The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South

“By concentrating solely on the planter, historians have, in effect, been listening to only one side of a complicated debate. The distorted view of the plantation which emerges from planter records is that of an all-powerful, monolithic institution which strips the slave of any meaningful and distinctive culture, family life, religion, or manhood. The clearest portrait the planter has drawn of the slave is the stereotype of Sambo, a submissive half-man, half-child. Such stereotypes are so intimately related to the planter’s projections, desires, and biases that they tell us little about slave behavior and even less about the slave’s inner life, his thoughts, actions, self-concepts, or personality.”

This quote is Blassingame’s main criticism of previous historians of slavery in the South. Previous historians not only ignored the perspective of enslaved people but focused almost entirely on the experiences and writings of plantation owners.

“While relying heavily on those black autobiographies which pass the tests commonly applied to historical sources, I have also systematically examined several hundred white autobiographies, plantation records, agricultural journals, and travel accounts. This approach permits us to view slave life through the eyes of three witnesses. Two of them, the planter and the slave, give an insider’s view of the plantation. The third witness, the traveler, views the relation between slave and master from the outside. Although there are no absolute guarantees of truth, this three-dimensional picture of the plantation at least reveals the complexity of the institution and, hopefully, gives us a close approximation of the interaction between masters and slaves.”

Here, Blassingame describes his sources. Because slave autobiographies provide a direct look into how enslaved people viewed their own experiences and the plantation system, he argues that they “are crucial for an understanding of the slave experience” (368).

“The sophisticated research of ethno-musicologists, anthropologists, and folklorists, coupled with the evidence in a large number of primary sources, suggests that African culture was much more resistant to the bludgeon that was slavery than historians have hitherto suspected.”

Core to Blassingame’s argument is the idea that enslaved people were not entirely defined by their enslavement and the trauma of slavery. Instead, they drew from resources like their native African cultures in order to survive and assert their individuality.

“All things considered, the few Africans enslaved in seventeenth and eighteenth-century America appear to have survived their traumatic experiences without becoming abjectly docile, infantile, or submissive. The Africans retained enough manhood to rebel because the Southern plantation was not a rationally organized institution designed to crush every manifestation of individual will or for systematic extermination. The mandatory requirements of the master—labor and obedience—were familiar to the Africans at least in the form of their former occupations and the obeisance they paid to chiefs and elders. Whatever the impact of slavery on their behavior and attitudes, it did not force them to concentrate all of their psychic energy on survival. Once they acquired the language of their master, the Africans learned that their labors, and therefore their lives, were of considerable value. As a result, they were assured of the bare minimum of food, shelter, and clothing. Although provisions were often inadequate and led to many complaints from slaves, they survived.”

According to Blassingame’s understanding of psychology and oppression, people in authoritative institutions like the military and prisons resist authority. However, the more they are subjected to coercion, the more submissive they are likely to become. Still, Blassingame suggests that even in extreme circumstances like the Nazi concentration camps, individuals try to retain a sense of self and avoid total submission (328).

“Compared with his Latin American brother, the Southern slave retained relatively few Africanisms in his music, language, dances, and religion. Two factors largely account for the faster rate of and more complete acculturation of Southern slaves. First, the African slave trade ended earlier in the United States than in much of Latin America. Second, Southern churches were far more interested and successful in providing religious instruction for slaves than was the Latin American Catholic Church. Overwhelmingly Protestant, democratic, and evangelical, Southern churches enjoyed many advantages over the autocratic, formalistic, politicized Latin American Catholic Church in their attempt to convert the slaves to Christianity.”

In this quote, Blassingame explains the two factors that made Protestant Christianity more accessible to enslaved people in the Southern United States than Catholic Christianity was to enslaved people in Latin America—timing of the slave trade and interest in educating enslaved people in religion. As a result, enslaved people in the South became more acclimated to the culture of their captors.

