As a well-read scholar and student of antebellum history, in this blog I
hope to present some realities about slavery during the antebellum period
1820-1860. There are several misconceptions about the eras of slavery that
often are a product of anachronistic readings of the period or opinions that
lack a total perspective.
Slavery was a complex institution. As a labor and social system there are
several aspects of the institution that are not discussed in common
conversation that may change the perception of the system and reveal certain
truths if we are to look closer. The following are 7 facts about slavery that
often overlooked and unknown amongst those who casually discuss the period:
1.
Slave Hiring was a
common practice as southern cities began to industrialize.
a. Plantations were not the only ways that slaveowners
brought from their slaves. The price of slaves frequently fluctuated and slave-owners
were most interested in finding ways to maximize their investment in human
cargo. In industrial cities such as Richmond, Va., Charleston, SC., Augusta,
GA., and Baltimore, it was common for entrepreneurs to hire slaves to work in
their factories. Factory work presented opportunities for slaves to collect
capital for themselves and it also worked for slaveowners as factory owners
typically paid 10 % of the total value of the slave to “rent” or hire a slave
for a period (pay $150 for a slave purchased for $1500). Some slaves returned
to their plantations at the end of the workday and others stayed in housing
quarters located on the factory premises. However, many slaves were given
papers by their masters and employers to remain the in the cities. Within major
southern cities also lived substantial populations of free blacks—many whom are
born free, chose to remain in the south to work who have been manumitted or purchased
their own freedom. In these cities there was a strong cultural exchange between
free blacks and bondspersons, which is exemplified in places such as Congo Square
in New Orleans. Predictably, this dynamic discomforted many whites, as southern
municipalities began to enact a series of laws designed to limit the
interaction with free black and slave populations.
2.
The institution of
slavery, as a whole, was not always as profitable nor as productive as
free-labor.
a. One common misconception of the entire slave period
was its profitability. While it’s actual profitability is still an area of
contention amongst many scholars, our generalization of period only applies to
a particular period of time. Slavery was only as profitable as the products
that slavery produced-- namely cotton, sugar, and tobacco in the US. While
markets change and the US progresses, however, the development of railroads
became very important for commerce. The transportation industry and the
production of iron and the ability to turn raw materials into consumer goods
became how northern cities progressed economically. As the global world moved
away from the plantation economy, the owning of slaves to work on plantations
was not as practical. Some southern industrialists deduced that by integrating
slave labor into industrial factories, owning the labor force would give them a
competitive advantage in production. However, the use of slaves in industrial
factories did not work out as enterpreneurs had planned it. Ties with
slave-owners, the meticulous and costly maintenance of the slave labor
workforce (financing their housing (many slaves had taken their family with
them), clothing, etc.) was not competitively advantageous to northern factory
workers, especially during a period where employers were relatively free from
liability with respect to the welfare of workers. Employing free labor was
altogether cheaper.
3.
Many slaves were able to
negotiate conditions in their workplace and bargain with slave-hirers
a. The slave system, for owners, was intended to be as
non-confrontational as possible. Knowing the volatility of owning human cargo,
slaveholders understood that the less conflict with respect to their slaves
meant greater productivity and thus profit for them. In addition, slaves often
served as business liaisons amongst the aristocracy. When slaves were hired for
work off of the plantation, slaves were often able to negotiate conditions and
incentives (of course, so long as the slaveholder thought it to be reasonable
in his mind). Unsatisfied workers disrupted productivity, and because factory
owners invest such as large sum to hire the slave, some were also willing to
make sure slaves were accommodated in the process.
4.
Brutal treatment on
plantations was often economically impractical, as selling the slave was better
discipline.
a. It is often implied that slaveholders beat slaves to
make them become more effective workers. Harsh treatment on slave plantations
was frequent. It was not a method used to make slaves work harder, however.
Incentive for working harder had less to do with punishment than it did with
reward, and this is something slaveholders recognized early. The separation of
families was commonplace to teach slave communities lessons about servitude. Marks
on a slave drove down his economic value on the slave trade market. Slave
traders were careful to do what they can to cover up signs of brutal treatment
on the slave market. Lacerations, whip marks, visible bruises were details on
the body that slave speculators viewed carefully as it was believed they
indicated behavioral patterns.
5.
Slavery disenfranchised
a substantial portion of working class native whites, planting the seeds of
hatred against white supremacists groups long before the reconstruction era.
a. White supremacist groups were largely developed in
the years after the civil war when white men galvanized resources to reverse
gains made by blacks during reconstruction. However, much of the one-sided conflict
happens years before the civil war. White laborers rioted frequently against
black workers and employers of black labor. Occupying a social status that was
dependent upon the feasibility of black labor at the time was frustrating for
white workers. In addition to slaves, employing free blacks in the south was
also attractive for entrepreneurs. While white workers were viewed as being “militant”,
free black workers lacked the social status as full citizens to assemble labor
unions or negotiate fairer labor conditions. Free black workers, unlike slaves
and white workers, could be paid smaller wages and be free of tensioning ties
with slaveholders. White workers struck in opposition to the employ of slave labor
in industrial factories for fears that industrialists would replace their
skills by teaching slaves how to perform tasks that were mostly designated for
white workers.
