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   olwell


New Views of Slavery: Using Recent Historical Work to Promote Critical Thinking about the "Peculiar Institution"

Russell Olwell
Eastern Michigan University


Most students do not enter college-level history classes knowing much about the history of slavery and race relations. As James Loewen pointed out in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me, most K-12 history textbooks and classes avoid controversy and therefore steer clear of discussions of slavery and its impact on American history. However, a complex and detailed knowledge of slavery is required to understand the history of North American colonization, the development of America's economy, the secession of the South from the union, and the subsequent Civil War. Additionally, students need to understand that slavery was not a unified, static, unchanging institution: The nature of slavery varied depending on the time and geographic region examined. In this article, I discuss the difficulties of teaching about slavery, then describe how recent scholarship paints a more complex view of slavery than is usually presented in secondary and college textbooks. I discuss how teachers can integrate this new research into their classroom with a pair of exercises I have developed for a college survey class. 1
     The three books I discuss below have all won acclaim for their groundbreaking research and interpretation: Philip D. Morgan's, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-century Chesapeake and Lowcountry; Ira Berlin's Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America; and Lorena Seebach Walsh's From Calabar to Carter's Grove: The History of a Virginia Slave Community. I have used all of them as a reference to structure lectures, conduct discussions and design teaching exercises for my survey class, and each has the potential to help bring out a more complex historical narrative of slavery than is usually presented. 2
     The problems of teaching about American slavery are daunting. Traditionally textbooks have failed to provide accurate information, and they have provided, at best, a one-dimensional view of the institution and its effects. As Peter Kolchin noted in his 1998 article, "Slavery in United States Survey Textbooks," "Perhaps the biggest weakness of these texts is the failure to convey a sense of slavery as a subject of extraordinary historical research, debate, and reinterpretation, and the ensuing excitement. ... In the failure to explain the heated debates on such issues, the texts miss a major opportunity to expose students to what history is all about and show why it is exciting. No wonder so many students find textbooks - and history - boring."1 Ellen Swartz also notes that even recent textbook accounts of slavery have followed a "master script," which has not substantially changed over the decades. Rather than fully describing the social impact of slavery on America, textbook publishers have simply added material to texts that highlights achievements of a few African-American role models. She points out that textbooks have taken an "individualistic, biographical approach" to African-American history, failing "to address underlying issues such as the purpose, cause and consequence of events and systems such as slavery." Added to this is the fragmentary treatment of the subject, with a "lack of contextualized information" that would help students understand the depth of impact of the institution on American life. Editorial changes may have tinkered with the edges of this narrative, but they leave the traditional story of race relations in America intact.2 3
     These problems of teaching about slavery are not new. In a survey of textbook accounts of slavery ranging from 1900 – 1982, Leah Wasburn found that five basic themes predominated, four of which tended to justify slavery. These included a "neutral presentation of slavery," "a justification of the slave system," "slavery as a necessary evil," and "slavery as a [positive] reflection of conservative values." Only a few textbooks presented slavery as "un-American" and incompatible with American democratic values. Wasburn found that over the last 100 years, the vast majority of students have received a systematic "mis-education" about slavery in their texts, and as a direct result, in their classrooms.3 4
     Recent scholarship on slavery presents a far different portrait of this institution. Using these new resources, as well as newly available primary sources in both print and Internet form, college and secondary teachers can present a richer, more complex view of this subject, as well as use the subject of slavery to encourage students to ask more complex historical questions. The three books I discuss below share methodological innovations that allow them to take a new look at slavery and to present substantial new findings to historians and teachers. However, new historical interpretations do not enter the classroom by osmosis; they need to be broken down into ideas and activities suited to different levels of student knowledge and interest. To further this migration of knowledge to the classroom, I conclude this article with two Internet exercises based on these books that can be used with students. 5


