made the paternity of Sally Hemings's children a subject of can nationality and that freedom became central to the ideology of Amer-
national interest. The names of scores of schools and highways have be- ican nationhood. Men and women who drove slaves understood the
come as much a matter of concern as the vexed matter of reparations. meaning of chattel bondage, as most surely did the men and women who
Without question, slavery has a greater presence than at any time since were in fact chattel. And if it is no accident that the slaveholder Thomas
the end of the Civil War. 2 Jefferson wrote that "all men are created equal," then it was most cer-
On one level, the reason for this is not too difficult to discern. Simply tainly no accident that some of the greatest spokesmen for that ideal, from
put, American history cannot be understood without slavery. Slavery Richard Allen and Frederick Douglass through W.E.B. Du Bois and
shaped America's economy, politics, culture, and fundamental principles. Martin Luther King Jr., were former slaves or the descendants of slaves.
4
For most of the nation's history, American society was one of slaveholders The centrality of slavery in the American past is manifest.
and slaves. It would be comforting, perhaps, to conclude that a recognition of
The American economy was founded upon the production of slave- slavery's importance has driven the American people to the history books.
grown crops, the great staples of tobacco, rice, sugar, and finally cotton, But there is more to it than that. There is also a recognition, often back-
which slave owners sold on the international market to bring capital into handed and indirect, sometimes subliminal or even subconscious, that the
the colonies and then the young Republic. That capital eventually funded United States' largest, most pervasive social problem is founded on the in-
the creation of an infrastructure upon which rests three centuries of Amer- stitution of slavery. There is a general, if inchoate, understanding that any
ican economic success. In 1860, the four million American slaves were con- attempt to address the question of race in the present must also address
servatively valued at $3 billion. That sum was almost three times the value slavery in the past. Slavery is ground zero of race relations. Thus, in the
of the entire American manufacturing establishment or all the railroads in twenty-first century-as during the American Revolution of the 1770s,
the United States, about seven times the net worth of all the banks, and the Civil War of the 186os, and the civil rights movement of the 196os-
some forty-eight times the expenditures of the federal government. 3 the history of slavery mixes with the politics of slavery in ways that leave
The great wealth slavery produced allowed slave owners to secure a everyone, black and white, uncomfortable and often mystified as to why.
central role in the establishment of the new federal government in 1789, Perhaps that is because most Americans do not know what slavery
as they quickly transformed their economic power into political power. was. Beyond the obvious, who were the slaves and what exactly did they
Between the founding of the Republic and the Civil War, the majority of experience? Who were the slaveholders, the white majority who did not
the presidents-from Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and own slaves, and the black men and women who were not slaves? Are the
Jackson through Tyler, Polk, and Taylor-were slaveholders, and gener- slaves of American history represented by Pharaoh Sheppard, who in
ally substantial ones. The same was true for the justices of the Supreme 1800 was rewarded with freedom for informing on the slave rebel
Court, where for most of the period between the ratification of the Con- Gabriel? Are the descendants of Pharaoh Sheppard to be accorded the
stitution and the Civil War a slaveholding majority was ruled over by two same consideration as Gabriel's descendants? Does Pharaoh Sheppard,
successive slaveholding chief justices, John Marshall and Roger Taney. A once free, represent the free black experience, or might that better be ap-
similar pattern can be found in Congress, and it was the struggle for con- preciated in the person of the rebel Denmark Vesey? Should the descen-
trol of Congress between the slaveholding and nonslaveholding states dants of the white boatman who assisted Gabriel in his failed escape be
around which antebellum politics revolved. given a special dispensation from the burden of slavery's sordid history? If
The power of the slave-owning class, represented by the predomi- the evil of slavery was unambiguous, the lives of the men and women-
 4 • IRA BERLIN COMING TO TERMS WITH SLAVERY • 5

both black and white-who lived through the era were as complicated Some Americans believe slavery was foisted upon unknowing and
as any. sometimes unwilling European settlers and unfortunately entwined itself
But there is much to learn from those complications, not the least of around American institutions until it could be removed only by civil war.
