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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