Mr. Trent:
I don't think you will find too many slaves buried with their white owners. The occasional family slave may have received that recognition, but most slaves were treated as property.
One thing to remember, MOST slaves were not owned by small slaveholders. They were living on plantations (defined as more than 20 slaves). On the other hand, most slaveowners owned fewer than 10 slaves. [Imagine a county where one master owns 100 slaves and another owns 75 and ten master own 5 slaves each. Most masters own fewer than 10 slaves; most slaves -- the vast majority are on large plantations.]
Most studies suggest that slaves on small farms were worse off than those on plantation. Richer masters (large slaveowners) had more resources for food; the larger slave community allowed for some privacy for slaves -- living in slave quarters.
Also, there was greater turnover among small slaveowners. James Oakes book The Ruling Race, demonstrates that many small farmers wen in and out of slave holding, as the economy went up and down. So slaves owned by small farmers were more likely to be sold and sold more often.
The worst time for a slave was when the master died. That would lead to settling an estate and dividing property. While some wills specifically gave individual slaves to specific heirs, most wills just divided the property, and the best way to do that was at auction. This was true for small farmers and major planters -- think of all of Jefferson's slaves being sold off! Not a pretty cite. The Master of Monticello freed his blacksmith Joseph Fossett, (who was a Hemings) but Jefferson did not free Fossett's wife and eight children, who were subsequently auctioned off to at least four different purchasers [I discuss this at greater length in the last chapter of Slavery and The Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (3rd ed., M.E. Sharpe, 2014). Fossett spent the rest of his life trying to locate and purchase his family.
Fossett may have been a favorite of Jefferson (and a relative of his mistress and half-sister-in-law, Sally) but he and his family were not buried by the grave of the master.
*************************************************
Paul Finkelman
Senior Fellow
Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism
University of Pennsylvania
President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law, Emeritus
Albany Law School
518-439-7296 (p)
518-605-0296 (c)
[log in to unmask]
www.paulfinkelman.com
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________________________________________
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Hank Trent [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2014 10:02 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Out-migration from Virginia early 1810- -- small slaveholders
I wonder though if surveying wills demonstrates the obvious, while missing
nuances. Yes, slaves were property to be distributed to heirs, and the
relatively few manumissions at death show that owners generally desired to
keep them as property--but then, if they didn't, they probably wouldn't
have bought them in the first place.
So slavery was, at base, inevitably about ownership, and that idea is
enough to horrify most people today, as it should. But if one looks
further, I think there were differences in relationships, in the same way
that a beef farmer and a dog lover both own their animals with the same
legal status and could will or sell them, but their psychological
relationship to those animals is vastly different. Even the same person
might mourn the death of a dog and lovingly bury him under a tombstone,
while callously shipping steers to be slaughtered and eaten each year, with
a prize bull treated somewhere in between. Such nuances among slaveowners
can only be teased out by looking at other clues--letters, other legal
documents, observers' writings, plantation records, burials, etc.
That is no excuse for slavery of course, but instead I think it shows how
humans always are capable of compartmentalizing their feelings, and that
social conventions and pressure can make ordinary people do things that
seem obviously evil only in retrospect.
Hank Trent
[log in to unmask]
On Tuesday, September 9, 2014, Paul Heinegg <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The largest collection of statements by Virginia slave owners on the
> subject of their slaves is contained in the wills recorded in Virginia
> counties, so it should be useful to analyze those.
>
> I abstracted the wills of two counties (Halifax County, North Carolina,
> and King George County, Virginia) to see how slave owners referred to their
> slaves. I did no analysis, but "to my loving wife...a negro, horse, cow,
> furniture" is typical.
> http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/halifax.htm
>
> Paul
>
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