On May 9, 2012, at 12:13 PM, Kimball, Gregg (LVA) wrote:
> I just approved all of the messages we've had this morning. (The Library is closed for training and I am just getting to this task).
>
> Let me offer a quick note in response to Mr. Browning and Mr. Southmayd. I think that there is a world of difference between "lazy" and passive-aggressive behavior. One, it seems to me, is a judgment about a group of people based an innate characteristic. The other is a perfectly logical response to the exploitation of one's labor without any real ownership or incentive. I see no "kernel of truth" there.
Sorry I wasn't more clear, but the "kernel of truth" is in the interpretation. Lazy is normally given as an attitude that pervades one's life. I have certainly heard it use pejoratively. But if the "lazy" person is resisting the application of his coerced labor by slowing down his work to just above a critical threshold, then it is a conscious resistance that is labeled by the psychologists as passive-aggressive. That is where I was headed with that one. It's all in the perception and who's perceiving what and for what ends. There's a whole literature on passive resistance by enslaved people wherein the most common form is working at the slowest pace possible. And there are people who will consciously put themselves in harms way in order to show that they will not be broken by physical coercion. The psychology of people who did that more than once and who did so realizing the consequences has deserved a good look, if it hasn't already had one.
>
> Let me illustrate with an actual historical event. (I urge all to do the same instead of speculating).
I can also speak to that directly. My father hired an African-American hand as his sole help on his farm. He lived in the former overseer's house and was paid exactly the going rate for white labor which also happened to be twice the rate for black labor. My father taught him to run farm equipment and after ensuring that he could do so safely and within the explicated rules, he checked on him a few times and once satisfied, he got on with other work. It was decidedly not the done thing to pay a black man at a white man's wage level so my father kept that quiet, nor was it acceptable to have black people running farm equipment and that my father ignored comments about and simply said that the work had to be done and John could do it and that was that.
> Joseph Reid Anderson decided in 1847 to train slaves to do the most highly skilled work in the industrial world in his rolling mills at Tredegar. He had no doubt it would be profitable and that people of African descent could do these highly skilled jobs. His white workers, he deemed, were too troublesome, drank too much, and to jealously guarded their work prerogatives, including the ability to pick their assistants. Were these British workers "lazy"?
Lazy would never come into it from what I can understand about his white workers. Bolshy to use the Brit vernacular or boisterous are more the phrase I would associate. They were also performing a variant of passive-aggressive and "work to rule" that backfired due to their perception that they had the only game in town.
> No, they simply had a cultural belief in the value of their work and who should control it. They dictated how long they worked and how much output they were responsible for. (Some of this work was compensated by tonnage rates). An enslaved person had far less control of their labor EXCEPT in certain situations such as manufacturing, where masters allowed some overtime pay and other incentives.
>
> So, let's get back to some informed discussion, which has been rolling along pretty well here lately. Let's at least try to base our comments here on reading, research, and analysis. I know that it is much easier to make broad fact-free generalizations, but these are rarely useful.
>
> Personally, I really don't care for the PC claim. It's usually a cop-out for advancing a coherent argument. And that's really not the point here.
It seemed to me that the responder's comment about a racist attitude was knee-jerk and was done without seeing what Mr. Southmayd meant or might have meant or what might have been learned from a measured response to his comment. Perceived attitudes form the basis for many relationships, no less than those between black and white populations then and to a lesser extent now. Automatically shunning an argument because it contains distasteful elements without examining the basis is what I mean by PC. I want to go around an idea from all sides, inside and out so that nuances are exposed that illuminate.
Lyle
>
> Gregg
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Lyle E. Browning
> Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 6:57 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention Of The Civil War
>
> Mr. Southmayd has an "interesting" mode of expression and although provocative, it bears looking at more closely. Is there a kernel of truth or more than a kernel but a good percentage of truth in his statement? Managing property that didn't want to be property has long been a bone of contention. The photo of that one slave who had a terribly scarred back is always trotted out as an example of the worst behavior by the ownership side. There's always going to be a "Coolhand Luke" who will go that route despite the physical and mental pain just because.....
