In a message dated 2/28/07 11:37:22 PM, [log in to unmask] writes:


> I have read of slaves who didn't want to leave their homes during and 
> after the war, in many cases they were forced away at gunpoint. It 
> happened to my husbands' gr-gr grandfather, a Harrison who lived in 
> Powhatan County, somehow related to the Va. Harrisons [it's a long 
> story]. A group of northern soldiers came riding up to his farm [the 
> brothers were carpenters and brickmasons, not the elite, a church 
> they built still stands in Pow. Co., it has stunning woodwork inside] 
> and ordered the slaves to leave. They were supposedly crying, 
> clustered at the door, didn't want to go, and the soldiers threatened 
> to shoot them if they didn't. Mr. Harrison [who had been a Conf. 
> Cavalry Captain and set fire to the 14th street bridge after the 
> evacuation of Richmond] appeared with a rifle and threatened to shoot 
> the soldiers if they shot any of the slaves, and they rode away. Or 
> so the family story goes.
> 
> I suppose there might have been genuine affection between some slaves 
> and their masters; and cases of life being good but as they had never 
> known freedom, they didn't know what they never had ["One can not 
> aspire to what one cannot imagine."- Eudora Welty]; cases of these 
> WPA accounts where, as the wit said, "marriage is the triumph of hope 
> over experience"- in the interim you forget the bad parts and only 
> remember the good; and what also comes to mind are the Russians, so 
> many of whom did not want democracy or freedom, it seemed to scare 
> them, they wanted to go back to the old Communist life or even the 
> Czarist days. Human psychology can be a puzzling thing.
> 
> Nancy
> 
> -------
> I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
> 
> --Daniel Boone
> 
> 
> 
> On Feb 28, 2007, at 10:21 PM, Basil Forest wrote:
> 
> > I just finished reviewing the slave narratives taken from former 
> > slaves by
> > the WPA during the Depression that is available from the National  
> > Archives.  I
> > was surprised at how many of the former slaves were so  nostalgic 
> > for the
> > days when they were slaves (it seemed to be the clear  majority), 
> > and their
> > comments on how well they were provided for by their  masters.  I 
> > was equally
> > surprised by how few of the former slaves  complained about their 
> > treatment by
> > their masters.
> >
> > Has anyone compiled data on the positive versus negative comments 
> > of  these
> > 2300 former slaves that were part of the WPA project?
> >
> > I reviewed the entire group of interviews, not just those selected by
> > ancestry.com for their CD.
> >
> >
> >
> 

Dear Basil and Nancy:

One reason for the positive recollections is the timing of the interviews.   
They were taken during the depression when things were pretty rough for 
everyone but even rougher if you were poor.   If you had been a house slave or one 
whose owner had been relatively benevolent, slavery to that person may have 
been a piece of cake from a comfort level compared to what they were experiencing 
during the depression. They may have good reasons for remininscing!     Also 
the interviewers were for the most part white and sometimes the ethnicity of 
the interviewer can cause the interviewee to give responses he thinks the 
interviewer wants to hear.   This is true of any interview and is a variable one 
needs to control for if the objective is to get true and accurate data.

Anita L. Henderson


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