Kenneth Stampp

Kenneth Stampp

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

No slaveholder needed to respect the marital ties of his slaves; yet a Tennesseean purchased several slaves at a public sale, not because he needed them, but because of "their intermarriage with my servants and their appeals to me to do so." A Kentucky mistress tried to buy the wife of her slave before moving to Missouri. Another Kentuckian, when obliged to sell his slaves, gave each an opportunity to find a satisfactory purchaser and refused to sell any to persons residing outside the neighborhood. (The Peculiar Institution, pp. 229-230)

A number of slaves were freed by their owners in the owners' wills. African-American scholars John Franklin and Alfred Moss note that for many years slaveholders, "stricken by conscience, impelled by affection, or yielding to the temptation to evade responsibility, manumitted [freed] their slaves in large numbers. . . ." (From Slavery to Freedom, Eighth Edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, p. 168, emphasis added).

Other slaves earned enough money to purchase their freedom. Some owners assisted with the purchase of freedom by accepting payments over a period of time or by agreeing to accept a generously low price. Stampp explains how some slaves managed to buy their freedom:

Occasionally, they earned the necessary funds by working nights and Sundays. More often, they hired their own time. Either way, they gradually accumulated enough money to pay their masters an amount equal to their value and thus obtained deeds of emancipation. Benevolent masters helped ambitious bondsmen by permitting them to make the payments in installments over a period of years or by accepting a sum lower than the market price. (The Peculiar Institution, p. 96)

Allan Nevins noted that even in the 1850s "many" slaves continued to buy their freedom:

Even in the eighteen-fifties, many slaves, particularly in towns and among the skilled or semi-skilled, continued to buy their liberty. (The Emergence of Lincoln, Volume 2, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950, p. 161)

In contrast to many factory workers in the North, and even in contrast to many low-wage workers in our day, many if not most slaves received relatively good medical care. Most slaves received at least some medical care. And some slaves received exceptional medical care. Says Stampp,

To treat their sick slaves, many masters employed trained physicians, often the same ones who treated the white families. A few large planters retained resident doctors on their estates; occasionally several small planters together contracted with a doctor for his full-time service. More commonly a slaveholder made a yearly contract with a physician who agreed to charge a fixed amount for each visit. "Bargained today with Dr. Trotti to practice at the plantation," Hammond noted in his diary. "He agrees to charge only $2.50 a visit without reference to the number of sick prescribed for." Another planter cautioned his overseer, "Strong medicines should be left to the Doctor; and since the Proprietor [the master] never grudges a Doctor's bill, however large, he has a right to expect that the Overseer shall always send for a Doctor when a serious case occurs." Slaveholders, both large and small, sometimes spent generous sums for skilled medical treatment for their "people." To prove that there was "no class of working people in the world better cared for," one southern physician declared that he had often received large fees for attending even senile and worthless slaves.

This statement was much too optimistic, but it did give recognition to a class of humane masters whose expenditures for medical service went far beyond the simple dictates of self-interest. In mourning the death of an old slave woman, a North Carolinian noted that his physician had given the case "assiduous attention" for six months, "devoting to it more reflection and research than he had (as he informs me) to any case within ten years". . . .

A few masters patronized hospitals which were built and maintained especially for the care of sick slaves. During the 1850's, three Savannah physicians ran a slave hospital for "lying-in" women as well as for medical and surgical cases; similar institutions existed in Charleston, Montgomery, Natchez, and New Orleans. But plantation proprietors usually established their own hospitals where the sick could be attended by physicians or slave nurses. "All sick persons are to stay in the hospital night and day, from the time they first complain to the time they are able to go to work again," a South Carolinian instructed his overseer. "Hopeton," James Hamilton Couper's Georgia rice plantation, contained a model hospital where ailing slaves received the best medical attention the South could provide. The hospital was well ventilated and steam heated; it contained an examining room, medicine closet, kitchen, bathing room, and four wards, all of which were swept every day and scrubbed once a week.

Wise and humane masters gave proper attention to slave women who were either expectant or nursing mothers. A Mississippian ordered his overseer to treat them with "great tenderness." A South Carolinian required "lying-in women" to remain at the quarters for four weeks after parturition, because their health might be "entirely ruined by want of care in this particular." Hammond gave the "sucklers" lighter tasks near the quarters and insisted that they be cool and rested before morning.

Some masters were equally solicitous about the care of slave children. On the smaller establishments they appointed an old woman to watch the children while the mothers worked in the fields. On the plantations they built nurseries where the plantation nurse cooked for the children, mended their clothing, and looked after them during illness. (The Peculiar Institution, pp. 311-313)