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Interpretations of Slavery: The Slave Status in the Americas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Arnold A. Sio
Arnold A. Sio
Affiliation:
Colgate University
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Extract

Recent interpretations of slavery in the United States suggest that we may be entering a new phase of scholarship on slavery as new approaches and categories are introduced by historians, and as anthropologists and sociologists again take up the study of an institution that was of such concern to their nineteenth century predecessors.

Type
Slavery and Bondage
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , April 1965 , pp. 289 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1965

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References

1 The author wishes to acknowledge his obligations to M. I. Finley, John Hope Franklin, Robert Freedman, and Richard Robbins, among others, who have read and criticized this paper, and to the Research Council of Colgate University for a generous research grant.

2 See Elkins, Stanley, Slavery (Chicago, 1959),Google Scholar Chap. Stampp, I: Kenneth, “The Historian and Southern Negro Slavery”, American Historical Review, LVII (04, 1952), pp. 613–24;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHofstadter, Richard, “U. B. Phillips and the Plantation Legend”, Journal of Negro History, XXIX (04, 1944), pp. 109–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Smith, M.G., “Slavery and Emancipation in Two Societies”, Social and Economic Studies, III, Nos. 3 and 4 (1954), pp. 245–46.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., p. 246.

5 The classic account is Nieboer, H.J., Slavery as an Industrial System (Rotterdam, 1910).Google Scholar

6 Moore, Wilbert, “Slave Law and the Social Structure”, Journal of Negro History, XXVI. (04, 1941), pp. 171–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Slave and Citizen (New York, 1947).Google Scholar

8 Slavery. Chap. 2. This discussion is limited to his treatment of the legal status of the slave. Elkins proposes an alternative to the established approach to slavery in the United States which, taking its stance from the debates over slavery, has been concerned mainly with the tightness or wrongness of the institution considered in terms of categories pertaining to the health and welfare of the slaves. The historical study of slavery has alternated over the years between a pro-slavery and an anti-slavery position, but the purpose and the categories of analysis have remained unchanged. The result has been a continuing confusion of the historical study of slavery with moral judgments about slavery. Elkins proposes discarding this approach and adopting instead the method of comparison as followed by Tannenbaum. Slavery as an evil is taken for granted. Elkins' treatment of slavery as analogous to the concentration camp in its effects on Negro personality is discussed in Thorpe, Earle E., “Chattel Slavery and Concentration Camps”, The Negro History Bulletin, XXV (05, 1962), pp. 171–76.Google Scholar

9 Tannenbaum, pp. 43–65.

10 Ibid., p. 8.

11 Ibid., p. 82.

12 Elkins, p. 37.

13 Ibid., p. 55.

14 Ibid., p. 52. These categories are taken from Elkins, but they are also used by Stampp and Tannenbaum in describing the status of the slave.

15 (New York, 1957).

16 (New York, 1918).

17 Stampp, Chap. 5.

18 Ibid., pp. 192–93.

19 Elkins, p. 61.

20 Stampp, p. 23.

21 Tannenbaum, pp. 55–56.

22 Ibid., p. 69. See also Westermann, William L., The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity (Philadelphia, 1955), p. 154.Google Scholar

23 Tannenbaum, p. 69.

24 Westermann, William L., “Slavery and Elements of Freedom in Ancient Greece”, Bulletin of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, I (06., 1943), p. 346.Google Scholar See also Finley, M.I., “Beween Slavery and Freedom”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, VI (04., 1964), p. 246.Google Scholar

25 Westermann, The Slave Systems, pp. 57, 80; Buckland, W.W., The Roman Law of Slavery (Cambridge, 1906), p. 1.Google Scholar The consequent ambiguity in the status of the slave as property and as a person in ancient society is discussed at a later point.

26 Materials for the description of the legal status of the ante-bellum slave are standard and taken from Elkins, Chap. 2; Stampp, Chap. 5; Tannenbaum, p. 69ff; and Catterall, Helen T., Judicial Cases Concerning Slavery and the Negro (Washington, 1926).Google Scholar Those for the Roman Republic are taken from the standard work by Buckland; Barrow, R.H., Historical Introduction to the Study of Roman Law (Cambridge, 1932);Google Scholar and Sohm, Rudolph, The Institutes (Oxford, 1907).Google Scholar

27 Howard v. Howard, 6 Jones N.C. 235, December 1858. Catterall, II, p. 221.

28 Buckland, p. 77.

29 Stampp, p. 197.

30 The Civil Code of Louisiana quoted in Hurd, John C., The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States (Boston, 1858), II, p. 160.Google Scholar

