The Slave Community
Encyclopedia
The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South is a book written by American historian
John W. Blassingame
. Published in 1972, it is one of the first historical studies of slavery in the United States to be presented from the perspective of the enslaved. The Slave Community contradicted those historians who had interpreted history to suggest that African American
slaves were docile and submissive "Sambos" who enjoyed the benefits of a paternalistic
master-slave relationship on southern
plantation
s. Using psychology, Blassingame analyzes fugitive slave narratives
published in the 19th century to conclude that an independent culture developed among the enslaved and that there were a variety of personality types exhibited by slaves.
Although the importance of The Slave Community was recognized by scholars of American slavery, Blassingame's conclusions, methodology, and sources were heavily criticized. Historians criticized the use of slave narratives that were seen as unreliable and biased. They questioned Blassingame's decision to exclude the more than 2,000 interviews with former slaves conducted by the Works Progress Administration
(WPA) in the 1930s. Historians argued that Blassingame's use of psychological theory proved unhelpful in his interpretation. Blassingame defended his conclusions at a 1976 meeting of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History
and in 1979 published a revised and enlarged edition of The Slave Community. Despite criticisms, The Slave Community is a foundational text in the study of the life and culture of slaves in the antebellum South.
in the United States largely ignored the testimony of the enslaved. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
wrote the first major historical study of the 20th century dealing with slavery. In American Negro Slavery (1918), Phillips refers to slaves as "negro
es, who for the most part were by racial quality submissive rather than defiant, light-hearted instead of gloomy, amiable and ingratiating instead of sullen, and whose very defects invited paternalism rather than repression." American Negro Slavery is infused with racial rhetoric and upholds perceptions about the inferiority of black people common in the southern United States
at the time. Although African American academics such as W. E. B. Du Bois criticized Phillips's depiction of slaves, the book was considered the authoritative text on slavery in America until the 1950s.
Phillips's interpretation of slavery was challenged by Kenneth M. Stampp
in The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (1956) and Stanley M. Elkins
in Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1958). Stampp's study lacks the racist interpretation found in American Negro Slavery and approaches the issue from the position that there is no innate difference between blacks and whites. He questions the reality of plantation paternalism described by Phillips: "the reality of ante-bellum paternalism ... needs to be separated from its fanciful surroundings and critically analyzed." Elkins also dismisses Phillips's claim that African American slaves were innately submissive "Sambos". He argues that slaves had instead been infantilized, or "made" into Sambos, by the brutal treatment received at the hands of slaveowners and overseers. Elkins compares the process to the infantilization of Jews
in Nazi concentration camps
.
Like Phillips, Stampp and Elkins relied on plantation records and the writings of slaveowners as their main primary source
s. Stampp admits that "few ask what the slaves themselves thought of bondage." Historians dismissed the written works of slaves such as the 19th century fugitive slave narratives as unreliable and biased because of their editing by abolitionists
. Scholars also ignored the 2,300 interviews conducted with former slaves in the late 1930s by the WPA Federal Writers' Project
. As historian George P. Rawick
points out, more weight was often given to white sources: the "masters not only ruled the past in fact" but also "rule its written history."
The 1970s, however, witnessed the publication of revisionist studies that departed from the traditional historiography of slavery. Focusing on the perspective of the slave, new studies incorporated the slave narratives and WPA interviews: George Rawick's From Sunup to Sundown: The Making of the Black Community (1972), Eugene D. Genovese
's Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974), Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (1974), Leslie Howard Owens's This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South (1976), Herbert G. Gutman's
The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 (1976), and Lawrence Levine's Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (1977). One of the more controversial of these studies was John W. Blassingame's The Slave Community.
, gained a sense of worth in the quarters, spent most of his time free from surveillance by whites, controlled important aspects of his life, and did some personally meaningful things on his own volition."
] and were in a position to construct psychological defenses against total dependency on their masters."
Blassingame asserts that historians have discussed "what could be generally described as slave 'culture,' but give little solid information on life in the quarters." He argues that culture developed within the slave community independent of the slaveowners' influence. Blassingame notes, "Antebellum black slaves created several unique cultural forms which lightened their burden of oppression, promoted group solidarity, provided ways for verbalizing aggression, sustaining hope, building self-esteem, and often represented areas of life largely free from the control of whites."
Blassingame notes that many of the folk tales told by slaves have been traced by African scholars to Ghana
, Senegal
, and Mauritania
to peoples such as the Ewe
, Wolof
, Hausa
, Temne, Ashanti, and Igbo
. He remarks, "While many of these tales were brought over to the South, the African element appears most clearly in the animal tales." One prominent example discussed by Blassingame is the Ewe story of "Why the Hare Runs Away", which is a trickster
and tar-baby tale
told by southern slaves and later recorded by writer Joel Chandler Harris
in his Uncle Remus
stories. Southern slaves often included African animals like elephants, lions, and monkeys as characters in their folk tales.
As Christian missionaries and slaveowners attempted to erase African religious and spiritual beliefs, Blassingame argues that "in the United States, many African religious rites were fused
into one—voodoo
." Voodoo priests and conjurers promised slaves that they could make masters kind, harm enemies, ensure love, and heal sickness. Other religious survivals noted by Blassingame include funeral rites, grave decorating, and ritualistic dancing and singing.
Slaveowners and state governments tried to prevent slaves from making or playing musical instruments because of the use of drums to signal the Stono Rebellion
in 1739. Blassingame, however, points out that in spite of restrictions, slaves were able to build a strong musical tradition drawing on their African heritage. Music, songs, and dances were similar to those performed or played in Africa. Instruments reproduced by slaves include drums, three-stringed banjos, gourd rattles, and mandolin
s.
Still, Blassingame concludes that cross-cultural exchanges occurred on southern plantations, arguing that "acculturation
in the United States involved the mutual interaction between two cultures, with Europeans and Africans borrowing from each other." Blassingame asserts that the most significant instance revolved around Protestant Christianity
(primarily Baptist
and Methodist
churches): "The number of blacks who received religious instruction in antebellum white churches is significant because the church was the only institution other than the plantation which played a major role in acculturating the slave." Christianity and enslaved black ministers slowly replaced African religious survivals and represented another aspect of slave culture which the slaves used to create their own communities. While ministers preached obedience in the presence of the slaveowners and other whites, slaves often met in secret, "invisible" services unsupervised by whites. In these "invisible churches
", slaves could discuss freedom, liberty, and the judgment
of God
against slaveowners.
Nevertheless, Blassingame argues that "however frequently the family was broken it was primarily responsible for the slave's ability to survive on the plantation without becoming totally dependent on and submissive to his master." He contends:
Blassingame asserts that slave parents attempted to shield infants and young children from the brutality of the plantation. When children understood that they were enslaved (usually after their first whipping), parents dissuaded angry urges to run away or seek revenge.
Children observed fathers demonstrating two behavioral types. In the quarters, he "acted like a man", castigating whites for the mistreatment of himself and his family; in the field working for the master, he appeared obedient and submissive. According to Blassingame, "Sometimes children internalized both the true personality traits and the contradictory behavioral patterns of their parents." He believes that children recognized submissiveness as a convenient method to avoid punishment and the behavior in the quarters as the true behavioral model. Blassingame concludes, "In [the slave father's] family, the slave not only learned how to avoid the blows of the master, but also drew on the love and sympathy of its members to raise his spirits. The family was, in short, an important survival mechanism."
