The Slave South

What does the lithograph Slavery as it Exists in America. Slavery as it Exists in England state?

After mine have done a certain amount of labour which they finish by 4 or 5pm, I allow them to enjoy themselves in any reasonable way

Give an example of an enslaved communal space

Congo Square, Louisiana

Why was the sense of ‘slave community’ stronger pre 1808?

International slave trade meant cultural continuity

How did religion help promote a slave community?

Inter-planation gatherings were allowed at informal churches

Give a quote from the Life of Mary F.McCray

She attended nearly every night. The old people encouraged her, and then she began to take part in speaking and praying

What system did the north operate on, and what impact did this have?

Task system

Provided more leisure time

What does the fact they were centred around prayer tell us about slave communities?

ultimately vehicles for survival

What does Moses Grandy’s story tell us about slave communities?

Mother hid in woods with eight children, surviving of raw corn provided by nearby plantations

Why were informal communication networks between slaves essential?

Information about impending sales created chance for escape

Name one escape route slaves could use

Underground Railroad

Give one example of a division which was evident amongst Black communities outside the plantation

Formerly enslaved

Free Black people

Why did slave masters increasingly focus on the nuclear family?

End of international slave trade meant reproduction was only way to have more slaves

Where is the strongest sense of ‘slave community’ evident?

Motherhood

How does the idea of the enslaved mother and her body link?

Body could still be a source of pride as it provided life and food

Define the Chattel principle

any slaves identity could be disrupted as easily as a price could be set and a piece of paper passed from one to another.

Give the stats on separations in the 660,000 interstate sales made before the civil war

25% destroyed marriage

50% destroyed a family

Give two reasons a salve family might be split up

Punishment

Small workforce needed on lots of sight across the south, Caribbean and west

Give two ways the inherent fragility of the slave community stopped it from growing

Fear fostered individualism

Slaves invoked their own value - cutting off fingers, killing themselves

Give an account of a slave invoking their own value according to Edounall

if I send him from her (his wife, Sally) it will not do you or anybody else any good – meaning I suppose that he will kill himself.

Stevenson (1997) - Structural conditions

1. small size of enslaved populations

2. small size of plantations

3. constant presence of slave masters

At his largest farm in Mount Vernon Washington owned …

nearly twice as many adult men as women

What was there a rise of in North American, making slave holding different from in the Caribbean?

paternalism

Where did slaves tend to live in the south?

In their masters home

Give two reasons why slaves fortunate enough to receive their own plot of land could not use it to its full potential

Time constraints

Constant surveillance

Why could white people be enslaved in the north?

Not yet in era of scientific racism

What did southern republicanism revolve around?

small landholding which Westward expansion was creating more off

How did southern slave owners project masculinity?

Control over other - slaves and their families

Why did the Northern democrats have to keep a focus on freedom?

It was why they had so many irish catholic voters

During the 19th century, what was the motivation for abolition?

Not moral

Employers would get slaves to do otherwise paid work

Why did slavery begin in the upper south?

Tobacco trade was failing

Give two examples of how slaves were used in a very capitalist way in the south

Pay a mortgage

Settle a debt

Aside from slaves, the trade also required …

auctioneers, transport workers etc

Why were mistresses usually cold rather than evil?

Moral issue when masters had an affair with slaves

Women could not punish a slave in front of white company

Why were female slaves so expensive during the civil war?

Belief masters could start again if they moved to Honduras, Cuba etc

Why did women face ‘dual exploitation’

domination by slaveholders intersected with the patriarchal power enslaved men held

What does Djelid mean by third flesh/ third party rape?

Enslavers were a third participant because they forced relationships

Why did children represent future capital?

enslavers calculated the labour and sale value of children before they were even born

What were stockmen?

Enslaved men hired out specifically to impregnate women

What type of language was used to further dehumanise slaves?

Agricultural - stock, herd etc

What triple bind did young girls face?

1. Age

2. Race

3. Gender

How did reproduction start to move towards eugenics?

Enslavers could choses strong slaves and make them breed together

Djelid (2024)

forced, coerced, and cajoled sit along a spectrum of violence

Define geography of containment

slavery worked by confining Black movement through passes, patrols, curfews, plantation boundaries and surveillance

How did architecture materialise architecture?

Houses, quarters and outbuildings could make the slave feel surrounded

Define rival geography

Enslaved people started to uses woods, swamps etc in ways that conflicted with the enslaved vision

rival geography was defined by …

movement, not territory

What two ways can we define freedom?

Permanent flight north

A night spent in the woods

What does rival geography not equal?

autonomous Black space

Give two reasons rival geographies were gendered

Men more likely to do jobs that required knowing roads, waterways etc

Women more likely to have familial ties

Camp (2004)

At the heart of the process of enslavement was a spatial impulse