# Was it ever tolerable to be a slave in America? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 13, 2012, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876 "2012-12-13T00:17:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/21 "2012-12-13T10:52:12Z")
Harriet Jacob’s [Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11030) gives an interesting perspective on just how complex master-slave relations could be. There was certainly some dynamics involved: slaves could, by making themselves more useful or through sheer chutzpah, develop some leverage. Her father, for example, was a slave, but lived as a free man: a skilled carpenter, he paid his “owner” $300 a year as a flat rate, and supported himself and his family out of the rest of his earnings. However, even in the best of circumstances, the insecurity was overwhelming: in her case, her father’s “comfortable” family fell apart when someone died and her father’s children had to be split among the heirs. Anyway, it’s a really good book and gives a vivid illustration of slavery right on the cusp of the civil war. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/22 "2012-12-13T13:09:11Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Read page 2 of the article, which shows that there, indeed, were some blacks who fought for the Confederacy, though certainly not a lot. It shows nothing of the kind. I’ll quote the relevant part from page 2: > [@](#): > > Barrow said that he has uncovered countless examples of black Confederates. One is Wiley A. Stewart. He found Stewart’s name in public records listed as a free man of color who fought for Confederates. Barrow replaced Stewart’s nondescript headstone with one that says, “Private Wiley A. Stewart, free man of colour,” he said. > > “He is in Stonewall Confederate Cemetery,” Barrow said. “Stewart was a private in Company H, 4th Tennessee Cavalry. He enlisted Aug. 24, 1861; was wounded on July 22, 1864, at the Battle of Atlanta; and sent to Catoosa Hospital in Griffin. He died and was buried on July 26, 1864. He isn’t the only one.” Barrow argues that Confederates have a difficult time producing more documents because many were destroyed after they lost the war. So this Barrow guy claims there’s ONE he knows the name of, and that there were others but it can’t be documented. So who is this Barrow guy? Page 1 told us: > [@](#): > > Proponents of the existence of black Confederates are equally adamant that it is not a myth. Just ask Charles Kelly Barrow – lieutenant commander in chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, an organization dedicated to preserving and chronicling the army’s history – who has written extensively on the subject, including Black Confederates and Black Southerners in Confederate Armies. I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that the _lieutenant commander in chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans_ is possibly a revisionist, and certainly an apologist, and not an objective source. And he’s got one name (which he does not substantiate with citations) and the assertion that there were “others.” That’s a terribly poor case that there were _any_, and a solid argument that “a lot” is certainly wrong. Truth is, regardless of whether a slave wanted to fight for the Confederacy, the Confederacy didn’t want to consider allowing the to do so, and they rejected all proposals to permit it until the final exigencies of impending defeat. > [@MEBuckner](#): > > 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. It’s _absolutely_ a myth to say “a lot.” ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/23 "2012-12-13T15:15:06Z")
During the depression the WPA sought to interview many of the surviving slaves, there interviews and stories can be found here [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/](http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/) I have read most of them and for the most part the lives they remembered were not horrific. I suspect a survivorship bias because the interviews took place seventy plus years after emancipation. The most numerous complaints are seperation from family members, fear of the slave patrols, and the lack of freedom to worship. ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/24 "2012-12-13T15:41:34Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > And I’ve seen pictures of the scarred backs of slaves… Ever seen pictures of the scarred backs of non-slaves who were flogged? They’re remarkably similar. Some people seem to think [flogging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellation) was some kind of special torture reserved only for American slaves. Nope; it was commonly used on non-Americans up until surprisingly recently, and [it’s still legal (and used)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_corporal_punishment) in 33 of the the world’s more backward and/or totalitarian countries. Which is not to say that flogging American slaves was in any way justified, just that it happened to plenty of non-slaves, too. According to the cite on that Wiki page, the last public flogging in the USA was in **1952**. ---
