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Hi All,
I've been reading this thread and want to interject a few ideas.
Remembering the heightened sense of duty of those time...The slave owners felt very responsible for thier slaves. They felt they had a Godly duty to guide and protect them. If you don't believe it look at all the religious rhetoric of the time - both Southerners and Abolitionists believed they were guided by God - men have died for less throughout history!
In Nachitoches, when Mr. Lincoln freed the slaves, they gathered on the banks of the Mississippi waiting to be picked up and "taken" to freedom. Their owners took them food and had to talk them back onto the farms, as otherwise they were camping without any regard to food or sanitation, and illness was breaking out. One owner explained to them that they should keep one person for a lookout and then if the boats came they could leave then, as nothing could dissuade them from this idea.
In Texas and Louisiana on land that wasn't devastated by war, the owners asked the slaves to stay and then deeded the land to them upon death.
One of my gggrandfather's had a couple of slaves he loved dearly and after they were freed he provided for them until he died and then in his will asked his sons to watch over them and provide for them until thier death.
Given these and other similar acts by owners toward thier slaves which they considered thier responsibility, why is it so hard to believe O.I. John?
Hi All,
I've been reading this thread and want to interject a few ideas.
Remembering the heightened sense of duty of those time...The slave owners felt very responsible for thier slaves. They felt they had a Godly duty to guide and protect them. If you don't believe it look at all the religious rhetoric of the time - both Southerners and Abolitionists believed they were guided by God - men have died for less throughout history!
In Nachitoches, when Mr. Lincoln freed the slaves, they gathered on the banks of the Mississippi waiting to be picked up and "taken" to freedom. Their owners took them food and had to talk them back onto the farms, as otherwise they were camping without any regard to food or sanitation, and illness was breaking out. One owner explained to them that they should keep one person for a lookout and then if the boats came they could leave then, as nothing could dissuade them from this idea.
In Texas and Louisiana on land that wasn't devastated by war, the owners asked the slaves to stay and then deeded the land to them upon death.
One of my gggrandfather's had a couple of slaves he loved dearly and after they were freed he provided for them until he died and then in his will asked his sons to watch over them and provide for them until thier death.
Given these and other similar acts by owners toward thier slaves which they considered thier responsibility, why is it so hard to believe O.I. John?
Just a thought,
Texas2nd
Those anecdotes, if true, were the exception rather than the rule.
Dear Cash,
No disrespect intended but ...sez who?
I found examples of the same thing in other ACW tomes - these are just ones I personally know about from local interviews, CSA women's letter's and diaries and my own personal documents.
If these acts of responsibility are repeated over and over again by slave owners, (books ranging from the early 1900s through today repeat some of these same scenarios)then I don't think that these "anecdotes" are the exception.
I'm not arguing the horrible condition of slavery - It was bad and wrong. I'm just pointing out that because responsibility was taken so seriously is not hard to believe that O.I. John was sincere - wrong but sincere.
Reminds me of an old saying I heard when I was growing up.
"God save me from those who wish to do me good."
Sincerely,
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
Texas2nd. Welcome aboard. As you will or have discovered, some of these folks resist light from any source. Keep after 'em. If kindness and caring for the slaves didn't occur in consistent reasonably large numbers, then I'm fooled by what I've read the last fifty years. As you and I have both opined, slavery has never been glorified, justified or desired by any rational being. Human kindness is a different story.
__________________ Ancestors in US Army: 13th TN Cav; 10th TN Cav; 3rd NC Inf
Ancestors in CSA Army: 48th VA; 63rd VA, 5th NC Cav; 37th NC
Wife and Grandson's CSA: 15th AL, 51st GA, 41st TN; 36th TN; GA Mil 1197 Dist
I presume there was some. People are individuals. They act differently, one to the next, even when we view them as groups and try to cover them all with the same blanket description. How much concern there was, what it meant in our terms, how many people felt it, and how powerful/genuine a motivation it was can be the subject of endless debate.