which is the perplexing connection between slavery and race and the rela- While it burdened white Americans, this basically benevolent institution
tion of both to the intractable problems of race and class in the twenty- tutored a savage people in the niceties of civilization. Such a view still has
first century. Nothing more enrages black and white Americans than the some adherents, perhaps more than we would like to admit, but it is on
race-based policies that aggravate class inequities and the class-based the wane and in some places totally discredited, as it should be.
policies that expose deep-seated racism. The award of an equal- It has been replaced by the view that slavery was an institution of suf-
opportunity scholarship to the daughter of a wealthy black cardiologist focating oppression, so airtight that it allowed its victims little opportu-
angers members of the white working class, just as working-class black nity to function as full human beings. Slavery robbed Africans and their
men and women are infuriated by the supposedly color-blind school en- descendants of their culture and denied their language, religion, and fam-
trance exam that excludes people of color. Conflicts of this sort stem from ily life, reducing them to infantilized ciphers. Slavery, in short, broke
a system that once elevated a few white slave owners into positions of ex- Africans and African Americans.
traordinary power. It continues to shape American society today. Recent studies of slavery suggest that neither view correctly represents
The lines of class do not only cross those of race between white and the experience of enslaved people in the United States.
black. Within an increasingly diverse America-where blacks are no In January I 865, General William Tecumseh Sherman and Secretary of
longer the largest minority and where many whites are foreign-born- War Edwin S. Stanton met in Savannah to query an assemblage of former
new complexities have arisen. Whereas once the descendants of white im- slaves and free people of color on precisely these subjects. The response of
migrants questioned what slavery had to do with them when their fathers Garrison Frazier, a sixty-seven-year-old Baptist minister who served as
or even grandfathers arrived in the United States after slavery had been spokesman for the group, offers about as good a working definition of
abolished, now the same question is broached by newly arrived black men chattel bondage as any and as clear an understanding of the aspirations of
and women. "Barack Obama claims an African American heritage," de- black people as can be found. "Slavery," declared Frazier, "is receiving by
clared Alan Keyes, the black Republican candidate for an Illinois Senate the irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent."
seat in 2004, about his equally dark-skinned Democratic opponent. But, Freedom, Frazier continued, "is taking us from the yoke of bondage, and
he contends, "we are not from the same heritage. My ancestors toiled in placing us where we could reap the fruits of our own labor, take care of
slavery in this country. My consciousness, who I am as a person, has been ourselves and assist the Government in maintaining our freedom." 7
shaped by my struggle, deeply emotional and deeply painful, with the re- Frazier's last remark-calculated to reassure the general and the sec-
ality of that heritage." 5 In a similar if less publicized controversy in the retary-spoke to the minister's appreciation of the political realities of the
District of Columbia, one longtime African American leader condemned moment. But his definition of slavery-irresistible power to arrogate
his foreign-born if equally dark-skinned challengers, noting disdainfully another's labor-drew on some three hundred years of experience in
that "they look like me, but they don't think like me." 6 bondage in mainland North America. Slavery, of necessity, rested on
All of which is to say that what is needed are not only new debates about force. It could only be sustained when slave owners-who, with reason,
slavery and race but also a new education-a short course in the historical preferred the title "master"-enjoyed a monopoly on violence backed by
meaning of chattel bondage and its many legacies. The simple truth is that the power of the state. Without irresistible power, slavery quickly col-
most Americans know little about the three-hundred-year history of slav- lapsed-an event well understood by all those who came together at that
ery in mainland North America with respect to peoples of African descent historic meeting in Savannah.
