Milan Billingsley
History of Slavery Discussion Paper
Professor McKinney
October/15/2014
People
or Slaves: The Struggle between Personhood and Property and the Systematic
Illustrations of Resistance in the Antebellum South
Throughout
the history of slavery in the United States there has been a constant struggle
concerning the classification of slaves. In certain instances they are
considered as pure property which needs to be stored, fed and sustained. This
topic is exemplified and fleshed out in Stephanie E. Smallwood’s book Saltwater Slavery. In other
circumstances slaves are considered semi people who count as three fifths of a
person, as we see in The Constitution of
the United States, who have rights under municipal laws and who have free
time to spend as they please after completing their daily tasks, as we see in Major Problems in African American History.
In these writings and in Slavery’s
Constitution the divide between personhood and property is made clear, slaves
were found somewhere in between these two classifications. This, however,
raises a fundamental issue because, according to the logic of slavery, slaves
are meant to be property controlled by the master. Yet when we look at the
institution of slavery we see consistent instances of resistance, rebellion,
and exploration of the “systematic fissures and cracks within the ostensibly
absolute hegemony of the master” (Holt 195).
Saltwater Slavery does an exemplary job
of showcasing how slaves were changed from people into property. While enduring
the trans-Atlantic journey from Africa to the New World slaves were defined as
property. They were captured, transported and then bought and sold along the
West African Coast. Once put on ships they found themselves in extremely
miserable conditions, life was scaled “down to an arithmetical equation” where
“the lowest common denominator” was found (Smallwood 43). Their classification
as property continued once in the Americas where they were taken off ships,
cleaned, pruned, and finally sold to buyers for profit. This processes was
brutal and many slaves died along the voyage. Being classified as property they
are rarely remembered in documents outside of ledgers where their lives were only
numbers on a spreadsheet.
When,
however, we look at our founding documents we see a systematic and covert
approval of slavery. Our founding document makes many references to freedom,
liberty and justice. It is a document which puts an emphasis on these
ideologies and values. Even though it never mentions the word slavery it supports
slavery in a myriad of ways. For one, it has the three fifths compromise where
representation is based on the “whole number of free persons, including those
bound for service for a term of years” and “three fifths of all other persons”
(Constitution). Furthermore, it has the fugitive slave clause where escaped
slaves had to be returned to their masters in article IV section 2. Finally the
Federal Government has the power to restrict the slave trade. In all of these
cases slavery is not mentioned overtly. Instead it is embedded in the
background where it defines the lines of the American slave trade quite
extensively. Even though people only glance over the issue today, the fact of
the matter is that slavery was a central component of American life at the time
and is omnipresent in the constitution. This omnipresence classifies slaves as
three fifths of people, yet in actuality slaves are supposed to be slaves,
people who are the legal property of another and are forced to obey them. This
classification is a great example of the struggle between personhood and
property that slaves encountered. On the one hand they are supposed to be
property, but on the other hand they play a role in the legal representation of
the state.
Even
more deserving of attention is the classification of slavery at the municipal
level. At this level slaves possessed legal rights, rights such as “proper
nourishment and clothing” and protection from “cruel treatment” from their
masters (Holt 197). Thomas Cobb, an Antebellum Scholar, phrases the issue of
classifying slaves quite elegantly when he says that the law by protecting him
against cruel or unusual punishment “recognizes his existence as a person”,
furthermore, “his existence as a person being recognized by the law, that
existence is protected by the law” (Holt 197). In so doing, Thomas Cobb
categorizes slaves less as property and more as people.
These
three writings, The Constitution of the
United States, Saltwater Slavery, and Major
Problems in African American History all exemplify the major problem within
slavery. The institution of slavery was one that treated slaves as property.
They were things. The same way you store your horses in the barn you need to
store your slaves in a shack. The fact of the matter, however, was that slaves
were not property, they were people. Over and over again we see that as people
they try to make a space for themselves in this brutal and gruesome
institution. They find ways to resist, rebel against and explore the fissures
of the system.
Dancing,
music and burial practices are all great examples of slaves exploring the
fissures of the system. Slaves would oftentimes partake in these activities
because they were “an integral part of religion and culture” (Holt 128). Most
common was the ring dance ceremony which was a West African ceremony honoring
the ancestors of the dancers. By preserving their culture they were actively
making a space for themselves, a space where they could be free humans. In this
space they were free to enjoy their culture and traditions. Interestingly
enough “for decades before and generations following the American Revolutions,
Africans engaged in religious ceremonies in their quarters and in the woods
unobserved by whites” (Holt 138).
By understanding how
slaves simultaneously occupied “a double character of person and property” we
can see how slaves managed to make space for themselves in an extremely
oppressive system (Holt 196). The space they created was a space in which they
could enjoy some of the most important of freedoms. What is most concerning is
that the people who subjugate slaves to work in the fields also agree that they
are not property. This is visible in the Constitution, where slaves represent
three fifths of a person, and at the local municipal level where slaves enjoy
certain protections from cruel punishment. By classifying slaves as part person
they are in essence saying that slaves are not property, this in essence is a
fallible argument for slavery and thus justifying slavery becomes a reason
backed more by economic goals.
Bibliography
Holt, Thomas C., and Elsa Barkley.
Brown. Major Problems in African-American History: Documents and Essays.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Print.
Smallwood, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle
Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007.
Print.
The Constitution
of the United States
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