But no one will be able to define it by quoting passages from speeches, diaries, and letters. Doing it that way is like trying to describe the image on your monitor by looking at one or two individual pixels on the screen. There were millions of slaves in the South; millions more of white people; and about 25% of the families owned slaves, while even more used them in the course of everyday life, either as rented or loaned workers, or as servants of others who did their bidding.
Some of those people would make Simon Legree look good. Some would show real concern for the well-being of slaves under their care, and even those they did not own or control.
Some like Stonewall Jackson and R. E. Lee were undoubtedly above the average in the South. Even Jefferson Davis was unfailingly "good" to his slaves when they kept their places.
Some, like James Hammond, Governor and Senator from SC, were hopefully abberations. (Dear God, I hope that man was an abberation, having read a few excerpts from his diaries; maybe I just wish the older Wade Hampton had decided to shoot him instead of hushing things up to avoid the scandal -- and that involved free white girls of good name. When the daughter he apparently fathered on his young slave mistress got to be about 13, he transferred his affections from the mother to the daughter -- for the most part.)
But the truth is that all anyone can do about a large population is to develop an overall impression, an average. The "good" slave owners were not it. The "evil" slave owners were not it. Some of the worst abuses of slaves actually came from whites who did not own slaves -- particularly in SC and other areas of the Deep South. Many or most of the men riding slave patrols in the 1850s seem to have come from this class, and in Charleston they were avid in punishing slaves who violated the codes in any way. Part of it seems to have been as a way of twisting the tails of the gentry who did own slaves.
I think that average is somewhere above the dark picture painted at one extreme -- and nowhere near the soft and pleasing lights at the other. Slavery was an issue that divided not just politics, but religions as well, splitting the Methodists, the Baptists, and others into northern and southern segments in those days. Even a "good", God-fearing, Christian slaveowner needed a justification for keeping people in bondage to live peacefully in his own soul. The "evil" ones, of course, would have cared only about the pretense.
Never saw a slave
True for some, but largely overdone for most of the Southern population.
I am sure there were poor farmers out on the frontier and in remote areas who rarely or never saw a slave. It would have been impossible for anyone who visited a large town or city, and probably impossible for anyone who visited a sizable village to buy goods of any kind. Impossible for anyone near a major transportaion route (like the Mississippi River and its tributaries, a RR, the Natchez Trace, etc.) Impossible for anyone near a cotton, rice, tobacco or other plantation. There would be areas with few slaves and areas with lots of slaves, but very few with none. Those that did exist would be largely isolated and remote (i.e., they would have very few people in them).
Best interests of their slaves at heart
Like all such sentiments ("We're from the government. We're here to help you.", etc.), this needs to be taken with a large grain of salt. I'm sure there were people who thought of slaves as a "white man's burden" and seriously tried to better their lot. But what did the slaves think of that idea?
How much of this "best interests" rhetoric was self-justification? If anyone ever really tries to diagram it, justifying slavery as necessary to help the slaves is obviously bogus circular logic -- and since the slavery was obviously of value and benefit to the slave-owners, highly suspect reasoning. But I do think some form of self-justification would be needed by the many obviously "good" people in the South to allow themselves to do such an "evil" thing.
I do think many believed it. I do think many shied away from examining such pious beliefs with a critical eye. Few of us are coldly logical in all we do -- and almost all of us have mastered the art of turning a blind eye to our own actions in what is closest to us.
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
What do you all have to say about Miscegenation? Race Mixing? The Brazilifaication of America?
Without a doubt, Southern Aristocrats did it. 19th Century New Orleans was reknowned for it's Quadroons, Octaroons and High Yellow negress whores.
I'm not making any value judgments or statements about racial purity or the superiority/inferioriaty of either any or the other. I'm just asking: How do you reckon the Southern Aristocrats felt about it? How do you reckon their mixed race kids felt about it? How do you feel about it? Is your family mixed race yet?
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