Jim--
Thank you so much for reminding me of the Ann Lane book, the existence of which I had managed to forget completely. My own reading of the historiography seems to agree with yours--that much of the best scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s amounts to a rejection, or at least serious qualification, of the Elkins thesis. Elkin's argument was so stark and total, however, that to my reading of it some qualification was almost certain. The more basic issue strikes me as still very much open for analysis.
It seems to me to be axiomatic that *all* human institutions exert some degree of influence on the character of the people who comprise them. Some institutions are considerably more coercive than others, and some go about reshaping character more overtly than others. Think, for example, of the experience of the Marine Corps, which I would imagine we can all agree does a pretty good job of fashioning a certain character type. So at the broadest level of generalization, I find it plausible that the experience of slavery shaped the character (habits, dispositions, inclinations, mode of thought, values, etc.) of the people subject to it. Just how far that takes us is not all that evident. (I guess thinking this way betrays a certain Weberian influence!)
As scholars, we seem to be more comfortable analyzing the influence of the institution on the oppressor rather than on the oppressed. That slavery deformed the character of the slaver-owner is of course an old idea--we find it in the thought of William Byrd II, Thomas Jefferson, and George Mason, for example, or in a slightly different way, that of the Grimke sisters. Drew Gilpen Faust's biography of James Henry Hammond, and Rhys Isaac's of Landon Carter, are two terrific modern scholarly works that have followed up the same broad insight.
All best wishes,
Kevin
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Kevin R. Hardwick
Associate Professor
Department of History, MSC 8001
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807
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From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of [log in to unmask] [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 8:56 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention Of The Civil War
Kevin,
There was of course the book of essays edited by Ann Lane in 1971,_The Debate Over Slavery: Stanley Elkins and His Critics_. Elkins in many respects sparked much of the work on slavery in the late 1960s and 1970s such as that by John Blassingame, Eugene Genovese, Herbert Gutman, and many others. The point was that the slave community and its various institutions shielded black personality from the corrosive effects of the slave system. That has been much debated to this day. The work of Peter Kolchin for example serves as a good guide to the debate and scholarship.
Jim Hershman
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