Directly challenging Elkins's infantilization thesis, Blassingame argues that historians have focused too much on the Sambo personality type
and the role of paternalism. "The Sambo stereotype was so pervasive in antebellum Southern literature that many historians, without further research, argue that it was an accurate description of the dominant slave personality."
According to Blassingame, the Sambo figure evolved from white Americans' attitudes toward Africans and African Americans as innately barbaric, passive, superstitious, and childlike. Southern writers felt a need to defend slavery from allegations of abuse and brutality leveled by northern abolitionists, so Sambo became a common portrayal to justify and explain the need for plantation paternalism. Finally, slaveowners used the Sambo stereotype to alleviate their own fears and anxieties about the potential rebelliousness of their slaves. Blassingame remarks, "In this regard, Nat, the actual and potential rebel, stands at the core of white perceptions of the slave. With Nat perennially in the wings, the creation of Sambo was almost mandatory for the Southerner's emotional security. Like a man whistling in the dark to bolster his courage, the white man had to portray the slave as Sambo."
Despite slaveowner paternalism and charges of submissiveness, Blassingame contends, "There is overwhelming evidence, in the primary sources, of the Negro's resistance to his bondage and of his undying love for freedom." Blassingame outlines efforts of slaves to run away and rebel, particularly the Stono Rebellion of 1739, Charles Deslondes's revolt in 1811, Nat Turner's revolt of 1831, and the participation of fugitive slaves in Florida
fighting with Seminole
s during the Seminole Wars
. Blassingame concludes that the Sambo and Nat stereotypes "were real." He explains, "The more fear whites had of Nat, the more firmly tried to believe in Sambo in order to escape paranoia."
Blassingame concludes that there were a variety of personality types exhibited by slaves positioned on a scale between the two extremes of Sambo and Nat. He argues that variations present in plantations, overseers, and masters gave the slave "much more freedom from restraint and more independence and autonomy than his institutionally defined role allowed. Consequently, the slave did not have to be infantile or abjectly docile in order to remain alive." Blassingame compares slavery on southern plantations to the treatment of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps in an effort to demonstrate that "the most important factor in causing infantilism, total dependency, and docility in the camps was the real threat of death which left few, if any, alternatives for the inmates." He remarks, "Placed on a continuum of total institution
s, the concentration camp is far removed from the Southern plantation." According to Blassingame, the goal of the irrationally organized and understaffed plantation was not the systematic torture and extermination of its laborers, who were "worth more than a bullet".
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In The Slave Community, Blassingame uses psychologist
Harry Stack Sullivan
's interpersonal theory
to interpret the behavior of slaves on antebellum plantations. Sullivan claims that "significant others", persons with the most power to reward and punish individual behavior, were primarily responsible for determining behavior. Interpersonal theorists argue that "behavioral patterns are determined by the characteristics of the situation, how the person perceives them, and his behavioral dispositions at the time." The most important component of personality is self-esteem. Blassingame explains, "Our sense of self-esteem is heightened or lowered by our perception of the images others have of us." Interpersonal behavior revolves around the dominant-submissive axes: "One form of behavior tends to elicit its complement: dominance leads to submission and vice versa. The extent of submissiveness often depends on the structure of the group to which the person belongs."
Another psychological theory used by Blassingame is role theory
. According to this theory, "a person's behavior is generally determined by the socially defined roles or the behavioral patterns expected of him in certain situations." Blassingame asserts that through applying interpersonal and role theory to the fugitive slave narratives, historians can determine "the extent to which slaves acted the way their masters expected them to behave" and how the Sambo, Jack, and Nat personality types can be misleading.
Blassingame contends that historians have "deliberately ignored" autobiographies of ex-slaves, particularly the fugitive slave narratives. "Consequently", argues Blassingame, "a great deal of emphasis has been placed on non-traditional sources in this study in an effort to delineate more clearly the slave's view of bondage and to discover some new insights into the workings of the system." He relies heavily on narratives by Henry Bibb
, Henry Clay Bruce, Elizabeth Keckley, Samuel Hall, Solomon Northup
, Charles Ball
, Jermain Wesley Loguen
, William Wells Brown
, John Brown
, Robert Anderson, William Grimes, Austin Steward
, and Frederick Douglass
. Blassingame's discussion of the African slave trade
, Middle Passage, and African culture is based on Olaudah Equiano
's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1794).
Rather than accepting the fugitive slave narratives without question, Blassingame admits to scrutinizing his reading of the texts. He notes that arguments against the use of these autobiographies used by historians revolve around reliability: "Many historians refuse to use these accounts because they have felt the fugitive, as the primary sufferer in the institution, was unable to give an objective account of bondage." Still, Blassingame defends his reliance on autobiographies, noting, "The portrait of the institution of slavery which emerges from the narratives is not the simple picture of hell
on earth that most historians have led us to believe they contain. Instead, the fugitives' plantations are peopled with the same range of heroes and villains, black and white, which one generally finds in the human race." Therefore, Blassingame concludes_
Besides fugitive slave narratives, Blassingame uses abolitionist periodicals such as The Liberator, National Anti-Slavery Standard
, Pennsylvania Freeman
, Anti-Slavery Bugle, and Genius of Universal Emancipation
. According to Blassingame, these periodicals printed slave interviews, letters, and autobiographies, but "gave even more coverage to white Southerners than to slaves and frequently reprinted articles, letters, and proceedings from a large number of Southern newspapers".
A primary source that Blassingame did not consult in his study was the WPA slave interviews. While he admits that "slave interviews rival autobiographies in their revelations about the internal dynamics of bondage, ... the heavy editing of the WPA interviews makes them far more difficult to utilize than black autobiographies." He elaborates on his criticism of the interviews in a 1975 article in the Journal of Southern History. He describes how white interviewers often deleted material contrary to the paternalistic image of the antebellum South which they wanted to present. Blassingame concludes, "Uncritical use of the interviews will lead almost inevitably to a simplistic and distorted view of the plantation as a paternalistic institution where the chief feature of life was mutual love and respect between masters and slaves."
Blassingame builds on the historiography of Phillips, Stampp, and Elkins, but he acknowledges the influence of Charles S. Sydnor's Slavery in Mississippi (1933), Orville W. Taylor's Negro Slavery in Arkansas (1958), Eugene D. Genovese's The Political Economy of Slavery (1961), and Ann J. Lane's anthology of essays The Debate Over Slavery: Stanley Elkins and His Critics (1971).
writes in the Washington Post
that Blassingame's study comes "closer than any previous study to answering the question 'what was it like to be a slave?'"
Still, Blassingame's conclusions, methodology, and sources received substantial criticism from historians. Marian DeB. Kilson's review in the American Historical Review
described Blassingame's aims as "imperfectly realized" because he "lacks a clear analytical perspective". She found his discussion of slave personality types "fascinating" and "his methodological aims ... important" but "not systematically pursued". Kilson believes that Blassingame ultimately failed in his analysis because "his intellectual integration of social and psychological orientations has yet to be fully achieved." Orville W. Taylor contends in the Journal of Negro History that Blassingame had a tendency to overgeneralize and make "unsubstantiatable claims to originality and uniqueness".
