Historiography on Four Works Written

¶ … historiography on four works written by four different authors. Each of these works depicts a time and place in the history of American slavery, and each makes unique and valid points regarding this "peculiar" institution. Each of them uses strong research and writing to make their points, but their points differ greatly and indicate how different people can view the diverse aspects of slavery in far different ways. In the end, John W. Blassingame's work seems to be the most interesting, well-researched, and factual account of slave life, it creates a balanced view of the community of slaves and how important that community was to their overall survival.

Ulrich Bonnell Phillips "American Negro Slavery" is clearly written with a bias toward the white slave owners, and a clear lack of understanding about the harshness of slave life. He portrays the whites and blacks in harmony, without any trace of animosity or hatred on either side, and he portrays the blacks as quite simple and accepting of their lot in life. For example, he writes, "At the horse races of the whites the jockeys and many of the spectators were negroes; while from the cock fights and even the 'crap' games of the blacks, white men and boys were not always absent."

Throughout this work, Phillips continually refers to the blacks condescendingly and without any recognition of the actual institution of slavery, in fact, he rarely mentions the word, instead using terms like "field hand" and other euphemisms to ignore the realities of the plight of these people. In fact, he portrays the blacks as week, immoral, and child-like all through his writing.

Much of this work is concerned with the blacks and their religion, which he shows to be very similar to their white masters. They might often attend the same church, even though they would not worship together, but in separate sections of the church. Like the rest of this work, Phillips portrays the blacks in a negative light, implying that they were not serious about their religion or beliefs. He writes, "There were a few licensed negro preachers, this writer continued, who were thought to do some good; but the general improvement in negro character, he thought, was mainly due to the religious and moral training given by their masters."

Most of the positive aspects of slave life Phillips cites are attributable to the masters, in his opinion, and this seems far removed from the realities of most slaves' lives.

Not only is this work clearly biased, it is based mainly on first-hand accounts of slave owners, rather than slaves themselves, and so it creates a very distorted picture of slave life and the culture of the South. There are so many first-hand accounts of violence, murder, and bigotry from slaves themselves, that Phillips book is simply not reliable or even valid. In perhaps one of the most infuriating points of the book, Phillips writes, "The adjustments and readjustments were mutually made, for although the masters had by far the major power of control, the slaves themselves were by no means devoid of influence."

There is never a mention of the beatings, the cruelties, the physical and mental abuse, the sexual liaisons, or anything else that has been clearly shown to be the regular treatment of blacks on southern plantations. Phillips accounts of slave life read more like fiction than real life, and they reduce his credibility and authority as a historian.

Phillips was one of the foremost American historians on slavery and southern life during his lifetime (1877 to 1934). He wrote several books, and taught at several universities, including Yale.

Today, his thoughts and theories seem outmoded and clearly biased toward the white slaveholding community. His bias and lack of humanity toward the slaves is clear, and his portrayal in this work is almost laughable in its innocence and sheer ignorance of the truth of the situation. As a slave historian, Phillips leaves much to be desired.

Stanley M. Elkins "Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life" is perhaps one of the most controversial books on slavery ever written. In it, Elkins maintained that American abolitionists were ineffectual because they insisted on ideology and purity, and compared them to British abolitionists, who managed to rid themselves of slavery without war. He also maintained that the institution of slavery infantilized slaves, and it closely resembled the concentration camps created by Nazi Germany, and had some of the same results on the psyche of both groups - slaves and Jews. The book, first published in 1959, created an uproar. This section of that book discusses how American slavery was an entirely "closed" system with very little ability for blacks to move outside the system. He then goes on to examine the "Sambo" stereotype of black slaves, (one that author Nell Irwin Painter soundly decries in her article, below).

In another controversial allegation, Elkins maintains that although the "black Sambo" stereotype is harmful and demeaning, it could actually have been a valid assessment of the personalities of many slaves. He writes, "It will be assumed that the sanctions of the system were in themselves sufficient to produce a recognizable personality type."

He notes that many of the aspects of this assessment are generalities, and that is not always a good way to judge history, but that it is legitimate because it is a "universal type" and exists so frequently in the literature and descriptions of the period.

To back up his claims, Elkins notes that the original Africans who came to America as slaves were culled from numerous tribes in Africa, and they shared very few commonalties. They did not all speak the same language, they had divergent religious beliefs, and they were essentially all very different. However, their common slave experience merged them into one cohesive culture, one that Elkins attributes with the stereotypical "Sambo" description. These include ignorance, laziness, shiftlessness, and a general innocence like that of a child. He also compares the concentration camps and their attempt to break down humans to childlike dependency and fear to the lives of slaves, in an attempt to prove his thesis, along with a discussion of child psychology to prove it, as well.

The most notable aspect of this reading is of course Elkins rather outlandish conclusions about slaves and slavery, including the Sambo philosophy and the concentration camp analogy. Elkins makes his points quite well, and spends a good amount of time backing up his assertions with research and examples. Probably the most difficult thing about this piece, other than the conclusions, is the massive amount of footnotes in the text. They break up the flow of the work, and often take up the majority of the printed page. While they certainly are crucial to the overall effectiveness and depth of the research Elkins has done, they are unwieldy in the book, and they might have been much more effective if they had been utilized as end notes, allowing the reader to ponder them at will, instead of forced to acknowledge them on every page.

As of 2004, historian Stanley Elkins was an emeritus professor at Smith College. He is most known for his book "Slavery," but he has written several other books, as well. One of his books won the Bancroft Prize, but he is most remembered for the controversy that began when "Slavery" was published, and the book underwent two revisions after that first edition. For the most part, his theories on slavery, particularly its comparison to concentration camps, is not seen as relative today as it was when the book was first published. His focus on research and teaching has been slavery and the American South.