and almost nothing of its effect on the majority of white Americans. Frazier also correctly emphasized the centrality oflabor to the history

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6 • IRA BERLIN COMING TO TERMS WITH SLAVERY • 7

of slavery. African slavery did not have its origins in a conspiracy to dis- What makes slavery so difficult for Americans, both black and white,
honor, shame, brutalize, or otherwise reduce black people on some per- to come to terms with is that slavery encompasses two conflicting ideas-
verse scale of humanity-although it did all of those at one time or both with equal validity and with equal truth, but with radically different
another. The stench of slavery's moral rot cannot mask the design of implications. One says that slavery is one of the great crimes in human
American captivity: to commandeer the labor of the many to make a few history; the other says that men and women dealt with the crime and sur-
rich and powerful. Slavery thus made class as it made race, and, in en- vived it and even grew strong because of it. One says slavery is our great
twining the two processes, it mystified both. nightmare; the other says slavery left a valuable legacy. One says death,
No understanding of slavery can avoid these themes: violence, power, the other life.
and the usurpation of labor for the purpose of aggrandizing a small mi- Mastering that contradiction is difficult, but even when it is accom-
nority. Slavery was about domination, and of necessity it rested on coer- plished there is more to be done. The lives of slaves, like those of all men
cion. The murders, beatings, mutilations, and humiliations, both petty and women, changed over time and differed from place to place. Thus
and great, were an essential, not incidental, part of the system. To be sure, slavery was not one thing but many. Like every human being who ever
one could dwell upon the wild, maniacal sadism of some frenzied slave lived, the slave was a product of his or her circumstances, only one part of
owners who lashed, traumatized, raped, and killed their slaves; the record which-to be sure, a significant part-was that he or she was owned.
of such lurid tales is full. But perhaps it would be more instructive to un- Knowing that a person was a slave does not tell us everything about him
derscore the cool, deliberate actions of, say, Robert "King" Carter, the or her. It is the beginning of the story, not its end.
largest slaveholder in colonial Virginia, who petitioned and received per- What were these circumstances that shaped slaves' lives? Ask most
mission from the local court to lop the toes off his runaways; or William Americans and they would probably say three things: cotton, the deep
Byrd, the founder of one of America's great families, who forced an incon- South, and African Christianity. Like most such conventional wisdom,
tinent slave boy to drink a "pint of piss"; or Thomas Jefferson, who calmly this is not wrong, as there was a moment-an important moment-when
reasoned that the greatest punishment he could inflict upon an incorrigi- most slaves grew cotton, lived in the deep South, and embraced Chris-
ble fugitive was to sell him away from his kin. Without question, the his- tianity. But that moment-the years immediately prior to the American
tory of slavery is the story of victimization, brutalization, and exclusion; it Civil War-was just a small fraction of slavery's history in the United
is the story of the power ofliberty, of a people victimized and brutalized. 8 States. For the most part, Americans have read the history of slavery
But there is a second theme, for the history of slavery is not only that of backward, freezing slavery in its death throes. This perhaps is a tribute to
victimization, brutalization, and exclusion. If slavery was violence and the abolitionist movement and its ability to shape popular understandings
imposition, if it was death, slavery was also life. Former slaves did not sur- of the history of slavery, but it is a disservice to the experience of the slaves
render to the imposition, physical and psychological. They refused to be and to those who try to come to terms with ground zero of American race
dehumanized by dehumanizing treatment. On the narrowest of grounds relations.
and in the most difficult of circumstances, they created and sustained life During the last two decades, historians have worked hard to detach
in the form of families, churches, and associations of all kinds. These slavery from its Civil War nexus and to explore its larger history-that is,
organizations-often clandestine and fugitive, fragile and unrecognized the full three hundred years of African and African American bondage.