In the Journal of Political Economy
, economic historian
Stanley L. Engerman complains that the book is not "written by or for economist
s" and makes "limited use of economic analysis". He continues, "Given the concern with the 'personal autonomy' and culture of the slave, much of the book is devoted to the African heritage; to slave music, religion, and folklore; and to the discussion of the slave family and other personal relationships." Engerman concedes that The Slave Community "is a book written at a time of transition in the interpretation of slavery and black culture", but "the author at times seems unsure of the direction in which he is pointing." He concludes that Blassingame's "analysis is incomplete in its presentation of a different and more complex scene" even though he "effectively shows the difficulties of the concentration-camp image and the Sambo myth".
Historians criticized Blassingame for dismissing the WPA slave interviews and relying solely on fugitive slave narratives. In the Journal of American History
, Willie Lee Rose writes that Blassingame's use of the fugitive slave narratives is marred by his neglect of the WPA interviews. Kenneth Wiggins Porter regards Blassingame's dependence on printed sources as a "major weakness" and believes he does not use enough white sources like plantation records and travel narratives, particularly Frederick Law Olmsted
's account of life in the antebellum South. According to George Rawick, "We desperately need work that depicts and analyzes the lives of black women under slavery. We have had very largely a male-dominated literature about slavery." He notes, "Blassingame, unfortunately, does not help us at all in this task." Rawick surmises that if Blassingame had consulted the WPA slave interviews, he would have developed a picture of the "heroic struggles of black women on behalf of themselves and of the whole black community".
Historians exhibited varying responses to Blassingame's use of psychological theory. In a review in the William and Mary Quarterly, George Mullin is especially critical of Blassingame's use of psychology, stating that Blassingame "reduc[es] slave behavior and culture to a question of roles and psychological characteristics". He concludes that an "E. P. Thompson
for the American Black community during slavery is still off-stage", and that the topic needs exploration by a social
or economic historian. Rawick states that Blassingame's "first major error lies in adopting the very questionable deterministic social psychological role theories associated with ... Irving Goffman and Henry Stack Sullivan." He complains that it "parodies the basic complexity of the 'psychology' of the oppressed who simultaneously view themselves in socially negative terms while struggling against the view of themselves and their behavior". Rawick is convinced that Blassingame would have reached the same conclusions from the sources without the use of psychology "because the historical evidence as seen through an unadulterated commitment to the struggles of the slaves and an equally uncompromising hostility to the masters would have led him there." On the other hand, Eugene D. Genovese and Earl E. Thorpe praised Blassingame for his use of psychological theory, but admit they prefer Freudian
and Marxist
interpretations over Sullivanian theory.
met in Chicago
and held a session on The Slave Community. Panelists included Mary Frances Berry
, Herbert Gutman, Leslie Howard Owens, George Rawick, Earl Thorpe, and Eugene Genovese. Blassingame responded to questions and critiques from the panel. The discussion led to the publication of an anthology edited by Al-Tony Gilmore called Revisiting Blassingame's The Slave Community: The Scholars Respond (1978). The book includes essays by the panelists as well as James D. Anderson, Ralph D. Carter, John Henrik Clarke
, and Stanley Engerman. Blassingame's essay, "Redefining The Slave Community: A Response to Critics" appears in the volume.
Since its publication in 1972 and revision in 1979, The Slave Community has influenced subsequent historiographical works on slavery in the United States. In a 1976 edition of Roll, Jordan, Roll, Eugene Genovese explains that Blassingame's book "demonstrates that the published accounts of runaway slaves can be illuminating". The authors of Reckoning with Slavery (1976) use Blassingame's findings to challenge the assertions of Robert William Fogel
and Stanley Engerman in Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery
(1974). In Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (1978), Albert J. Raboteau
comments, "We should speak of the 'invisibility' of slave religion with irony: it is the neglect of slave sources by historians which has been the main cause of this invisibility." Raboteau credits Blassingame and others for demonstrating the value of slave sources. Historian Charles Joyner's influential study Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (1984) is reinforced by the findings of The Slave Community and relies on similar evidence.
Historian Deborah Gray White builds on Blassingame's research of the family life of the slaves in Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (1985). Her argument is similar to Blassingame's: "This present study takes a look at slave women in America and argues that they were not submissive, subordinate, or prudish and that they were not expected to be so." White discusses the Mammy
and Jezebel stereotypes often applied to African American women by white Americans. She calls The Slave Community "a classic" but remarks that "Blassingame stressed the fact that many masters recognized the male as the head of the family. He observed that during courtship men flattered women and exaggerated their prowess. There was, however, little discussion of the reciprocal activities of slave women." She concludes that Blassingame "described how slave men gained status in the family, but he did not do the same for women."
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
makes similar observations in Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (1988). She notes that The Slave Community, like other historiography produced in the 1960s and 70s, "did not directly address women's history
, even though many of the historians were sensitive to women's experience. Most of the male authors had done a large part of their work before the development of women's history as a discipline, and even the most sensitive were hampered by a paucity of sources and by unfamiliarity with the questions feminists
would soon raise."
Primitive Baptist
minister from Tennessee
who pastored a white church in the 1850s. Blassingame wanted to "solve the myriad dilemmas posed by George Bentley", but he also wanted to answer the questions, challenges, and critiques raised by scholars since the publication of The Slave Community.
Blassingame explains that he incorporated the suggestions published in Revisiting Blassingame's The Slave Community "without long protestation or argument". The most significant changes made to the text involve further discussion of African cultural survivals, slave family life, slave culture, and acculturation. Blassingame added a chapter titled "The Americanization of the Slave and the Africanization of the South" where he draws parallels between the acculturation of African American slaves in the American South, African slaves in Latin America
, and European slaves in North Africa
and the Ottoman Empire
. He compares the conversion of slaves in the southern states to Protestant Christianity, European slaves in North Africa to Islam
, and African slaves in Latin America to Catholicism
.
Blassingame addresses the historiography of slavery published between 1972 and 1978 in the revised edition. For instance, he challenges Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's economic and statistical study of slavery in Time on the Cross. Blassingame writes:
Reviewing the revised edition in the Journal of Southern History, Gary B. Mills suggests, "All controversy and revision aside, The Slave Community remains a significant book, and the author's position that the bulk of both slaves and slaveowners lay between the stereotyped extremes proves durable. Their exact location on a scale of one to ten will always remain a matter of opinion."
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
John W. Blassingame
John Wesley Blassingame
John Wesley Blassingame was an American scholar, historian, educator, writer, and pioneer in the study of American slavery. He was the former chairman of the African-American Studies program at Yale University. He died at age 59. The cause of death was not known according to his son, John W...
