34 pages • 1-hour read
The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South
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Chapter 7-8 & AppendicesChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary and Analysis: “Plantation Realities”
As suggested in Chapter 6, slave stereotypes did not function in practice. In the everyday labor on the plantation, “the planter recognized the variability of slave personality in his day-to-day relationships” (282). Furthermore, interactions between enslaved people, their managers and owners, and their owners’ families were made more complex by constant tension between slavery and religious values.
There were two main roles for enslaved people in the South: domestic slaves, who performed duties in the home, and field slaves, who did agricultural labor. Field slaves engaged in hard labor from dawn to dusk. Domestic slaves received better food and were charged with less hard labor, but since they lived with the plantation owner and his family, they were constantly under surveillance and had to match the family’s schedule.
Enslaved people lived and slept in barely furnished, rundown cabins. Their living conditions may have been better than that of the free laborers in the North, but “the return the slave received for his work was in no wise comparable to that received by free laborers” (255). Some enslaved people were in a more privileged position as drivers, assigned “to keep [other] slaves at their tasks” (258) or risk punishment themselves. Meanwhile, domestic slaves “often represented an extension of the master’s eyes and ears: the plantation’s secret police” (260).
Like enslaved people themselves, the personalities of masters varied: “Differences in family life, childhood experiences, and religious beliefs caused the planters to treat their slaves in a great variety of ways” (265). Some masters were cruel and sadistic, “Uncompromisingly harsh, the portrait which the slaves drew of cruel masters was filled with brutality and horror” (262). Even “kinder” masters could have episodes of drunkenness or rage, during which they abused enslaved people. Blassingame says there is “a great deal of evidence in antebellum court records, newspapers, memoirs, and plantation diaries” (262) that all enslaved people were horribly abused at least once in their lives.
The children of plantation owners were often raised by a “mammy”, an enslaved woman assigned to tend to the children. She was often a child’s “second, more attentive, more loving mother” (266). Plantation owners’ children often grew up alongside enslaved children, and the two usually had equal friendships. Blassingame argues that this created conflicting feelings for white people who grew up with enslaved people: “He envied the slave his apparent freedom from social restraints [...] Often he internalized the love ideal of the black mammy but later learned that she was a hated, black thing” (267-68). Such feelings, Blassingame asserts, led white men to lust after Black women while also resenting and fearing the possibility of Black men seducing white women.
Another factor in slave-master relationships was religion: “[...] a number of [masters] tried to apply Christian principles in their relations with slaves” (268). At least, white preachers stressed that slave owners had a moral obligation to ensure enslaved people’s comfort as much as possible.
Still, the demands of plantation life complicated relationships between enslaved people and plantation owners and managers. Overseers had to balance meeting production demands and not punishing enslaved people too harshly: “[...] it was impossible for the overseer to supervise every detail of the slave's life. Most men were unwilling to lead the kind of solitary life that plantation management demanded” (276). Overall, both plantation owners and overseers “had to make several compromises in order to maintain the façade of absolute control” (282).
Chapter 8 Summary and Analysis: “Slave Personality Types”
In Chapter 8, Blassingame continues his argument against a general experience of slavery or a single type of enslaved person. Despite their shared experience of oppression and hard labor, enslaved people in the South were first and foremost individuals, albeit ones who had similar reactions to and strategies for similar circumstances. Blassingame interweaves his own interpretation of his primary sources with psychological theory to argue that enslaved people did not “fully accept” the “submissive role” despite adopting the submissive roles forced on them (286).
Blassingame cites the “interpersonal theory” of psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan, in which the “significant others” (or people with the most power to reward or punish an individual) are the people with the most influence over how an individual behaves. However, Blassingame also argues that some “are solely dependent on the way others see them for their conception of themselves” (285).
While a superior may try to force a subordinate into a role, the subordinate may continue to resist—which would then require coercion (286). Subordinates can simply play the role they are given: “The rituals of deference are fleeting, highly formalized, almost unconscious acts that are often performed without too much psychological cost to the subordinate” (288-89). In other words, subordinates can simply pretend to be deferential. Despite their hardships, enslaved people retained their own inner lives, relationships, motives, and acts of resistance.
As for being loyal to one’s master, enslaved people did so for various reasons depending on their relationships with themselves and their masters. Some may have expected to be rewarded with freedom or were flattered and won over by a master. Those forced to work under a cruel master “became docile, submissive, and Sambo-like” (293) or were overcome with despair. Blassingame adds that some enslaved people faced their circumstances by accepting “the rightness, the power, and the sanctity of whiteness and the degradation, the powerlessness, and the shame of blackness. As a result, some blacks wished passionately that they were white” (303).
However, “the nature of Southern society prevented the slave’s acceptance of all whites as superior beings” (306). Slave owners also treated poor whites with contempt; enslaved people, who were often better treated than many poor whites, sometimes developed similar attitudes. Some enslaved people did not believe in white supremacy because of the “ignorance, indolence, and dissolution of their master” (307).
Blassingame argues that enslaved people found refuge in deception; for example, they could pretend to mourn the death of a cruel master. Furthermore, they had a shared hatred of white people and a sense of solidarity with other Black people. Even drivers, who were Black themselves, could take advantage of opportunities to ease the treatment and labor of other enslaved people. There were also cases of physically strong enslaved people whom plantation owners and overseers feared punishing.
