This question of the "good" or "moral" slaveowner is a familiar one to
those of us who teach the history of slavery. To condemn the institution
and all owners as immoral is a perfect example of "presentism"--i.e.,
imposing our own values and beliefs on the past, or, more specifically,
judging one group or another for its failure to think and act as we
suppose we would have in their place.
Before explaining why this leads to bad history, I want to make it clear
that we always define or judge our own values and beliefs with
reference to "benchmarks" in the past. There is, after all, nothing else
to use as a standard than that which has already happened. So, using the
past to arrive at judgments about ourselves is perfectly appropriate.
But reversing the procedure--judging the past by the standards of the
present--is not. It is rather like trying to speak to the past from the
present: we won't be heard and nothing will change.
If this quick portrait of presentism does not seem clear enough,
consider another: what would we think about historians 100 or 200 years
from now lambasting capitalism and all employers as immoral because they
exploit workers, degrade work, and so forth? By the enlightened
standards of 2100 or 2200, capitalism may well seem crude, even evil.
Does that mean that our historians of the future would be correct in
judging the institution and its leading "players" (capitalists) using
their standards, not ours today? We would probably think the argument
is wrong-headed. Well, we might reply, some capitalists or employers are
real bastards, others are pretty enlightened, at least by today's
standards. Not all work is equally degrading in our capitalist economy,
Sure, some people oppose the institution even now, but like the
abolitionists of the 19th century, the anti-capitalists of today are a
minority.
Back to our historical issue: We would want to give slaveowners of the
19th century the same open-minded examination that we know our
21st-century capitalists deserve. Sizing up each group, we might
conclude that in terms of personality and character, both slaveowners
and capitalist employers run the gamut from the most evil and vicious to
the most charitable and good. Human nature allows for (determines?) this
sort of variation along a spectrum or in some multi-dimensional field of
possibilities. One of the most interesting questions is how an
"institution" (which, in the end, is just a collection of people and the
ideas, values, and practices they have installed as norms) shapes and
challenges the qualities of individuals inside it. Similar, albeit
rephrased, questions should also be asked about slaves and wage workers
under the two systems. It makes no more sense to describe all
slaveowners as evil or immoral than it would to describe all slaves as
morally upright or good.; ditto for employers and workers today.
The point of historical investigation is not to demonstrate the progress
we have made since the "bad old days." It is, rather, to appreciate the
"otherness" of people and their actions in the past, while acknowledging
their humanity, and thus the diversity and complexity of the human
condition in general.
Doug Deal
History/SUNY Oswego
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