Maggie Bradley
Professor McKinney
Slavery in the United States
November 12, 2014
Extreme Dependence
As time passed, slavery continued to be the most pervasive establishment in the United States. Although people began questioning if slavery should be abolished, the institution never displayed signs of natural cessation. By the 1800’s, slavery had been woven into the very fabric of America. The South seemed to be particularly rooted in the practice of slavery. In creating widespread white reliance on the transformative powers of slavery, the institution produced lasting impacts for both the Antebellum South and the entire nation.
The possibility of economic transformation proved to be a truly compelling interest for buying a slave. While there were numerous reasons to invest in a slave, men “were buying slaves to clear and till the fields, to plant and harvest the crops”. At its core, slavery was an economic institution. Farmers bought slaves in order to increase production and obtain wealth. More bodies for labor meant more money could be earned. White Southerners had a “dream of a never-ending cycle of purchase and profits”. Although most men knew they could not achieve the dream immediately, it was still lurking in their minds as a goal to reach one day. Without the hope of acquiring a greater income, most men would not consider wasting their money on a slave. Essentially, the original potential for greater wealth acted as the gateway for all other transformations.
Perhaps the most alluring motivation for becoming a slaveholder was the social metamorphosis brought about by the change in economic status. Slavery played a large role in determining status due to one’s position often being dependent upon wealth and influence. Because slavery seemed to result in such prestige, men were always hoping to someday own a slave. White Southerners saw “buying a slave as a way of coming into their own in a society in which they were otherwise excluded”. Thus, slave ownership provided masters with access to more than the manual labor of a slave, it provided them with power and esteem in society. In one simple act, men could “[buy] their way into full participation in the political economy… and white masculinity”. In owning another person, one instantaneously garnered the respect of the dominant master class. During this time period, when “appearances and reputation mattered above all else,” this immediate effect of purchasing another person was too tempting to turn down.
Men may have experienced the greatest transformation from slaveholding, but women also significantly benefitted from the practice. A woman’s status was decided by her daily activities. If a lady was working in the fields alongside her husband and a few slaves, she lacked the wealth that would result in her relaxation and refinement. Higher class women lived a life of “leisure and gentility… [that was] produced by slaves”. Only when a white woman’s husband procured enough slaves to relieve the wife of any kind of physical labor, was the woman considered to be of the elite, master class. The desire, then, for more slaves became unquenchable because “more slaves provided access to ever more rarified possibilities of feminine delicacy for the white women”. Mistresses constantly wanted more slaves to take care of domestic chores and leave her to practice more sophisticated hobbies. Ultimately the possession of slaves could escalate both men and women’s rank in society.
Thinking that increased wealth and respect inevitably followed slavery, white Southerners characterized the institution as an ideal way to attain happiness. Many nonslaveholders throughly believed that if they could just save enough money to buy a slave, they would automatically gain a sense of satisfaction. Johnson states that “the possibility that they might one day own slaves was one of the things that kept nonslaveholders loyal to the slaveholders’ democracy”. People assumed that their idealized version of slavery was real and that they would be blissfully happy with their laborers. White men placed a lot of hope in the institution to positively transform their lives. When men did become slaveholders, they quickly realized that their idealized version of slavery was utterly false. This disappointment results from the whites’ misguided theory “that other people existed to satisfy their desires”.
Whites’ dependence on the slaves for successful transformations seems to be an apparent contradiction. Southerners completely relied on their slaves to submit to their wishes. Slaves, however, were in fact human beings. They had the ability to act in defiance of their masters’ orders. Therefore, slaveowners “daily gambled their own fantasies of freedom on the behavior of people whom they could never fully commodify”. With any acts of resistance, a slave could instantly diminish their positive transformative effects on the master. Consequently, the lasting effects of transformation were in a tenuous position due to “the intimacy of [masters’] dependence upon their slaves”. Because “slaves were at the same time both objects and subjects, human property held for the purpose of enriching the masters and individuals with lives of their own,” it became harder and harder for white men to reap the benefits of slavery. Nevertheless, the possible transformations provided by the institution still proved to be too appealing for slaveholders to pass up.
Peter Kolchin makes the argument that the Antebellum South’s “most important relationship was that between master and slave”. The whole Southern region of the country was so devoted to slavery and its envisioned benefits that “few areas of life there escaped the touch of the peculiar institution”. Unable to cope with the idea of losing the foundation of their society, Southerners became evermore committed to slavery. Their complete reliance on slavery and its transformative effects caused the people of the South to cling to institution even to the point of secession. Ultimately, this extreme dependence affected the entire nation by leading to the largest internal conflict in American history.
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