31 Buckland, p. 82.

32 Ibid., p. 82.

33 Ibid., p. 82.

34 State v. Mann, 2 Deveroux 263, (N.C.), December 1829, Catterall, II, p. 57.

35 Virginia Act of 1669, Hurd, I, p. 232.

36 Buckland, p. 36.

37 Westermann, p. 75.

38 Sohm, p. 166.

39 Westermann, p. 83.

40 Toynbee, Arnold J., A Study of History (Oxford, 1934), II, p. 218.Google Scholar

41 There has been considerable disagreement as to whether the term “caste” is applicable to the American case. It has been insisted that it should be limited to India. The present writer agrees with Everett Hughes who writes: “If we grant this, we will simply have to find some other term for the kind of social category into which one is assigned at birth and from which he cannot escape by action of his own: and to distinguish such social categories from classes or ranked groups, from which it is possible, though sometimes difficult, to rise.” Hughes, Everett C. and Hughes, H. MacGill, Where Peoples Meet (Glencoe, 1952), p. 111.Google Scholar Berreman has recently defined the term as to be useful cross-culturally. He defines a caste system “as a hierarchy of endogamous divi sions in which membership is hereditary and permanent. Here hierarchy includes inequality both in status and in access to goods and services. Interdependence of the subdivisions, restricted contracts among them, occupational specialization, and/or a degree of cultural distinctiveness might be added as criteria, although they appear to be correlates rather than defining characteristics.” Berreman, Gerald D., “Caste in India and the United States”, American Journal of Sociology, LXVI (09., 1960), pp. 120–21,CrossRefGoogle Scholar cf. Dumont, Louis, “Caste, Racism, and ‘Stratification’, Reflections of a Social Anthropologist”, Contributions to Indian Sociology, V (10., 1961), pp. 20–43.Google Scholar

42 Moore, pp. 177–9.

43 Ibid., 184–88. See also Jordan, Winthrop D., “American Chiaroscuro: The Status and Definition of Mulattoes in the British Colonies”, William and Mary Quarterly, XIX, No. 2 (04, 1962), pp. 183–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 Franklin, John Hope, The Free Negro in North Carolina (Chapel Hill, 1943);Google ScholarLitwack, Leon F., North of Slavery (Chicago, 1961).Google Scholar

45 Westermann, p. 15, 23.

46 Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America (New York, 1948), I, pp. 358–60.Google Scholar

47 Degler, Carl N., “Slavery and the Genesis of American Race Prejudice”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, II (10., 1959), p. 52.Google Scholar Cf. Oscar and Handlin, Mary F., “Origins of the Southern Labor System”, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser., VI (04, 1950), pp. 199–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Jordan, Winthrop D., “Modern Tensions and the Origins of American Slavery”, Journal of Southern History, XXVII (02., 1962), pp. 18–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Degler, p. 52.

49 Ibid., pp. 53–56. See also Jordan, Winthrop D., “The Influence of the West Indies on the Origin of New England Slavery”, William and Mary Quarterly, XVIII (04, 1961), pp. 243–250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Ibid., pp. 56–62. See also Moore, pp. 177–86.

51 Degler, p. 62.

52 Ibid., p. 62. Jordan, The Influence of the West Indies, pp. 243–44, 250.

53 Human Society (New York, 1949), p. 456.Google Scholar

54 Westermann, p. 1.

55 Slavery in the Near East (New York, 1949), p. 64.Google Scholar

56 Elkins, p. 49, 53.

57 Ibid., p. 42.

58 Tannenbaum, p. 97.

59 Stampp, pp. 192–93.

60 Moore, pp. 195–96.

61 Ibid., p. 196. See also Sellers, Charles, “The Travail of Slavery”, in Sellers, Charles, ed., The Southerner as American (Chapel Hill, 1960), pp. 40–71.Google Scholar

62 Parsons, Talcott and Smelser, Neil J., Economy and Society (Glencoe, 1956), p. 12.Google Scholar

63 Stampp, pp. 192–93. The following discussion is not intended to be comprehensive. For a detailed treatment of the definition of the slave as a person see Moore, pp. 191–202.

64 Jarman v. Patterson, 7 T.B. Mon. 644, December 1828, (Ky.) Catterall, I, p. 311. See also Catherine Bodine's Will, 4 Dana 476, Oct. 1836, (Ky.) Ibid., I, p. 334–35.

65 Kennedy v. Williams, 7 Humphreys, Sept., 1846 (Tenn.) Ibid., II, p. 530.

66 Fields v. State, I Yerger 156, Jan., 1829 (Tenn.) Ibid., II, p. 494.

67 Hudson v. State, 34 Ala. 253, June 1859, Ibid., Ill, p. 233.

68 State v. Cynthia Simmons and Laurence Kitchen, I Brevard 6, Fall 1794 (So. Car.), Ibid., II, p. 277.

69 State v. Davis, 14 La. An. 678, July 1859, Ibid., III, p. 674.

70 Baker v. State, 15 Ga. 498, July 1854, Ibid., III, p. 35.

71 State v. Cynthia Simmons and Laurence Kitchen, I Brevard 6, fall 1794 (So. Car.), Ibid., II, p. 277.

72 Creswell's Executor v. Walker, 37 Ala. 229, January 1861, Ibid., III, p. 247.

73 Catherine Bodine's Will, 4 Dana 476, October 1836, (Ken.), Ibid., I, pp. 334–35.

74 Moore, Wilbert and Williams, Robin, “Stratification in the Ante-bellum South”, American Sociological Review, VII (06, 1942), pp. 343–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. Hall, Douglas, “Slaves and Slavery in the British West Indies”, Social and Economic Studies, II, No. 4 (12, 1962), pp. 305–18.Google Scholar

75 Westermann, p. 140.

76 Ibid., p. 140.

77 Mintz, Sidney W., Review of Slavery by Stanley Elkins, American Anthropologist, 63 (06, 1961), p. 580.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

78 Wilbur, G. Martin, Slavery in China During the Former Han Dynasty (Chicago, 1943), p. 243;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Mendelsohn, pp. 121–22.

