Milan Billingsley
History of Slavery Discussion Paper
Professor McKinney
October/15/2014
Bedrock
of Society: Slaveholding and its Fundamental Importance to Social Hierarchy in
the Antebellum South
Within
the Antebellum South slaveholding played a fundamental role in determining the hierarchy
in society. That is because slavery was not only present, instead it influenced
every facet of society. In their books Soul
by Soul and American Slavery
1619-1877, Walter Johnson and Peter Kolchin manage to capture the
influences that the institution of slavery had on the lives and social
standings of whites. In their books they also show how paternalistic slave owners
were towards their property. For example slave owners would routinely meddle
with the lives of their slaves. They would dictate what food the slave in
question could consume and the treatment they could receive when sick, in other
words the slave master was constantly present and played an active role in the
slave’s life. The social consequences that this paternalism had on white
society in the Antebellum South are extensive, ranging from justifying slavery its
self, to determining the social status of families. Slaves in the south were
not simply property which worked for their masters, instead, slaves marked the
class hierarchy of southern culture.
Sometimes
it is difficult to understand the extent to which slaves were involved in Southern
society. Slaves were not simple farm equipment stationed in the field to plow,
plant and harvest. Instead, they were people who were forced participants, and the
foundation of, the unjust institution of slavery. This institution played an all-encompassing
role in political, economic, cultural, and religious life within the South.
Being so multifaceted, slavery in effect was the institution upon which
southern hierarchy was based. The market in slaves “held the promise that non slaveholders
could buy their way into the master class, and the possibility that they might
one day own slaves was one of the things that kept non slaveholders loyal to
the slaveholders’ democracy in which they lived” (Johnson 80). Slaves were
important investments made by slave-owners, investments so important that they
defined the owner.
Slaves
defined the owner because of their intrinsic value. The labor a slave could
provide could drastically change the conditions of the owner and the owner’s family.
The thought process would oftentimes be: “if only we could get another pair of
hands to work in the field” (McKinney). Having an extra pair of hands could
help dirt farmers climb up the Southern social ladder. With an extra slave “to
tend to gardening, drawing water, and chopping wood” women “would have been
able to spend more time inside; (their) skin would no longer be darkened by the
sun, (their) hands no longer roughened by the tools, (their) hair no longer
blown into knots by the wind” (Johnson 91). Those extra hands could be put to
work in the field so that your wife could work in the house, or so that a
larger cotton crop could be harvested. As the conduit up the social ladder,
slaves could transform white farm laborers into established gentry. In essence,
slaves could be used to distinguish oneself within southern society.
The
fact that this distinction was possible pointed to the fact that slavery, as an
institution, was simultaneously invisible and essential. Slavery was invisible
in that many of the effects it had on southern political, economic, religious and
social lifer were taken for granted. In reality, slavery was essential to the
Old Southern way of life. A slave joining a family could liberate white women
and children from daily work and tasks. The slave made ladies marked out the
class hierarchy of the South because they were the ones who could live increasingly
elaborate lives away from the fields. Lives full of slaves, slaves who could
take on responsibilities such as cooking, cleaning, sowing, raising the kids,
and taking care of the ill within the family. By distancing themselves from these
chores and responsibilities, these ladies exemplified, embodied, and “perhaps
more than anyone else marked out the class hierarchy of the antebellum South” (Johnson
93).
Owning
slaves played such a large part of these women’s lives that it even played a
role in their marriage. A white woman with slaves automatically held a higher
status in society compared to one without slaves. Furthermore, “the purchase of
ever more slaves provided access to ever more rarified possibilities of
feminine delicacy for the white women who watched over them” (Johnson 92).
Women with slaves simply had more value, they had more people to attend to
their needs and to take care of the household. When one had a large household “a
white woman could skate lightly across the surface of daily exigency, her own
composure unscathed by the messy process required to produce the pleasing
tableau of her own life” (Johnson 92).
This
entire system of purchasing slaves for social mobility was also motivated by a
sense of paternalism for ones slaves. As Johnson makes painfully clear in his
book Soul by Soul, slaves in the
slave market were seen as being uncared for. Slave owners would see themselves
in a positive light when they would purchase slaves from the slave pens of New
Orleans. This is because they were taking slaves out of what was deemed a
negative environment. One slave master justified his purchase by saying that “I
bought him from a Negro trader” because “I feel satisfied that however
inadequately I may discharge my duty towards this boy that he is better off
with me than with the man from whom I bought him” (Johnson 109). This is a
perfect example as how slave owners saw themselves as doing good, they were
helping out the slaves buy buying them. In reality this logic is just misguided
because they were perpetuating an unjust system.
Once on the farm this
trend of paternalism would continue. Slave owners would attempt to show “managerial
benevolence” to their slaves (Johnson 86). Slaves were considered similar to
kids, they were not deemed responsible enough to take care of themselves.
Because of this slave owners would go out of their way to dictate what the
slaves would eat, how they would behave, and how they would be treated when
sick. This of course was done out of the utmost care and concern for the slave
on the part of the slave owner because slaves were a costly investment.
By looking at the
paternalistic nature of slavery, and at the fact that slaves were a means to climb
the social ladder within the antebellum south we see how fundamental this
institution was at the time. Slavery was so engrained in Southern life that it
became a self-perpetuating system which over time “demanded that … owners buy
more and more slaves” (Johnson 85). This “circularity” was caused by an innate
value which slaves offered slave owners, whites with slaves simply had more
status than those without (Johnson 79). The fact that slaves were not simple
property which worked for their masters, but were instead a means to higher
social status ultimately caused slavery to become a fundamental part of
Southern political, social, religious and economic society.
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