Let me preface this by stating that I firmly believe that the concept of slavery, and the practice of it in the U.S., was abhorrent. And I’ve seen pictures of the scarred backs of slaves, or read of inhumane practices, to be aware of its abuses. But was it ever “tolerable”? Like a shitty and exhausting job, but with a chance to kick back and relax a night? Did the service as an attendant to a wealthy and prominent person (I.e. Thomas Jefferson’s personal valet) give one exposure to opulence and make life half-way decent? Were there ever occasions where a person treated a slave genuinely like family?
A lot of slaves fought on the confederate side, obviously of their own choice.
Tolerable in my opinion makes it highly difficult and politically loaded to answer. You’ll get a lot of pontificating on that one.
The factual is easy enough:
- Yes, for some slaves it was realistically possible to kick back and relax after a day of labor.
- Yes, if you were a personal manservant of sorts for a wealthy and influential slave owner you’d be exposed to finer things than many non-slaves would see. Some of Jefferson’s slaves for example traveled to Europe with him in pretty good conditions.
- Yes, sometimes slaves were actually family not just treated like family. Some of the master-slave sexual relationships evolved into unsanctioned common law marriages, strange as that sounds.
To me that is the factual truth on those questions. But even answering those is political. Some people feel you are doing a disservice to history if you acknowledge any of those things without pointing out the immorality of the system as a whole, the horrific torture, rape, family disruption etc that was common place in the system and etc–but the answers to those factual questions is pretty easy and non-controversial.
Oppression never hits all individuals equally, and of course pain is and has always been relative. I would never want to be a slave, neither house or field. But if I had to pick, of course I’d want to be in someone’s kitchen. That doesn’t mean being a house slave was da bomb, though. It just means the quality of life would have been leagues more preferable to being stooped all day under the sun
I am sure there were slaves that didn’t suffer horribly, if only because not every slaveowner was Simon Legree.
In response to your question above, I am positive there were slaveowning families who honestly believed they treated their Uncles and Aunties like family. But I don’t know about you, but I don’t force any of my family members to empty my slopbuckets, nurse my children, or cook my food! There were slaves who indeed were family, but as slaves, they were not entitled to any of the benefits of their birthright. So while they may have been treated better than other slaves and given some status (perhaps even freedom), they would have never been treated like full family members. That would have been subverting the entire system.
That’s essentially a myth.
As to the question in the OP, American slavery lasted for centuries and involved millions of people, including not just field hands but also skilled artisans, and house slaves, and slaves who were mistresses of their masters and the children of such liaisons who were legally speaking the property of their own fathers, so it is pretty much a certainty that there were at least some slaves who led lives that were (apart from the whole “legally defined as property” thing) tolerable or even comfortable.
People can and did tolerate a lot of stuff. It would be bad use of your investment to constantly work your slaves to exhaustion; I understand that slaves were usually treated better than mules, if not always as well as the horses.
In the interest of full disclosure, during the time of institutional chattel slavery in the American South, my forefathers were Irish peasants and equally poor Ukrainians.
Slaves were a huge financial investment, so I would guess that there were quite a few slave owners that treated their slaves well out of humanitarian or financial reasons.
The loss of freedom would probably be the worst aspect, but I would think that many slave owners would keep their slaves housed and well fed to protect their investment, if nothing else.
I’ve always suspected that slaves in the south (assuming they didn’t go out of their way to be “uppity” or rebellious in some way) had lifestyles not much different from share croppers or most any other person trying to eek out a living in those days.
Yes, in theory they weren’t free but in a practical financial sense most people back then really weren’t either.
Read page 2 of the article, which shows that there, indeed, were some blacks who fought for the Confederacy, though certainly not a lot. I’d be surprised if there weren’t any; human perversity is immense and it’s not all that unknown to see people fighting against their own best interests.
But, yes, there were certainly some slaves who were treated decently and (other than being property, of course) lived lives not far different from their owners. This was especially true for small slaveholders, who might own a single slave who lived in their house and worked alongside their owner.
Ever? Of course. Putting aside the abhorrent idea of owning other human beings as chattel, they were an investment. It wouldn’t make sense for a master to work them 20 hour days so they drop dead at a young age.
If you own pack horses or mules, would you beat them and work them until they died? Some would, but that’s a poor choice. Especially since these were human beings, I’m convinced that many slave owners understood the rationale of giving their slaves an existence above miserable…
I believe, iirc, that it was Malcolm X who wrote that while Southerners oppressed black people as a whole, they could quite often be paternalisticly kind to blacks on an individual basis. Whereas, in his opinion, in the north it was the other way around.
Yes, there were probably some. The statement I was responding to specifically said that “A lot of slaves fought on the confederate side”, which is, fundamentally speaking, a myth.
Even if you had a kind master who treated you well, there was always the danger that he might need money, or die, and you could end up sold to another owner (and/or your family members sold to a different one).
Except share croppers did not have their children sold off on the auction block. Slaves were property, not more not less.
I did not know that.
Are you American? I’m not trying to be down on you, I’m just curious if an American could literally not know that Slaves were auctioned off, and families split up. I often wonder if people are being willfully ignorant when they try to sugarcoat slavery.
Obligatory reference to a contemporary cartoon about Confederate slave-soldiers:
That was a joke son (Rogerbox).
Slaves weren’t free and were considered property? Who knew?!
I didn’t know the obvious differences between slaves and non-slaves needed fleshing out. My bad I guess.
I recall Frederick Douglass wrote that he was mostly treated well. Maybe not by objective standards, but relative to other slaves.