# Interesting article about questions received while giving tours of Southern plantations **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 30, 2015, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842 "2015-06-30T02:44:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/81 "2015-07-07T03:59:44Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Some jobs were held by free men and some by slaves. It was a mix of people all working together. I laughed out loud. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/82 "2015-07-07T04:03:08Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I’m not sure where people get the idea these people were closely guarded prisoners. That would never work. It would take too many resources to operate a plantation like a labor camp prison. Everybody had important jobs to do. They couldn’t stand around guarding slaves all day. > > Slavery worked because the majority of slaves were 2nd, 3rd and even 4th generation slaves. They knew no other life. They didn’t have to be guarded or chained up. Very few ran off. Yes the ones that did run off were hunted and if caught they got returned and punished. That was the exception. Most coped with the situation the best they could and lived as fulfilling a life as they possibly could under the circumstances. I’m going to use the word “torture” here in a very specific sense. When I say “torture,” I mean, “inflict extreme physical pain on a victim in order to induce a behavior or prevent a behavior.” Torture was the bedrock of slavery. No, plantations didn’t have 24/7 guards in towers. They had torture. If you didn’t work, you got tortured. If you objected to treatment, you got tortured. If you tried to escape, you got extra tortured and maybe killed. Yeah, people coped with it. They knew that they would be tortured if they didn’t. Slavery could not work without that torture. As you say, there were not guards in towers. There were not, generally speaking, high fences that made escape difficult. The only reason why enslaved people complied with the slavemasters was because they knew the horrors that awaited those who didn’t comply. Yeah, some of the people who were terrorized by torture worked alongside free people, people who were motivated by profit or by self-reliance rather than being motivated by terror. I wonder, however, if you can think of a significant difference between their experiences. Even “kind” slavemasters? Torture was the bedrock of their system. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/83 "2015-07-07T04:24:40Z")
I understand everybody wants to hate slave owners. dehumanize them, think of them only as evil monsters. I see them much that way too. Just look at it then from a purely, cold hearted, logical business sense. The least drama, the least oppression will result in the most productivity. Raise a child on a plantation. His friends are there. His relatives. His entire world is the plantation. Anyplace outside the plantation is foreign and scary. He’s already built his own fence. It’s very unlikely this man or woman will leave. Treat this person decently, let them have their own cabin, marry, and have a small personal vegetable garden in the yard. This person will be much more productive. You won’t have to expend resources guarding him. You won’t have to worry about getting attacked with an axe if you turn your back. You’ll have somebody that will work day after day and make you money. Many slaves lived well into their forties and fifties just like anybody else. That’s decades of service and hard work. it’s just plain simple good business. I’m not suggesting there wasn’t brutal, thuggish slave owners. I’d like to think they were few and far between. There were a lot of people that weren’t like that. People that agonized over the necessity of owning slaves. Their livelihoods depended on slavery and it tore them up inside. Many slave owners left orders in their wills to free their slaves. I think Washington and Jefferson freed theirs? I’d have to double check to be sure. It was a highly complicated issue. Slavery is morally wrong. But we can’t apply our 21st century values to this situation. We’re talking about an entirely different time and place. People with life experiences totally foreign to us. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/84 "2015-07-07T04:34:15Z")
I wonder if **aceplace** was one of those who inspired the “[Ask A Slave](http://www.askaslave.com/)” series. > [@aceplace57](#): > > I’ve seen where the slave cabins were at Mt Vernon. They would be considered small by todays standards and primitive. But they were cabins just like many poor white farmers lived in. > > I’m not sure where people get the idea these people were closely guarded prisoners. That would never work. It would take too many resources to operate a plantation like a labor camp prison. Everybody had important jobs to do. They couldn’t stand around guarding slaves all day. > > Slavery worked because the majority of slaves were 2nd, 3rd and even 4th generation slaves. They knew no other life. They didn’t have to be guarded or chained up. Very few ran off. Yes the ones that did run off were hunted and if caught they got returned and punished. That was the exception. Most coped with the situation the best they could and lived as fulfilling a life as they possibly could under the circumstances. > > I’m not trying to glamorize it. It was a hard life, filled with work. But humans find ways to still live even under adverse conditions. They fall in love, they make kids, play with those kids. They find ways to entertain themselves when they aren’t working. The human spirit is amazing. Good god, you’re more full of shit than my cats’ litterbox. And I have four cats. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/85 "2015-07-07T04:35:53Z")