6.
Slavery & and an unwillingness
to relinquish southern tradition is the largest reason why the south remained undeveloped and lacked competitiveness with the industrializing world.
a. Once those southern staples lose its demand and
profitability, the exchange and purchase of black bodies themselves becomes a
significant function of slavery, particularly in the US, where the domestic
slave trade turns New Orleans into the southern economic capital. To identify
an analogy, it would be more useful to consider slaves as a form of technology
(as problematic as that sounds). Newer and more effective forms of technology
are constantly invented but in America, there are certain consumer markets that
will always exist because they become markers of status. As the country drew
closer to the civil war, the owning of black bodies became indicative of the
place in which one occupied in society. The ownership of black bodies became a
fulfillment for whiteness. Many working class-whites spent their entire lives
in pursuit of becoming a planter, even to the extent that some gamble their
future livelihood on the investment of slaves. Southern culture surrounded the
ownership of black bodies to the extent that it crippled their economies and
prevented them from investing more effectively to the production of
transportation goods.
7.
Slaves—politically,
culturally and physically-- held a capital with wealthy whites that many working
class whites lacked during the period.
a. One awkward reality of slavery is relative distance
and proximity slaves had to white elites. Slaves were the subjects of white
supremacy but also an extension of white supremacy. White racial identity in
the south could not exist without the presence of blacks. Slaves are protected
as extensions of white privilege and their societal value is also derived from white
supremacy (which might explain how we currently view our own status). On
average, approximately ten percent of the population are planters (those owning
ten or more slaves). While it is clear that slaves occupied little-to-none
political clout with their slaveholding counterparts, they occupied a social
status that was often elevated over non-slaveholding whites, and it was a
status about which slaves themselves were aware. It is this very protection as
extensions of whiteness that prevents white workers from successfully
galvanizing support to defeat the use of slave labor in factories. Once blacks
are no longer extensions of white supremacy in the years after the civil war,
it leaves them exposed to the tensions and animosities white workers had been
building toward blacks for decades, arguably centuries. Non-slaveholding whites
are often powerless to the power-structure during the same period. Nominal
favors are dealt to socially dependent white workers in exchange for votes and
support. Also, southern municipalities are mostly indifferent to the demands of
white workers.
We must place several things in perspective with
regards to slavery. One of which is that the system itself drastically changed
the psychological spirit of Africans that eventually emerge to become African
Americans. Bondspersons find ways to make the most out of the situation in
which they are found. One prevalent pro-slavery argument during this period is
the quality of life advantage Blacks in the south had over Blacks in the north.
What is problematic about that position is that it assumes that the quality of
life is reduced to the material conditions that surround them. Enslaved
blacks—no matter their relative “freedom” or opportunities afforded to them as
being extensions of the white power-structure—are still left with the unending
reality that their bodies do not belong to them. As normal-- even as
comparatively advantageous—their lives may or may have not been, we must
respect how destructive it is to the human psyche to be owned by another. More
disturbingly and fascinatingly, we must respect how destructive it is to ACCEPT
that one’s body is owned by another.
As I have stated already, there is evidence that
suggest that enslaved blacks endured equal or better material conditions than
many of their white, free, slave-less counterparts. In some contexts, their
labor was often preferred over some of their white counterparts in areas where
they both were skilled. In other contexts, the skilled white labor force had
been forced to train slaves to perform certain skills. This is where my
intellectual interests take off, as I am fascinated in finding out the reasons
why white workers choose to antagonize blacks for the destruction of their
plight and not the power structures, that, often, publicly insult white
workers.
As it pertains to reparations, we also must consider the
vast majority of white workers that are disenfranchised as a product of having
a national social and economic body that is based on the trading of black souls
and the employ of owned labor.
Furthermore, when reparative justice pundits demand
restitution for slavery, it is mostly along the context of being reimbursed for
the labor performed during the era. That is where the argument loses its
gearth. Demanding to be recompensed for labor lends itself to the problematic
conclusion aforementioned regarding material conditions and quality of life. I
am inclined to believe that if are to discuss reparations, the discourse should
exclusively be held to restitution for the psychological trauma endured. By then,
though, we have lost by demanding compensation for unfathomable human
suffering. Who has suffered more: African Americans that are continually discriminated
upon and are acutely aware of such discrimination and can use that awareness as
capital and leverage in a self-professed democratic and fair nation? Or poor
working class and impoverished whites that have no idea that they are
economically and socially excluded by design, and consider the only way to
address their plight is to disrupt another’s? I am inclined to be sympathetic.
Most black people are not.
