In "The End of Racism" (1995), Dinesh D'Souza extracted what he wanted to
extract from the documents and advanced a notion similar to "slavery in fact
was not all that dehumanizing or cruel."  Indeed, D'Souza painted a portrait
of slavery that was so benign I found myself asking, "Why don't we bring it
back?"  

Before coming to conclusions from the slave narratives, one must weigh
statements of ex-slaves such as these two:

"Lots of old slaves closes the door before they tell the truth about their
days of slavery. When the door is open, they tell how kind their masters was
and how rosy it all was." (Paul Escott, "Slavery Remembered," p. 8.)  

Another ex-slave, interviewed in Petersburg by a black interviewer, said he
was still afraid to tell the truth about what he had seen, and he was
speaking in 1937.  "Lord chile, ef ya start me I kin tell ya a mess 'bout
reb times, but I ain't tellin' white folks nuthin' 'cause I'm skeer'd to
make enemies."  (Narrative of Rev. Ishrael Massie, Perdue, "Weevils in the
Wheat," p. 205.)

Yes, many ex-slaves spoke favorably of their former masters, and I believe
them--sometimes.  Mainly I take this as evidence not of the universal
kindness of masters and the benign nature of slavery, but of the nobility of
the African-American people, whose history since Emancipation has
consistently been one of forgiveness. 

In 1990 I began work on my book "The Hairstons: An American Family in Black
and White" because I was struck by the cordial relations I saw between black
and white Hairstons which seemed to indicate that, in that extended family,
slavery and its aftermath had not been so bad at all.  That's the story I
set out to tell--but little did I know then of the southerner's (both black
and white) capacity to put on a good front for outsiders such as myself. 
Once I got into the documents and deeply into the interviews, all my
assumptions were shattered.  

Henry Wiencek
Charlottesville

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html