Slaves, sex and souterners

[Nofix]

There is no such thing as a good slave master

Agreed. It's a range from "Horrid" to "Unbelievable Evil". As in, if this person were a fictional character, and I was ignorant of his real life inspiration, I might not actually believe such a thing to be true.

"Crawford's earlier analysis had provided an alternative interpretation of the way plantation size influenced the slaves' family patterns. He found that in one out of every six of the single slave mothers, the father was white. He also found that the probability of having a white father was also higher on small plantations. When Steckel analyzed data in the manuscript schedules of the 1860 census, his findings were consistent with those of Crawford. Using a more powerful statistical technique and a larger sample than could be obtained from the interviews with former slaves used by Crawford, Steckel found that on average, one out of every ten slave children was mulatto. He also demonstrated that this proportion likely to be was seven times as high on a farm of ten slaves engaged in mixed farming than it was on a cotton plantation of seventy-five slaves in the deep South. According to Steckel, the proportion of mulatto children was highest on small slave units in large predominately white cities and lowest on large plantations in the rice-growing region where the density of whites was low..." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/ensuringinequality.htm

So, if I'm reading this right, the more whites and the smaller the plantation: there were more mulatto slaves. The less white and bigger the plantation: there were less mulatto slaves? I suppose that makes sense.

 

[Benevolent]

Agreed. It's a range from "Horrid" to "Unbelievable Evil". As in, if this person were a fictional character, and I was ignorant of his real life inspiration, I might not actually believe such a thing to be true.



So, if I'm reading this right, the more whites and the smaller the plantation: there were more mulatto slaves. The less white and bigger the plantation: there were less mulatto slaves? I suppose that makes sense.

Yes, it's the reason why the cotton, rice and sugar plantations regions have the blackest populations of the US while West Virginia with its small holdings and whiter over all population has the whitest black populations.

But of course the mixed race in predominately black slave zones still existed and in fact became quiet prominent in their own right if given freedom and education, they were the figurative and literal buffer group.

 

[DG Valdron]

So, if I'm reading this right, the more whites and the smaller the plantation: there were more mulatto slaves. The less white and bigger the plantation: there were less mulatto slaves? I suppose that makes sense.

Basically, the more access that whites had to slaves, and the 'weaker' the slaves were, the more raping that happened.

 

[Revolutionary Avocado]

Yes, it's the reason why the cotton, rice and sugar plantations regions have the blackest populations of the US while West Virginia with its small holdings and whiter over all population has the whitest black populations.

But of course the mixed race in predominately black slave zones still existed and in fact became quiet prominent in their own right if given freedom and education, they were the figurative and literal buffer group.

Only legally so until Plessy v. Ferguson, which established "separate but equal" along the lines of the "one-drop" rule. After that, unless you could pass for white, you were black, no matter what shade you were.

 

[Benevolent]

Only legally so until Plessy v. Ferguson, which established "separate but equal" along the lines of the "one-drop" rule. After that, unless you could pass for white, you were black, no matter what shade you were.

So my statement was pre-antebellum, Plessy's activism fail was after slavery ended.

Even then the rights were upheld until Jim Crow ended among the Gen de Couleur libre of Mobile as written in the Adams Onis Treaty.

 

[NothingNow]

So, if I'm reading this right, the more whites and the smaller the plantation: there were more mulatto slaves. The less white and bigger the plantation: there were less mulatto slaves? I suppose that makes sense.

Well yeah. It's definitely contact related. On a smaller farm you've also got the owner's sons and everything around, and most are small enough that everyone has to work in close proximity instead of having whites simply working as overseers or acting in managerial roles.

It's like how most rape victims today know their rapist. Only you know, with serious long-tern economic incentives for the rapist.

 

[Georgepatton]

I mean there are examples of similar situations in the Sea Islands where the owner in question didn't bother to hide the relationship (but the Sea Islands were and continue to be weird,) but for the most part, in the 18th century it seems to have been something kept under wraps.

Like Zephaniah Kingsley and his slave polygamy?

 

[Benevolent]

Like Zephaniah Kingsley and his slave polygamy?

She isn't exceptional in Low Country, whites were much more likely to give mixed race and black people positions of authority in the malarial swamps. They left plantations seasonally to be controlled by trusted black slaves whom I imagine were just as bad.

it's quite funny South Carolina has the highest percentage of White Americans with at least 2% African ancestry.

