Brief History of Slavery in the United States Essay

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It has often been said that history is written from the eyes of the conqueror. For centuries, people in America have only heard the stories of the triumph of Columbus in discovering this continent, not the stories of brutality and murder that took place as these white visitors began determining which land was theirs and which land they would allow the indigenous people to occupy. Some of these stories are just now beginning to be shared in the greater community, slowly changing the impression of the Indian from one of contempt to one of sympathy. In the same frame, there has often been conflicting accounts of what it must have been like to be a slave in the Southern states. While some reports seem to indicate that most of the slaves, not knowing what it was like to have freedom, were content with their lot in life, other evidence exists that suggests even peaceful slaves resisted their position. This controversy is the subject of both Kenneth Stampp’s article “A Troublesome Property” and Eugene Genovese’s article “The Black Work Ethic”. While each author discusses the nature of slave relations within the group, Stampp’s conclusions seem to provide the more satisfactory analysis in keeping with what is known about slave behaviors throughout the slave period.

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Both authors write about the subversive slave culture that developed on the plantations among the slaves themselves. This culture is predominantly characterized by their owners as ‘lazy’. This is so much the case that both authors cite numerous reports by slave owners regarding the laziness and stupidity of their workers. “Slave owners generally took it as a matter of course that a laborer would shirk when he could and perform no more work than he had to” (Stampp, 1956: p. 270). As a result, they found it necessary to utilize various methods to ‘encourage’ the slaves to keep working. “Too often they fell back on the whip and thereby taught and learned little” (Genovese, 1974: p. 300). However, too much physical abuse on the slave and he was no longer capable of working and the action often had an adverse affect on the rest of the slaves. “After a slave was punished in the Richmond tobacco factories, the other hands ‘gave neither song nor careless shout for days, while the bosses fretted at slackened production” (Stampp, 1956: p. 271). Slave owners were often forced to keep a watchful eye on the slave and were often stymied as to how to get more work out of their hands. “Slave owners generally took it as a matter of course that a laborer would shirk when he could and perform no more work than he had to. They knew that, in most cases, the only way to keep him ‘in the straight path of duty’ was to watch him ‘with an eye that never slumbers.’” (Stampp, 1956: p. 270). For both Stampp and Genovese, the major goal of the slave was to experience as much as they could of what it meant to be free. While both authors agree on these issues, they seem to disagree as to the owners’ responses and the slaves’ motivations.

In his article regarding the true sentiments of the slaves, Genovese suggests the reasons why the slaves were perceived as lazy was as the result of their more natural, rural lifestyle. “The setting remained rural, and the rhythm of work followed seasonal fluctuations. Nature remained the temporal reference point for the slaves” (Genovese, 1974: p.300). At the same time, they were products of a deeper cultural understanding of the world, which Genovese finds elucidated in the work of W.E.B. DuBois. “The black slave brought into common labor certain new spiritual values not yet fully realized. As a tropical product with a sensuous receptivity to the beauty of the world, he was not as easily reduced to be the mechanical draft-horse which the northern European laborer became” (cited in Genovese, 1974: p.301). In introducing this concept, Genovese seems to be suggesting that the black man was more in touch with a deeper understanding of life as something more than the Protestant idea of work for its own good. The black man “was not easily brought to recognize any ethical sanctions on work as such but tended to work as the results pleased him and refused to work or sought to refuse when he did not find the spiritual returns adequate, thus he was easily accused of laziness and driven as a slave when in truth he brought to modern manual labor a renewed valuation of life” (DuBois cited in Genovese, 1974: p.301). Thus, slaves were not necessarily lazy, they just held a different worldview from that of the predominantly Protestant world of the psychics. While many slaves, particularly as time moved on, had been born and raised within the slave society and thus had never been exposed to the lifestyles in Africa to which Genovese seems to be gaining much of his ideas, the culture that grew up among the slaves upon the plantation served to preserve this approach to life, particularly as the plantation owners learned to work with it as much as possible rather than against it.

Stampp, on the other hand, believes this inherent laziness of the slave culture is not so much a different outlook on life and a determination to enjoy it, but rather a deliberate means by which the slaves managed to control the masters. While he seems to agree that some slaves enjoyed their captivity sometimes, “He [the slave] was not always even making a conscious protest against bondage” (1956: p. 269). Stampp argues that the indolence of the slaves was at least partially intentional. “Slaves sought to limit the quantity of their services in many different ways … Besides slowing down, many slaves bedeviled the master by doing careless work and by damaging property. They did much of this out of sheer irresponsibility, but they did at least part of it deliberately” (Stampp, 1956: p.271). When they weren’t reducing their work flow or damaging equipment, some slaves reduced the amount of effort they expended for their master through the guise of illness such as the case in which a slave stuck her arms in beehives periodically causing her arms to swell and claiming handicap or the man who claimed he was mostly blind for most of his life yet proved perfectly capable of maintaining a small and very healthy farm once he was emancipated.

