Some historians, especially in the last 40 years or so, have focused on slave resistance and the "agency" of slaves. So, for example, we have wonderful literature on how slave communities across the South developed their own brand of Christianity, and and some became lay preachers. There are also scattered -- very scattered -- examples of slaves who managed to earn money on Sundays or on their own time, to purchase their freedom. Some succeeded. Many did not because of course at any time a slave owner could cancel the deal and simply take whatever the slave had earned. Under the law of VA (and every other slave state) an enslaved person owned "nothing" -- because the slave was the property of the owner and anything the slave owned belonged to the owner. Some slaves were taught skills -- carpenter, blacksmith, chef, boatman, etc. -- and became quite skilled. Did this help them if they were still able to work after 1863-65? Sure. But this was not the goal of the owners who trained them to be more valuable and more profitable.
]And most enslaved people -- perhaps 90+% -- were only taught to do manual agricultural work --growing cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar for the most part -- to enrich those who owned them. They were denied access to literacy and numeracy (although a few succeeded in gaining these skills on their own), owned nothing (not even the clothes on their backs) and were constantly in fear of being sold or seeing their partners and children and parents being sold. They were perpetually threatened with harsh punishments for any reason or no reason at all. They were always subject to sexual abuse by their owners, the children of their owners, overseers and any whites. Since no slave (or any other Black person) could ever testify against a White, it was legally impossible to prosecute (or even arrest) a White for sexually abusing a Black, slave or free.
The fact that some slaves learned skills or were taught skills shows the perseverance of those skilled slaves under the horrors of slavery itself. These histories illustrate the strength of the human spirit under awful conditions. But, they do not illustrate and value of the system itself.
A great example of the absurdity of the claims made in Florida is Jefferson's blacksmith, Joseph Fossett (a member of the Hemings family), who gained his freedom in 1826 when Jefferson died. Jefferson provided in his will that Fossett could keep all his blacksmith tools (which of course legally belonged to Jefferson) live in the cabin he was already living in with his "wife" who and children. Of course their marriage had no legal standing, and while manumitting Fossett, he did not manumit his wife and children who were sold to various purchasers. At the time Fossett was 46. https://www.monticello.org/slavery/paradox-of-liberty/enslaved-families-of-monticello/the-fossett-family/ He spent much of the rest of his life tracking down and buying his wife and some of his children out of slavery and the moving to Ohio.
Would Fossett's life had been better if at age 21 he could have made his own way in the world as a journeyman apprentice? Or was he better off as a slave, subject to the will -- and in 1826 literally "the will" -- of the man who owned him and who set up his estate so Fossett's family could be scattered across the Commonwealth as the slaves of varyous masters?
So did Fossett learn skills as a slave? Sure. Did it save his family from being sold at auction? No. Did it lead him to prosperity? No, because he spend most of his years as a free person trying to find and liberate his family from slavery. This would be as great story for Governor DeSantis to suggest for the Florida curriculum. My guess is that it will not happen.
------------------
PaulFinkelman
48 Thorndale Road
Slingerlands,NY 12159
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m)518-605-0296
On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 08:12:51 AM EDT, LyleBrowning <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
The “Bright Side” of slavery looks to me like a very narrowly focused argument that is probably true in detail but fails in the broad picture when applied to this side of the Atlantic. The means by which Africans were first put onto the path to slavery in the Americas is the narrow truth. Capture during war, capture during raids, absolute disregard for life, much less anything else, ripping apart families, etc, etc., those were the sunny side of life as espoused by the apologists. And by that very narrow sense, slavery in North America was thought better than what they would have faced in Africa. In the 13 colonies, the argument was that slaves had 3 squares a day, clothing, housing, and as long as they worked and stayed within the laws, they were better off than they would have been in Africa. And of course, not mentioning the other enormous moral transgressions of slavery. The small truth hides the greater lie. In the colonies, people could advance according to their means and abilities. That stopped at the door of slavery. People are capable of enormous rationalizations is all that needs to be said.