Slaves played with their family dogs when they got off work and had private vegetable gardens, I love it. And they lived into their _forties_ dontcha know! ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/86 "2015-07-07T04:53:55Z")
You just aren’t thinking like a cold hearted business man. the vegetable garden isn’t a privilege or luxury. It means you (the slave owner) don’t have to provide food for that slave family. Best of all, they did the work raising that food. Yes, the average lifespan around 1810 was forty-five. Disease killed off most people long before they ever saw their fiftieth birthday. The rare survivors that lived into their seventies were remarkably fit and tough old birds. Treating people decently and with respect always gets the best results. Heck, even today prisons offer rewards for behaving and following the rules. It’s not because the warden and guards are soft hearted. Treating people firmly but with respect makes their job easier. A prisoner that follows the rules, to get a tv in their cell is less of a headache to guard. It costs the prison nothing to extend that privlege and it makes everybody’s job easier. It’s a win win. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/87 "2015-07-07T05:06:57Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > At the end of the days work they went home, ate dinner with their wife, played with their kids, petted the family dog. Told stories, sang, played games. LOL ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/88 "2015-07-07T05:15:53Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > They didn’t have to be guarded or chained up. Very few ran off. Yes the ones that did run off were hunted and if caught they got returned and punished. That was the exception. They also knew that they were literally marked by their race as a slave, and the chances of escaping were very slim. Frederick Douglas had a bit in one of his writings about how even in free states train conductors and such would hassle blacks for papers proving they were free. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/89 "2015-07-07T05:22:42Z")
> [@grude](#): > > They also knew that they were literally marked by their race as a slave, and the chances of escaping were very slim. Wait. You’re suggesting that slaves weren’t happy but could recognize how utterly fucked up their situation was in this country and that there really was no refuge against the relentless hatred and racism? I believe you might have just ruined Plantation Christmas. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/90 "2015-07-07T05:53:52Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Yes, the average lifespan around 1810 was forty-five. Disease killed off most people long before they ever saw their fiftieth birthday. The rare survivors that lived into their seventies were remarkably fit and tough old birds. Life expectancy of 45 **does not** mean people in their forties were near the end of their life nor does it mean most people died before their fiftieth birthday. It means that there was a high rate of infant mortality. Once you survived infancy, your chances of a long life (60s+) greatly improved. ---
**Author:** ![MsKaren](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a183cd/32.png) [@MsKaren](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsKaren)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/91 "2015-07-07T07:44:32Z")
Melrose Plantation is one of the most interesting to visit. Here is some history: "In 1742, Marie Thérèse Coincoin was born a slave into the household of Natchitoches’ founder Louis Juchereau de St. Denis. St. Denis later leased the twenty-six year old Coincoin as a housekeeper to a young French merchant named Claude Thomas Pierre Metoyer. A nineteen year relationship ensued, resulting in ten children. Eventually, Metoyer purchased Marie Thérèse and several of their children, giving them their freedom. With her freedom, a yearly allowance, and a parcel of land given by Metoyer, Marie Thérèse began raising tobacco, cattle, and harvesting bear grease. In the coming years, Marie’s fortunes grew by virtue of her and her sons receiving land grants and purchasing slaves. They became the leading family of a community called Isle Brevelle, populated by “gens de couleur libre", free people of color who thrived as business people, plantation owners, and slave owners. In 1796, one of her sons, Louis Metoyer, was deeded 911 acres of land on which he would eventually build one of Cane River’s jewels, Melrose Plantation." [http://www.melroseplantation.org/](http://www.melroseplantation.org/) “Descendants of the Metoyer family live along Cane River today, a people proud of their heritage and culture.” Louisiana history is very complicated. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/92 "2015-07-07T08:38:35Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > people today seem to assume a slave spent their entire lives chained to a tree, crying and weeping. Honey, I’m just not getting this slave to work right, are you sure you read the manual properly? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/93 "2015-07-07T08:49:51Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I can’t see the point of using a museum tour to deliver a harsh lesson. > > Slavery was covered quite thoroughly in school. How it caused tensions during the drafting of the Constitutions. Then severe political tensions as new states entered the Union (some free and some slave). Culminating with succession and the Civil War. I recall studying portions of U_ncle Toms Cabin_. Discussing the underground railroad and how escaped slaves found freedom in the North. > > Movie and tv have covered slavery. \*Roots \*is a miniseries that every parent should watch with their teenage children. Slavery isn’t a shameful event being hid from anybody. It happened. People died fighting a Civil War over it. The South paid a terrible, punitive price during the [Reconstruction Era](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Era). > > We don’t need a tour guide at a museum to remind us of that terrible period in history. What exactly do you think is the purpose of a historical museum or even history in general except to learn from it? Do you think people go to see how pretty the place looked? You go to get more involved in the history. And obviously those other sources haven’t worked, since the people actually attending the museum show such ignorance of history. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/94 "2015-07-07T10:47:01Z")
**aceplace** , please read just one chapter of **Twelve Years a Slave** and prepare to have your Wally-and-Beav characterization of slavery blown away. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/95 "2015-07-07T11:23:02Z")
> [@](#): > > Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton, > Old times there are not forgotten. > Look away, look away, look away Dixie Land! … ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/96 "2015-07-07T11:33:49Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I understand everybody wants to hate slave owners. dehumanize them, think of them only as evil monsters. I see them much that way too. > > Just look at it then from a purely, cold hearted, logical business sense. The least drama, the least oppression will result in the most productivity. Raise a child on a plantation. His friends are there. His relatives. His entire world is the plantation. Anyplace outside the plantation is foreign and scary. He’s already built his own fence. It’s very unlikely this man or woman will leave. Add a healthy portion of brutalization and dehumanization, and it might be even less likely that they’ll leave. Most things and desires can be beaten and tortured out of people, and many slave-owners used this to their advantage. > [@](#): > > Treat this person decently, let them have their own cabin, marry, and have a small personal vegetable garden in the yard. This person will be much more productive. You won’t have to expend resources guarding him. You won’t have to worry about getting attacked with an axe if you turn your back. You’ll have somebody that will work day after day and make you money. Many slaves lived well into their forties and fifties just like anybody else. That’s decades of service and hard work. Treat them decently, allow them to gather in groups, and allow them to read and learn, and they might start to get ideas… which is why in many places in the South, it was illegal to teach slaves to read, or illegal for them to gather in groups without an overseer present. > [@](#): > > it’s just plain simple good business. I’m not suggesting there wasn’t brutal, thuggish slave owners. I’d like to think they were few and far between. There were a lot of people that weren’t like that. People that agonized over the necessity of owning slaves. Their livelihoods depended on slavery and it tore them up inside. Many slave owners left orders in their wills to free their slaves. I think Washington and Jefferson freed theirs? I’d have to double check to be sure. Brutalization and dehumanization was good business. Humans can be beaten and tortured into near-total obedience and near-total subservience. People can be broken, and many slaves were. Perhaps even most. > [@](#): > > It was a highly complicated issue. Slavery is morally wrong. But we can’t apply our 21st century values to this situation. We’re talking about an entirely different time and place. People with life experiences totally foreign to us. An entirely different time and place… in which plenty of people recognized the moral horror of slavery, and yet others insisted on the right to brutalize, rape, and dehumanize as they choose. By the standards of the time, slavery was terrible, except in most of the South (and a few other states). ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/97 "2015-07-07T12:23:47Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > Birkenau was the death camp. Auschwitz was a …slave labor camp. This was too perfect. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/98 "2015-07-07T12:47:13Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > You just aren’t thinking like a cold hearted business man. No, you aren’t. If the only factor that could be adjusted was “respect”, then yeah, treating the person you’ve terrorized into working for you with respect would be a good idea. But remember: you have no armed guards in towers. You have to convince your slaves not to leave, and you have to convince them to work for you with no pay. How do you do that? Respect won’t do it. EVERY SINGLE SLAVEMASTER, bar none, relied on torture or the threat of torture to convince slaves to work. THERE WAS NO OTHER OPTION. None. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/99 "2015-07-07T12:48:26Z")
**Aceplace** , what is the good you are trying to accomplish here? ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2015, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842/100 "2015-07-07T15:08:10Z")
I keep imagining aceplace57 looking at a farm and talking about how the cows have it so good, out in the pasture, gamboling as calves, the whole getting slaughtered and eaten thing, why, that’s a tiny part of their otherwise really awesome existence! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-article-about-questions-received-while-giving-tours-of-southern-plantations/723842.md?page=6)