. Published in 1972, it is one of the first historical studies of slavery in the United States to be presented from the perspective of the enslaved. The Slave Community contradicted those historians who had interpreted history to suggest that African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
slaves were docile and submissive "Sambos" who enjoyed the benefits of a paternalistic
Paternalism
Paternalism refers to attitudes or states of affairs that exemplify a traditional relationship between father and child. Two conditions of paternalism are usually identified: interference with liberty and a beneficent intention towards those whose liberty is interfered with...
master-slave relationship on southern
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
s. Using psychology, Blassingame analyzes fugitive slave narratives
Slave narrative
The slave narrative is a literary form which grew out of the written accounts of enslaved Africans in Britain and its colonies, including the later United States, Canada and Caribbean nations...
published in the 19th century to conclude that an independent culture developed among the enslaved and that there were a variety of personality types exhibited by slaves.
Although the importance of The Slave Community was recognized by scholars of American slavery, Blassingame's conclusions, methodology, and sources were heavily criticized. Historians criticized the use of slave narratives that were seen as unreliable and biased. They questioned Blassingame's decision to exclude the more than 2,000 interviews with former slaves conducted by the Works Progress Administration
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
(WPA) in the 1930s. Historians argued that Blassingame's use of psychological theory proved unhelpful in his interpretation. Blassingame defended his conclusions at a 1976 meeting of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History
Association for the Study of African American Life and History
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History is an organization dedicated to the study and appreciation of African-American History. It is a non-profit organization founded in Chicago, Illinois, on September 9, 1915 and incorporated in Washington, D.C. on October 2, 1915 as...
and in 1979 published a revised and enlarged edition of The Slave Community. Despite criticisms, The Slave Community is a foundational text in the study of the life and culture of slaves in the antebellum South.
Historiographic background
Before 1972, the history of slaveryHistory of slavery
The history of slavery covers slave systems in historical perspective in which one human being is legally the property of another, can be bought or sold, is not allowed to escape and must work for the owner without any choice involved...
in the United States largely ignored the testimony of the enslaved. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
Ulrich Bonnell Phillips was an American historian who studied the American antebellum South and slavery. Phillips concentrated on the large plantations that dominated the Southern economy, and he did not investigate the numerous small farmers who held few slaves...
wrote the first major historical study of the 20th century dealing with slavery. In American Negro Slavery (1918), Phillips refers to slaves as "negro
Negro
The word Negro is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance, whether of African descent or not...
es, who for the most part were by racial quality submissive rather than defiant, light-hearted instead of gloomy, amiable and ingratiating instead of sullen, and whose very defects invited paternalism rather than repression." American Negro Slavery is infused with racial rhetoric and upholds perceptions about the inferiority of black people common in the southern United States
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
at the time. Although African American academics such as W. E. B. Du Bois criticized Phillips's depiction of slaves, the book was considered the authoritative text on slavery in America until the 1950s.
Phillips's interpretation of slavery was challenged by Kenneth M. Stampp
Kenneth M. Stampp
Kenneth Milton Stampp , Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley , was a celebrated historian of slavery, the American Civil War, and Reconstruction...
in The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (1956) and Stanley M. Elkins
Stanley Elkins
Stanley M. Elkins is the Sydenham Clark Parsons Professor Emeritus of history at Smith College.-Slavery:Slavery : A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life , based on Elkin's doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, was theoretically innovative and enormously influential in the...
in Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1958). Stampp's study lacks the racist interpretation found in American Negro Slavery and approaches the issue from the position that there is no innate difference between blacks and whites. He questions the reality of plantation paternalism described by Phillips: "the reality of ante-bellum paternalism ... needs to be separated from its fanciful surroundings and critically analyzed." Elkins also dismisses Phillips's claim that African American slaves were innately submissive "Sambos". He argues that slaves had instead been infantilized, or "made" into Sambos, by the brutal treatment received at the hands of slaveowners and overseers. Elkins compares the process to the infantilization of Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
in Nazi concentration camps
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
.
Like Phillips, Stampp and Elkins relied on plantation records and the writings of slaveowners as their main primary source
Primary source
Primary source is a term used in a number of disciplines to describe source material that is closest to the person, information, period, or idea being studied....
s. Stampp admits that "few ask what the slaves themselves thought of bondage." Historians dismissed the written works of slaves such as the 19th century fugitive slave narratives as unreliable and biased because of their editing by abolitionists
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
. Scholars also ignored the 2,300 interviews conducted with former slaves in the late 1930s by the WPA Federal Writers' Project
Federal Writers' Project
The Federal Writers' Project was a United States federal government project to fund written work and support writers during the Great Depression. It was part of the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program...
. As historian George P. Rawick
George Rawick
George P. Rawick was an American academic, historian, and socialist, best known for his editorship of a 41-volume set of oral histories of former slaves, entitled, The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography....
points out, more weight was often given to white sources: the "masters not only ruled the past in fact" but also "rule its written history."
The 1970s, however, witnessed the publication of revisionist studies that departed from the traditional historiography of slavery. Focusing on the perspective of the slave, new studies incorporated the slave narratives and WPA interviews: George Rawick's From Sunup to Sundown: The Making of the Black Community (1972), Eugene D. Genovese
Eugene D. Genovese
Eugene Dominic Genovese is an American historian of the American South and American slavery. He has been noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and slaves in the South. His work Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made won the...
's Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974), Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (1974), Leslie Howard Owens's This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South (1976), Herbert G. Gutman's
Herbert Gutman
Herbert Gutman was an American professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he wrote on slavery and labor history.-Early life and education:...
The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 (1976), and Lawrence Levine's Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (1977). One of the more controversial of these studies was John W. Blassingame's The Slave Community.
Blassingame's argument
In The Slave Community, Blassingame argues that "historians have never systematically explored the life experiences of American slaves." He asserts that by concentrating on the slaveowner, historians have presented a distorted view of plantation life that "strips the slave of any meaningful and distinctive culture, family life, religion, or manhood." Blassingame outlines that the reliance on planter sources led historians like Elkins to mimic planter stereotypes of slaves such as the "submissive half-man, half child" Sambo. Noting the agency slaves possessed over their lives, he contends, "Rather than identifying with and submitting totally to his master, the slave held onto many remnants of his African cultureCulture of Africa
The culture of Africa encompasses and includes all cultures within the continent of Africa. There is a political or racial split between North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa, which is in turn divided into a great number of ethnic cultures...
, gained a sense of worth in the quarters, spent most of his time free from surveillance by whites, controlled important aspects of his life, and did some personally meaningful things on his own volition."
African cultural retention and slave culture
According to Blassingame, African culture was not entirely removed from slave culture through the process of enslavement and "was much more resistant to the bludgeons that was slavery than historians have hitherto suspected." "African survivals" persisted in the form of folk tales, religion and spirituality, music and dance, and language. He asserts that the retention of African culture acted as a form of resistance to enslavement: "All things considered, the few Africans enslaved in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America appear to have survived their traumatic experiences without becoming abjectly docile, infantile, or submissive" and "since an overwhelming percentage of nineteenth-century Southern slaves were native Americans, they never underwent this kind of shock [the Middle PassageMiddle Passage
The Middle Passage was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of people from Africa were shipped to the New World, as part of the Atlantic slave trade...
] and were in a position to construct psychological defenses against total dependency on their masters."
Blassingame asserts that historians have discussed "what could be generally described as slave 'culture,' but give little solid information on life in the quarters." He argues that culture developed within the slave community independent of the slaveowners' influence. Blassingame notes, "Antebellum black slaves created several unique cultural forms which lightened their burden of oppression, promoted group solidarity, provided ways for verbalizing aggression, sustaining hope, building self-esteem, and often represented areas of life largely free from the control of whites."