“Because of the weaknesses of the Catholic Church and continual accretions to their numbers from the Fatherland, Latin American slaves became nominal Catholics while largely retaining their African religious beliefs, language, and culture. Consequently, the Latin Americanization of the slave was nowhere comparable to the Americanization of the bondsman in the South.”

Overall, Blassingame argues for the significance of religion in allowing enslaved people to assimilate to the cultures of their captors. The experience of Latin American enslaved people is an example of what happens when dominant religious institutions do not invest much in the conversion of enslaved people.

“Because creation stories, Supreme Beings, spirits, priesthealers, and elaborate moral and ethical systems were central in African religions, the native Africans enslaved in America found it relatively easy to understand similar features in Christianity.”

One of the reasons why polytheists and Muslims from West Africa found it relatively easy to convert to Christianity was because of the similarities between their religious traditions. This echoes Blassingame’s observation that some white European enslaved people converted to Islam because of the similarities between Christianity and Islam (60).

“At the beginning of the nineteenth century probably a majority of Southern planters accepted slavery as a necessary evil bequeathed to them by their fathers. Reeling from the attacks of abolitionists after 1830, the planters launched a massive propaganda campaign to convince whites at home and abroad that slavery was a positive good.”

Christianity was (and arguably remains) a potent force in the South. It was used by enslaved people to give themselves hope and belief in future liberation. However, it was also used by Southern leaders to justify slavery.

“White ministers often taught the slaves that they did not deserve freedom, that it was God’s will that they were enslaved, that the devil was creating those desires for liberty in their breasts, and that runaways would be expelled from the church. Then followed the slave beatitudes: blessed are the patient, blessed are the faithful, blessed are the cheerful, blessed are the submissive, blessed are the hardworking, and above all, blessed are the obedient.”

The fact that Christianity was used to justify slavery does not detract from it undermining slavery as well, even in the eyes of members of the planter class. Furthermore, Christianity was still adopted by enslaved people to support their own ideas of freedom and rebellion (133, 221).

“Southern whites not only adapted their language and religion to that of the slaves but also adapted agricultural practices, sexual attitudes, rhythm of life, architecture, food and social relations to African patterns. During the colonial period, for instance, the slaves planted rice according to African practice. The African tradition of cooperative work led some masters to adopt gang labor, which the slaves accompanied by rhythmic music. Other masters adopted the African tradition of the task system, thus giving the slaves a portion of each day to labor for themselves.”

According to Blassingame, the introduction of enslaved people from West Africa to the United States did not manifest in a single set way. Instead, slave culture was distinctive enough that it also transformed the South.

“The few periods of recreation the slave enjoyed and his religious beliefs gave him some hours of joy and a degree of hope amid his sufferings. Since his recreation was less supervised than his labor, these hours were especially important to him. Leisure time and religious activities broke the monotony of daily toil and permitted the slave to play roles other than that of the helpless dependent driven to his tasks”

The importance of slave culture was not just it providing an outlet outside of labor. It also provided means of achieving solidarity and resistance.

“The slave’s religious principles were colored by his own longings for freedom and based on half-understood sermons in white churches or passages from the Old Testament describing the struggles of the Jews, beautiful pictures of a future life, enchantment and fear, and condemnation of sin. The heaviest emphasis in the slaves’ religion was on change in their earthly situation and divine retribution for the cruelty of their masters.”

Despite white people’s attempts to use the messages of Christianity to force enslaved people to accept their situation (85-86), the latter were able to find inspiration in and create their own interpretations of Christianity.

“As other-worldly as they often appear, the spirituals served as much more than opiates and escapist fantasies. They affirmed the slave’s personal autonomy and recognized the reality of his earthly suffering.”

Spirituals did not just represent the way enslaved people adopted Christianity for their own aspirations. They also contributed to the development of slave culture and community.

“While men were clearly the initiators during courtship in the quarters, women controlled, by their answers to the questions propounded by the men, the pace, the length, and determined the success or failure of the wooing.”