 

[NothingNow]

Like Zephaniah Kingsley and his slave polygamy?

Actually, that was the guy I was thinking of.

God, Florida really does have the most colorful history of any of the southern states.

She isn't exceptional in Low Country, whites were much more likely to give mixed race and black people positions of authority in the malarial swamps. They left plantations seasonally to be controlled by trusted black slaves whom I imagine were just as bad.

it's quite funny South Carolina has the highest percentage of White Americans with at least 2% African ancestry.

Actually, didn't black overseers have a reputation for being worse?

 

[Benevolent]

Actually, that was the guy I was thinking of.

God, Florida really does have the most colorful history of any of the southern states.



Actually, didn't black overseers have a reputation for being worse?

You cannot measure those who control enslaved people, they are all inhumane.

 

[NothingNow]

You cannot measure those who control enslaved people, they are all inhumane.

No, you totally can.

I mean you've got measures of violence, intent and consistency to look at, same as you can in pretty much any other situation involving forced labor.

 

[The Uchronian]

Yeah, but it's also really disingenuous to bring it up as an example of well anything. It's just that goddamned weird a relationship by any standard.

I mean we know about it, and it's surprisingly well documented. But it's also a really unusual circumstance. I mean it's his wife's half sister, but she was apparently mostly the caretaker the daughter Jefferson brought with him to France (where she actually passed up a chance to be free, probably because it would have meant never seeing her family again,) before becoming one of the servants at Monticello, and definitely acting as Jefferson's mistress/concubine for most of the remainder of his life.

I mean it's hard to fit that relationship into anything else, aside from the fact that Jefferson did refuse to officially acknowledge the Hemings children as his descendants, he did educate them as servants or craftsmen and then free them (after which most entered white society,) which represented a major opportunity cost for a slave owner in any time frame.

Good post here.

I mean there are examples of similar situations in the Sea Islands where the owner in question didn't bother to hide the relationship (but the Sea Islands were and continue to be weird,) but for the most part, in the 18th century it seems to have been something kept under wraps.

Yeah, that's not exactly surprising, of course: I'll admit I don't know much of anything in regards to the Sea Islands, though, does anyone have any pointers?

And then the 19th Century saw slavery mixed with a really racist ideology, which presumably made it both more desirable to do such things, and much less respectable to do so.

No doubt there were some planters who while paying public lip-service to racial superiority and separatism, did not exactly resist the temptation to want to lay down and copulate with the "help", as it were.....(although there were certainly rather more who didn't, and because of that very same extreme hard-boiled racism that became popular starting in the 1830s.....)

"Crawford's earlier analysis had provided an alternative interpretation of the way plantation size influenced the slaves' family patterns. He found that in one out of every six of the single slave mothers, the father was white. He also found that the probability of having a white father was also higher on small plantations. When Steckel analyzed data in the manuscript schedules of the 1860 census, his findings were consistent with those of Crawford. Using a more powerful statistical technique and a larger sample than could be obtained from the interviews with former slaves used by Crawford, Steckel found that on average, one out of every ten slave children was mulatto. He also demonstrated that this proportion likely to be was seven times as high on a farm of ten slaves engaged in mixed farming than it was on a cotton plantation of seventy-five slaves in the deep South. According to Steckel, the proportion of mulatto children was highest on small slave units in large predominately white cities and lowest on large plantations in the rice-growing region where the density of whites was low..." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/ensuringinequality.htm

This is an interesting find indeed.

He was a predator who flouted his power on his human chattle, don't mollify him.

That's a bit of an extreme view to take on Jefferson, to be perfectly honest. Yes, slavery was a quite tragic thing(you won't hear me argue otherwise!), and he was indeed an adulterer as well, but still.....it doesn't hurt to be nuanced in our thinking.

Actually, didn't black overseers have a reputation for being worse?

I've heard this occasionally, but AFAIK, it would seem to me that the argument that this was really more than an occasional thing, seems to have been largely restricted to the Lost Causers and a few on the fringes; I will confess, however, that I'm not 100% certain about this.

No, you totally can.

I mean you've got measures of violence, intent and consistency to look at, same as you can in pretty much any other situation involving forced labor.