by the larger society-became the site of new languages, aesthetics, and They have shown that for most of its history in what becomes the United
philosophies as expressed in story, music, dance, and cuisine. They pro- States, slavery was not a southern institution but a continental one-as
duced leaders and ideas that continue to inform American life, so much so much at home in the North as in the South, in New York and Philadel-
that it is impossible to imagine American culture without slavery's cre- phia as fully as in Charleston or New Orleans. They have demonstrated
ative legacy. how slavery in the United States was part of a larger world system-
8 • IRA BERLIN COMING TO TERMS WITH SLAVERY • 9

indeed, beginning in the sixteenth century, slavery more than anything Little is known about these men and women, who had telling names
else linked Africa, Europe, and the Americas. 9 such as Paulo d' Angola of New Amsterdam, and Francisco Menendez of
Historicization of slavery does not deny the exceptional character of Saint Augustine, and Anthony Johnson of Virginia-names that speak to
the North American experience. Indeed, slavery's globalization revealed the larger Atlantic world. The Charter Generation's history can be
with ever greater precision what made slavery in the United States glimpsed through Anthony Johnson, a man who spent his life on the east-
uniqtte: the early emergence of an indigenous slave population, the rapid ern shore of Virginia and Maryland. Johnson was sold to the English at
development of a Creole culture, the peculiar definitions of race, and the Jamestown in 1621 as "Antonio a Negro." During the dozen years follow-
particularly bloody and destructive emancipation. But the historicization ing his arrival, Antonio labored in Virginia, where he was among the few
of slavery countered a static and transhistorical vision of slavery, and in so who survived the 1622 Indian raid that all but destroyed the colony, and
doing it connects the history of slavery to the rest of American history- where he later earned an official commendation for his "hard labor and
the making of classes as well as the making of races. known service." His loyalty and his industry also won the favor of his
Viewing slavery in the United States not as a status that remains for- owner, who became Antonio's patron as well as his owner, perhaps be-
ever unchanged but as history that is forever being made and remade, five cause worthies such as Antonio were hard to find among the rough and
"generations" of slaves can be identified: a Charter Generation, a Planta- hard-bitten, if often sickly, men who comprised the mass of servants and
tion Generation, a Revolutionary Generation, a Migration Generation, slaves in the region. Whatever the source of his owner's favors, they al-
and finally-and triumphantly-a Freedom Generation. 10 lowed Antonio to farm independently while still a slave, to marry, and to
The Charter Generation refers to people of African descent who ar- baptize his children. Eventually, he and his family escaped bondage. Once
rived as slaves in mainland North America prior to the advent of the plan- free, Antonio anglicized his name, transforming "Antonio a Negro" into
tation. Drawn disproportionately from the Atlantic littoral, their world Anthony Johnson, a name so familiar to English-speakers that no one
focused outward onto the larger Atlantic, not inward to the African inte- could doubt his identification with the colony's rulers. 12
rior. They spoke-among other languages-the Creole dialect that had Johnson, his wife, Mary, and their children-who numbered four by
developed among the peoples of the Atlantic in the fifteenth and sixteenth 1640-followed their benefactor to the eastern shore of Virginia and
centuries, a language with a Portuguese grammar and syntax but a vocab- Maryland, where the Bennett clan had established itself as a leading fam-
ulary borrowed from every shore of the Atlantic. They understood some- ily, and where the Johnson family began to farm on its own. In 1651, An-
thing about the trading etiquettes, religions, and laws of the Atlantic thony Johnson earned a 250-acre headright, a substantial estate for any
world. Many were employed as interpreters, supercargoes, sailors, and Virginian, let alone a former slave. When Anthony Johnson's eastern-
compodores-all-purpose seaboard handymen-for the great sixteenth- shore plantation burned to the ground in 1653, he petitioned the county
and seventeenth-century trading corporations: the Dutch West India court for relief. Reminding authorities that he and his wife were longtime
Company, the French Company of the West, the Royal African Company, residents and that "their hard labors and knowne services for obtayneing
and a host of private traders and privateers. They entered societies in their livelihood were well known," he requested and was granted a spe-
which many people of European descent, although not slaves, were held in cial abatement of his taxes. 13 Like other men of substance, Johnson and his
servitude of a variety of types. Almost immediately they began the work of sons farmed independently, held slaves, and left their heirs sizable estates.
incorporating themselves into those societies-taking familiar names, As established members of their community, they enjoyed rights in com-
trading on their own, establishing families, accumulating property, and mon with other free men and frequently employed the law to protect
employing their knowledge of the law to advance themselves and secure themselves and advance their interests.