Blassingame does not spend much time discussing the specific experiences of enslaved females. However, he does suggest that women had significant roles in slave culture, as the traditional dominance fathers and husbands had over their families and spouses in West African and Southern cultures was undermined by slavery. For example, in a slave family, women “shared authority and responsibility” (178).

“The slaves’ attitude toward sex and procreation was an amalgam of European and African beliefs.”

Even with the influence of Southern Protestant Christianity, Blassingame argues that enslaved families and marriages retained elements of West African cultures.

By all odds, the most brutal aspect of slavery was the separation of families. This was a haunting fear which made all of the slave’s days miserable. In spite of the fact that probably a majority of the planters tried to prevent family separations in order to maintain plantation discipline, practically all of the black autobiographers were touched by the tragedy.”

The threat of being separated from one’s family impacted enslaved people in two ways. Firstly, it elicited shared responsibility between men and women within the enslaved family (178). Secondly, it was another way that the institution of the plantation exercised power over enslaved people.

“The lessons the slave child learned about conformity were complex and contradictory. Recognizing the overwhelming power of the whites, parents taught children obedience as a means of avoiding pain, suffering, and death. At the same time, they did not teach unconditional submission. Instead, children were often taught to fight their masters and overseers to protect their relatives.”

One way enslaved people resisted slavery was through how they raised their children. Although they taught their children to act submissive to avoid indirectly hurting their communities, they also impressed on them the importance of defending themselves and their families.

“Although information is limited, it is possible to draw a portrait of the antebellum black rebel leaders. For the most part, they were young, literate, married, charismatic men. Finding sanctions for their bloodletting in the Bible, inspiring the faint-hearted with apocalyptic visions from the Scriptures of God delivering the Israelites from the hands of their oppressors, the leaders convinced the blacks that slavery was contrary to the will of God and that He commanded them to rise.”

Christianity did more than just provide enslaved people with a refuge and a source of hope. It also gave leaders of slave revolts and conspiracies a language they could use to legitimize and spread their message.

“Antebellum Southern novelists, dramatists, and journalists were so influential in the creation and reflection of public attitudes toward slaves that their works must be examined. An investigation of this literature is also mandatory because its impact has been so pervasive that twentieth-century historians have often uncritically accepted the most popular literary stereotype as an accurate description of slave personality.”

Blassingame argues that the stereotype of the docile slave, particularly that of “Sambo” (203-204), were deliberately pushed by Southern writers. Such stereotypes did not just affect how plantation owners thought of enslaved people, but the historical narrative on slavery that The Slave Community seeks to disprove.

“It is obvious from the writings of the planters that the slaves did not internalize the roles and automatically submit unconditionally to their masters.”

Although Blassingame largely draws from slave autobiographies (368), this quote is an instance in which he uses sources penned by white oppressors to verify the autobiographies’ claims.

“Uncompromisingly harsh, the portrait which the slaves drew of cruel masters was filled with brutality and horror.”

Blassingame makes it clear that, although enslaved people had ways to assert themselves, slavery was still a brutal system—especially under cruel masters who denied them their humanity.

“The Southern white man's perceptions of slave behavior make one point quite clear: the planter recognized the variability of slave personality in his day-to-day relationships. In reality, he had to make several compromises in order to maintain the facade of absolute control.”

Despite the existence of the “Sambo” stereotype, in reality, plantation owners recognized that most enslaved people were not at all weak-willed. Treating enslaved people as beings more diverse and nuanced than any one image was necessary for managing a plantation.

“The rituals of deference are fleeting, highly formalized, almost unconscious acts that are often performed without too much psychological cost to the subordinate.”

In his psychological analysis, Blassingame argues that enslaved people often maintained their individuality while presenting a submissive front before their masters. This act is framed as having been manageable for an enslaved person, who could present a more authentic, assertive self within the slave community.