Three Recent Studies of Slavery in America

     The new scholarship on slavery has broken with past accounts in that it both examines slavery as an institution that changed over time, and takes into account the vast regional variations in the system. In Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry, Philip Morgan compares the development of slavery in two regions that saw the development of "mature slave cultures." Though Morgan's approach is historical, his central methodological innovation is a synchronic approach to the development of slave societies, as he compares, point by point, African-American life in the two regions, in search of what he terms "contrapuntals and harmonies."4 Morgan's work raises questions about much of what readers might assume to be true about slavery; he breaks down stereotypes or ideas about slavery and replaces them with a contextual understanding of slavery that depends on the time and place under discussion. To take one small example, the "slave patrols" that whites performed throughout the South varied widely across the region. The picture of whites, poor and rich alike, constantly looking for runaways, is replaced in Morgan's work with a diverse range of supervision, from inactive and ineffective patrols to more military outfits. However, Morgan's key finding is that poor whites in the South often had little involvement in enforcing the slave system, and that they showed little interest in helping to keep the system of white supremacy in force. 6
     In both South Carolina and Virginia, the introduction of slavery began at a time of frontier development, when blacks and whites might work clearing land side-by-side with little difference in daily work patterns between African slaves and white indentured servants or even masters. Morgan gives as examples slaves and whites each working one end of a saw when clearing land, an image that clearly shows that there was rough equality in work, if not in social life. Particularly in seventeenth century Virginia, slaves formed alliances of friendship and romantic attachment with white servants, and free African-Americans existed on the same social level as their white counterparts. This frontier equality broke down when Virginia's plantation economy became more developed and indentured servitude ceased to be economically important in the colony. The eighteenth century saw increasing legislation that restricted and limited the social and economic options slaves still possessed. However, as a result of these extensive contacts between black and white society, Virginia developed a culture that drew from European and African sources, with religion, music, diet and economy reflecting a synthesis of the culture of slaves and masters. 7
     In South Carolina, the plantation system and slavery came to the colony later, but the lack of white indentured servants in the colony gave birth to a society far more dependent on slave labor. The crops of indigo and rice, labor intensive and unpleasant to cultivate, led to a deep separation of master and slave roles on the plantation. Demographically, the overwhelming majority of South Carolina's lowcountry residents were slaves, creating a separate and autonomous slave culture far from the planter's social world. While this environment gave slaves a great deal of economic, social and cultural independence from their masters, it was also an environment in which the health and nutrition of slaves suffered. The plantation in South Carolina became a world and law unto itself, with terrible punishments inflicted at the whim of a master, while Virginia's more developed legal and social system restrained the harshest violence against slaves. Morgan also points out that slaves in Virginia lived longer, had better nutrition and higher reproduction rates than their South Carolina counterparts, in spite of their relative lack of personal and cultural autonomy and economic independence. 8
     Taking a broader and more diachronic or historical approach, Ira Berlin in Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, examines slavery's development from the "charter generation" to the "revolutionary generation," tracing developments across North America. Berlin's book begins with a "Charter generation" of slaves who used their positions as middlemen and negotiators in the Atlantic economy to buy themselves freedom, join established churches, marry and accumulate property. Because they lived in a society with slaves, and not a slave society, their status was temporary, and was one degree of unfreedom in a world with many levels of deference and obligation. However, the agricultural revolution of sugar, rice and tobacco ended this world, as white society became less tolerant of African-Americans in positions of equality and sought to reduce all blacks to slavery. These economic changes affected what Berlin calls the "plantation generation" of slaves that struggled to live in a more exploitative and harsh environment than the charter generation had faced.5 9
     This shift from charter to plantation generation forms the core of Berlin's story. In the seventeenth century, slaves such as Anthony Johnson worked their way out of slavery to become plantation owners on Maryland's Eastern Shore. These men and women were part of an Atlantic commercial culture, which valued slaves' ability to serve as ambassadors between the European and African world. Slaves were a small population at this time, and were not different in status than indentured and apprenticed whites. However, with the agricultural revolutions in tobacco, rice, indigo and sugar, a new slave society was forged in the new world, leading to a massive increase in the number of slaves in America and the elimination of the advantages known to the charter generation of slaves. The status of slaves changed for the plantation generation; no longer valuable negotiators, slaves were now seen as property to be bought and sold at will. The great influx of African slaves changed the very image of slavery; most slaves were no longer personal servants, but muscle power. This new status marked slaves both economically as property and as racially inferior, set apart from all other degrees of freedom in the western world. Berlin traces this shift throughout colonial America, and demonstrates the declining position of slaves and free blacks from New England to French Louisiana, charting the changes in economics, law and custom that defined America as a "slave society." The "revolutionary generation," however, faced new struggles and possibilities, because the language of liberty and natural rights gave slaves a chance to argue for freedom. In the North, the revolutionary generation of slaves achieved a slow emancipation within decades of the Declaration of Independence. At same time in the South and Mississippi delta, slavery exploded after 1800, and slaves found themselves in what Berlin calls "slavery's tightening grip."6 10
     Berlin ties together stories not normally found in the same work. He traces the degenerating social position and social conditions of slaves in Spanish/French Louisiana as Americans took over the territory in 1804. His discussion of the rise and fall of northern slavery illuminates a period of history that most Northerners have conveniently forgotten. What emerges from Berlin's work is the image of America as a nation shaped by slavery in all regions and at all times from founding to 1800. While the Chesapeake tidewater and South Carolina lowcountry had a greater number of slaves than New York or Pennsylvania, Berlin points out that the same processes of slavery's expansion existed in both, and the entire country was shaped by slavery.7 11
     The approaches of Berlin and Morgan, though they differ in emphasis and interpretation, are essentially complementary. Berlin, unlike Morgan, traces slavery across vast distances of time and space, from its beginnings in the Atlantic trade networks of Africa, Europe and the New World to the nineteenth century. Morgan, unlike Berlin, keeps his focus on two specific areas, and thus is able to dig deeper into the African-American culture that arose from the slave economy. These two works revolutionize the traditional debates about slavery by the sheer force of their evidence and their interpretive sophistication. Reading these two works, one must confront not one slave society but many, depending on region, time period and the shifting balance of power between slave owners, non-slaveholding whites, and enslaved and free African-Americans. Thus, according to these new perspectives, there is no single "impact" of slavery on American history, but instead a range of outcomes depending on the region of the country and the time period examined. 12
     Lorena S. Walsh's From Calabar to Carter's Grove differs from both of the above in that it uses archaeological and historical evidence to piece together, on a local level, the lives of a group of slaves who lived near Williamsburg throughout the eighteenth century. Through written records and archaeological findings, she is able to trace a group of slave families throughout the decades, and brings together this evidence in the form of a collective biography of a large, heterogeneous slave population. Her work is innovative in its use of material objects, housing patterns and other evidence of everyday life often overlooked by historians. Walsh's work reveals that in the Chesapeake, some slaves were able to form rich kinship networks that remained intact for generations before nineteenth century agricultural shifts split up these networks. Walsh's work shows how the evidence provided by historical archaeology can bring a new level of analysis to the study of slavery. This material culture perspective can help our students understand that though people may not have left extensive written records, such as letters and diaries, they are not lost to history, but can be understood through the remains of material culture that they leave behind. Walsh summarizes well the recent scholarship on slavery and emancipation: 13