their freedom in remarkably high numbers. About one-fifth to one- The Johnsons were not unique in the Chesapeake region. As else-
quarter of the Charter Generation would gain their liberty. 11 where in mainland North America, the Charter Generation ascended the
 I0 • IRA BERLIN
COMING TO TERMS WITH SLAVERY • I I

social order and exhibited a sure-handed understanding of the social hier- Members of the Plantation Generation worked harder and died ear-
archy and the complex dynamics of patron-client relations. Although still lier than those of the Charter Generation. Their family life was truncated,
in bondage, they began to acquire the property, skills, and social connec- and few men and women claimed ties of blood or marriage. They knew
tions that became their mark throughout the Atlantic world. Men of the little-and probably did not want to know more-about Christianity
Charter Generation worked provision grounds, kept livestock, traded in- and European jurisprudence. They had but small opportunities to partic-
dependently, and married white women as often as they married black. ipate in independent exchange economies, and they rarely accumulated
They sued and were sued in local courts and petitioned the colonial legis- property. Most lived on large estates deep in the countryside, cut off from
lature and governor. 14 the larger Atlantic world. Few escaped slavery.
At the time of American settlement, African slavery was a long- Their names reflected the contempt with which their owners held
established institution. Europeans in the New World identified blackness them. Most answered not to names such as Anthony Johnson, Paulo
with slavery (how could they not, with the Atlantic filled with African d'Angola, or Samba Bambara but to such European diminutives as Jack
slaves?) and disparaged blackness, to the disadvantage of people of and Sukey. As if to emphasize their inferiority, some were tagged with
African descent. Wherever black people alit, whatever their legal status names more akin to those of animals: Topper, Postilion. Others were des-
and whatever skills they carried, they faced hostility and condescension. ignated with the names of some ancient deity or great personage, such as
But as long as the linkages between slavery and blackness were imperfect, Hercules or Cato, as a kind of cosmic jest; the most insignificant were
people of African descent were not denounced as congenitally dull, dirty, given the greatest of names. Whatever they were called, they rarely bore
stupid, indolent, and libidinous, even in the eyes of the most Eurocentric surnames, as their owners sought to obliterate marks of lineage and to
settlers. Rather, Europeans and European Americans condemned them deny them adulthood. Such names suggest the anonymity of the Planta-
as sly, cunning, deceptive, manipulative, and perhaps too clever by half, tion Generation. The biographies of individual men and women, to the
expressions that at once admitted grudging respect along with utter con- extent that they can be reconstructed, are thin to the point of invisibility.
tempt. It was a mixture of scorn and admiration that was not unlike the Less is known about these men and women than about any other genera-
evaluations that Europeans made of one another, as with English stereo- tion of American slaves.
types of the Dutch as mean and narrow but shrewd and knowledgeable, The degradation of black life had many sources, but the largest was
or portrayals of the French as flippant and oversexed but clever and de- the growth of the plantation producing staple commodities for an inter-
termined. Such characterizations of black people, moreover, were rarely national market, a radically different form of social organization and
joined to animalistic metaphors or doubts that people of African descent commercial production controlled by a class of men whose appetite for
could compete with Europeans and European Americans for wealth, labor was nearly insatiable. Planters-backed by the power of the state-
power, or sexual favor. The daily experience of Europeans and European transformed slavery. The plantation revolution came to mainland North
Americans in mainland North America-as throughout the Atlantic America in fits and starts. Beginning in the late seventeenth century in the
world-refuted such a possibility. In fact, it was precisely the presump- Chesapeake, planters moved unevenly across the continent over the next
tion of African competence that made black people so dangerous. In century and a half, first to lowland South Carolina in the early eighteenth
short, the nature of slavery-the relationship of black and white- century and then, after failing to establish a plantation regime in the
determined the character of racial ideas. colonies north of the Chesapeake, to the lower Mississippi Valley. By the
The successors to the Charter Generation, the Plantation Generation, beginning of the nineteenth century, slave societies dedicated to cultivat-
were not nearly as fortunate as their predecessors. The degradation of ing tobacco in the Chesapeake, rice in low-country South Carolina and
black life with the advent of the plantation altered the meaning of black- Georgia, and sugar in the lower Mississippi Valley had swept away the
ness and whiteness-the very definition of race. Charter Generation.

