This question of the "good" or "moral" slaveowner is a familiar one to 
those of us who teach the history of slavery. To condemn the institution 
and all owners as immoral is a perfect example of "presentism"--i.e., 
imposing our own values and beliefs on the past, or, more specifically, 
judging one group or another for its failure to think and act as we 
suppose we would have in their place.

Before explaining why this leads to bad history, I want to make it clear 
that  we always define or judge our own values and beliefs with 
reference to "benchmarks" in the past. There is, after all, nothing else 
to use as a standard than that which has already happened. So, using the 
past to arrive at judgments about ourselves is perfectly appropriate. 
But reversing the procedure--judging the past by the standards of the 
present--is not. It is rather like trying to speak to the past from the 
present: we won't be heard and nothing will change.

If this quick portrait of presentism does not seem clear enough, 
consider another: what would we think about historians 100 or 200 years 
from now lambasting capitalism and all employers as immoral because they 
exploit workers, degrade work, and so forth? By the enlightened 
standards of 2100 or 2200, capitalism may well seem crude, even evil. 
Does that mean that our historians of the future would be correct in 
judging the institution and its leading "players" (capitalists) using 
their  standards, not ours today? We would probably think the argument 
is wrong-headed. Well, we might reply, some capitalists or employers are 
real bastards, others are pretty enlightened, at least by today's 
standards. Not all work is equally degrading in our capitalist economy, 
Sure, some people oppose the institution even now, but like the 
abolitionists of the 19th century, the anti-capitalists of today are a 
minority.

Back to our historical issue: We would want to give slaveowners of the 
19th century the same open-minded examination that we know our 
21st-century capitalists deserve. Sizing up each group, we might 
conclude that in terms of personality and character, both slaveowners 
and capitalist employers run the gamut from the most evil and vicious to 
the most charitable and good. Human nature allows for (determines?) this 
sort of variation along a spectrum or in some multi-dimensional field of 
possibilities. One of the most interesting questions is how an 
"institution" (which, in the end, is just a collection of people and the 
ideas, values, and practices they have installed as norms) shapes and 
challenges the qualities of individuals inside it. Similar, albeit 
rephrased, questions should also be asked about slaves and wage workers 
under the two systems. It makes no more sense to describe all 
slaveowners as evil or immoral than it would to describe all slaves as 
morally upright or good.; ditto for employers and workers today.

The point of historical investigation is not to demonstrate the progress 
we have made since the "bad old days." It is, rather, to appreciate the 
"otherness" of people and their actions in the past, while acknowledging 
their humanity, and thus the diversity and complexity of the human 
condition in general.

Doug Deal
History/SUNY Oswego