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
, Senegal
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
, and Mauritania
Mauritania
Mauritania is a country in the Maghreb and West Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the west, by Western Sahara in the north, by Algeria in the northeast, by Mali in the east and southeast, and by Senegal in the southwest...
to peoples such as the Ewe
Ewe people
The Ewe are a people located in the southeast corner of Ghana, east of the Volta River, in an area now described as the Volta Region, in southern Togo and western Benin...
, Wolof
Wolof people
The Wolof are an ethnic group found in Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania.In Senegal, the Wolof form an ethnic plurality with about 43.3% of the population are Wolofs...
, Hausa
Hausa people
The Hausa are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. They are a Sahelian people chiefly located in northern Nigeria and southeastern Niger, but having significant numbers living in regions of Cameroon, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Chad and Sudan...
, Temne, Ashanti, and Igbo
Igbo people
Igbo people, also referred to as the Ibo, Ebo, Eboans or Heebo are an ethnic group living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria. They speak Igbo, which includes various Igboid languages and dialects; today, a majority of them speak English alongside Igbo as a result of British colonialism...
. He remarks, "While many of these tales were brought over to the South, the African element appears most clearly in the animal tales." One prominent example discussed by Blassingame is the Ewe story of "Why the Hare Runs Away", which is a trickster
Trickster
In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. It is suggested by Hansen that the term "Trickster" was probably first used in this...
and tar-baby tale
Tar baby
The Tar-Baby is a doll made of tar and turpentine used to entrap Br'er Rabbit in the second of the Uncle Remus stories. The more that Br'er Rabbit fights the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he becomes...
told by southern slaves and later recorded by writer Joel Chandler Harris
Joel Chandler Harris
Joel Chandler Harris was an American journalist, fiction writer, and folklorist best known for his collection of Uncle Remus stories. Harris was born in Eatonton, Georgia, where he served as an apprentice on a plantation during his teenage years...
in his Uncle Remus
Uncle Remus
Uncle Remus is a fictional character, the title character and fictional narrator of a collection of African American folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris, published in book form in 1881...
stories. Southern slaves often included African animals like elephants, lions, and monkeys as characters in their folk tales.
As Christian missionaries and slaveowners attempted to erase African religious and spiritual beliefs, Blassingame argues that "in the United States, many African religious rites were fused
Syncretism
Syncretism is the combining of different beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term means "combining", but see below for the origin of the word...
into one—voodoo
Louisiana Voodoo
Louisiana Voodoo, also known as New Orleans Voodoo, describes a set of underground religious practices which originated from the traditions of the African diaspora. It is a cultural form of the Afro-American religions which developed within the French, Spanish, and Creole speaking African American...
." Voodoo priests and conjurers promised slaves that they could make masters kind, harm enemies, ensure love, and heal sickness. Other religious survivals noted by Blassingame include funeral rites, grave decorating, and ritualistic dancing and singing.
Slaveowners and state governments tried to prevent slaves from making or playing musical instruments because of the use of drums to signal the Stono Rebellion
Stono Rebellion
The Stono Rebellion was a slave rebellion that commenced on 9 September 1739, in the colony of South Carolina...
in 1739. Blassingame, however, points out that in spite of restrictions, slaves were able to build a strong musical tradition drawing on their African heritage. Music, songs, and dances were similar to those performed or played in Africa. Instruments reproduced by slaves include drums, three-stringed banjos, gourd rattles, and mandolin
Mandolin
A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It descends from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family. The mandolin soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. A mandolin may have f-holes, or a single...
s.
Still, Blassingame concludes that cross-cultural exchanges occurred on southern plantations, arguing that "acculturation
Acculturation
Acculturation explains the process of cultural and psychological change that results following meeting between cultures. The effects of acculturation can be seen at multiple levels in both interacting cultures. At the group level, acculturation often results in changes to culture, customs, and...
in the United States involved the mutual interaction between two cultures, with Europeans and Africans borrowing from each other." Blassingame asserts that the most significant instance revolved around Protestant Christianity
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
(primarily Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
and Methodist
Methodism
Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...
churches): "The number of blacks who received religious instruction in antebellum white churches is significant because the church was the only institution other than the plantation which played a major role in acculturating the slave." Christianity and enslaved black ministers slowly replaced African religious survivals and represented another aspect of slave culture which the slaves used to create their own communities. While ministers preached obedience in the presence of the slaveowners and other whites, slaves often met in secret, "invisible" services unsupervised by whites. In these "invisible churches
Invisible Churches (Slavery)
Invisible Churches among slaves in the United States were informal Christian groups where slaves listened to preachers that they chose without their master's knowledge. The Invisible Churches taught a different message from white controlled churches and did not emphasize obedience...
", slaves could discuss freedom, liberty, and the judgment
Divine Judgment
Divine judgment means the judgment of God or other supreme beings within a religion. The concept is prominent in Abrahamic religions, most significantly in the Last judgment.-Objective and subjective judgment:...
of God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
against slaveowners.
Slave families
Slave marriages were illegal in southern states, and slave couples were frequently separated by slaveowners through sale. Blassingame grants that slaveowners did have control over slave marriages. They encouraged monogamous relationships to "make it easier to discipline their slaves. ... A black man, they reasoned, who loved his wife and his children was less likely to be rebellious or to run away than would a 'single' slave." Blassingame notes that when a slave couple resided on the same plantation, the husband witnessed the whipping and raping of his wife and the sale of his children. He remarks, "Nothing demonstrated his powerlessness as much as the slave's inability to prevent the forcible sale of his wife and children."Nevertheless, Blassingame argues that "however frequently the family was broken it was primarily responsible for the slave's ability to survive on the plantation without becoming totally dependent on and submissive to his master." He contends:
Blassingame asserts that slave parents attempted to shield infants and young children from the brutality of the plantation. When children understood that they were enslaved (usually after their first whipping), parents dissuaded angry urges to run away or seek revenge.
Children observed fathers demonstrating two behavioral types. In the quarters, he "acted like a man", castigating whites for the mistreatment of himself and his family; in the field working for the master, he appeared obedient and submissive. According to Blassingame, "Sometimes children internalized both the true personality traits and the contradictory behavioral patterns of their parents." He believes that children recognized submissiveness as a convenient method to avoid punishment and the behavior in the quarters as the true behavioral model. Blassingame concludes, "In [the slave father's] family, the slave not only learned how to avoid the blows of the master, but also drew on the love and sympathy of its members to raise his spirits. The family was, in short, an important survival mechanism."
Personality types
Blassingame identifies three stereotypes in the literature of the antebellum south:- Sambo was a combination of the Uncle Remus, Jim CrowJump Jim CrowJump Jim Crow is a song and dance from 1828 that was done in blackface by white comedian Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice. The first song sheet edition appeared in the early 1830s, published by E. Riley. The number was supposedly inspired by the song and dance of a crippled African slave called Jim...