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Although the variations in the nature of settlement, the character of Most important, the new regime left little room for free blacks.
the slave trade, and the demands of particular staple crops produced Planter-controlled legislatures systematically carved away at the free
striking differences in the Plantation Generation, the trajectory of the blacks' liberty. In various places, free black people lost the right to hold of-
plantation revolution was always the same. The number of slaves lurched fice, bear arms, muster in the militia, and vote. They were required to pay
upward. No longer did slaves dribble into the mainland from various special taxes, punished more severely for certain crimes, and subjected to
parts of the Atlantic littoral. Instead, planters turned to the African inte- fines or imprisonment for striking a white person, no matter what the
rior as their primary source of labor and imported slaves by the boatful. cause. Having cannibalized the rights of black people, lawmakers closed
The proportion of the population that was African grew steadily, in some the door to freedom, constricting manumission. The number of free peo-
places reaching a majority. For many Europe~n settlers, it seemed like the ple of African descent declined, and it became increasingly easy to equate
mainland would "some time or other be confirmed by the name of New slavery with blackness.
Guinea." 15 As Africans filled the continent, they began to create their own Evidence of the degradation of slave life was everywhere. Violence,
world. Whereas the Charter Generation had beaten on the doors of the isolation, exhaustion, and alienation often led African slaves to profound
established churches to gain a modicum of recognition, the new arrivals depression and occasionally to self-destruction. However, most slaves re-
showed neither interest in nor knowledge of Christianity-Jesus disap- fused to surrender to the dehumanization that accompanied the Planta-
peared from African American life, not to return for most people of tion Revolution. Instead, they contested the new regime at every turn,
African descent until well into the nineteenth century. answering the planters' ruthless imposition with an equally desperate re-
The Africanization of American slavery accompanied a sharp deterio- sistance, as the creation of the plantation regime sparked bloody reprisals.
ration in the conditions of slave life. The familial linkages that bound The mainland grew rife with conspiracies and insurrectionary plots. But
members of the Charter Generation attenuated, undermining the ability resistance required guile as well as daring. If the planters' grab for power
of the slave population to reproduce itself.Just as direct importation drove began with the usurpation of the African's name, slaves soon took back
birthrates down, it pushed mortality rates up, for the transatlantic journey this signature of their identity. Of necessity, slaves answered to the names
left transplanted Africans vulnerable to New World diseases. Whereas their owners imposed on them, but many clandestinely maintained their
members of the Charter Generation lived to see their grandchildren, few African names-and so began a battle of wits between master and slave.
of the newly arrived Africans would even reproduce themselves. 16 As the struggle between whites and blacks changed, so did the mean-
Confined to the plantation, African slaves faced a new harsh work ing of race. The coincidence of slavery with African descent became
regimen, as planters escalated the demands they placed on those who nearly perfect. With few free blacks to contradict their design, planters
worked the fields. Slaves found their toil subject to minute inspection, as equated the brutish realities of slave life with blackness. People of African
planters or their minions monitored the numerous tasks that the cultiva- descent became known for their "gross bestiality and rudeness of their
tion of tobacco, indigo, and rice necessitated. Slaves suffered as planters manners, the variety and strangeness of their languages, and the weak-
prospered. Living on isolated plantations, the slaves found their world ness and shallowness of their minds." Some speculated those differences
narrowed. Physical separation denied the new arrivals the opportunity to placed black people closer to the apes than to man, and others projected
integrate themselves into the larger society, preventing them from find- their most fanciful ideas upon blackness. The slaveholders' notions were
ing a well-placed patron and enjoying the company of men and women of often embraced by white nonslaveholders, free and unfree, many of
equal rank. The planters' intent to strip away all ties upon which the per- whom saw in their white skin a mechanism for eluding the terrible fate