That's true; slavery is indeed seen as a terrible thing to modern eyes.....and quite justifiably so! But not every planter was a completely vicious monster, either.

 

[Benevolent]

No, you totally can.

I mean you've got measures of violence, intent and consistency to look at, same as you can in pretty much any other situation involving forced labor.

No you cannnot, they are all terrible and horrendous examples of humanity.

 

[NothingNow]

No you cannnot, they are all terrible and horrendous examples of humanity.

Well, from the perspective of moral absolutism yes. Like, from an absurd, fundamentalist perspective there of, but it's still moral absolutism.

Which is rather maladaptive for doing literally anything involving the past, since it's mostly quantifying and understanding the motivations behind events, which goes completely out the fucking window if you just label things evil and walk away.

So, to the ignore list you go.

 

[Dave Howery]

Actually, didn't black overseers have a reputation for being worse?

one of my books has a note about a woman plantation owner who, aggravated at all the white overseers chasing after the slave girls, decided to make all her overseers black, as (according to her) they were much less likely to go chase after them. Never have read anywhere since then about if this was true or not, or if they were worse in other ways...

 

[dandan_noodles]

You can't measure it, but you can actually, you know, look at the sources and make an informed judgement. This is just one example, but if you look in The Slave Narratives, Annie Young Henson was a Virginia house slave who had a very positive impression of the farm's driver (basically an overseer, but black), an old man named Peter Taylor. According to her, punishment was only meted out when the accused was proven guilty, and the tone used in her description indicates that the sixty some slaves on the farm acknowledged the legitimacy of Old Peter's authority.

This isn't to excuse anyone involved, of course; this is still treating human being as property through the threat of violence, but we have to be able to distinguish a graduation of humanity by interpreting the evidence. The practices of slavery varied from time to place, and the slaves did have cards to play in the constant, implicit negotiation with the planters, many of whom sincerely believed in the paternalist ideology they'd adapted from the English aristocracy and the ideals of noblesse oblige. This didn't make it better for the slaves, mind, since their acts of resistance inflamed feelings of jealous betrayal in the planters, but you need to inform your interpretation with evidence.

 

[The Uchronian]

one of my books has a note about a woman plantation owner who, aggravated at all the white overseers chasing after the slave girls, decided to make all her overseers black, as (according to her) they were much less likely to go chase after them. Never have read anywhere since then about if this was true or not, or if they were worse in other ways...

I'm sure this did indeed happen from time to time; no doubt about that, at least, it's just that I've never seen any evidence suggesting that it was a significant phenomenon.

You can't measure it, but you can actually, you know, look at the sources and make an informed judgement. This is just one example, but if you look in The Slave Narratives, Annie Young Henson was a Virginia house slave who had a very positive impression of the farm's driver (basically an overseer, but black), an old man named Peter Taylor. According to her, punishment was only meted out when the accused was proven guilty, and the tone used in her description indicates that the sixty some slaves on the farm acknowledged the legitimacy of Old Peter's authority.

This isn't to excuse anyone involved, of course; this is still treating human being as property through the threat of violence, but we have to be able to distinguish a graduation of humanity by interpreting the evidence. The practices of slavery varied from time to place, and the slaves did have cards to play in the constant, implicit negotiation with the planters, many of whom sincerely believed in the paternalist ideology they'd adapted from the English aristocracy and the ideals of noblesse oblige. This didn't make it better for the slaves, mind, since their acts of resistance inflamed feelings of jealous betrayal in the planters, but you need to inform your interpretation with evidence.

This, pretty much.

 

[Jasen777]

No you cannnot, they are all terrible and horrendous examples of humanity.

Yes there are. But if you born into a rich southern antebellum slave holding family you would have been the same.

 

[Benevolent]

Historical Revision and the myth of the good slave master: the thread.

The owning of humans is fine so long as you treat them like pets, teach them some tricks and feed them well.

That's basically what I'm getting from some of y'all, as if Stockholm Syndrome can't be a very real possibility in "positive" ex-slave accounts.

 

[Benevolent]

Yes there are. But if you born into a rich southern antebellum slave holding family you would have been the same.

Actually no, my mixed race slave owning ancestor who married a black slave was just as terrible as the notorious Madame of New Orleans who tortured her human chattel.

I would not have engaged that system by any means even if it were a birthright.