They were obviously household servants and had to present a decent appearance. What did he expect? That they'd be dressed in rags and bound in chains?
General Lee was famous for treating his slaves like valued employees or even quasi-family. It isn’t polite to say so, but a lot of them, especially in the upper South, lived far better than factory workers in the North including better food, living arrangements, time off, old age care and the like.
Of course, people ought not to be a "commodity", but the point is that slaveowners had to care about the welfare of their slaves. In the industrial northeast, the factory workers cared far less about their workers -- after all: immigrant labor was arriving every day from Europe, so industrial workers were easily replaced. Unlike slaves.
Do the girls look like da’ General?
The pic of the slave women on the Fox News site is a stereoscope picture. Which means it was mass produced at some point in time.
BTW...Those images side-by-side are actually a stereopraph, to be viewed in 3-D in a stereopticon.
If the yankees hadn't burned so much, maybe more would have survived.
Her skirt is beautiful - I love the buttons down the front. I wonder if it’s her Sunday best? She looks like a formidable lady! Kept the General and his daughters in line, I’ll bet - just like Mammy in GWTW.
I don’t believe Lee owned the slaves. I believe they belonged to his wife although I get mixed up on this fact.
Robert E. Lee was a great American.
I don’t have all that many ancestors who held slaves, only three who had more than one. In two instances, they lived in the exact sort of building, a German double pen chestnut log structure, that the white people did. Of course that was just the multipurpose structure that they built, their livestock lived in one as well, just as surely as they did. Life in the backcountry on the Carolina wilderness frontier was like that. Practical and gritty, seldom even remotely glamorous.
The owners and family worked alongside the slaves. Their lives were no more grueling than that of their owners. There were several different legal statuses for people in the colonial era, from freeman to bound servant (indentured adult or apprenticed child, usually orphaned) to slave. Slaves could buy their way out of it and some did.
It’s not quite as awful as it’s generally depicted, but it’s not a status that I’d ever want for myself. There were atrocities, these occurred on the huge plantations. Even they didn’t go about damaging or destroying their slave labor randomly out of spite or imputed racism, it was due to disobedience, they were “made an example of” to deter running away, etc. among the hundreds of others.
I don’t advocate it and I don’t want a return to it, but an unvarnished, unpoliticized honesty in discussing the history is long overdue.
When taking a family portrait photo, I would imagine they would dress well for the occasion.
So it hasn't been authenticated yet.
A stereo opticon picture! The two images side by side overlap...see the hem of the dress in the lower left hand corner on the left and how the corner of the hem disappears in the right image. This was early 3d. you can also use the ‘crossed eyed’ method of viewing the two photos together by staring at the exact center(you may need to enlarge the photos together on you monitor) crossing then letting you eyes slowly uncross thus revealing a three d image composite of the two photos.
The great slavers, then and now, are muslims.
I love how Free Republic threads on the slave issue are all the same.
“It wasn’t THAT bad.”
I doubt ANYONE would choose to be a slave today. Although, many working today are either slaves to their employer or slaves to their government. Or both.
I know that I worked a summer in a CT tobacco field. We worked in that field in the manner that those in the 1840’s worked.
There was almost no automation, except for the planting process. The “bins” under the shade just did not allow for it, and the plants were to delicate to run through machines. This was leaf tobacco, the kind used for CT wrappers. Each wrapper was worth big bucks. You wreck leaves with automation.
It was hot, dirty, back breaking, low wage work.
Because I started working after schools during planting season, I was the only white kid in the field most of the day. They would bring up about twenty or so black men from Alabama to help. THEY were the great grandchildren of slaves. Real slaves.
They were some of the hardest working people I have ever worked with. I learned what being the only one of your race in a work group felt like. I came to be friends with them and admire their work ethics.
I cannot imagine that working in a shade tobacco field in August (easily 110 degrees) is different than working cotton in Mississippi.
Doing that without pay, six or seven days a week? If you haven’t done that kind of work, you have no right to say “It wasn’t THAT bad.”
I understand all of the automation arguments. I understand all of the “it was expensive and fading out” arguments.
But, I know I would not do it for free. Nor would many Freepers. Not if they had a choice.
THAT. The choice. That is the difference. That is why it WAS THAT bad.
It listed his property as a mule, 2 slaves and a wooden clock. It didn't mention his land grant from Mexico or the log house he built.
I wonder who inherited the wooden clock?
http://b-womeninamericanhistory19.blogspot.com/2009/05/19th-century-photo-archives-african.html