"Chapter 29
How the Negroes Lived under Slavery
SLAVE LAWS NOT STRICTLY ENFORCED
EARLY in Virginia's history the General Assembly made laws closely controlling the Negroes. However, the laws were not fully enforced. Many slave masters did not like to have the state government meddle in what they considered their private business. They managed their servants according to their own methods. They knew the best way to control their slaves was to win their confidence and affection.
Many Negroes were taught to read and write. Many of them were allowed to meet in groups for preaching, for funerals, and for singing and dancing. They went visiting at night and sometimes owned guns and other weapons"
--- Virginia: History, Government, Geography (state textbook used from 1957 to the 1970s)
It was quite sad to see that even in a history meme group (i.e. where members would be expected to know some history, appreciate historiography and understand the complexity of history), almost all of the commenters dismissed the claim out of hand, and some even called for the poster to be banned and/or the post to be removed
Of course, the truth is rarely pure and never simple, and the literature confirms that some slave holders were benevolent:
Africans in America/Part 4/William Scarborough on antebellum slavery
"Planters viewed themselves as benevolent patriarchs with respect to the institution of slavery. They felt that they treated their slaves humanely. They fed them well. They did not require more work than was required of agricultural laborers generally. They gave them generous holidays. It was not uncommon, for example, for slaves to receive as much as seven days at Christmas.
In fact, I think the average on one Louisiana plantation that I dealt with recently was eight and a half days at Christmas. They also had a system of rewards as well as punishments. We're all familiar with the whipping, which was certainly endemic on southern plantations. That was the normal form of punishment. But there [were] also systems of rewards. There was a Louisiana planter, for example, who operated a sugar plantation south of New Orleans. And the records indicate that he supplied the slaves there with mosquito nets, with sheets, with socks. This is highly unusual, I'll admit. But [he] also rewards [with] pay for overtime work on Sundays and on holidays, and generally tried to balance the punishment with rewards. [He] gave gifts at certain times to both male and female slaves and to the children. Generally a very benevolent master. Slaveowners felt that they treated their charges much better than northern factory workers treated the operatives in the New England textile mills and other manufacturing establishments."
--- William Scarborough
Professor of History
University of Southern Mississippi at Hattiesburg
Luckily, he has tenure
"Master didn't whip, only once. That 'cause a nigger steal he favorite pumpkin... he make that nigger set down and give him the big bowl pumpkin sauce and make him eat it. Him eat and eat and get so full him can't hardly swallow, and Master say, "Eat some more, it am awful good." That nigger try, but him can't eat no more. Master give him the light brushing, and it am funny to see that colored gentleman with pumpkin smear on he face and tears running down he face. After that, us children call him Master Pumpkin, and Master never have no more trouble with stealing he seed pumpkins."
--- Lay my burden down : a folk history of slavery / Benjamin Albert Botkin
"Since the commencement of 1830, I had been living with Mr. Joseph Travis, who was to me a kind master, and placed the greatest confidence in me; in fact, I had no cause to complain of his treatment to me"
--- The Confessions of Nat Turner, The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, VA. / Nat Turner
As an example of how awful historians some of these people in the group were, one, on being presented with the first 3 sources above, first dismissed them after reading the first sentence and upon my urging her to read them again, proclaimed that:
"I did read the article. It's a recollection FROM A WHITE MAN, who was born WELL AFTER slavery ended.
not exactly sure how a WHITE MAN, who wasn't alive during the slavery period in America, is going to understand the reality slaves faced, having NEVER actually experienced ANYTHING of the sort. This is ignorant, more propaganda, and is literally "slave owner apologist.""
Leaving aside the many problems with her historiography which would mean that history would not function as a discipline, Nat Turner was a black slave who was born in 1800 who led a slave revolt in 1831.
The literature also confirms that some slaves were taught to read and write - even by their masters, and that this was sometimes motivated by a resentment of government regulation:
Chaplin, J. E. (1993). When I Can Read My Title Clear: Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South. By Janet Duitsman Cornelius (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. xiii plus 215 pp. $29.95). Journal of Social History, 26(3), 632–634 (book review):
"In the English speaking Protestant tradition, reading scripture was necessary for true religious understanding; antebellum slaves, despite the fact that up to 90 percent of them were illiterate, agreed with this contention and wanted to learn to read. In explaining obstacles to slave literacy, Cornelius tellingly highlights the tension in slaveholders’ beliefs: a post Reformation conviction that every human should study God’s word warred with an Anglo—American tendency to denigrate Africans and African—Americans as not fully human... [There were] attempts on the part of church leaders—black and white, northem and southern—to link instruction in reading to religious instruction...
Cornelius reveals the libertarian streak in many slaveholders by recounting how they insisted on their right to teach slaves to read—even if this activity flew in the face of racialist justifications for the peculiar institution."
Sometimes, history tells you more about the time it was written than the time it is about
Keywords: good, kind, masters, slave owners, slaveowners, slave holders
