Unit 4.

2 – slave culture and slave resistances (including the

nature of female slavery and resistances)
Introduction
As had been true since colonial times, the centrality of slavery to
the economy and the need to keep slaves under firm control
required the South to become a slave society, rather than merely
a society with slaves, as had been the case in the North.
Purchased by slave traders from owners in the Upper South,
slaves were gathered together in notorious “slave pens” in places
like Richmond and Charleston and then moved south. Arriving
at a central market in the Lower South like Natchez, New
Orleans, or Mobile, the slaves, after being carefully inspected by
potential buyers, were sold at auction to the highest bidder.
A distinctive African American slave community, which had
first emerged in the eighteenth century, expanded dramatically
in the early years of the nineteenth century. This community was
as much shaped by cotton as was the white South. White masters
learned to live with the two key institutions of African American
community life: the family and the African American church,
and in their turn slaves learned, however painfully, to survive
slavery.
SLAVE CULTURE
Surely no group in American history has faced a harder job of
community building than the black people of antebellum
South.
Health remained a lifelong issue for slaves. Malaria and
infectious diseases such as yellow fever and cholera were
endemic in the South. White people as well as black died, as the
life expectancy figures for 1850 show: forty to forty three years
for white people and thirty to thirty-three years for African
Americans. Slaves were more at risk because of the
circumstances of slave life: poor housing, poor diet, and
constant, usually heavy, work.
Children lived with their parents (or with their mother if the
father was a slave on another farm or plantation) in housing
provided by the owner. Husband and wife cooperated in loving
and sheltering their children and teaching them survival skills.
From birth to about age seven, slave children played with one
another and with white children, observing and learning how to
survive. They saw the penalties: black adults, perhaps their own
parents, whipped for disobedience; black women, perhaps their
own sisters, violated by white men. And they might see one or
both parents sold away as punishment or for financial gain. They
might also see signs of white benevolence: special treats for
children at holidays, appeals to loyalty from the master or
mistress, perhaps friendship with a white child. Whatever their
particular childhood circumstances, at age twelve, slaves were
considered full grown and put to work in the fields or in their
designated occupation.
EMPLOYEMENT
In 1850, 55 percent of all slaves were engaged in cotton
growing. Another 20 percent labored to produce other crops:
tobacco (10 percent), rice, sugar, and hemp. About 15 percent of
all slaves were domestic servants, and the remaining 10 percent
worked in mining, lumbering, industry, and construction. Work
was tedious in the hot and humid southern fields, and the
overseer’s whip was never far away. Cotton growing was hard
and demanded proper work and real skill: plowing and planting,
chopping weeds with a heavy hoe, and picking the ripe cotton
from the stiff and scratchy bolls, at the rate of 150 pounds a day.
Working in the big house might seem to have been preferable to
working in the fields. Physically, it was much less demanding,
and house slaves were often better fed and clothed. From the
point of view of the slave, the most unpleasant thing about being
a house servant (or the single slave of a small owner) was the
constant presence of white people. There was no escape from
white supervision. Many slaves who were personal maids and
children’s nurses were required to live in the big house and
rarely saw their own families.
As had been true in the eighteenth century, families remained
essential to African American culture. No southern state
recognized slave marriages in law. Most owners, though, not
only recognized but also encouraged them, sometimes even
performing a kind of wedding ceremony for the couple. Masters
encouraged marriage among their slaves, believing it made the
men less rebellious, and because they were eager for the slave
women to have children. Whatever marriages meant to the
masters, to slaves they were a haven of love and intimacy in a
cruel world and the basis of the African American community.
Husbands and wives had a chance, in their own cabins, to live
their own lives among loved ones.
Marriage was more than a haven from cruelty: It was the
foundation of community. Family meant continuity. Parents
made great efforts to teach their children the family history and
to surround them with a supportive and protective kinship
network. Given the vast size of the internal slave trade, fear of
separation was constant—and real. This emphasis on family and
on kinship networks had an even more fundamental purpose.
The kinship of the entire community, where old people were
respected and young ones cared for, represented a conscious
rejection of white paternalism.