sona of the enslaved individual rested-village, clan, household, and that had befallen men and women with whom they had once shared
family-and leave slaves totally dependent upon their owners was nearly much. 17
realized. While people of European descent had long distinguished themselves
14 • IRA BERLIN COMING TO TERMS WITH SLAVERY • 15

from Africans in a manner that disparaged black people, this new under- retreated and slavery faltered in the new North American republic. In the
standing of race gave blackness a different meaning. Unlike members of North-first in areas where slaves were numerically few and economi-
the Charter Generation, who had been blasted as clever, manipulative, cally marginal and then throughout the region-slavery collapsed; one
cunning, deceptive, and too smart by half, descriptors that at once ex- state after another abolished slavery by legislative actions, judicial fiat, or
pressed grudging admiration mixed with utter disdain, such designations constitutional amendment. In the states of the upper South (Delaware,
were never extended to the members of the Plantation Generation. They Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina), slave owners successfully resis-
were stereotyped as dull, dirty, stupid, indolent, brutish creatures-the ted the emancipationist onslaught but were nevertheless forced to give
very opposite of white people, whose intelligence, ingenuity, industry, ground, and the free black population, which had declined for nearly a
and civilization were celebrated. If the members of the Charter Genera- century, expanded rapidly. As a .result, the proportion of black people en-
tion were all too human, members of the Plantation Generation were joying freedom increased, so that some rn percent of the black population
hardly human at all. 18 The transformation of slavery had changed the in the upper South had gained their freedom by the beginning of the
meaning of race. It would not be the last time race would change its nineteenth century. For the first time since the destruction of the Charter
meamng. Generation, freedom became the possession of large numbers of black
At the end of the eighteenth century, as a new generation of black men men and women. The link between slavery and blackness was broken. 20
and women-many of them American-born-reconstructed African life Once freed, former slaves began reconstructing their lives. Newly
in mainland North America, a series of dramatic changes again remade freed men and women commonly celebrated emancipation by taking
slavery. The great democratic revolutions-the American, the French, new names (such as Freeman, Newman, and Somerset) 21 , new residences
and the Haitian-marked a third transformation in the lives of black (deserting their former owners), and new occupations. They solidified old
people, propelling some slaves to freedom and dooming others to nearly institutions (family and church) and created new ones (schools, fraternal
another century of captivity. The changes that remade the institution of organizations, debating clubs, insurance societies), with such names as the
slavery also remade the ideology of race. African Society or the African School that connected their members to
The War for American Independence and the revolutionary conflicts their African past. Finally they began to create a new politics and new
it spawned throughout the Atlantic gave slaves in mainland North leaders.
America new leverage in their struggle with their owners. 19 By shattering The simultaneous emergence of freedom and nationality dramatically
the unity of the planter class and compromising its ability to mobilize the transformed race, creating two different racial traditions that would re-
metropolitan state to slavery's defense, the war offered slaves new oppor- main central to American life into the twenty-first century. One drew
tunities to challenge both the institution of chattel bondage and the allied upon a literal reading of the Declaration of Independence's precept that
structures of white supremacy. The Revolution also gave slaves a new all were created equal. This new understanding of race demanded the
weapon: the idea of universal equality, as promised in the Declaration of abolition of African slavery, along with the elimination of all the trap-
Independence and by the evangelical awakenings. Planters recovered pings of inequality. From this literalist reading of the Declaration, the
their balance, beat back the abolitionist challenge, reopened the transat- movement against slavery and for racial equality would expand in the
lantic slave trade, and created a new internal slave trade, so that by the be- years that followed. Racial distinctions would have no place in American
ginning of the nineteenth century there were more slaves in the United life.
