Posted on 04/08/2015 8:17:16 AM PDT by cripplecreek
Last night I stumbled across a collections of interviews conducted in the 1930s with blacks who had been born into slavery. They're kind of hard to read since they're written as the words were spoken with a heavy southern black accent.
Most interesting to me is the lack of anger from these former slaves. In fact, some spoke quite fondly of their former owners. At worst, they spoke with indifference of their former owners.
None of this matches the rage filled narrative of today with the endless claims of payment due.
Kate Dudley Baumont is only one example.
She speaks of her owner (Mr Preston) giving the slave children a nickle and the adults considerably more to spend as they wished. Mr Preston also gave adult slaves a legal deed to 8 acres of land for them to use as they wished.
I haven't had time to read through them all but there are plenty of interesting stories. Things like the slaves being given money so they could go to the county fairs or see plays. In others there are mentions of slaves who lived off the plantation with free spouses.
Simon Lagree was a fictional character.
Were slaves mistreated? Sure, some were. But they were the exception, not the rule.
Forgiveness comes with age. I have seen the similar trend of freed prisoners, who were exonerated after many years; having no anger or ill will toward the prison, guards, and judicial system.
“Were slaves mistreated? Sure, some were. But they were the exception, not the rule.”
___________
Slavery is mistreatment. The most heinous mistreatment possible is taking one’s freedom. Even if you put them up in a mansion, and clothe them in silk, anyone who is a slave is abused.
Talking about well treated slaves is like a date-rapist pointing out that he bought her a nice dinner first.
It doesn’t fit their narrative. Slavery is wrong period. However you can find writings of the time where the slaves were treated as well or better than owner family members. Attended church with the owner, children were schooled, and many came and went as desired. They did not mis-use their “property”.
Say a homeless guy pulls a gun on you, takes half your money and says “that’s enough for you”. Then you see him spend it all on sneakers and booze and one day he asks you for more.
Would you ever willingly help him? No, you’d hide every penny from now on and not give anyone a dime. That’s how rich people feel after paying taxes and seeing them wasted
interesting
In one story is the complaint that the slaves never had enough to eat but goes on to say that there were stories about plantations where slaves were treated much worse but none of these telling the stories seem to have experienced it themselves.
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress and includes more than 200 photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division that are now made available to the public for the first time. Born in Slavery was made possible by a major gift from the Citigroup Foundation.
Well, slaves were expensive property, much like cars of today, so why mistreat them, if so doing diminished their value or usefulness.
I wouldn't put too much stock in that. Unless it was something really horrific, folks tend to remember the good times and forget the bad.
A second point to consider is that many of those former slaves just didn't understand the situation they were once in. They took as reasonable something that most assuredly was not.
True. Also, these interviews were conducted in 1937-38, 72+ years after the Civil War ended. Any former slaves who were still alive then would likely have been very young at the time they were freed (young enough that many may not have even understood their situation at the time).
Tell me why did New York insurance companies, all still in business even today, offer life insurance for slaves? Couldn’t an owner just work their slaves to death then collect the insurance? Why didn’t that happen?
Fascinating. One thing to keep in mind is this is Ohio, these were folks treated well enough or were just healthy enouh, to live so long or were so young they didn’t comprehend what folks in their 20s understood, and also, a possibility, these had kinder Owners, being the northern peer environment, around large enough towns with a theater versus mississippi, and they have had 60-70 years to think back and forgive or harken more fondly, forgetting the harsh.....but that would explain your point!
But you know, I might be more ticked at WASPs over my dad’s treatment as an officer in WW2 than my dad did....maybe in ignorance, time, reflection, forgiveness. But then, I can let it go as I forget so easily, not having experienced it first hand, only in tale.
I would love to learn more of slave history. It would also be interesting to learn of the decendents experiences today in how they see things differently, like the very same experience through my and their eyes. I can be quite harsh of complaints in my shoes. White privalege seems to be more black hangups or female hangups when they start saying male privalege. It’s really all just American Freedom, liberty, ignoring, disregarding speed bumps or seeing them ad but hockey checks and football deflections, attempted tackles. But we learn by the opportunity to walk in other shoes.
While studying The First Census of Texas 1835, I found my ancestors. It said their belongings consisted of..... One mule, one slave and one wooden clock. I doubt that the slave lived a much more difficult life than my ancestors did, it was tough for all back then.
Slavery was and is wrong but in case you are wondering, I inherited nothing from these people, not even the wooden clock
The most brutal to African slaves were muslims but it wouldn’t be politically correct to point that out.
The muslims were absolutely brutal to their slaves. I’ve read that almost 80% - 90% died marching across the desert to where they were going to be slaves.
“Slavery is mistreatment. The most heinous mistreatment possible is taking one’s freedom. Even if you put them up in a mansion, and clothe them in silk, anyone who is a slave is abused.”
What about forcing everyone on the planet to live under a rigged monetary system for basic food and shelter?
Consider also that people who were there — including the slaves — had a better understanding of the underlying challenges the slave owners were dealing with. It’s pretty clear a lot of slave owners would have been happy to free their slaves by the time of the Civil War, because so many states had been passing laws that made freeing slaves more and more difficult!
Which goes back to the beginning of the country, really. George Washington couldn’t free most of his slaves because of the way the laws were written. And it was not entirely a myth that slave owners felt an obligation to care for their slaves, and some slave owners either hated slavery or tried to follow Biblical slave laws (meaning slaves could own property and earn money and were considered equal human beings in a temporarily subordinate role, etc.). No slave ever liked slavery, but the relationship could make the legalities of the situation less important.
It just seems to me that slavery then and now are surprisingly similar.
Slaves weren’t held by fences or guns, they were held by a sense of security, ignorance of the far horizons, they were fed and clothed. I once read that runaway slave hunters were far more effective at intimidating slaves on the plantations than actually capturing escaped slaves.
Today they have the security of the democrat party, EBT, cards and welfare. Any black person audacious enough to flee the democrat plantation gets a very public flogging from the left.
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