, and Uncle TomUncle TomUncle Tom is a derogatory term for a person who perceives themselves to be of low status, and is excessively subservient to perceived authority figures; particularly a black person who behaves in a subservient manner to white people....
figures who represented the faithful, submissive, and superstitious slave. - Jack worked faithfully until he was mistreated, then he became uncooperative and occasionally rebellious. Rationally analyzing the white man's overwhelming physical power, Jack either avoided contact with him or was deferential in his presence.
- Nat was the perpetual runaway and rebellious slave feared by slaveowners. Named after Nat TurnerNat TurnerNathaniel "Nat" Turner was an American slave who led a slave rebellion in Virginia on August 21, 1831 that resulted in 60 white deaths and at least 100 black deaths, the largest number of fatalities to occur in one uprising prior to the American Civil War in the southern United States. He gathered...
, the Nat character retaliated against slaveowners and was subdued and punished only when overcome by greater numbers.
Directly challenging Elkins's infantilization thesis, Blassingame argues that historians have focused too much on the Sambo personality type
Personality type
Personality type refers to the psychological classification of different types of individuals. Personality types are sometimes distinguished from personality traits, with the latter embodying a smaller grouping of behavioral tendencies. Types are sometimes said to involve qualitative differences...
and the role of paternalism. "The Sambo stereotype was so pervasive in antebellum Southern literature that many historians, without further research, argue that it was an accurate description of the dominant slave personality."
Despite slaveowner paternalism and charges of submissiveness, Blassingame contends, "There is overwhelming evidence, in the primary sources, of the Negro's resistance to his bondage and of his undying love for freedom." Blassingame outlines efforts of slaves to run away and rebel, particularly the Stono Rebellion of 1739, Charles Deslondes's revolt in 1811, Nat Turner's revolt of 1831, and the participation of fugitive slaves in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
fighting with Seminole
Seminole
The Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida, who now reside primarily in that state and Oklahoma. The Seminole nation emerged in a process of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans, most significantly Creeks from what is now Georgia and Alabama, who settled in Florida in...
s during the Seminole Wars
Seminole Wars
The Seminole Wars, also known as the Florida Wars, were three conflicts in Florida between the Seminole — the collective name given to the amalgamation of various groups of native Americans and Black people who settled in Florida in the early 18th century — and the United States Army...
. Blassingame concludes that the Sambo and Nat stereotypes "were real." He explains, "The more fear whites had of Nat, the more firmly tried to believe in Sambo in order to escape paranoia."
Blassingame concludes that there were a variety of personality types exhibited by slaves positioned on a scale between the two extremes of Sambo and Nat. He argues that variations present in plantations, overseers, and masters gave the slave "much more freedom from restraint and more independence and autonomy than his institutionally defined role allowed. Consequently, the slave did not have to be infantile or abjectly docile in order to remain alive." Blassingame compares slavery on southern plantations to the treatment of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps in an effort to demonstrate that "the most important factor in causing infantilism, total dependency, and docility in the camps was the real threat of death which left few, if any, alternatives for the inmates." He remarks, "Placed on a continuum of total institution
Total institution
A total institution is place of work and residence where a great number of similarly situated people, cut off from the wider community for a considerable time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life...
s, the concentration camp is far removed from the Southern plantation." According to Blassingame, the goal of the irrationally organized and understaffed plantation was not the systematic torture and extermination of its laborers, who were "worth more than a bullet".
Methodology and sources
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
Harry Stack Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan was a U.S. psychiatrist whose work in psychoanalysis was based on direct and verifiable observation .-Life and works:Sullivan was a child of Irish immigrants and allegedly grew up in an...
's interpersonal theory
Interpersonal psychoanalysis
Interpersonal psychoanalysis is based on the theories of Harry Stack Sullivan , an American psychiatrist, who believed that the details of a patient's interpersonal interactions with others can provide insight into the causes and cures of mental disorder.-Selective inattention:Sullivan proposed...
to interpret the behavior of slaves on antebellum plantations. Sullivan claims that "significant others", persons with the most power to reward and punish individual behavior, were primarily responsible for determining behavior. Interpersonal theorists argue that "behavioral patterns are determined by the characteristics of the situation, how the person perceives them, and his behavioral dispositions at the time." The most important component of personality is self-esteem. Blassingame explains, "Our sense of self-esteem is heightened or lowered by our perception of the images others have of us." Interpersonal behavior revolves around the dominant-submissive axes: "One form of behavior tends to elicit its complement: dominance leads to submission and vice versa. The extent of submissiveness often depends on the structure of the group to which the person belongs."
Another psychological theory used by Blassingame is role theory
Role theory
Role theory is a perspective in sociology and in social psychology that considers most of everyday activity to be the acting out of socially defined categories . Each social role is a set of rights, duties, expectations, norms and behaviour a person has to face and to fulfill...
. According to this theory, "a person's behavior is generally determined by the socially defined roles or the behavioral patterns expected of him in certain situations." Blassingame asserts that through applying interpersonal and role theory to the fugitive slave narratives, historians can determine "the extent to which slaves acted the way their masters expected them to behave" and how the Sambo, Jack, and Nat personality types can be misleading.
Blassingame contends that historians have "deliberately ignored" autobiographies of ex-slaves, particularly the fugitive slave narratives. "Consequently", argues Blassingame, "a great deal of emphasis has been placed on non-traditional sources in this study in an effort to delineate more clearly the slave's view of bondage and to discover some new insights into the workings of the system." He relies heavily on narratives by Henry Bibb
Henry Bibb
Henry Walton Bibb was an author and abolitionist who was born a slave. After escaping from slavery to Canada, he returned to the US and lectured against slavery. Migrating to Canada, he founded a newspaper Voice of the Fugitive.-Biography:...
, Henry Clay Bruce, Elizabeth Keckley, Samuel Hall, Solomon Northup
Solomon Northup
Solomon Northup was a free-born African-American mulatto. He was born in Minerva, Essex County, New York. He disappeared in 1863.-Family history:...
, Charles Ball
Charles Ball
Charles Ball was an African-American slave from Maryland, best known for his account as a fugitive slave, The Life and Adventures of Charles Ball .-Biography:...
, Jermain Wesley Loguen
Jermain Wesley Loguen
Jermain Wesley Loguen , born Jarm Logue, in slavery, was an African American abolitionist and bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church....
, William Wells Brown
William Wells Brown
William Wells Brown was a prominent African-American abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery in the Southern United States, Brown escaped to the North in 1834, where he worked for abolitionist causes and was a prolific writer...
, John Brown
John Brown (fugitive slave)
John Brown also known by his slave name, 'Fed', was a slave in Virginia. He moved at age ten to North Carolina where he was separated from his mother...
, Robert Anderson, William Grimes, Austin Steward
Austin Steward
Austin Steward was an African-American abolitionist and author. He was born a slave of William Helm in Prince William County, Virginia. His autobiography, Twenty-Two Years a Slave was published in 1857.-External links:...
, and Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing...
. Blassingame's discussion of the African slave trade
African slave trade
Systems of servitude and slavery were common in many parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In some African societies, the enslaved people were also indentured servants and fully integrated; in others, they were treated much worse...