In addition to disagreeing about the motives of the slaves, Stampp and Genovese also disagree about the reactions of the slave owners. Genovese suggests numerous slave owners finally came to understand their slaves somewhat better, figuring out various means by which they could encourage more work out of them. One way in which they did this was by paying their slaves wages for work performed on Sundays and in the evenings and by holding community work-related competitions such as corn shucking. While these events, held at night and comprising heavy work, often were looked forward to as a means of winning money and other prizes from the master, Genovese suggests there was a deeper reason for their success. “The most important feature of these occasions and the most important incentive to these long hours of extra work was the community life they called forth. They were gala affairs. The jug passed freely … the work went on amidst singing and dancing, friends and acquaintances congregated … and the work was followed by an all-night dinner and ball at which inhibitions, especially those of class and race, were lowered as far as anyone dared” (Genovese, 1974: p.306). In addition, many slave owners provided their slaves with a small garden plot of their own from which they could keep the yield of their labor. Genovese suggests that the slaves were relatively happy in bondage as a result of these measures, which were applied to a large degree throughout the South.

In contrast, Stampp points to the numerous instances of runaway slaves and attempted slave uprisings despite the hopelessness of their cause as proof that the slave was never content with his lot and desired to be free simply because it is a natural desire of all men to be free regardless of how they were treated by their masters. “Slaves showed great eagerness to get some – if they could not get all – of the advantages of freedom. They liked to hire their own time, or to work in tobacco factories, or for the Tredegar Iron Company, because they were then under less restraint than in the fields, and they had greater opportunities to earn money for themselves” (Stampp, 1956: p.268). In addition to their passive resistance, Stampp illustrates how slaves had a relative morality regarding several small crimes like theft and self-mutilation as a means of appropriating their own value and discusses the various attempted or enacted slave uprisings that served to terrify the slave owners throughout the South. “In truth, no slave uprising ever had a chance of ultimate success, even though it might have cost the master class heavy casualties. The great majority of the disarmed and outnumbered slaves, knowing the futility of rebellion, refused to join in any of the numerous plots. Most slaves had to express their desire for freedom in less dramatic ways” (Stampp, 1956: p.281). In this argument, Stampp does not specifically address the reactions of the slave owners to the slave’s laziness in the same way that Genovese does, but eloquently illustrates why owner behavior had little bearing on the ultimate result – most slaves desired freedom whether with a ‘good’ master or a ‘bad’ one.

While both authors ultimately make a case for the slaves’ ultimate desire for freedom as expressed through their laziness (a form of passive aggression), both Genovese and Stampp come up with different motivations for the slaves and different reactions as proof of their claims. In these discussions, each author presents a well-considered analysis of the inner life of the slave. However, Stampp’s presentation emerges as the stronger of the two as he illustrates the reasons for numerous reports of runaway slaves and slaves so desperate to be free that they’d actually fight for the ability to die rather than return to the plantation. These are actions that are well-known in the general population and that remain unexplained by Genovese’s picture of a happy community life on the farm scenario with the kindly master and the carefree slaves. By including this information, Stampp is able to illustrate why his interpretation of slave life is more valid as it explains otherwise difficult to understand behavior while still providing room for slaves to have opted to remain passive resistant on the plantation.

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Works Cited

  1. Genovese, Eugene. “The Black Work Ethic.” (1974). Book name that the articles came from. Name of Editor (Ed.). Place of publication: Publisher’s name, year of publication: pp. 299-313.
  2. Stampp, Kenneth. “A Troublesome Property.” (1956). Book name that the articles came from. Name of Editor (Ed.). Place of publication: Publisher’s name, year of publication: pp. 266-281.
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IvyPanda. 2021. "Brief History of Slavery in the United States." September 5, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/brief-history-of-slavery-in-the-united-states/.

1. IvyPanda. "Brief History of Slavery in the United States." September 5, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/brief-history-of-slavery-in-the-united-states/.


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IvyPanda. "Brief History of Slavery in the United States." September 5, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/brief-history-of-slavery-in-the-united-states/.

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