It almost goes without saying that the entire New World, the Western
Hemisphere was opened to the enslavement of Africans and Native Americans
when they could be caught during the initial period of European expansion
west. But it might be important to hold in mind Ira Berlin's sharp
distinction between "societies with slaves" and "slave societies." To take
the onus off the South in the US, lets think of the island of Hispaniola.
In the western third of the island a real slave society was generated
chiefly by French investment. San Domingue (soon to be Haiti) had an
overwhelming black majority, gang labor produced sugar cane, high barriers
of racial caste, and ultimately a massive slave uprising that destroyed the
plantation system. The eastern two thirds of the island, Santo Domingo
(soon to be the Dominican Republic) seems never to have sustained a complete
plantation economy. Quickly some enslaved Africans gained their freedom,
intermarried (and interbred) with Spaniards, Indians, and mestizos. Slavery
remained an institution but a diversified peasant economy of staple
production, cattle, chicken, and hog raising, with perhaps some sugar cane
and tobacco for the market. There were and are of course color differences
among Dominicans but the entire thoroughly mixed population is described as
"la Raza Dominicana." Haiti was a slave society; the Dominican Republic
was a society with slaves.
I think kindly, principled acts of manumission might lead to the gradual
elimination of the slave status in a society with slaves. I am skeptical
that such acts in a slave society would produce the same results. And
Virginia, where Carter and others manumitted their slaves in the late-18th
and early-19th centuries, was a slave society. I understand that the case
of Virginia is nuanced and that Virginia split, essentially along east-west
lines over slavery (hence, West Virginia.) But from tobacco to diversified
farming outside the western valleys to mining and iron working to manning
the river boats and the wagons on the great roads to domestic service and
the under recognized panoply of skills called housewifery, Virginia's
economy was dependent on slave labor.
I do acknowledge the Revolutionary era passion for liberty and equality but
I should also point out that the market for burleigh tobacco was failing
after the Treaty of Paris, which also led some planters in the upper South
to consider getting out of the slaveholding business. The cotton gin and
the subsequent cotton boom changed all that. Much of America's wealth
directly derived from slave labor. New York got rich as the factor for
southern cotton. The Canadian provinces which were barely societies with
slaves, easily obeyed the British mandate for emancipation. The US, self
governing after a fashion, split into bloody civil war on the hint and the
majority of northerners might abolish the labor regime at some point in the
near future.
Harold S. Forsythe
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mary Moyars-Johnson" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 3:47 PM
Subject: Re: Andrew Levy's FIRST EMANCIPATOR
> And no one on the list has mentioned the slaves - red and black - the
> French had in the Ohio and Mississippi Valley area - part of which
> was considered Canada and part Louisiana during the French regime.
>
>
> Mary Moyars-Johnson (MMJ)
>
>
>
>
> On Oct 31, 2006, at 3:04 PM, Anita L. Henderson wrote:
>
>> Dear Joan:
>>
>> I would also like to expand on your observation that slavery
>> involved the entire 13 colonies (anybody remember a slave graveyard
>> in NYC)??? Slavery involved not just the 13 colonies but Canada as
>> well. All of North America was involved in the slave trade albeit,
>> the Canadian provinces gave it up after England outlawed it and
>> again because it wasn't as profitable in Canada and also the
>> northern colonies as it was in the American South. This
>> difference in profitability gets a huge boost with the invention of
>> the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in the late 18th century. Prior to
>> that, there were quite a few prominent slaveholders who emancipated
>> their slaves in the spirit of that new national idea of "all men
>> are created equal" that created personal internal discord with the
>> realities of a slave society and the hypocrisy therein.
>>
>> Anita L. Henderson
>> Woodbine, MD
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 10:44 AM
>> Subject: Re: Andrew Levy's FIRST EMANCIPATOR
>>
>>
>> Since the discussion has once again turned to slavery and
>> emancipation in the
>> USA, I have a question for those resident scholars who are
>> conversant with the
>> published and unpublished documents on the subject:
>>
>> Has anyone read _Slave Nation How Slavery United the Colonies &
>> Sparked the
>> American Revolution_? What are your comments on this book by
>> Alfred W.
>> Blumrosen & Ruth G. Blumrosen?
>>
>> As to the "evil" at the core of Virginia--- I would respond that
>> slavery was the
>> entire nation's problem-burden-moral morass, not just Virginia's or
>> the South's.
>> Too little focus is given to the motivations and 'enabling'
>> activities-behaviors
>> of Northern colonies-states in maintaining the peculiar institution.
>>
>> Maybe I did not learn the names of large scale Southern
>> emancipators in school,
>> but I was taught that there was controversy over slavery in the
>> discussion and
>> writing and passing of the Declaration and the Constitution, that
>> the country
>> would most likely not have become 'united' without the legality of
>> slavery in
>> the Constitution, that there were emancipations by slave-owners
>> through the
>> years, that many non-slave owners because of their beliefs moved
>> west or
>> northwest to leave the slave-holding areas, and that a balance of
>> power between
>> regions was necessary to hold our government intact.
>>
>> I look forward to your comments.
>>
>> Joan Logan Brooks
>> a Southside Virginian through 11 proven generations
>>
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>> ______________________________________________________________________
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