Southern Slave Owners example essay topic

"What Right Can A Man Have To Compel His Neighbor To Toil Without Reward, And Leave The Same Hopeless Inheritance To His Children, In Order That He May Live In Luxury And Indolence?" From the landing of Christopher Columbus until today, this nation has struggled to become a realm of idealism. We have fought mightily along the way, and for a period of time during the start we nearly didn't find the right path at all. Slavery was viewed differently by all involved. It was justified by the Southern slaveowners and despised by the oppressed African Americans. It held back the development of the South by self-inflicted oppression of the poor whites and was the most shameful period of American history. Somehow, Southern slaveowners managed to persuade both themselves and Northerners for many years that slavery was not the vile institution that the slaves purported it to be.

In fact, a slave owner said that the slave, "is happier here than on the shores of his own degraded, savage, and most unhappy country" (Shi and Mayer 530). Further to justify slavery, according to one slave owner, the slave is, "scarcely acquainted with the word care. He never suffers from unwholesome food. No fear of want disturbs his slumbers. Hunger and cold are strangers to him; and in sickness or age he knows that he has a protector and a friend able and willing to shield him from suffering" (529). In sharp disparity to these very words are the descriptions of Frederick Law Olmsted's Review of a First-Rate Cotton Plantation (1860).

Here the slaves were allowed to start work at around 6 am (except during picking season, when they would be out before daylight) and end when the light was such that they could no longer see to work. They broke just long enough to eat and then returned to work. The work was regulated with a whip, "which he often cracked at them" (516). These slaves were given 'a peck of corn and four pounds of pork per week each' with which to eat and allowed to raise a garden and keep fowl. Although they had these privileges, it is unclear when they had time for these chores since it was mandated that they be in bed asleep by ten each night. (517).

This overseer was considered very generous, yet still he had slaves that ran off. The plantation kept dogs just for tracking down the runaways; they were especially trained for this purpose. For slave Frederick Douglass, the food ration was strikingly different, being only eight pounds of meat per month and one bushel of cornmeal. (513). Slaves were not given beds and were too tired to even notice. Contrary to Lydia Child, who, although she was an abolitionist, thought that the slave master had to keep his slaves covered (522), Douglass says that the slaves got "two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers... one jacket, one pair of linen trousers for winter... one pair of stockings and one pair of shoes".

When these clothes wore out they went naked until the next allowance day. He goes on to add that "children from seven to ten years old, of both sexes, almost naked, might be seen all seasons of the year" (513) A southern slaveholder also argued "the slaves of the South are protected from abuse or wrong by liberal laws... The laws protect the slave as fully as the white man: they go further, and, as the slave is supposed to be completely dependent upon his master, they require that he should be supplied with the necessaries and comforts of his station, and treated with unvarying kindness" (529). Frederick Douglass speaks to these laws in an account of their overseer, Mr. Severe, whom he had seen "whip a woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this, too, in the midst of her crying children, pleading for their mother's release" (513). Were these laws enforced on any Plantations? Certainly they weren't on any that Harriett Jacobs knew of.

In a section of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs wrote about some of the neighboring slaveholders and their treatment of their slaves. One such was a lady, Mrs. Wade, on whose plantation "At no hour of the day was there cessation of the lash" (Jacobs 50) and whose barn was a particular place of torture. "There she lashed the slaves with the might of a man" (50). She goes on to tell of a slave owner who shot a woman through the head for running away and a man who was whipped and then put inside a cotton gin to die.

"Nobody asked any questions. He was a slave; and the feeling was that the master had a right to do what he pleased with his property" (51-52). There was no law to protect "Nelly", a slave accused of instructing another slave to burn down a barn. The only witness against her, her own seventeen year old grandson, who was also accused of the crime and threatened with being whipped, was no doubt terrified and coerced into his accusations. The sentence for this crime was to be hanged; fortunately for Nelly her owner had heart and requested only that this grandmother be sold out of state. (Shi and Mayer 508-512).

There was no justice for her. In Georgia, the poor white man, although he had nothing, refused to work at anything that they considered fit only for slaves. Slaves did manual labor and they were not slaves. Thus they stayed poor. Their food was obtained by poaching and stealing. These people had no land, no skills, and squatted on other peoples land.