Individual and community experience among slaves were as varied as the people themselves, as were also the particular places they inhabited and the particular times in which they lived. These multiple and far from predictable experiences of place, time and specific circumstance in turn found expression in varied collective memories that nourished and sustained individuals, families, and groups over time, often in otherwise brutal and dehumanizing circumstances. Reconstructing the basis of these memories can sustain and nourish still.8


Presenting New Scholarship on Slavery to Students

     How do you get interpretations such as the three described above into a survey classroom? In the following two exercises, students are provided with Internet resources on slavery in Virginia and South Carolina, and asked to think through the historical implications of that information. While such exercises can never replace reading books such as the three discussed above, in a survey class, they can give a flavor of the issues researched and written about by contemporary historians. While I use material from the above books in lecture and discussion, I find that students also need to examine and think about historical issues without my point of view predominating – they need to think for themselves. The two exercises following are designed to start students in the direction of critical thinking about history. While students in my United States survey course at Michigan State have needed guidance both on the technical aspects of web navigation and on the interpretation of documents, I have found that they have reacted positively to their experiences completing these assignments and found them thought provoking. 14


Exercise I:
Teaching Exercise on Slavery in Virginia


Part I: Africans in America

     1. Direct students to the website for the PBS series Africans in America (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/).
     2. At the close of the exercise, discuss with students their findings about the changes in the nature of slavery in Virginia from 1600-1700, drawing on the resources of the website.

First, try out the interactive map on the page "Map: The British Colonies." Click on different colonies to see the development of slavery in that colony.

     1. Which British colonies in America developed slavery most rapidly and extensively?
     2. What factors may have led to this pattern?

From the pages "From Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery" and "Virginia Recognizes Slavery":

     3. Describe indentured servitude, slavery as practiced in Africa, and the British enslavement of Africans in America.
     4. What were the major differences among them?

From the page "From Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery" and "Court Document regarding Anthony Johnson":

     5. How were the first Africans in America treated in the 1600s? How did the status of Africans change during this century?

From the pages "Africans in Court," "Virginia Slave Codes," and "Colonial Laws":

     6. Looking at court documents and colonial legislation, how did the institution of slavery change from 1600 to 1700?
     7. What rights did masters gain and slaves lose during this period?
     8. How did the position of Free Blacks change in this period?
     9. Historians have debated for almost 50 years if racism in America developed as a result of slavery, or if it was a cause of slavery. From today's activity, which do you think is true? Why?


Part II: Colonial Williamsburg

Go to the Williamsburg website, at www.history.org. Within this homepage, click on Archaeology. (It is in the left-hand column) Then click on Research, then on the Rich Neck Plantation. Read the text, and look at the diagram of the plantation.

     10. What does this diagram tell you about the changes in slavery in Virginia from 1650-1750? What do the positions of the buildings tell you about social positions on this plantation?