>
> Passive-aggressive behavior is what folks who have no power take up to "stick it to the man". I don't think there's any serious disagreement with that statement. And from personal observation, that sort of thing was the norm until the "Mexican Invasion" whereby the little buggers worked their backsides off and displaced the folks who had previously done that kind of labor. What I saw was that for the first time, there was active competition, leading to the definite up-tick in pace and response to where the passive-aggressive lessened to the point it was about invisible. I just mention that as an observation, not a judgment.
>
> Mr. Southmayd has identified the sale of northern Southern slaves southward to where manual labor was still needed. If I could somehow correlate that with the sales of McCormick reapers and similar equipment, I'd be a happy camper. My degree is in history, not economics, but I see the economic side of the equation as the 800lb gorilla in the corner of the room. Are there studies to show that the cost of human maintenance versus farm equipment purchase pays off on the human side? If one looks at areas where there were small farms in the greater Mississippi Valley west to the Great Plains and north to Canada, it is these folks who never owned slaves who are buying into mechanization. At least, that's what I think I am seeing from the limited info I have yet been able to accumulate.
>
> Let's not go all PC on Mr. Southmayd and throw out the baby with the bathwater, please. We are all mature enough to withstand a bit of silliness, surely. Gregg Kimball can draw that line as he so ably has in the past.
>
> Lyle Browning
>
>
> On May 8, 2012, at 4:48 PM, EV Pace wrote:
>
>> "accounts of how lazy and shiftless many were" what is your source for your declarations? Source or not your racist leanings are in plain view.
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Jeff Southmayd <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Tue, 08 May 2012 18:41:12 -0000 (UTC)
>> Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention Of The Civil War
>>
>> I would think based on accounts of how expensive slaves were to purchase and provide for, and accounts of how lazy and shiftless many were, Southerners would be pleased to substitute technology for the problems and expense involved in keeping slaves in their work force. With a ready market like Brazil for the sale of their slaves, they would have an out to recoup what they had into their slaves. While there may not have been a widespread movement for emancipation in the South, there was a widespread discussion on what to do with the burgeoning slave population which was becoming more and more problematic, to the extent that the northern Southern states were moving away from slavery and selling them to the deep Southern states.
>>
>> SOUTHMAYD & MILLER4 OCEAN RIDGE BOULEVARD SOUTH
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>> 386.445.9156
>> 888.557.3686 FAX
>>
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>>> Date: Tue, 8 May 2012 10:44:50 -0700
>>> From: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention Of The Civil War
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>>
>>> much different set of facts. Indian removal involved about 30,000 persons, overland, over a period of time. Many self-removed before the infamous forced removals. Plus they provided their own transport.
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>> From: "Kimball, Gregg (LVA)"
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Sent: Tuesday, May 8, 2012 1:24 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention Of The Civil War
>>>
>>> Where did the United States find the money to remove Native Americans to the West? As Bill Freehling has pointed out, it at least demonstrates that the national government had the political will to execute a removal program given the right incentives. I freely admit that there were many differences in the two circumstances, but it gave a certain veneer of plausibility to colonization.
>>>
>>> Gregg Kimball
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Finkelman, Paul
>>> Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 1:05 PM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention Of The Civil War
>>>
>>> Hard to imagine where would have found the ships and money for a mass exodus to Liberia.
>>>
>>> ========================================
>>>
>>> Paul Finkelman
>>> President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law
>>> Albany Law School
>>> 80 New Scotland Avenue
>>> Albany, NY 12208
>>>
>>> 518-445-3386 (p)
>>> 518-445-3363 (f)
>>>
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> www.paulfinkelman.com
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Kilby
>>> Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 12:34 PM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention Of The Civil War
>>>
>>> I wrote that, and it was in connection Lincoln's initial plan to send freed slaves to Liberia. I clearly stated that that was veering off topic of this thread. Lincoln abandoned that plan due to vocal opposition from the black community.
>>>
>>> That sentence was part of a larger "conjecture" of how slavery would have ended had the South won, whenever it ended, if it would ever end (and it surely would.)
>>>
>>> Craig Kilby
>>>
>>> On May 7, 2012, at 11:53 PM, Finkelman, Paul wrote:
>>>
>>>> One post suggested that "hundreds of thousands of blacks" might have gone to Liberia? On what boats? How many ships were around to move them? Who would pay for it?
>>>
>>>
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