(518). In Virginia, poor whites would hire themselves out for a dollar a day to help with the harvest. At other than harvest-time they would sometimes work for the farmers but never at agricultural labor. They would never do certain type of work "such as taking care of cattle, or getting water or wood to be used in the house" (520) and poor white girls would help with sewing or quilting but never servant's work. The farmers would rather use their slaves to do the work. They considered the poor whites to be "a distinct and a rather despicable class" (520).

They only hired white laborers to make up the work when they had hired out their slaves to work on railroads and in tobacco factories. As one farmer put it, "You never could depend on white men, and you couldn't drive them any; they wouldn't stand it. Slaves were the only reliable laborers - you could command them and make them do what was right" (250). The poor white man appeared jealous of the slave, using any means possible to inflict his share of atrocities upon the already beaten slaves. Whereas the poor white man had the opportunity to "elevate themselves to positions and habits of usefulness, and respectability...

They seem, nevertheless, more than any other portion of the community to hate and despise the negroes" (521). This is especially evident in Jacobs's account of the poor whites that searched her grandmother's house after the insurrection of Nat Turner. She says, "It was a grand opportunity for the low whites, who had no negroes of their own to scourge. They exulted in such a chance to exercise a little brief authority" (Jacobs 69). Rallied into a drunken mob, these low whites terrorized the black slaves for the next few nights.

They whipped people, dragged them behind horses, stole whatever they could, and committed the most shocking outrages with perfect impunity until the plantation owners realized that they too were in danger and set about ousting them. This class of low white men had a direct link to slavery and held back the growth of the South. As long as the planters failed to see that labor was "considered the disgraceful portion of the slaves, these free men will hold it nobler to starve or steal than till the earth" (Shi and Mayer 519). Childs makes the same point in her Propositions Defining Slavery and Emancipation's when she says that, "where slaves are employed... indolence becomes the prevailing characteristic" (523).

The free black man of the North didn't fare much better than the slaves of the South. While, they were not slaves, they were prejudiced against and repressed in everyway possible. The black man could not vote; was denied the ability to move around freely; he was encouraged by laws not to settle in certain states; he was denied the right to Petition the government and to peaceably assemble. The free black man was excluded from the Army and Militia; disallowed from being a judge, juror or constable; hindered from getting an education; obstructed from receiving religious instruction and denied liberal professions. He was also, thanks to the fugitive slave laws, always in danger of being seized and sent back to the south as slave. To add to it all, blacks were constantly denied entrance to businesses unless they were going in under servitude and treated with contempt everywhere they went.

It was even argued by Colonization ists and slaveholders and many northern divines that the "situation of a slave is far more preferable to that of a free negro" (538). Within any institution involving more than 3 million oppressed peoples, it is certain that divergent opinions will arise. The Southern slave owners had a vested interest in perpetuating this practice. The free pool of labor was a necessity in maintaining the huge agricultural expanses of the plantation. Of course, not all Southern whites were plantation owners, and for these people the practice of slavery was detrimental to their ability to maintain a livelihood.

The slaves themselves were cognizant of the deprivation they were experiencing and longed to be free, while their free brethren experienced a life that was neither emancipated or slave. Disagreement over the view of slavery in the South finally drove this country to civil war.

Bibliography

Jacobs, Harriett, writing as Linda Brent, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd. 2000 Shi, David E.
and Holly A. Mayer. "From the Case of Nelly, a Slave (1861)".
For the Record: A Documentary History of America. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999: 508-512 Shi, David E.
and Holly A. Mayer. "From Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)".
New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999: 512-514 Shi, David E.
and Holly A. Mayer. "From Review of a First-Rate Cotton Plantation (1860)".
New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999: 515-518 Shi, David E.
and Holly A. Mayer. "From Accounts about 'Poor Whites' (1839, 1856)".
New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999: 518-521 Shi, David E.
and Holly A. Mayer. "From Propositions Defining Slavery and Emancipation (1833)".
New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999: 521-524 Shi, David E.
and Holly A. Mayer. "From The South Vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of the Northern Abolitionists (1836)".
New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999: 528-533 Shi, David E.
and Holly A. Mayer. "From The Condition of the Free People of Colour in the United States (1839)".
New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999: 533-539.