Comparing enslaved people in the South to the victims of German death camps during World War II, Blassingame concludes that although “slaves were generally submissive, they did not regress to the [...] abject docility of the concentration camp inmate primarily because they were not treated as harshly as the inmates” (320). Slavery was a brutal, cruel system, but enslaved people still found opportunities for resistance, building community, and asserting their sense of self.
Appendix I Summary and Analysis: “Comparative Examination of Total Institutions”
In Appendix I, Blassingame compares slavery in the South to other oppressive authoritarian institutions: the U.S. army, U.S. prisons, and Nazi concentration camps. In particular, he seeks to examine how much these institutions are able to subjugate individuals. To him, avoiding subjugation “is dependent on the kinds of power exercised, the level of surveillance, and the frequency of interaction” (323).
In the army, soldiers are subject to a strict hierarchy with rules enforced by punishment. However, soldiers who strictly obey the rules are sometimes resented by their comrades. They are encouraged to do the bare minimum to follow rules and fulfill tasks, resist authority and maintain individuality when possible, and engage in cursing, drinking, and sexual exploits during their leisure time. Meanwhile, there is a “great social distance” (325) between officers and soldiers, leading officers to assume the latter respect them more than they do. These details certainly apply to slavery in the South, especially enslaved people’s willingness to bend the rules and present a false emotional front to please their masters.
Next, Blassingame discusses prisons. Prisoners try to preserve their personalities and moral codes in the face of institutional authority. They try to protect themselves by joining groups that are hostile to the prison administration. Like how plantation owners recruited enslaved people as drivers, prison administrators “recognize the higher status of some prisoners by giving them better jobs as a means of control” (326).
Blassingame finishes his comparison with the most extreme of the three institutions—the Nazi concentration camp. Because physical punishment and the threat of death were constant, it is more difficult for camp inmates to maintain their individuality than in the U.S. army or prisons. Still, people who had higher social standing or had already struggled for survival before becoming inmates found it slightly “easier…to withstand the trauma of the camp experience” (225). Despite the differences between surviving on a plantation and in a concentration camp, they illustrate how people can maintain “psychical balance because of group solidarity, prior experience in similar institutions, religious ideals, a culture differing greatly from that of their oppressors, prior referents for self-esteem, and physical stamina” (331).
Note: Appendix II: “African Words, Numerals, and Sentences Used by Former Slaves in Georgia and South Carolina in the 1890s,” is not covered in this guide.
Appendix III Summary and Analysis: “Statistics on Slaves and Slavery: Observations and Tables”
Appendix III: “Statistics on Slaves and Slavery: Observations and Tables” covers the raw social data that Blassingame used in his research. He cautions readers on the reliability of quantitative data: “Statistical truths are no more self-evident than literary” (336). In particular, researchers must be aware of the limitations and potential flaws of their data. For example, the data on participants in Southern churches at the time of slavery is flawed because it does not distinguish between white and Black congregants. There are also contradictions between data on marriages and other rituals and that collected by individual churches (337). Despite errors in data, “they reveal much about the nature of slave life and culture” (339). However, Blassingame claims that the more reliable information preserved by Southern ministers proved illuminating.
Blassingame also acknowledges that some data is unavailable. For example, there is no reliable data on how many enslaved people were physically abused (340). Nonetheless, there are reliable sources of data for judicial and marriage records. On the other hand, some data—such as data on mental illness among Black people—were manipulated to validate claims that they benefited from slavery in the 19th century (342). The lack of provisions for those with mentally illnesses at the time also calls the data’s validity into question.
Appendix III Summary and Analysis: “Critical Essay on Sources”
Appendix III: “Critical Essay on Sources” discusses Blassingame’s sources. He suggests that in slave autobiographies, “more clearly than in any other source, we learn what went on in the minds of black men”—and that they are “crucial for an understanding of the slave experience” (367-368). Still, he acknowledges the flaws of using slave autobiographies. Writers tended to flatter and forget details about themselves and other parties, as their readership comprised white people; furthermore, writers at the time generally avoided topics like sexuality (368-69).
Blassingame addresses the objection that the accounts of escaped enslaved people are biased, given their understandable opinions about slavery and their former masters. However, he responds that few primary sources written as narratives are objective: “Inasmuch as all commentators were prejudiced in some way, slaves cannot be dismissed because of their biases” (370). He adds that these narratives do not depict a “simple picture of hell on earth”—suggesting that their writers attempted to be “relatively dispassionate” (371) in their portrayals of plantation life and slavery.
Finally, Blassingame counters the argument that slave narratives were edited by white abolitionists, noting that he found similarities in style between slave autobiographies and other works by the same writers. He also suggests that some autobiographies were so crudely written that they were likely not edited by an outside person. Blassingame concludes that “a little more than half of the fugitive slave narratives were written by abolitionists” but “not distorted” as they were diverse and taken directly from records or dictated by former enslaved people (372). To him, narratives that were heavily edited or fictional “can be identified relatively easily” (372).
Blassingame discusses interviews with formerly enslaved people collected by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. He deems them less reliable than slave autobiographies, as they were “heavily edited” by Southern white interviewers who wanted to preserve the “paternalistic image of the Old South” (375); enslaved people themselves also tended to present a rosier view of their lives. Still, Blassingame admits that formerly enslaved people’s childhood recollections provide valuable information about slave culture and verify information from slave autobiographies.
Blassingame argues that the majority of narratives from white enslaved people are accurate, so those of Black enslaved people should be taken seriously as well. Other sources include writings by white plantation owners and their families, periodicals representing the plantation owner class, travel writings about the South, abolitionist publications, as well as secondary sources on slavery, religion in the South, psychology, and other topics.
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