**Author:** ![gracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/25 "2012-12-13T16:05:43Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > During the depression the WPA sought to interview many of the surviving slaves, there interviews and stories can be found here [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/](http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/) > I have read most of them and for the most part the lives they remembered were not horrific. I suspect a survivorship bias because the interviews took place seventy plus years after emancipation. The most numerous complaints are seperation from family members, fear of the slave patrols, and the lack of freedom to worship. Thanks for the link, I’m reading some now. Here is a bit relevant to the OP: [QUOTE=Louisa Adams] Abraham Lincoln freed us by the help of the Lawd, by his help. Slavery wuz owin to who you were with. If you were with some one who wuz good and had some feelin’s for you it did tolerable well; yea, tolerable well. [/QUOTE] Louisa Adams’ master didn’t sound quite “tolerable well”, if you ask me. He didn’t give them enough to eat, never gave them a single day off, didn’t allow them to pray or baptise their babies, beat them and sold them if they were caught with a book. We recently had a thread about the use of written-out accents in works of fiction. That normally doesn’t bother me, but it does bother me here. It’s not fiction. You probably speak with an accent yourself, and you don’t spell that out. Why do it in an interview with someone else? It seems racist to me. But maybe there is some other reason, and I’m misinterpreting it? I guess it preserves the accent, if the person who recorded did it well. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/26 "2012-12-13T17:08:07Z")
> [@gracer](#): > > Louisa Adams’ master didn’t sound quite “tolerable well”, if you ask me. He didn’t give them enough to eat, never gave them a single day off, didn’t allow them to pray or baptise their babies, beat them and sold them if they were caught with a book. Did she work for Foxconn? ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/27 "2012-12-13T17:42:59Z")
Well, nearly everyone in the US (and most of the world) is a slave, and most are only dimly aware of it. Which is worse: knowing you’re a slave and having the opportunity to imagine or achieve genuine freedom, or imagining you’re already free? I suspect that many slaves in the earliest era of US history had only a dim idea that they could ever be free - so there may have been a certain “this is all there is” toleration/contentment. ---
**Author:** ![Strain\_of\_Thought](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3be4f8/32.png) [@Strain\_of\_Thought](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strain_of_Thought)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/28 "2012-12-13T17:44:55Z")
I remember in reading the narrative of the life of Fredrick Douglas, he did assert that the condition of slaves varied widely, but from his experiences it sounded like few slaves if any escaped the worst treatment entirely- even a slave of a “kind” master who gave him some freedom was still treated as though he was subhuman by most whites when he went into town. Furthermore, Douglas emphasizes the destructive effects on the slave owners themselves, talking about watching whites he initially knew as “kind” masters gradually become crueler the more experience they had with slave ownership. What I consider the most insidious practice Douglas describes, was, in fact, a technique used by even harsh masters of giving slaves a strategic vacation between Christmas and New Year’s Day, in fact _forbidding_ them to work during this time, giving them as much cheap food and alcohol as they could consume and encouraging them to be lazy and indulge to excess- which after a year of hard labor they readily succumbed to the temptation of- in order to make them disgusted with themselves and convince them they were unable to handle freedom, leaving the slaves all too willing to put the vacation behind themselves and return to constant heavy work when the new year began. ---
**Author:** ![gracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/29 "2012-12-13T17:56:52Z")
> [@Strain\_of\_Thought](#): > > What I consider the most insidious practice Douglas describes, was, in fact, a technique used by even harsh masters of giving slaves a strategic vacation between Christmas and New Year’s Day, in fact _forbidding_ them to work during this time, giving them as much cheap food and alcohol as they could consume and encouraging them to be lazy and indulge to excess- which after a year of hard labor they readily succumbed to the temptation of- in order to make them disgusted with themselves and convince them they were unable to handle freedom, leaving the slaves all too willing to put the vacation behind themselves and return to constant heavy work when the new year began. What a horrible, despicable thing! It’s these things, really, that are the truly horrible thing about slavery. Not beatings, but completely taking away any belief in yourself, any pride, any sense of autonomy or accomplishment or sense of worth. Thanks for sharing that, because I didn’t know about that practice yet. It’s sad how, after all the horrible things we know humans have done to each other, they can still surprise us with more. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/30 "2012-12-13T18:01:10Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > 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. I would bet 50 DoperPoints that there were twice as many women posing as men carrying rifles in the Confederate army as there were blacks, free or slave. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/31 "2012-12-13T18:02:23Z")
> [@NitroPress](#): > > Well, nearly everyone in the US (and most of the world) is a slave, and most are only dimly aware of it. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/32 "2012-12-13T18:05:15Z")
What typically happened to slaves who became too old or sick to work? ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/33 "2012-12-13T18:10:35Z")
