Slavery: historical contexts and impacts

Slavery and Economy According to Elkins and McPherson To Elkins' way of thinking, one of the primary stumbling blocks in allowing us to truly understand why slavery occurred, why it was so uniquely durable in the United States and how it impacts us today is the unchanging rancor of the discourse on this subject. Elkins makes the case that our reflection on the subject has become to deeply entrenched in kneejerk ways of understanding the subject that a greater illumination of slavery's roots and its persistence has been obscured. His text remarks that "there is a painful touchiness in all aspects of the subject; the discourse contains almost too much immediacy, it makes too many connections with present problems. How a person thinks about Negro slavery historically makes a great deal of difference here and now; it tends to locate him morally in relation to a whole range of very immediate political, social, and philosophical issues which is some way refer back to slavery." (Elkins, 1) The text concedes to understand why individuals make such concerted emotional connections but suggests that these connections have presented us from moving into more reflective consideration of our history of slavery. This differs fundamentally from the McPherson article, which succeeds in characterizing the slave-holding South according to its economic imperatives without appearing to forgive it its ethical trespasses. Where Elkins contends that it is necessary to dispatch with the moralizing and emotional connotation often connected to the present-day discourse in order to understand the practical implications of slavery in its time and place, McPherson argues that in fact, the mores of slavery were inherently impractical. By framing his discussion according to the implications of the Civil War, McPherson denotes that economic realities sufficiently illustrate the core irrationality of the so-called 'peculiar institution' known as slavery. This also points us to a core similarity between the two texts. Though they differ fundamentally in their willingness to address the moral implications of slavery, Elkins and McPherson agrees that the rhetoric of racial superiority would largely function as a distraction in a discussion laden with more pressing economic implications. To this end, McPherson explains that in the divide leading up to the Civil War, "the Republicans became the party of reformist, antislavery Protestantism. They also became the party of dynamic, innovative capitalism. . . Southerners and Catholics returned the hostility. Their epithets of 'Black Republicans,' 'Yankees,' and the 'Puritan party' summed up in turn a host of negative symbols associated with the Republicans: abolitionism and racial equality, material acquisitiveness and sharp practice, hypocrisy, bigotry, and an offensive eagerness to reform other people's morals or to interfere with their property." (McPherson, 101) It is ironic in this aspect of the discussion that in fact there would be this perception of ethical righteousness by slaveholders, who perceived federal regulation abolishing slavery as a fundamental violation of individual rights. Elkins makes the argument that a way of better understanding this irony would be to remove the ethical implications which frame debates over slavery. In a certain regard, no debate exists as slavery is both abolished and unconditionally accepted as not viable in modern society for practical and humanitarian reasons. Therefore, to frame the ongoing discussion over slavery as a debate such as that which persisted in the ante-bellum period of American history is, Elkins contends, to overlook an opportunity for greater illumination of the subject. To this end, he points out the value of historiographical reports on slavery from all array of perspectives, and not just those that have condemned slavery. As Elkins states of those committed to documentation the history of slavery, "although the writers and compilers were themselves by no means free from polemical intentions (indeed, they were for the more part inspired by them) the requirements of fact operated upon them in such a way that they left a number of works which are still of great value. The two leading examples were produced by men whose commitments to the subject itself were at opposite poles. Thomas R.R. Cobb's Inquiry into the Law of Slavery was the work of a Georgia jurist, and John Codman Hurd's Law of Freedom and Bondage that of a New Englander of strong abolitionist leanings. They are equally useful and equally dependable today." (Elkins, 3) It is thus that in a certain respect, the Elkins may be seen as the more effective text where an examination of everyday slave life is concerned. The willingness of the historian to explore the subject without prejudicial interest in the perspective of the author would allow him to understand the variant of experiences in slave life that help to reduce the value of sweeping assumptions pertaining thereto. For instance, Elkins remarks upon the wide spectrum of levels of autonomy experienced by slaves, depending largely upon the selective orientation of slave-owners and the size of the estate on which such slaves toiled. On larger plantations, where whole communities of slaves lived, they would have a relative degree of autonomy in their lives with respect to the fact that it would fall upon the slaves to maintain order and activity within these communities. Elkins' text is the more useful in elucidating these experiences, as it reports upon slavery from the wider array of documented perspectives. This points to Elkins' argument that we should enter into a period of academic evaluation of such contradicting sources so as to better understand the matter-of-fact position of those existing within the system now relegated properly to the past. This also makes the Elkins text a reliable source for understanding the nuance of the role played by Christianity and the church in the institution of slavery. This would have the dual effect of providing slaves with a channel for the manifestation of hope and of providing their masters with a way to manipulate obedience and a sense of acceptance for the established order. Again, the degree to which the Elkins text dedicates itself to removing the debate permeating the discussion of slavery is manifested here as a balanced recognition of slavery as playing a part in sustaining slavery and simultaneously of providing asylum from its hardship. Ultimately though, the Elkins text works too aggressively to undermine the emotional permanence of the issue of slavery, discrediting the text as perhaps given over to its own historical prejudices. The McPherson text succeeds in framing the discussion over slavery without requiring a massive shift in perspective. Instead, the text more effectively connects the end of slavery with the interceding economic and humanistic requirements of modernization. As the McPherson text would argue, "in short, slavery and modernizing capitalism were irreconcilable." (McPherson, 50) It is thus that the McPherson text goes into great detail about the manner in which the spread of industrial growth and economic expansion in the north would ultimately make slavery an impossible institution to sustain. Though it would be the slaveholder who would vociferously claim the importance of limited government as a cause for the maintenance of the system of slavery, McPherson illustrates that it would actually be the inherent nature of capitalism that would ensure the ultimate end of the type of economy which called for and sustained the practice of slavery. To this point, McPherson reports that "heavy investment in social overhead capital, which transforms a localized subsistence economy into a nationally integrated market economy; rapid increases in output per capita, resulting from technological innovation and the shift from labor-intensive toward capital-intensive production; the accelerated growth of the industrial sector compared with other sectors of the economy; rapid urbanization, made possible by an increase in agricultural productivity that enables farmers to feed the growing cities; an expansion of education, literacy, and mass communications; a value system that emphasizes change rather than tradition; an evolution from the traditional, rural, village-oriented system of personal and kinship ties, in which status is 'ascriptive' (inherited), toward a fluid, cosmopolitan, impersonal, and pluralistic society, in which status is achieved by merit." (McPherson, 13) This is to illustrate that the abolition of slavery did not just threaten to dismantle the institution retaining blacks in bondage. Moreover, the modes of capitalism promised to dismantle the southern agrarian way of life which depended upon slavery. This was not simply because slavery was perceived as something which had to be abolished. Moreover, this was because the nature of the southern economy no longer corresponded with economic patterns defining the United States. The value of the McPherson text is particularly found in these descriptions which suggest that moral questions relating to slavery would never truly be addressed because economic imperatives would instead define the course of events ending the institution. It is to this extent that while Elkins does a better job of characterizing antebellum American slavery, McPherson is more successful at describing its implications with accuracy. Elkins uses a bevy of primary sources which present an effective anecdotal picture of the many experiences pertaining to slavery. However, its dedication to dispelling emotional imperatives which remain critically relevant functions as something of an unwelcome departure from traditions discourses on the subject. Though this is Elkins' stated ambition, the success which McPherson achieves absent the use of this device suggest such a departure to be unnecessary. The economic framing of slavery and abolition is not mutually exclusive from the emotional and ethical questions pertaining to the issue, nor is there necessarily a value in making this distinction.