States than there were at the beginning of the Revolution. The transfor- But the Declaration also spawned a second definition of race, particu-
mation of both black slavery and black freedom had profound conse- larly since slavery remained and, indeed, expanded in the Age of Revolu-
quences for understanding race. tion. The presumption that all men were equal by nature and the
As the reality of worldwide revolution manifested itself, slaveholders continued presence of slavery cried for explanation. Those who were not
16 • IRA BERLIN COMING TO TERMS WITH SLAVERY • 17

willing to support abolition or embrace equality found a rationale by ous other places in the Americas. In the process, some husbands and wives
writing black people out of humanity. In his 1786 Notes on Virginia, the were separated and children orphaned, while other families were recon-
slave-owning author of the Declaration of Independence speculated that structed. Still others found new families, married or remarried, and
black people were different from whites, a result not of circumstance but themselves became parents, creating new lineages. Migrants, voluntary or
of nature. Thomas Jefferson's speculations were soon followed by others coerced, came to speak new languages, practice new skills, and find new
who wrote without the Sage of Monticello's reservations. They main- gods, as thousands of men and women abandoned the beliefs of their par -
tained black people were a separate species. Racialist clergy broke with ents and grandparents and embraced new ideas.
the biblical story of a unified creation. Racialist scientists conjured the As slavery was transformed, so too were notions of race. Slaveholders
physical differences between white and black. Others theorized that invented distinctions between black and white, rooting their origins in
blacks and whites had different psychologies. Such differences rational- the Bible, antiquity, and the new sciences. But even as some extended the
ized exclusion, separation, and the projected extirpation of free black racialist ideas Jefferson had advanced merely "as a suspicion" in the Notes
people, who were denied the rights of citizens-the vote and the rights to on Virginia, others continued to embrace a literal reading of the Declara-
testify in court, sit on juries, and stand in the militia. Likewise, free blacks tion. The egalitarian tradition found a home within the radical abolition-
were denied entry to respectable society, segregated in white churches, ist movement, which denounced all racial distinction as invidious. The
and barred from schools with white children. Whites and blacks could struggle between slavery and antislavery occupied Americans in the nine-
not even be buried in the same cemeteries. As earlier, a new understand- teenth century and eventuated in civil war, which also redefined black-
ing of race emerged from transformation of the institution of slavery. ness and whiteness, embedding a new relationship between race and
But if the Revolution transformed slavery and race, it did not do so citizenship in the Constitution of the United States. But even before the
permanently. As the new century began, they were altered yet again. Be- ink was dry on the Fourteenth Amendment, others began to reconstruct
tween the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and Abraham Lincoln in race in contrary ways. Building upon Jefferson's racialist remarks, they
1860, more than one million black people--enslaved and free-were created a new anthropology and psychology of race that emphasized dif-
forced from the homes they and their forebears had created. The Second ference and hierarchy in ways with which slaveholders would have been
Middle Passage from the upper South to the lower South dwarfed the ini- familiar and comfortable. 22
tial transatlantic slave trade that had carried black people to mainland The process of race formation, of course, did not end with the passage
North America. Driven by a seemingly insatiable demand for cotton and of the Civil War amendments or the counterrevolution that accompanied
an expanding market for sugar, the massive migration transported black the overthrow of Reconstruction and the elevation of Jim Crow segrega-
people across the continent, assigning most to another half century of cap- tion. In the twentieth century and down to the twenty-first, notions of
tivity and providing immediate freedom for a few. Some of the latter race continued to be transformed with the circumstances of American
reentered the Atlantic from which they or their ancestors had come, com- life. What was true in the Charter, Plantation, Revolutionary, and Migra-
pleting the diasporic circle. Whatever direction they traveled and what- tion Generations was equally true in the Freedom Generation and those
ever the circumstance under which they traveled, this Second Middle that followed. If the omnipresence of race in American history provided
Passage forced people of African descent to remake their lives on new ter- the dismal specter of permanence, race's ever-changing character suggests
rain. its malleability. That it could be made in the past argues that it can be re-
The lives of men and women ensnared in the Second Middle Pas- made in the future-a prospect that provides all the more reason to come
sage-the Migration Generation-were changed forever. Tobacco and to terms with slavery.
rice cultivators came to grow cotton and sugar. Southerners became
northerners or Canadians. Still others traveled to Africa, Europe, or vari-