Lyle Browning, RPA
> On Aug 14, 2023, at 3:36 PM, Paul Heinegg <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I often read descriptions of slavery that include the words rape and whipping that one can easily recognize as horrible. But one less often hears about the fact that enslaved people were chattel property. Their relations with all members of society were that of another person's property. They were not John Smith or Mary Jones but rather John, the property of neighbor Frank Smith; and Mary, the property of neighbor James Jones. (And, of course, their "owners'" property rights overrode their family connections.) This is a fact that is not so easy to conceptualize but far worse than any beating. And that relationship with members of their society would not miraculously disappear upon the proclamation of Emancipation or amendments to the Constitution.
> Paul Heinegg
>
> On 8/13/2023 1:19 PM, T. GRAY wrote:
>> Yes….. Respectfully, I find it hard to believe that any learned individual could entertain the thought that enslaved persons found slavery having advantages.
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>> On Aug 9, 2023, at 12:19 PM, Crawford, Greg (LVA) <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> The short answer to your question is yes. The 11th-grade public school textbook, “Cavalier Commonwealth: History and Government of Virginia” taught that being enslaved had its advantages and proceeded to list what those advantages were and summed it up by saying "the slave enjoyed what we might call comprehensive social security."
>>>
>>> LVA posted a blog on this topic about the origins of how slavery was taught in 20th century Virginia history text books.
>>>
>>> https://uncommonwealth.virginiamemory.com/blog/2022/09/14/the-measuring-rod-for-southern-history/
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>>
>>>
>>> [https://www.lva.virginia.gov/img/signatures/200th-anniversary/200yearLVA.jpg]
>>>
>>> Greg Crawford
>>>
>>> State Archivist and Director of Government Records Services
>>>
>>> [https://www.lva.virginia.gov/img/signatures/200th-anniversary/phone_thumbnail.png] 804-692-3505
>>> [https://www.lva.virginia.gov/img/signatures/200th-anniversary/mail_thumbnail.png] [log in to unmask]
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>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>> From: Meyers, Terry L <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 9:54 AM
>>> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Subject: [VA-HIST] The "Bright Side" of Slavery?
>>>
>>> ChatGPT on the Florida controversy:
>>>
>>> https://chat.openai.com/share/455d6d14-43b7-48f2-9736-8e8f8b526909
>>>
>>> John Lesslie Hall, one of my predecessors at W&M, explored what he called “the bright side of slavery”(without even ChatGPT’s attempts at contextualizing):
>>>
>>> No agricultural laborer has ever had food so nutritious and so plentiful as the plantation negro. He had, as a rule, a kind and considerate master, self-interest and humanity combining to make his master feed him plentifully, clothe him comfortably, see that he was not overworked, and look after him in sickness. His working days were from two to four hours shorter than those of European laborers. (p. 131)
>>>
>>> from: Half-Hours in Southern History (1907):
>>>
>>> https://ia800207.us.archive.org/13/items/halfhoursinsouth01hall/halfhoursinsouth01hall.pdf
>>>
>>> Hall goes on to quote an English historian, Percy Greg, to the effect that “the Southern negro was the happiest agricultural labor in the world,” benefiting from "the vigilant supervision of Anglo-Saxon intelligence, methods, and science” (pp. 133,134).
>>>
>>> Were the history textbooks in Virginia schools this extreme?
>>>
>>> My recollection of the presentation of slavery in 7th grade in a Chicago suburb and then in high school (late 50’s, early 60s) in a Maryland suburb of D.C. is that it was perfunctory at best, with a dry focus on the triangular trade. In music class alone I got a vague sense of suffering as we learned and sang spirituals, but overall slavery didn’t figure much in the school lessons.
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Terry L. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, Emeritus, The College of William and Mary, in Virginia, Williamsburg 23187
>>>
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>>>
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>>>
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