Page 280 - American Stories, A History of the United States

action prevented white dissenters from publicly criticizing or even questioning slavery. The South
became a closed society with a closed mind. Loyalty to the region was identified with defense of 11.1
it, and proslavery agitators sought to create a mood of crisis and danger requiring absolute unity
and single-mindedness among the white population. This embattled attitude fostered a more
militant sectionalism and inspired threats to secede from the Union unless the South’s peculiar 11.2
institution could be made safe from northern or abolitionist attack.
The repression after the Nat Turner rebellion succeeded. between 1831 and the Civil War, no
further uprisings resulted in the mass killing of whites. This once led some historians to conclude 11.3
that African American slaves were brainwashed into docility. but resistance to slavery simply took
less dangerous forms than open revolt. The brute force employed to suppress the Turner rebel-
lion and the elaborate precautions taken against its recurrence showed slaves that it was futile to
confront white power directly. instead, they asserted their humanity and maintained their self-
esteem in other ways. The heroic effort to endure slavery without surrendering to it gave rise to
an African American culture of lasting value.

The World of Southern blacks

11.1 What factors made living conditions for southern blacks more or less difficult?
M ost African Americans of the early to mid-nineteenth century experienced

slavery on plantations, estates owned by planters who had 20 or more slaves.
To ensure their personal safety and the profitability of their enterprises, the
masters of these agrarian communities used all the means—physical and
psychological—at their command to make slaves docile and obedient. Despite these
pressures, most African Americans managed to retain an inner sense of their own worth
and dignity. When conditions were right, they asserted their desire for freedom and
equality and showed their disdain for white claims that slavery was a positive good.
Although slave culture did not normally provoke violent resistance to the slaveholders’
regime, the inner world that slaves made for themselves gave them the spiritual strength
to thwart the masters’ efforts to dominate their hearts and minds. Much of what we
know about the world of southern slaves comes from interviews ex-slaves gave in the
1930s, decades after slavery ended. While the transcriptions of these interviews often
reflect the prejudices of the white interviewers, and are colored by the circumstances in
which they were given, they remain an invaluable window into the lives of slaves.

Slaves’ Daily Life and Labor

Slaves’ daily life varied with the region in which they lived and the type of planta-
tion or farm on which they worked. On large plantations in the Cotton Belt, most
slaves worked in “gangs” under an overseer. White overseers, sometimes helped by
black “drivers,” enforced a workday from sunup to sundown, six days a week. There
was never a slack season under “King Cotton.” Cultivation required year-round labor.
Enslaved women and children also worked in the fields. Parents often brought babies
and young children to the fields, where older children could care for them and mothers
could nurse them during brief breaks. Older children worked in “trash gangs,” weeding
and yard cleaning. Life on the sugar plantations of Louisiana was much harsher: Slaves
had to work into the night during harvest season, and mortality rates were high.
Not all slaves in agriculture worked in gangs. In the low country of South Carolina
and Georgia, slaves who cultivated rice worked under a “task system” that gave them
more control over the pace of labor. With less supervision, they could complete their
tasks within an eight-hour day. Slaves on small farms often worked side by side with
their masters rather than in slave gangs, although such intimacy did not necessarily
affect power relationships. While about three-quarters of slaves were field workers,
slaves performed many other kinds of labor. They dug ditches, built houses, worked on
boats and in mills (often hired out by their masters for a year), and were house servants,
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