, Middle Passage, and African culture is based on Olaudah Equiano
Olaudah Equiano
Olaudah Equiano also known as Gustavus Vassa, was a prominent African involved in the British movement towards the abolition of the slave trade. His autobiography depicted the horrors of slavery and helped influence British lawmakers to abolish the slave trade through the Slave Trade Act of 1807...
's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1794).
Rather than accepting the fugitive slave narratives without question, Blassingame admits to scrutinizing his reading of the texts. He notes that arguments against the use of these autobiographies used by historians revolve around reliability: "Many historians refuse to use these accounts because they have felt the fugitive, as the primary sufferer in the institution, was unable to give an objective account of bondage." Still, Blassingame defends his reliance on autobiographies, noting, "The portrait of the institution of slavery which emerges from the narratives is not the simple picture of hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
on earth that most historians have led us to believe they contain. Instead, the fugitives' plantations are peopled with the same range of heroes and villains, black and white, which one generally finds in the human race." Therefore, Blassingame concludes_
Besides fugitive slave narratives, Blassingame uses abolitionist periodicals such as The Liberator, National Anti-Slavery Standard
National Anti-Slavery Standard
The National Anti-Slavery Standard was the official weekly newspaper of the American Anti-Slavery Society, established in 1840 under the editorship of Lydia Maria Child and David Lee Child. The paper published continuously until the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States...
, Pennsylvania Freeman
National Enquirer (1836)
The National Enquirer was an abolitionist newspaper founded by Quaker Benjamin Lundy in 1836.. It was renamed the Pennsylvania Freeman after John Greenleaf Whittier took over as editor in 1838....
, Anti-Slavery Bugle, and Genius of Universal Emancipation
Genius of Universal Emancipation
The Genius of Universal Emancipation was an abolitionist newspaper from Mount Pleasant, Ohio run by Benjamin Lundy.Elihu Embree established the Manumission Intelligencier in 1819 which became The Emancipator in 1820. In 1821 the paper was bought by Benjamin Lundy and renamed Genius of Universal...
. According to Blassingame, these periodicals printed slave interviews, letters, and autobiographies, but "gave even more coverage to white Southerners than to slaves and frequently reprinted articles, letters, and proceedings from a large number of Southern newspapers".
A primary source that Blassingame did not consult in his study was the WPA slave interviews. While he admits that "slave interviews rival autobiographies in their revelations about the internal dynamics of bondage, ... the heavy editing of the WPA interviews makes them far more difficult to utilize than black autobiographies." He elaborates on his criticism of the interviews in a 1975 article in the Journal of Southern History. He describes how white interviewers often deleted material contrary to the paternalistic image of the antebellum South which they wanted to present. Blassingame concludes, "Uncritical use of the interviews will lead almost inevitably to a simplistic and distorted view of the plantation as a paternalistic institution where the chief feature of life was mutual love and respect between masters and slaves."
Blassingame builds on the historiography of Phillips, Stampp, and Elkins, but he acknowledges the influence of Charles S. Sydnor's Slavery in Mississippi (1933), Orville W. Taylor's Negro Slavery in Arkansas (1958), Eugene D. Genovese's The Political Economy of Slavery (1961), and Ann J. Lane's anthology of essays The Debate Over Slavery: Stanley Elkins and His Critics (1971).
Reception and influence
The importance of The Slave Community as one of the first studies of slavery from the perspective of the slave was recognized by historians. The book nonetheless received heavy criticism by academics who disagreed with Blassingame's conclusions, methodology, and sources. Historian George P. Rawick noted in 1976, however, that the criticism "should not obscure the fact that [Blassingame's] book was of such merit as to warrant spending our time criticizing it four years after its publication. Yet, like many good books, it should have been better."Criticism
In The History Teacher, Keith Polakoff comments that "only with the publication of Blassingame's work do we obtain for the first time a detailed examination of the daily lives of the slaves on large plantations, with some intelligent speculation about the forces to which they were subjected. David Goldfield writes in Agricultural History that the book was the most impressive and balanced attempt to understand the slave's responses to plantation life to date. Carl N. DeglerCarl N. Degler
Carl Neumann Degler is an American historian. Degler is a past president of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association and the Southern Historical Association...
writes in the Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
that Blassingame's study comes "closer than any previous study to answering the question 'what was it like to be a slave?'"
Still, Blassingame's conclusions, methodology, and sources received substantial criticism from historians. Marian DeB. Kilson's review in the American Historical Review
American Historical Review
The American Historical Review is the official publication of the American Historical Association, established in 1895 "for the promotion of historical studies, the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts, and the dissemination of historical research." It targets readers...
described Blassingame's aims as "imperfectly realized" because he "lacks a clear analytical perspective". She found his discussion of slave personality types "fascinating" and "his methodological aims ... important" but "not systematically pursued". Kilson believes that Blassingame ultimately failed in his analysis because "his intellectual integration of social and psychological orientations has yet to be fully achieved." Orville W. Taylor contends in the Journal of Negro History that Blassingame had a tendency to overgeneralize and make "unsubstantiatable claims to originality and uniqueness".
In the Journal of Political Economy
Journal of Political Economy
The Journal of Political Economy is an academic journal run by economists at the University of Chicago and published every two months by the University of Chicago Press. The journal publishes articles in both theoretical economics and empirical economics...
, economic historian
Economic history
Economic history is the study of economies or economic phenomena in the past. Analysis in economic history is undertaken using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and by applying economic theory to historical situations and institutions...
Stanley L. Engerman complains that the book is not "written by or for economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...
s" and makes "limited use of economic analysis". He continues, "Given the concern with the 'personal autonomy' and culture of the slave, much of the book is devoted to the African heritage; to slave music, religion, and folklore; and to the discussion of the slave family and other personal relationships." Engerman concedes that The Slave Community "is a book written at a time of transition in the interpretation of slavery and black culture", but "the author at times seems unsure of the direction in which he is pointing." He concludes that Blassingame's "analysis is incomplete in its presentation of a different and more complex scene" even though he "effectively shows the difficulties of the concentration-camp image and the Sambo myth".
Historians criticized Blassingame for dismissing the WPA slave interviews and relying solely on fugitive slave narratives. In the Journal of American History
Journal of American History
The Journal of American History is the official academic journal of the Organization of American Historians. It covers the field of American history and was established in 1914 as the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, the official journal of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association...
, Willie Lee Rose writes that Blassingame's use of the fugitive slave narratives is marred by his neglect of the WPA interviews. Kenneth Wiggins Porter regards Blassingame's dependence on printed sources as a "major weakness" and believes he does not use enough white sources like plantation records and travel narratives, particularly Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...
's account of life in the antebellum South. According to George Rawick, "We desperately need work that depicts and analyzes the lives of black women under slavery. We have had very largely a male-dominated literature about slavery." He notes, "Blassingame, unfortunately, does not help us at all in this task." Rawick surmises that if Blassingame had consulted the WPA slave interviews, he would have developed a picture of the "heroic struggles of black women on behalf of themselves and of the whole black community".
