I was thinking the same thing, how beneficial these discussions have  
been about white/ black/ native relations and situations, and how  
extremely complex they are, once you scratch the surface. So much we  
don't know about the other; so much we think we do know! I feel we've  
learned a lot and cleared away some old misconceptions, or at least  
agreed to disagree, something that, sadly, will never happen in the  
larger culture, driven by the media as it is and the sound bites and  
snappy headlines; no one will ever bother to look at the deeper  
issues, the bigger picture, and come to any greater understanding. We  
will continue to bicker, misunderstand and misjudge, as we have for  
so long.

Nancy

-------
I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.

--Daniel Boone



On Mar 3, 2007, at 12:52 PM, Jurretta Heckscher wrote:

> Bravo, Kevin.  May I say that this discussion has been impressive  
> and heartening both for the humane erudition and for the respectful  
> pedagogy it has elicited from so many on this list, professional  
> historians and informed non-professionals alike.  We have had the  
> equivalent of a graduate seminar in historiography co-led by a  
> particularly wise and skilled group of professors.  I've been too  
> busy to participate much, but every time I began to think I just  
> had to add something, I'd see that someone else had said it  
> already, and far better than I could have.
>
> The first and perhaps most important lesson I learned from my own  
> mentor in the scholarship of slavery, James O. Horton, was never to  
> forget or underestimate slavery's enormous human complexity.   It's  
> a lesson I hope we've all had reinforced on this thread.
>
> As I head out of town for several days, let me add just one more  
> filament of evidence.  It comes from the autobiography of Mary A.  
> Livermore, a New England woman who lived for several years in the  
> late 1840s on a wealthy Mecklenburg County, Va., plantation as a  
> teacher for the plantation owner's children (and later  
> distinguished herself as a journalist, suffragist, and lecturer).   
> She genuinely liked the family who employed her, and believed on  
> the basis of close observation that they generally treated their  
> slaves well.   She noted their contempt for professional slave- 
> traders.  She formed friendships with both the slaveholding family  
> and some of their slaves.
>
> But as the following passage shows, she also came to understand  
> just how complex and terrible was slavery's reality, even on a  
> plantation with a "good" master where some of the slaves seemed to  
> have adopted his attitudes unquestioningly.
>
> In this passage drawn from detailed letters she wrote her family at  
> the time, Livermore remembers a conversation with one such  
> individual, "Aunt Aggy" (whose dialect she recreates through  
> regrettable nineteenth-century stereotypes), in which they  
> discussed another slave woman, Mary Harris:
>
>
> "'You 'member Mary Harris's baby dat was so sick, dat I tol' Missus  
> 'bout?  Well, dat pickaninny's dun dead. I 'spected 't would die  
> w'en its mammy went off, fo' 'twas a sickly chile.'
>
> 'Went off!  Why, where has Mary Harris gone!' I inquired.
>
> 'Bress youah soul, honey!  Didn't you know Mas'r James sold Mary  
> Harris to de trader dat Missus wouldn't eat with?  He wouldn't buy  
> de chile, an' o' course Mas'r James wouldn't gib it t'm for  
> nuffin', an' so 'twas leff; an' it's dead now.'
>
> My heart stood still for a moment, and I could neither see nor hear.
>
> 'Why was Mary Harris sold, Aunt Aggy?'
>
> 'Oh, she was a triflin', no 'count niggah, makin' a fuss  
> eberywhar.  She wouldn't nebber stay wi' no husband long, but was  
> allers gittin' some o' de oder women's husban's away; an' den dere  
> was a fight 'mong de folks, an' dere heads got broke, an' de work  
> was put back.  Mas'r James gib her plenty warnin's, but she nebber  
> larnt no sense.'
>
> 'Did she feel badly about leaving her baby?'
>
> 'Oh, Miss, she jess took on orful.  'Pears like she cared mo' for  
> dis yere sick baby dan fo' all her oder chillun, an' any husban'.   
> I t'inks she wouldn't a made a fuss if dey'd jess 'lowed her t'  
> take dat ar poor pickaninny 'long; but she screeched an' screeched,  
> when she larnt dat de baby was t' be leff, till dat trader had t'  
> gag her, or she'd a waked up all de folks wid her screeches.'
>
> 'Oh, Aggy, Aggy!  What dreadful things are done on this plantation!'
>
> 'Dey had heaps o' warnin's from Mas'r James, an dey'd orter 'haved  
> better.'"
>
> (Mary A. Livermore, The Story of My Life; or, The Sunshine and  
> Shadow of Seventy Years [Hartford, Conn., 1899; rpt. New York: Arno  
> Press, 1974], p. 329.)
>
>
> In the manuscript archives of the Virginia Historical Society,  
> there is a memoir by a Virginia woman born in 1865  who records the  
> abiding affection with which her mother spoke of the slave woman  
> who had been her own surrogate mother.  Clearly, "Old Aunt Effie"  
> cared devotedly for the white children in her charge.  But as the  
> writer notes without comment, all of Effie's own children "were in  
> the cotton fields in Mississippi, and there was not much hope of  
> their ever coming back."  (Marion Knox [Goode] Briscoe, Memoir,  
> "Ashes of Roses" [typescript], VHS, 1:54).
>
> Of such hideous complexities was American slavery made.
>
> --Jurretta Heckscher
>
>
> On Mar 3, 2007, at 11:11 AM, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>> Basil--
>>
>> I am not suggesting that slavery is wrong because "everyone
>> knows it wrong."  Nor am I suggesting that slavery is wrong
>> only by "today's standards."
>>
>> Rather, I am suggesting that slavery is wrong because it
>> violates the most fundamental values on which our country
>> was founded.  The founders recognized this at the time, but
>> believed that slavery was a "necessary evil."  Thinkers like
>> John C. Calhoun, and in Virginia Thornton Stringfellow,
>> transformed the argument in the 1830s to argue that slavery
>> was a "positive good."  The "positive good" argument was
>> explicitly racist and self-serving.  It was also an
>> important source of southern paternalism.
>>
>> The existence of slavery elsewhere in the world is
>> irrelevant to the argument I am advancing.  Likewise, the
>> fact that the slaves who wound up in America were captured
>> and sold into slavery by other African peoples is
>> irrelevant.  What matters is that our nation is founded on a
>> set of ideals, and that slavery violated those ideals.
>>
>> Our nation is not held together by bonds of religion,
>> ethnicity, or tribalism.  What holds us together as a people
>> is our commitment to the values and aspirations established
>> in the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of
>> Confederation, the North West Ordinances, and the
>> Constitution of the United States.  If you open the volumes
>> of the US Code, you will find these four documents preceding
>> the law, under the heading "Organic Laws of the United
>> States of America."  Slavery is evil because it contradicts
>> the values of our founding.
>>
>> To say this is not to say that slavery is wrong for other
>> reasons.  Slavery is an abomination for a host of reasons.
>> But it is to say that anyone who is committed to the
>> fundamental values of the United States is, and was, deeply
>> wrong to condone or apologize for slavery.
>>
>> All best,
>> Kevin
>
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