I think the answer is that there were certain cases where it was more tolerable in many ways that being a free laborer not being paid a living wage, but the question is so political that any simple answer is not easy. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/34 "2012-12-13T18:34:11Z")
I appreciate all of the replies to the OP. I certainly didn’t want to suggest that I was seeking to soften the impact of slavery, but it fascinates me that people made lives (including marriage and family) under such unfortunate circumstances. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/35 "2012-12-13T18:37:13Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > I think the answer is that there were certain cases where it was more tolerable in many ways that being a free laborer not being paid a living wage, but the question is so political that any simple answer is not easy. One thing people forget is that the southern states could take a lot of the moral high ground in debate away from the northern states by pointing out that the slaves were often materially better off than the free factory workers in the industrialized north, who were being systematically exploited and abandoned by the factory owners. In addition to being a “peculiar institution”, slavery was an agrarian institution. In an industrialized society with a ready pool of available labor, the up front cost of owning slaves made little sense. Much more profitable to pay workers as little as you can get away with, work them to death, and have no obligation to them once they leave your employ, which could very well be because they were exploited into starvation and could no longer work. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/36 "2012-12-13T18:42:58Z")
I have this vague recollection that some states had some laws regarding the allowable treatment of slaves by slave owners. Now if a slave got too uppity, was thought to have raped a white woman, escaped, and plenty of other things they could easily be in deep shit fast. But it would be ironic that at some basic level slaves certain protections before free workers did. Am I remembering this right or is my adled brain just making stuff up now? And yes, on a practical level I suspect statistically speaking I might have found life a slave more tolerable than being a free man working somewhere up north in a factory. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/37 "2012-12-13T18:47:29Z")
> [@gracer](#): > > I guess it preserves the accent, if the person who recorded did it well. This is it, right here. Recording former slaves isn’t just about getting their stories, it’s about recording as much information as possible about them. Linguists can learn a lot from accents. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/38 "2012-12-13T18:59:06Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > 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. > [@orcenio](#): > > Except share croppers did not have their children sold off [on the auction block](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnR8WDD2aoQ). Slaves were property, not more not less. > [@billfish678](#): > > I did not know that. > [@rogerbox](#): > > 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. > [@billfish678](#): > > 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. So you thought it was so glaringly obvious so as not to need mentioning that slaves were treated as property, could be bought and sold, and their families split up on a whim on an auction block, and you still suspected that they “had lifestyles not much different from share croppers or most any other person trying to [eke] out a living in those days.” ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/39 "2012-12-13T19:03:24Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > What typically happened to slaves who became too old or sick to work? Actually did a paper for college on this about 137 years ago or so ------- the short answer was your mileage varied greatly. Larger plantations often kept the older and infirm to the same standards as the average younger/valuable “buck” providing some medical care and allowing for them in the food purchases. They could help watch over the children and quarters making the parents more profitable as field hands. Some large farms holding hundreds of slaves would sometimes even buy older slaves for that purpose. Smaller farms that only had a couple to a dozen slaves often sold them off cheap to manage roadside stands or basically be worked to death. A shoestring operation was just that and couldn’t afford property that didn’t serve a purpose. Like a lame horse or a cracked plow, hustle it off and make it someone else’s problem. There were stories in the “North” of older unproductive or crippled slaves being killed - shot as you would a dieing horse - but I wasn’t able to find a documented case of it happening. Doesn’t mean it didn’t ---- but it would make it really rare. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876/40 "2012-12-13T19:32:51Z")
I recently finished\* His Excellency: George Washington _by Joseph Ellis. According to Ellis, Washington kept on even very aged and disabled slaves, providing what medical care was available at the time_, and would not split up families. By the end of his life, Mount Vernon was essentially a not-for-profit retirement home for enslaved African-Americans, using just about all of its production to support everyone who lived there. \*Considering that Washington himself died as a direct result of the \*\*best \*\*medical care available at the time, this was not an unmixed blessing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-ever-tolerable-to-be-a-slave-in-america/643876.md?page=3)