Historians exhibited varying responses to Blassingame's use of psychological theory. In a review in the William and Mary Quarterly, George Mullin is especially critical of Blassingame's use of psychology, stating that Blassingame "reduc[es] slave behavior and culture to a question of roles and psychological characteristics". He concludes that an "E. P. Thompson
E. P. Thompson
Edward Palmer Thompson was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class...
for the American Black community during slavery is still off-stage", and that the topic needs exploration by a social
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
or economic historian. Rawick states that Blassingame's "first major error lies in adopting the very questionable deterministic social psychological role theories associated with ... Irving Goffman and Henry Stack Sullivan." He complains that it "parodies the basic complexity of the 'psychology' of the oppressed who simultaneously view themselves in socially negative terms while struggling against the view of themselves and their behavior". Rawick is convinced that Blassingame would have reached the same conclusions from the sources without the use of psychology "because the historical evidence as seen through an unadulterated commitment to the struggles of the slaves and an equally uncompromising hostility to the masters would have led him there." On the other hand, Eugene D. Genovese and Earl E. Thorpe praised Blassingame for his use of psychological theory, but admit they prefer Freudian
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
and Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
interpretations over Sullivanian theory.
Influence
In 1976, the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and HistoryAssociation for the Study of African American Life and History
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History is an organization dedicated to the study and appreciation of African-American History. It is a non-profit organization founded in Chicago, Illinois, on September 9, 1915 and incorporated in Washington, D.C. on October 2, 1915 as...
met in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and held a session on The Slave Community. Panelists included Mary Frances Berry
Mary Frances Berry
Mary Frances Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and the former chairwoman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. She is also the former board chair of Pacifica Radio...
, Herbert Gutman, Leslie Howard Owens, George Rawick, Earl Thorpe, and Eugene Genovese. Blassingame responded to questions and critiques from the panel. The discussion led to the publication of an anthology edited by Al-Tony Gilmore called Revisiting Blassingame's The Slave Community: The Scholars Respond (1978). The book includes essays by the panelists as well as James D. Anderson, Ralph D. Carter, John Henrik Clarke
John Henrik Clarke
John Henrik Clarke , born John Henry Clark, was a Pan-Africanist American writer, historian, professor, and a pioneer in the creation of Africana studies and professional institutions in academia starting in the late 1960s.He was Professor of African World History and in 1969 founding chairman of...
, and Stanley Engerman. Blassingame's essay, "Redefining The Slave Community: A Response to Critics" appears in the volume.
Since its publication in 1972 and revision in 1979, The Slave Community has influenced subsequent historiographical works on slavery in the United States. In a 1976 edition of Roll, Jordan, Roll, Eugene Genovese explains that Blassingame's book "demonstrates that the published accounts of runaway slaves can be illuminating". The authors of Reckoning with Slavery (1976) use Blassingame's findings to challenge the assertions of Robert William Fogel
Robert Fogel
Robert William Fogel is an American economic historian and scientist, and winner of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He is now the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of American Institutions and director of the Center for Population Economics at the...
and Stanley Engerman in Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery
Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery
Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery is a book authored by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman-Content:Time on the Cross directly challenged the long-held conclusions that American slavery was unprofitable, a moribund institution, inefficient, and extremely harsh for...
(1974). In Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (1978), Albert J. Raboteau
Albert J. Raboteau
Albert Jordy Raboteau is an African American scholar of African and African American religions.Before Raboteau was born, his father, Albert Jordy Raboteau , was killed in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, by a white man who was never convicted of the crime. His mother moved from the South where she was...
comments, "We should speak of the 'invisibility' of slave religion with irony: it is the neglect of slave sources by historians which has been the main cause of this invisibility." Raboteau credits Blassingame and others for demonstrating the value of slave sources. Historian Charles Joyner's influential study Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (1984) is reinforced by the findings of The Slave Community and relies on similar evidence.
Historian Deborah Gray White builds on Blassingame's research of the family life of the slaves in Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (1985). Her argument is similar to Blassingame's: "This present study takes a look at slave women in America and argues that they were not submissive, subordinate, or prudish and that they were not expected to be so." White discusses the Mammy
Mammy archetype
The mammy archetype is perhaps one of the best-known archetypes of African American women. She is often portrayed within a narrative framework or other imagery as a domestic servant of African descent, generally good-natured, often overweight, very dark skinned, middle aged, and loud...
and Jezebel stereotypes often applied to African American women by white Americans. She calls The Slave Community "a classic" but remarks that "Blassingame stressed the fact that many masters recognized the male as the head of the family. He observed that during courtship men flattered women and exaggerated their prowess. There was, however, little discussion of the reciprocal activities of slave women." She concludes that Blassingame "described how slave men gained status in the family, but he did not do the same for women."
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
Elizabeth Ann Fox-Genovese was a feminist American historian particularly known for her writing about women in the Antebellum South...
makes similar observations in Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (1988). She notes that The Slave Community, like other historiography produced in the 1960s and 70s, "did not directly address women's history
Feminist history
Feminist history refers to the re-reading of history from a female perspective. It is not the same as the history of feminism, which outlines the origins and evolution of the feminist movement. It also differs from women's history, which focuses on the role of women in historical events...
, even though many of the historians were sensitive to women's experience. Most of the male authors had done a large part of their work before the development of women's history as a discipline, and even the most sensitive were hampered by a paucity of sources and by unfamiliarity with the questions feminists
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
would soon raise."
Revised edition
After the 1976 Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History meeting and the publication of Revisiting Blassingame's The Slave Community in 1978, Blassingame produced a revised and enlarged edition of The Slave Community in 1979. In the new preface, Blassingame asserted that the book had to be revised because of George Bentley, an enslaved, pro-slaveryPro-Slavery Thought in the Old South
Proslavery ideology arose in the antebellum United States. It began as a reaction to the growing antislavery movement in the United States in the late 18th century and early 19th century.-Need for a defense:...
Primitive Baptist
Primitive Baptist
Primitive Baptists, also known as Hard Shell Baptists or Anti-Mission Baptists, are conservative, Calvinist Baptists adhering to beliefs that formed out of the controversy among Baptists in the early 1800’s over the appropriateness of mission boards, bible tract societies, and temperance...
minister from Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
who pastored a white church in the 1850s. Blassingame wanted to "solve the myriad dilemmas posed by George Bentley", but he also wanted to answer the questions, challenges, and critiques raised by scholars since the publication of The Slave Community.
Blassingame explains that he incorporated the suggestions published in Revisiting Blassingame's The Slave Community "without long protestation or argument". The most significant changes made to the text involve further discussion of African cultural survivals, slave family life, slave culture, and acculturation. Blassingame added a chapter titled "The Americanization of the Slave and the Africanization of the South" where he draws parallels between the acculturation of African American slaves in the American South, African slaves in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
, and European slaves in North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
and the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
. He compares the conversion of slaves in the southern states to Protestant Christianity, European slaves in North Africa to Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
, and African slaves in Latin America to Catholicism
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
.
Blassingame addresses the historiography of slavery published between 1972 and 1978 in the revised edition. For instance, he challenges Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's economic and statistical study of slavery in Time on the Cross. Blassingame writes:
Reviewing the revised edition in the Journal of Southern History, Gary B. Mills suggests, "All controversy and revision aside, The Slave Community remains a significant book, and the author's position that the bulk of both slaves and slaveowners lay between the stereotyped extremes proves durable. Their exact location on a scale of one to ten will always remain a matter of opinion."
External links
- The Slave Community at Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
. - The Slave Community at Google Books.