John W. Blassingame's "The Slave Community" takes a deeper look into slavery and what drove the slave community. He writes, "The social organization of the quarters was the slave's primary environment which gave him his ethical rules and fostered cooperation, mutual assistance, and black solidarity."

Thus, Blassingame seems to use some of the same arguments that Painter does, namely that the slaves survived because of their family life and support in their homes, combined with their religious beliefs. In addition, he maintains the women were at the heart of this very vital social structure. He states, "They made the clothes, served as warriors, did the marketing, and worked in the fields alongside their husbands. The care and training of the children were primarily the responsibility of the women. As a result, a deep bond of affection developed between mothers and children."

It is clear he admires the mothers, but he understands their hardships as well.

And yet, he does not moralize about the aspects of slavery, especially those that tore the families apart. That is a far different reaction to the slave situation than most of the other writers here, because most of them very clearly moralize, according to their own biases and beliefs. Phillips moralizes on the side of the whites, Elkins moralizes on theories of slavery compared to other institutions, and Painter moralizes about family violence and abuse. Blassingame presents his information in a more unbiased manner. Perhaps he was worried of being accused of bias because he was black, and so, he worked hard to eliminate it from his work. Whatever the reason, his book seems the most balanced and effective of all these works, partly because he does not moralize, he simply presents the facts, as he knows them.

Later he writes that the whites often felt they were giving the slaves everything they needed, and they should show more gratitude. He quotes, "The quantity, quality, and variety of food, clothing, housing, and medical care the slave received rarely satisfied him. The fact that another man determined how much and what kind of food, clothing, and shelter he needed to survive posed a serious problem for him."

This would seem to prove to be a serious problem for just about anyone, because the slaves had no freedoms and rights of their own, including the right to choose their own food and clothing. Everything was chosen for them, dictated to them, and decided for them, so their lives had little meaning because they had no control.

He looks at the Sambo myth, as well as the concentration camp thesis that Elkins believes, and came up with his own ideas about them. He acknowledges that the Sambo generalization existed, but he shows how it also applied to runaway slaves, and that they were extremely organized, motivated, and clever to be able to manage the semantics of running away, something the Elkins assertions did not take into account. He also agrees at least in part that the violent plantations were very similar to concentration camps, and resulted in demoralizing the inhabitants. He writes, "The plantation was a battlefield where slaves fought masters for physical and psychological survival."

Thus, he has some of the same conclusions as Elkins, but he presents them in a more balanced way, and so, they seem less outrageous than those of Elkins do, somehow.

His writing style is also very straightforward, and he always backs up his assertions with reasons and research that has led him to reach them. His book is probably the most interesting of all these readings, and of course, it is the most complex, as well. Blassingame clearly did enormous amounts of research, and it shows in this book, because it is the one that I personally would keep in my collection, in favor of all the others. Elkins book is certainly important because it was so controversial, but Blassingame's is more interesting to me, and it seems to paint the most valid picture of slave life, especially the importance of community in that life, than any of the others.

John W. Blassingame lived from 1940 to 2000, and during that time, he was recognized as a premier scholar on the American South and slavery. A black historian, he attempted to paint a more realistic picture of slavery and how the slave community evolved, and he used a balanced set of research documents, both first-hand and secondary sources from white and black southerners, to attempt to show the lives of the slaves. He taught history at Yale University, and worked their until his premature death at the age of 59.

In Nell Irvin Painter's "Soul Murder and Slavery," the author attempts to point out the full "costs" of slavery, including what she calls "tragic overhead" costs. Painter writes, "By focusing attention on women's lives, feminist scholarship has made women visible rather than taken for granted and queried the means by which societies forge gender out of the physical apparatus of sex."

She also believes history has largely ignored the family, and that many slaves suffered not only physical abuse but also sexual abuse, often at a young age, and this results in the term "soul murder" or the killing of the soul. She continues, "Abused persons are at risk for the development of an array of psychological problems that depression, anxiety, self-mutilation, suicide attempts, sexual problems, drug and alcohol abuse."

She also cautions against using modern ideals of psychology to assess the behavior and reaction of slaves eons ago, but notes that some psychological principles do indeed apply to the study of slavery, and she zeros in on the affects of patriarchal power and domination over slave (and white) women in the South.

In one of her key points, she notes, "Because the standard of slavery calibrated values in other core institutions, slavery deserves recognition as one of the fundamental influences on American family mores and, by extension, on American society as a whole."

She also maintains that as a whole, sexual abuse studies and histories ignore the influence or existence of physical and sexual abuse on slaves, and therefore, the studies are incomplete at best. She maintains the constant abuse created generations of continued abuse in black families, and that it affected all of American society. She also soundly renounces Stanley Elkins work in the book "Slavery," disagreeing with most of his major points, including that of the concentration camp analogy.

However, Painter's own analysis is somewhat difficult to follow because it jumps between several subjects during the course of the article. She talks about religion, work ethic, gender, sexuality, abuse, and psychology throughout the article, and as a result, sometimes it feels disjointed and as if it is taking off in too many directions. Her thesis ties these items together, but it still is sometimes difficult to follow and discern as she flits from topic to topic and then attempts to tie them all together.

Painter herself is a noted historian with a doctorate from Harvard University. She has written nine history texts, and one of her focuses is on Sojourner Truth, who she discusses in this article. She has received numerous honorary awards, and she often lectures and speaks about United States history. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers -- the State University of New Jersey.