Equally remarkable was the way in which African Americans
reshaped Christianity to serve their needs. African religions
managed to survive from the earliest days of slavery in forms
that white people considered as “superstition” or “folk belief,”
such as the medicinal use of roots by conjurers. Religious
ceremonies survived, too, in late-night gatherings deep in the
woods where the sound of drumming, singing, and dancing
could not reach white ears. In the nineteenth century, these
African traditions allowed African Americans to reshape white
Christianity into their own distinctive faith that expressed their
deep resistance to slavery. The number of African American
converts, preachers, and lay teachers grew rapidly, and a
distinctive form of Christianity took shape. Free African
Americans founded their own independent churches and
denominations. African Americans found in Christianity a
powerful vehicle to express their longings for freedom and
justice.
RESISTANCE
The rapid geographical spread of cotton introduced a new source
of tension and resistance into the slave–master relationship.
White Southerners did everything they could to prevent escapes
and rebellions. Slave patrols were a common sight on southern
roads: Any black person without a pass from his or her master
was captured (usually roughly) and returned home to certain
punishment.
The ultimate resistance, however, was the slave revolt. Every
white Southerner knew about the last-minute failure of Gabriel
Prosser’s insurrection in Richmond in 1800 and the chance
discovery of Denmark Vesey’s plot in Charleston in 1822. But
when in 1831, Nat Turner actually started a rebellion in which a
number of white people were killed, southern fears were greatly
magnified. Gabriel’s Rebellion, the Denmark Vesey plot, and
Nat Turner’s revolt were the most prominent examples of
organized slave resistance, but they were far from the only ones.
FEMALE RESISTANCE
As much as there is similarity, there are remarkable differences
in the experiences of enslaved women and men. Additionally,
women had to do reproductive work. This involved actual
bearing and nurturing of children with domestic work within
slave quarters that fed husbands, fathers, and children and gave
them the strength to persevere at the productive work of the
plantation. As childbearing women they were physically
vulnerable in ways that men were not. Slavers separated the
black women from most of what had lent meaning to her life.
Women were often purchased and transported in colonies lest
the men become dissatisfied and run away.
Because the cost of a female slave was less than that of a male
slave, female slave labour was cheaper than male slave labour.
The procreative ability of slave women proved to be profitable
for the slave holders. The presence of an even sex ratio made
American slavery unique in the western hemisphere. For black
women, the consequences of the even sex ratio were also severe.
Once slaveholders realised that the reproductive function of the
female slave could yield a profit, the manipulation of procreative
sexual relations became an integral part of the sexual
exploitation of female slaves. Meanwhile responsibilities of
child bearing and childcare seriously circumscribed a female
slaves life. The limits were reflected in patterns of female
resistance.
Some of the reasons why women were underrepresented in the
fugitive population had to do with child bearing. Also important
in understanding why females ran away less frequently than men
is the fact that women tended to be more concerned with the
welfare of their children, and this limited their mobility. This, of
course, was no secret to slaveholders and probably accounts for
the casual attitude many masters and overseers had about female
runaways. The few women who ran away did so for a variety of
reasons. Some escaped with men and many left for the same
reasons as men – cruel treatment or the fear of it, fear of sale or
sale of a loved one, or just a desire to be free. The desperation of
some slave mothers was carried in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
fictionalised account of the escape to freedom by Eliza Harris
and her son across the ice flows of the Ohio River. Motherhood
structure the slave woman’s behaviour, but so too did the female
slave work experience.
The division of labour on most plantations conferred greater
mobility on male then on female slaves. Few of the chores
performed by bondwomen took them off plantations. Usually
masters chose their male slaves for works of such concern. Slave
resistance however was not ruled out. bondmen, were adept in
inventing schemes and excuses to get their own way. Some
bondwomen were direct in their resistance which included
murdering their masters, some were arsonists and still others
refused to be whipped.
Slave woman also sometimes violently resisted sexual
exploitation. Since southern laws did not recognise the rape of a
black woman as a crime, often the only recourse the woman had
was to fight off their assailants. A less overt form of resistance
involved the use of poison and this suited woman because they
officiated as cooks and nurses on the plantation. The slaves’
objective was not to get caught because punishment was sure
and swift. Perhaps the most important difference between male
and female slave resistance was the greater propensity of women
to feign illness in order to gain respite from their work or to
change the nature of their work altogether. This strategy was
feasible precisely because child rearing was the primary
expectation that slave owners had of a slave woman.
Female slave bondage was not better or worse, or more or less
severe command and male bondage, but it was different. From
the very beginning of a woman’s enslavement she had to cope
with sexual abuse, abuse made legitimate by the conventional
wisdom that black women were promiscuous Jezebels. Work
assignments also structured female slave life so that women
were more confined to the boundaries of the plantation then
were men.