Exercise 2:
Teaching Exercise Comparing Slavery in Virginia and South Carolina

     1. Go to the site: http://www.sciway.net/hist/chicora/slavery18.htm
     2. This is the title page – click on Understanding Slavery: The Lives of Eighteenth Century African-Americans to continue. Then proceed to The African Slave Trade and South Carolina, The Lives of African-American Slaves in Carolina During the Eighteenth Century and For More Information.
     3. After students answer the questions below, bring them back together for a discussion of the differences and similarities in slavery in South Carolina and Virginia during this time.
     Answer the following questions:
     1. When did slavery take root in South Carolina?
     2. What crops did slaves produce? What types of farms did most slaves live on?
     3. Was slave ownership in South Carolina widely dispersed among whites, or tightly concentrated among a few elites?
     4. What can archaeology tell us about slave life and culture? What contributions did slaves make to the economy and culture of colonial South Carolina?
     5. What differences do you see between slave life in South Carolina and in Virginia?
     6. How did the institution of slavery and slave life change from the 17th to the 18th centuries in both colonies?
     7. What questions do you have about slavery in these colonies that these sites have raised for you? After looking at the For More Information page, where might you investigate the issue further? What kind of evidence (documentary, oral history, archaeological) would you need to answer the question?


Appendix

Resources for Teaching About Slavery and Emancipation

     For teachers, a new generation of resources is available to help students understand slavery's part in our nation's heritage. First, the Southern Freedmen and Slavery Project has published excellent collections of primary sources about slavery during the Civil War, and the transition in the south to a free economy. A small selection of these documents are found on the web at
     Several books published in the Freedom series shed light on slavery and its aftermath. These include Series 1, volume 1, , ed. Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Thavolia Glymph, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (, 1985); Series 1, volume 2, , ed. Ira Berlin, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (, 1993); Series 1, volume 3, , ed. Ira Berlin, Thavolia Glymph, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland, and Julie Saville (, 1990); and Series 2, , ed. Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (, 1982).
     The Southern Freedmen and Slavery project has also published several shorter, more teacher-friendly works such as , by Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (, 1992); , ed. Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (, 1992); , ed. Ira Berlin and Leslie S. Rowland (, 1997); and , ed. Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (, 1998).
     Other important resources include the WPA slave narratives, a selection of which are at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/wpahome.html. A series of selections, organized by topic, can be found at http://www.gliah.uh.edu/black_voices/black_voices.cfm. A more complete collection of WPA slave narratives can be found at http://sunsite.unc.edu/docsouth/neh/neh.html. These narratives, as they were written down almost seven decades after emancipation should be read critically, and can be used to paint a more rosy picture of the institution of slavery than is warranted.
     The Bedford series in history and culture contains several works that can provide a rich and complex portrait of slavery. These include works The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; and the Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents can also help students better understand these figures in the context of American slavery
     The web site for historic Williamsburg (www.history.org) includes a wealth of information about slavery. Williamsburg's archaeology section includes a report on the excavation of a slave quarters, as well as documents and summaries of what life was like for African Americans in colonial Virginia.
     Edward Ayer's Valley of the Shadow (http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow/vshadow.html) includes a range of documents dealing with slavery, including newspapers, public documents (such as wills) and diaries and letters that shed light on slavery in two communities before, during and after the Civil War.
     The African in America website, based on the PBS television series, (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/) offers documents, images and a narrative about slavery that is unmatched on the web for both its depth and scope of content. This site allows students to examine the historical development of slavery, its regional diversity, as well as to sample current historical opinion about issues involving slavery.
     The Library of Congress's American Memory web site http://memory.loc.gov, includes the following resources about slavery: African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907; The African-American Experience in Ohio: Selections from the Ohio Historical Society; From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909; African-American Sheet Music, 1850-1920: Selected from the Collections of Brown University; African American Odyssey.
     My own web page, http://online.emich.edu/~olwell offers resources for teaching about slavery as well, including links to several of the above sites.


Notes

1 Peter Kolchin, "Slavery in United States Survey Textbooks, Journal of American History, 84 (1998), 1436-7.

2 Ellen Swartz. "Emancipatory Narratives: Rewriting the Master Script in the School Curriculum," Journal of Negro Education, 3 (1992), 343.

3 Leah H. Wasburn, "Accounts of slavery: An Analysis of United States History Textbooks from 1900 – 1992." Theory and Research in Social Education, 25, 470-491.

4 Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

5 Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).

6 Ibid, 13.

7 Another excellent work that succinctly covers the development of slavery in the British North American colonies is Betty Wood's The Origins of American Slavery. (New York, 1997).

8 Walsh, Lorena Seebach. From Calabar to Carter's Grove: The History of a Virginia Slave Community. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997), 226.

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