Excellent. Mr. South finally makes a few straightforward declarative statements.

Let's examine them:

---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 14:30:58 EDT
>From: [log in to unmask]  
>Subject: Re: Slavery and Unanswered Questions  
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Undoubtedly, slavery was, or should have been, a harrowing experience for  
>the slaves as their collective experience is generally taught.

There is an underlying assumption here about how slavery "is generally taught."  Based on my own experience interviewing my students, high schools are all over the map in how they teach slavery.  Some, amazingly enough, simply avoid the subject.  

I can't speak to how slavery is taught in University and college classes, save in my own of course.  But if we judge from the scholarly literature and infer from that how professors teach the subject, I would guess that in most classes Professors teach it as a complex and nuanced institution, in which the possible range of experience was diverse and broad.

> Some Black slaves and freemen apparently  
>fought for their "suppressors" during the War.  

The scholarship here is contested.  There is no academic consensus on this question as yet.  It certainly is the case that there were a small number of free black militia companies, especially in deep south cities.  

> In addition, Black slaves  
>reproduced in exceedingly large numbers while "under the scourge of  slavery."

When, and in comparison to whom?  If we compare the demographics of slavery in the 18th century British mainland colonies or in the antebellum U.S. South, with that of the Caribbean, we discover that slave populations did reproduce themselves.  That is because in the Caribbean, it was cheaper to work slaves to death than it was to feed and clothe them adequately, and as a consequence slave owners did not make adequate provision for slave reproduction.  There is a super essay comparing the Mesopotamia plantation in Jamaica with the Tayloe family plantations in Virginia, by Richard Dunn, that appeared about 25 years ago in the William and Mary Quarterly, that gives a nice case study of this issue.

If we compare slave reproduction with white, free populations, however, we discover that free white populations experienced considerably greater rates of natural increase than did slaves.  Thus, while slavery was not as severe an institution on the main land as it was in the Caribbean, it nonetheless imposed relatively strong constraints on population growth.

In comparison to free populations, the demographic studies demonstrate that:

*  Slaves tended not to live as long as non-slaves
*  Slaves had smaller families than did non-slaves
*  Slaves suffered greater infant mortality than did non-slaves
*  Slave diets were nutritionally inferior than those of non-slaves

None of these findings should be all that surprising, in as much as slaves were by any definition impoverished.  When we compare the demography of the poor with those of the non-poor, we discover similar patterns.  The difference, of course, was that a poor white person might reasonably expect to experience some social mobility, which was not something a poor slave could hope for.

>To me, this doesn't add up in the context of Southern slavery being Hell on  
>earth, as it is traditionally characterized?

Who has suggested that Southern slavery was "Hell on earth?"  I have stated that it was "evil," but I have not compared slavery to Hell.  To my knowledge, no one on this list serv has done so either.  I think this is something of a straw man here.

>The characterizations that these poor unfortunate Black folk who were  
>interviewed by WPA workers later in life were  
>untruthful/delirious/insane/senile/illusory or outright fearful of telling  the truth also doesn't add up.  Where 
>is the support for that theory?

No one has suggested that they were untruthful, or delirious, or insane, or senile, or illusory.  Again, this is a straw man.

What various authors in this conversation *have* suggested is that the data is skewed.  That is not the same thing at all, however, as the adjectives you introduce above.  

If we are going to engage in a fair argument, you have to make at least a minimal effort to state your opponents argument in terms that they would recognize.  This is not an exercise in sophistry--what we are seeking here is something more akin to truth.  

Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University