What Was Slavery Really Like?

What Was Slavery Really Like?

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

So just how bad was slavery in the South? Did any good come from slavery? Did slavery have any good aspects? Did all slaveowners mistreat their slaves? The subject of slavery in the antebellum (i.e., pre-Civil War) South is a delicate, highly charged issue because history books and documentaries have usually only told one side of the story.  The recent PBS documentary Slavery and the Making of America is a prime example of the  one-sided, misleading, and incomplete portrayals of Southern slavery that are usually presented to the public. I'm not trying to justify slavery. All I'm saying is that if we're going to talk about slavery, let's be fair and honest about it.

Most history books and documentaries that discuss slavery are full of tragic stories about the bad aspects of slavery, but they rarely mention the good aspects of the institution. Historians typically cite the worst cases of mistreatment and abuse but ignore or minimize the far more numerous cases of humane treatment, mutual respect, and genuine friendship. True, the good aspects of slavery don't outweigh the fact that slavery was wrong, but they should be noted in the interest of fairness and historical truth.

Southern slavery may have been the most humane form of slavery the world had ever known.  Most slaves were not mistreated, and most masters treated their slaves humanely.  Slaves in the South were arguably materially better off than many factory workers in the North. In many cases, slaves and slaveholders formed lasting friendships.  Most of the ex-slaves who were interviewed for the W.P.A. narratives and who discussed how they were treated said their masters were good men.  Some slaves remained fiercely loyal to their masters, even during the war and even though they had ample opportunity to leave. The suicide rate among slaves was actually substantially lower than the suicide rate among whites.  In part because of the efforts of numerous slaveowners, millions of slaves voluntarily accepted Christianity and found peace in their personal lives.  In some cases, Christian slaves converted their masters and afterward enjoyed a better relationship with them (see, for example, Leslie Howard Owens, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South, New York: Oxford University Press, 1976, p. 150).  Bearing in mind that most American slaves lived in the South, let's consider some of the observations of historian James McPherson, who certainly can't be accused of being sympathetic toward the antebellum South:

Slavery in the United States operated with less physical harshness than in most other parts of the Western Hemisphere. . . .

The U.S. slave population increased by an average of 27 percent per decade after 1810, almost the same natural growth rate as for the white population. This rate of increase was unique in the history of bondage. No other slave population in the Western Hemisphere even maintained, much less increased, its population through natural reproduction. In Barbados, for example, the decennial natural decrease from 1712 to 1762 was 43 percent. At the time of emancipation, the black population of the United States was ten times the number of Africans who had been imported, but the black population of the West Indies was only half the number of Africans who had been imported. Of the ten million Africans brought across the Atlantic by the slave trade, the United States received fewer than 6 percent; yet at the time of emancipation it had more than 30 percent of the hemisphere's black population. (Ordeal By Fire, pp. 34-35)

McPherson notes other interesting facts: Although Southern law did not recognize marriages between slaves, 66 to 80 percent of slave marriages were not broken up by their masters (Ordeal By Fire, pp. 35-36).   McPherson points out that not only did most slaveowners permit their slaves to marry, but that some masters allowed their slaves to earn money and in some cases to buy their freedom (Ordeal By Fire, p. 34).  Economic historians Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman contend that slaves were able to earn money and rise to responsible positions in the slave system, and that in some cases they received a greater share of the product of their labor than did many factory workers in the North (Time on the Cross, Norton Edition with Afterword, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989, pp. 39-78, 144-150; see also John Niven, The Coming of the Civil War, Arlington Heights, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1990, pp. 160-161).  Fogel and Engerman discuss some of the various forms of advancement and reward that existed in Southern slavery:

While slavery clearly limited the opportunities of bondsmen [slaves] to acquire skills, the fact remains that over 25 percent of males were managers, professionals, craftsmen, and semiskilled workers.  Thus, the common belief that all slaves were menial laborers is false.  Rather than being one undifferentiated mass, slave society produced a complex social hierarchy which was closely related to the occupational pyramid. . . .

Neglect of the fact that more than one out of every five adult male slaves held preferred occupational positions, which involved not only more interesting and less arduous labor but also yielded substantially higher real incomes, has encouraged still another oversight: that is, the failure to recognize the existence of a flexible and exceedingly effective incentive system that operated within the framework of slavery. . . .

What planters wanted was not sullen and discontented slaves who did just enough to keep from getting whipped.  They wanted devoted, hard-working, responsible slaves who identified their fortunes with the fortunes of their masters.  Planters sought to imbue slaves with a “Protestant” work ethic and to transform that ethic from a state of mind into a high level of production.  “My negroes have their name up in the neighborhood,” wrote Bennett Barrow, “for making more than anyone else and they think whatever they do is better than anybody else.”  Such an attitude could not be beaten into slaves.  It had to be elicited.

Much of the managerial attention of planters was focused on the problem of motivating their hands.  To achieve the desired response they developed a wide-ranging system of rewards.  Some rewards were directed toward improving short-run performance.  Included in this category were prizes for the individual or the gang [a team of slaves] with the best picking record on a given day or during a given week.  The prizes were such items as clothing, tobacco, and whiskey; sometimes the prize was cash.  Good immediate performance was also rewarded with unscheduled holidays or with trips to town on weekends.  When slaves worked at times normally set aside for rest, they received extra pay—usually in cash and at the rate prevailing in the region for hired labor.  Slaves who were performing well were permitted to work on their own account after normal hours at such tasks as making shingles or weaving baskets, articles which they could sell either to their masters or to farmers in the neighborhood.

Some rewards were directed at influencing behavior over periods of intermediate duration.  The rewards in this category were usually paid at the end of the year.  Year-end bonuses, given either in goods or in cash, were frequently quite substantial.  Bennett Barrow, for example, distributed gifts averaging between $15 and $20 per slave family in both 1839 and 1840.  The amounts received by particular slaves were proportional  to their performance.  It should be noted that $20 was about a fifth of national per capita income in 1840.  A bonus of the same relative magnitude today would be in the neighborhood of $1,000.

Masters also rewarded slaves who performed well with patches of land ranging up to a few acres for each family.  Slaves grew marketable crops on these lands, the proceeds of which accrued to them.  On the Texas plantation of Julian S. Devereux, slaves operating such land produced as much as two bales of cotton per patch.  Devereux marketed their crop along with his own.  In a good year some of the slaves earned in excess of $100 per annum [per year] for their families.  Devereux set up accounts to which he credited the proceeds of the sales.  Slaves drew on these accounts when they wanted cash or when they wanted Devereux to purchase clothing, pots, pans, tobacco, or similar goods for them.

Occasionally planters even devised elaborate schemes for profit sharing with their slaves.  William Jemison, an Alabama planter, entered into the following agreement with his bondsmen:  “You shall have two thirds of the corn and cotton made on the plantation and as much of the wheat as will reward you for the sowing it.  I also furnish you with provisions for this year. . . .”

There was a third category of rewards.  These were of a long-term nature, often requiring the lapse of a decade or more before they paid off.  Thus, slaves had the opportunity to rise within the social and economic hierarchy that existed under bondage.  Field hands could become artisans or drivers.  Artisans could be allowed to move from the plantation to town where they would hire themselves out.  Drivers could move up to the position of head driver or overseer.  Climbing the economic ladder brought not only social status, and sometimes more freedom; it also had significant payoffs in better housing, better clothing, and cash bonuses. (Time on the Cross, pp. 40-41, 147-149)