I have heard that many black slaves were selectively bred in the south much like race horses and prize bulls are. The intent was to breed bigger, stronger slaves that would do more work. Is there any truth to this?
Dunno, but it’s said that many - especially within 100 miles or so of New Orleans - intentionally bred for daughters sired by white men on the most attractive women, often doing the “chore” themselves. That was to send to the New Orleans auctions. They kept most of the first generation, even some second, in order to breed quadroons, octaroons, etc. The very light skinned black women thus obtained were in high demand both to be purchased as mistresses (to be housed in the city, away from the owners’ homes) and for the brothels. Research into the history of New Orleans will show you that there were huge, famous brothels of light skinned quadroons, etc., there during that era.
Ugly, isn’t it. Somehow or other, they just couldn’t see the offspring as their own progeny, an even nastier psychology than Thomas Jefferson. He apparently saw no inherent conflict in keeping his own children by Sally as his property, serving him. She was said to have begged freedom for her children from him just prior to his death (he died deeply in debt, accounts I’ve read say).
As the average slave owner had only 2 or 3 slaves, he couldn’t really had much of a breeding operation going, selective or not.
And I think we discussed this issue at length a year or two ago. Might be worth searching for that thread.
A few seconds of thought makes that idea rather silly on the face of it. If slaves couldn’t interbreed, the population would have dwindled. So while owner may have only had two or three, you’re ignoring that a) those weren’t necessarily the same 2 or 3 from year to year, b) when children were born they were likely sold to other owners upon reaching work age, and c) men can be rented out as studs. Either of these will create sufficient chance to spread particular DNA.
I was, in fact, researching the legality of slave marriages a month or so back (they weren’t legally recognized), and a point that came up many times was that families were quite often separated. Many black men had three “marriages” from having been sold off to someone else. But how prevalent this really was I couldn’t say, and whether particularly stronger men were traded around more or less, I have no idea.
But logic would hold that in any transaction, you’re more likely to find a buyer when you have a superior product.
Now like I said before, slaves are going to be moved around through selling or renting, or sold off for the first time as budding adults. Regardless of the parentage of the young slave being sold for the first time, you’ll keep lowering the price until he/she finds a buyer. So really there’s no chance to select for stronger genes there.
Once you have a new, young slave, you’re going to want him to work. It’s a waste to be selling him about to other people when you could use him as a worker yourself, and if you rent him out as a stud, there’s no guarantee that target slave woman and him will do as they’re supposed to. Still, it is entirely possible to do so.
But the time when things can really pick up is when your slave hits his 30s. He’s still fertile, but is no longer going to be quite as good a worker as he once was. If he has an impressive work history and you’re in it for the money, selling him off as a stud makes sense. Once he finds a new owner, he’ll likely eventually impregnate one of the women slaves (via romantic interest), and if not he’s still young enough to work at least decently well. If he didn’t have an impressive work history, you won’t be able to make money selling him off at the age of 30+, so you’re stuck with him and his genes don’t spread.
Ultimately, whether there was stud-renting or not, it’s pretty likely that the financial nature of the slave trade did select for strong, hardy workers. But personally I would be surprised if there weren’t at least numerous attempts to rent out male slaves as studs. If it didn’t happen a lot, this probably indicates more that humans won’t perform like horses more than that slave owners had any qualms about the practice.
Whether or not any slave owners ever seriously attempted to do so, selective breeding of slaves could not have had much effect on the general population. To be effective, selective breeding has to be carried out very intensively on a rather small population. You have to select from only a small number of potential breeders, and prevent interbreeding with the general population for quite a few generations. Ideally, you may want to backcross to parents, or interbreed siblings, something that would probably have beyond the pale even to the most amoral slave holders.
Given the long human generation time, and the fact that a selective breeding program is unlikely to have been carried out intensively in any one place for more than a few generations at best, it is almost impossible that artificial selection strong enough to have an impact on the general slove population could have taken place.
I would also imagine that the sorts of work slaves did was sufficiently varied that really you need all the regular human capabilities–which is what evolution has already bred for.
I would assume a different reason for the above end result: slave owners slept with the prettiest of their slaves, resulting in pretty children they didn’t want to raise (due to the cost, time, space, etc.); it’s more economical to buy a new, adult slave rather than raise one. So, they sold them, and pretty girls of no means ended up in whorehouses.
