Leaving aside the sweeping generalization about academics, the issue here
is dificult because it is clouded by perceptions.  I am sure that there
were a good many men and women who owned slaves who treated their chattel
decently by their own moral standards.  Surely too that there were slaves
who acknowledged the relative decency of their masters. (For some examples,
see the WPA narratives reprinted in WEEVILS IN THE WHEAT.  In the
recollections of a good many elderly men and women who had grown up as
slaves, the monstrous slave owner who abused his slaves lived on the next
plantation over, while one's own master or mistress was often recalled as
decent.  There is an interesting psychological phonemenon there which, to
my knowledge, has not been accounted for--thoughts, anyone?)  But there are
plenty of instances of masters who, no doubt quite reasonably by their own
standards, felt they had treated their slaves well, and who were surprised
when their slaves failed to see it that way.  Warren Hofstra and Deborah
Lee have written a very nice essay in the Journal of Social History which
gives one example of that.  It depends entirely on what you mean by
"decent."  What looks like moral decency from one perspective can easily
look like oppression from another.

And then there are our own contemporary perceptions.  By our standards
today, given the nature of the relationship, its hard to imagine anyone
really saying that slavery could be "decent," even when it involved decent
people of good will on both sides.  After all, slavery violates what I take
to be one of the fundamental values of American society--liberty.  To be a
slave is to be denied liberty and self-detemination.  Regardless of the
quality of the persons involved, this is a relationship that is
intrinsically corrosive of decency, at least when judged by basic
contemporary American standards.  Thomas Jefferson wrote perceptively on
this issue in his NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA, which has been referenced
recently in a related conversation.

I don't think it is PC to say that ultimately, no master-slave relationship
can be a decent one, because slavery is intrinsically contradictory to the
ethical tenets on which we today order our society and our values.

Best,
Kevin R. Hardwick

--On Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:08 AM -0500 "COUNTRY.GARDENS"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> An objective, thoughtful, pedagogical-type discussion concerning the
> subject of slavery will never happen on this web site......
> the politically correct forces that now run our schools and colleges will
> pounce upon anything that even hints of the notion that there just might
> possibly have been the remote slave owner who actually treated his slaves
> decently........even if that slave owner treated his slaves well for no
> other reason than it made good economical sense to take proper care of
> one's "investments".
> I do not think that anyone in his or her right mind would ever, ever try
> to justify the totally reprehensible  practice of human bondage and
> slavery and ownership of another human being.
> But the fact that slavery existed here, in the United States of America,
> at one time, does not necessarily mean that every, single slave owner was
> a Simon Legree.
> We read on this list recently that a slave holder (a relative of Thomas
> Jefferson) murdered one of his slaves in a particularly heinous fashion.
> That man (the murderer)) was probably a psychopath of enormous proportions
> who treated his own family in disgusting and despicable ways. Or maybe he
> wasn't a heinous psychopath. Perhaps he was a Sunday school teacher who
> turned Mr. Hyde occasionally.
> Whatever he was we, of course, have no sure way of knowing.
> And just as we never want the citizens of the future to forget about the
> God awful realities of the Holocaust, we surely don't want  anyone to ever
> forget the horrors of slavery.
> But, the most important aspect regarding historical study is to dig and
> dig and dig until one finds the Truth or, at least, as much of the Truth
> as we can possibly ascertain.
> Then throw that information on the table and let folks sort it out for
> themselves.
>
> Deane Mills
> York County
> Virginia
>
>
>
>
>> An exploration of the historical literature on slavery with a focus on
>> Virginia is a very good topic for discussion, indeed, especially for
>> folks who have not kept up with all the new scholarly literature of the
>> last decade.
>>
>> Brent Tarter
>> The Library of Virginia
>> [log in to unmask]
>
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
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--
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of History, MSC 2001
James Madison University
Harrisonburg VA 22807
Phone:  540/568-6306
Email:  [log in to unmask]

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