Lyle-- I meant to reply earlier to say you hit on two very strong points.  Thank you.
--Joanne

"Lyle E. Browning" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Two things spring to mind here. A will is in essence a legal document  
and will have a language structure of its own, tending to be formal.  
Given that slaves were viewed as property, the logical expression  
generally would be dispositive, especially as most folks tend to  
follow the template in legal matters. Also, where a number of slaves  
were owned, household slaves were obviously more familiar than field  
slaves, leading again to a differentiation from more or less friendly  
to chillingly cool terms.

The other issue is that we view that era through the filter of Jim  
Crow, seeing African-Americans as essentially an unknown "other" set  
of folks (not in the TV program Lost "other" sense). The owner-slave  
dynamic was then much less separated than it was in Jim Crow. How  
might that affect perception and interpretation? And again, we are  
not dealing with monolithic blocks of people on either side but  
rather people with wide ranges of sensibilities crammed into the  
mores of the day.

Lyle Browning, RPA


       
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