79 That the essential features of a caste status for the Negro may have preceded the full development of the slave status does not alter the widely accepted proposition that the initial status of the Negro was not that of a slave but rather that of an indentured servant or free man. Some aspects of caste appear to have developed later than others, but the main defining features were fixed early and before the complete development of the status of slavery. Racial segregation, although obviously foreshadowed in the status of the free Negro, did not appear as a part of the caste system until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The system of restricted contacts between Negroes and whites, clearly based on the long-standing assumption of the innate inferiority of the Negro, was simply the latest feature of caste to develop. See Woodward, C. Vann, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York, 1957).Google Scholar

80 Moore, pp. 201–02. For another discussion of the alternative value systems and the resulting conflicts within Southern society and within individuals see Sellers, pp. 51–67. A similar ambiguity existed in connection with slavery in ancient society. In Roman law “slavery is the only case in which, in the extant sources…, a conflict is declared to exist between the Ius Gentium and the lus Naturale”. Buckland, p. 1. “No society”, writes Finley, “can carry such a conflict within it, around so important a set of beliefs and institutions, without the stresses erupting in some fashion, no matter how remote and extended the lines and connections may be from the original stimulus.” Finley, M.I., “Was Greek Civilization Based on Slave Labour?”, in Finley, M.I., ed. Slavery in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, 1960), p. 162.Google Scholar

81 David M. Potter, Review of The Peculiar Institution by Kenneth Stampp, Yale Review, 46 (Winter, 1957), pp. 260–61.

82 Elkins, pp. 137–38.

83 The pattern of the master-slave relationships continues to be one of the most problematic and debated aspects of ante-bellum slavery. The exploitative commercial pattern tends to be taken as the predominant pattern and in accordance with the normative prescriptions of ante-bellum society, while the paternalistic manorial pattern is generally treated as the result of the intrusion of non-normative factors, and usually attributed to smallness of size. However, Franklin has pointed out that the bulk of the slaves were on small plantations. If so, then the paternalistic manorial pattern must have been exceedingly widespread. On the other hand, it has also been suggested that this pattern was to be found on the larger holdings. Phillips had this conception of the master-slave relationship on large plantations. It seems likely that both patterns were normative; that is, accepted and approved ways of organizing the master-slave relationship. If this was the case, then further investigation must be directed at ascertaining the determinants of these patterns on the concrete level. Size would be one among several determinants. See Franklin, John Hope, From Slavery to Freedom (New York, 1952), pp. 185–86.Google Scholar Needless to say, the pattern of the master-slave relationship is significant for the impact of slavery upon the personality of the Negro. If the paternalistic manorial pattern was widely institutionalized in the ante-bellum South, then a very significant number of Negro slaves were able to escape the tendency for the system to absorb the personality. Cf. Elkins, pp. 137–138.

88a Useful summaries are to be found in Comas, Juan, “Recent Research on Race Relations — Latin America”, International Social Science Journal, XIII, No. 2 (1961), pp. 271–99;Google ScholarNogueira, Oracy, “Skin Color and Social Class”, Plantation Systems of the New World (Washington, 1959), pp. 164–83;Google ScholarBastide, Roger, “Race Relations in Brazil”, International Social Science Bulletin, IX, No. 4 (1957), pp. 495–512.Google Scholar

84 Mintz, p. 581.

85 Ibid., p. 583, See also Sherrard, O.A., Freedom from Fear (London, 1959), p. 75.Google Scholar

86 The Golden Age of Brazil (Berkeley, 1961), p. 173.Google ScholarFreyre's, GilbertoThe Masters and the Slaves (New York, 1946),Google Scholar on which much of the existing conception of slavery in Brazil is based, wrote mainly about domestic slaves.

87 Boxer, p. 177.

88 Hammond, Harley Ross, “Race, Social Mobility and Politics in Brazil”, Race, IV, No. 2 (1962), p. 477.Google Scholar See Wagley, Charles, “From Caste to Class in North Brazil”, in Wagley, Charles (ed.), Race and Class in Rural Brazil (New York, 1963), pp. 142–156.Google Scholar

89 Ibid., p. 4.

90 Boxer, p. 17.

91 Ibid., p. 17.

92 Ibid., p. 17.

93 Nogueira, pp. 167–176, has attempted to distinguish race prejudice in Brazil from that in the United States. With reference to the origin of race prejudice in Brazil, James G. Leyburn, in his discussion of Nogueira's paper, questions whether it was slavery which produced prejudice. Ibid., p. 181.