Excerpt from Stanley Elkins, Slavery
(Elkins's footnotes have been omitted.)

Historians have debated the evils of slavery for generations. James Ford Rhodes (1893) described it as a curse to both masters and slave. Ulrich B. Phillips (1918) countered that the evils of slavery were wildly exaggerated. He emphasized the humane friendship between kind-hearted master and contented, faithful, and childlike slaves. Kenneth Stampp (1956) reasserted the traditional view, showing the harshness and cruelty of the system. My interpretation makes a fresh examination of slavery through the lens of social psychology to provide a new perspective to the old debate on the evils of slavery, and it provides insights into the behavior of slaves and masters.

Basically, slavery in the United States was much worse than slavery in other countries and had a much more severe effect on the slaves. American slavery was comparable in many ways to a concentration camp. It took away personal initiative from slaves and destroyed their personalities.

Unlike slavery elsewhere, slavery in the United States had no institutions, such as the church or government, to either oppose the slave owners, or to control slavery for the benefit of the slaves. Slave owners had complete dominance over their slaves. In contrast to relatively "open" systems of slavery in other countries, slavery in the United States was a "closed" system. This contrast can be illustrated by comparing the slave systems in Latin America and the United States.

In Latin America slavery was a relatively "open" system. Slaves there had certain rights and some possibilities to develop themselves personally. The Catholic Church and the mercantile governments of the European Powers ruling the Latin American countries intervened frequently in the slave system. The slave owner had to be conscious of the clergy and government officials in his dealings with his slaves. As a result, the harshness of slavery was softened considerably.

Slaves in Latin America were not automatically slaves forever; they could purchase their own freedom. Slaves were thought to have immortal souls and, as such, were to be legally married and received the sacraments. Masters' disciplinary power over slaves was limited by the laws of the government. Masters were liable for the murder of their slaves. Although the law was violated, and owners were sometimes cruel to their slaves, the laws were not as widely violated as they were under the English or in the United States. Government officials and priests regularly checked to see if slaves had been mistreated. Slaves could also own property. Lastly, slaves in Latin America regularly had contact with the rest of society. One of the results of this was a much higher rate of intermarriage than in the United States.

By contrast, slavery in the United States was a "closed" system. Slaves had almost no rights and were totally dependent upon their master for nearly everything. The term of servitude in the United States was for life; slaves couldn't buy their freedom. There was no recognition of marriage or the family. Slaves were to be sold to the highest bidder even if it meant breaking up the family. Conversion to Christianity meant no difference in status or treatment as slaves. Slaves as property took precedence over slaves as human beings. They had no civil rights, right to own property, or any other rights. Slaves were limited to the plantation--they had little contact with the rest of society. They were isolated on the plantation under the absolute control of their owners, to whom they were to give complete obedience. The masters exercised such extensive power because there were no governmental restrictions on them.

The result of the closed system of slavery in the United States was to destroy the personality of the slave; that is, to reduce his behavior to that of a child. Historians have long noticed the passive personality among slaves. Many slaves were docile, irresponsible people, perpetual children incapable of mature behavior. Slaves passively did whatever they were told. They had no initiative, and offered no resistance to slavery. Some people have contended that this is just another white stereotype of blacks, yet abundant evidence proves that the passive personality type did exist in the United States.

Since there is no evidence of the passive personality in slavery in Latin America, one is left with the conclusion that the passive personality must be the result of the authoritarian nature of American slavery. The absolute power of the slave owners over their slaves, but not necessarily the cruelty of the masters, was enough to produce passive slaves.

Many of the blacks brought from Africa to the United States as slaves had been warriors or had held high position in their advanced civilizations. They were transformed into passive people as a result of their enslavement. There was the shock of being caught and enslaved, and the several-week march to the coast. The next shock was their sale to the Europeans. They were put into pens and branded. Blacks rejected as slaves were left to starve. The cruelest step was the middle passage on slave ships across the Atlantic Ocean. Slaves were packed in and chained down in the hold of the ships for two months, where they remained amidst their own vomit and excrement. If they survived this ordeal they were introduced to severe masters and conditions in the West Indies. Then they were transported and sold to owners in the United States. By this time two-thirds of the slaves had died.

After all these shocks to their personalities, slaves could not be expected to exhibit aggressive behavior. They had to look for new cues for the type of behavior expected of them in America. Since the master had complete control and authority, the only person the slave could look to was the master. The master became like a father. The result was the child-like personality dependent upon the master.

With this dependent personality of slaves in full-scale wars, there were very few in the United States. Moreover, the few revolts in the United States were led by non-slaves. This phenomenon supports the view that slaves in Latin America retained much of their personalities, including their will to resist.

The striking aspect of slavery in the United States, and especially the passive personality, is its similarity to personality changes in concentration camps under Hitler's Germany. Like the slave owners, the guards (called SS) had absolute power over the inmates. Even though they were brutal, the SS became father figures to the prisoners, since they were the only figures of authority. Inmates accepted the values of the SS, and most inmates did not hate the SS when they were released--they showed no emotion.

Brutalities were so great in concentration camps that inmates soon felt that the brutalities were not happening to them. They testified years later that they had felt separate from their bodies. The tortures were happening to their bodies, but not to them. It was like watching someone else being tortured. The unreal self became the real self. There were few cases of resistance to the guards or revolts in concentration camps, even when they were being herded into gas chambers! There were few cases of suicide--the inmates had completely passive personalities.

It is obvious that there are striking parallels between personality traits exhibited in concentration camps and in slavery in the United States. The effects of slavery in the United States on blacks were profound. Their personalities were destroyed, and, as such, their ability to form meaningful relationships and families was destroyed. Since these awful consequences did not exist in slavery elsewhere, the conclusion is inescapable that it was the unchecked and complete power of the slave owners, the closed nature of the system in the United States, which led to the childlike, passive personality.

Return to the Common School

Discuss this article in the Republic of Letters