In other words, some slave owners may well have tried to selectively breed slaves (to answer the OP’s question), but if so, they didn’t succeed.
In Harriet Jacob’s autobiography, she (a former slave in 19th century North Carolina) reports that overseers would do “bed checks” at night to make sure that slave men, worked to exhaustion, hadn’t fallen asleep anywhere other than in bed with their wives, as this was seen as a way to encourage reproduction. But never in any of the slave narratives that I have read was there any suggestion that slave owners were particular about who impregnated who.
ETA: Remember, too, that the slave narratives of the early 19th C. were designed to shock and appall the middle-class sensibilities of the abolitionists. If there had been “selective breeding” going on, I have no doubt it would have been reported.
:dubious: How could anyone know that?
This:
Coupled with this:
Make it hard for me to take you seriously. Sounds like you just have a beef with our 3rd President.
Only with regard to his personal life. I’d like to remind you that I labeled what I wrote above quite plainly as hearsay. I’ve never researched the subject, and am therefore not prepared to assert it as fact.
However, haven’t you ever noticed that a significant percentage of African Americans have lighter skin by far than the average? For the approximately 100 years between the Civil War and the era of Free Love and the Civil Rights campaign converged in the 1960s, the percentage of miscegenation - especially that which resulted in offspring - was quite low, due to social norms, even in the North. Therefore, the vast majority of those very light-skinned “blacks” must have resulted from miscegenation during slavery days.
Thomas Jefferson was a brilliant man - most probably a genius, possibly a polymath - who largely wrote one of the most beautiful, important and influential documents in the world, the U.S. Constitution. He was at very least a highly competent president - indeed, by current standards, he was outstanding. His genius at political theory and writing were not the only things where he excelled intellectually. He practically invented archaeology, and dabbled intelligently in other sciences, as well - all while leading an active political life.
It’s his personal life that I find appalling. I realize that he treated Sally better than many other slave-owners treated their slave mistresses. However, I still find his opportunistic use of, IIRC, his wife’s slave (admittedly, AFA we know, only after the wife’s death) as a sexual outlet. (Remember, this is the same man who wrote that we are all created equal.) And, having taken that step, to maintain her and his children in slave status as long as he lived. Further, I can’t imagine how he could have his mixed-race children living as his slaves, inferiorly housed, and in involuntary servitude to him.
I admit I’m sensitive about this sort of thing. Maybe it’s because I’m a minority myself (Cherokee), and a woman who has experienced a certain degree of sexual exploitation. Further, I have counted blacks among my dearest friends at various periods during my life. I have directly observed the effects of prejudice (I’ll spare you the details, but the case that comes to mind first was particularly egregious, and resulted in the premature and unnecessary death of a young black woman I’d known since she was four years old.
[Moderating]
Let’s not get sidetracked into a discussion of Jefferson specifically. Please try to stick to the more general question in the OP.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
See Other than Americans did any other slave masters practice selective breeding?
Fairly involved discussion of the topic in that thread
Freddy the Pig’s comment was probably the most succinct
Nobody disputes that masters often slept with their slaves. The question is just the motive behind it: I think it’s easier by far to assume that they were sleeping with them because they were horny and could get away with it, than that they were actively trying to produce mixed-race children.
Here ya go!
http://www.turq.com/antiguaandbarbuda/barbuda/barbudahistory.php
And here - although this article puts the slave breeding station idea as a rumour.
First, look at what this selective breeding was supposed to accomplish. A superior product to sell?
Now look at how long this “superior product” has to be alive before it can be sold for superior money. 15, 20 years? Meanwhile, you have to feed and care for the slave and hope it doesn’t die in childhood, etc.
How could this ever be economically feasible?
I’m not saying masters didn’t encourage their slaves to have children. Many did - it made it less likely for the parents to try to run away, gave the master excellent leverage over the parents, and once the child grew up they increased the master’s slave population or could be sold for cash. But this is an investment that would take many, many years before the master ever saw a dime.
Say a master starts his breeding program when he’s 20. He will be middle-aged before he can start selling these new slaves, and one would assume he had to pay a stud fee or some such. He’s better off working the slaves in the field, where they bring in steady money, and sell any children that come along as an extra little bonus instead of looking at that has his main source of income.