Kindle Notes & Highlights
It was becoming clear that the plantation was not the smooth, well-managed operation described by Phillips.1
Meanwhile, pursuing his own line of inquiry, Larry Gara looked at the myths surrounding the Underground Railroad. Although the Underground Railroad was a reality, Gara said, “much of the material relating to it belongs in the realm of folklore rather than history.” It was not, he asserted, a well-organized transportation system offering multitudes of slaves safe passage to the “Promised Land of freedom.” Indeed, most runaways remained in the South, few were aided by abolitionists or anyone else, and many fled with a sense of terrible urgency.4
Tyshon Kelton liked this
As they meted out punishment, reasoned judgment often gave way to passion.70 What might have been a moderate flogging grew into brutal retribution. There is little doubt that fiendish brutality played a significant role in the South’s peculiar institution.
Men often went to great lengths and traveled many miles to reunite with spouses. The obstacles they faced were often as great as the distances involved. Sometimes the quest meant attempting to traverse hundreds of miles.
Having stolen a silver watch and some money, the twenty-two-year-old black man named January vanished from his New Orleans owner in May 1839. He could have been stolen, his owner H. F. Wade said, but was probably on his way to Vicksburg, Mississippi, to be with his wife.
twenty-two-year-old black man n...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
What is surprising is the persistence of violence on the plantation. For obvious reasons, such incidents often went unreported—masters did not wish to admit a failure in governing their human property and rumors that a slave was aggressive or belligerent diminished the slave’s value.
But the popular myth that “slaves are more generally good tempered than other people” is not supported by the evidence. Most of the violence was spontaneous, and most of it was directed against whites—owners, members of the owner’s family, overseers—although it could also be directed against fellow slaves.
Targeting areas with free black populations was not only done to achieve anonymity, but to obtain assistance. Many slaves in the Upper South, and not a few in the Lower South as well, had friends, acquaintances, and relatives who were free. “DESERTED the premises,” declared one Virginia owner, adding that he had reason to believe that his slave Bob was being “harbored by free negroes.” In Loudoun and Fauquier counties, fugitives sought out free relatives and friends to such an extent that whites petitioned the General Assembly to rid the state of free people of color because “in many
...more
Tyshon Kelton liked this
Knox
Indeed, the entire system of slavery was predicated on the ability of whites to control their property. When a slave ran away, it was necessary to make every effort to recover the “miscreant.” It seemed as if the peculiar institution itself was on trial when such “breaches” occurred. To control slaves, masters established rules and regulations on each farm and plantation, but they were also aided by an elaborate system of state and local laws, patrols, militia, vigilance committees, and individuals, like Knox, who specialized in tracking runaways.
Perhaps the most salient characteristic, however, was courage, especially for those who ran away more than once despite severe punishments.
Among the most significant characteristics of runaways was their intelligence. Masters warned the public to beware of black persons who were able to provide credible excuses as to why they were traveling in the area.
“Every person should be made perfectly to understand what they are punished for,” another planter added, “and should be made to perceive that they are not punished in anger, or through caprice.”15 Such advice came from the pages of periodicals such as De Bow’s Review, Southern Cultivator, Farmer’s Register, Carolina Planter, and Farmer and Planter, in articles “On the Management of Slaves,” “The Management of Negroes,” “Judicious Management of the Plantation Force,” “Moral Management of Negroes,” and “Management of Slaves.”
The failure of management techniques and the inability to control runaways left slave owners in a quandary.70 It appeared that no matter how diligent, punitive, or lenient; no matter how imaginative, ingenious, or attentive; no matter how determined, compassionate, or brutal, they remained unable to halt the stream of slaves that left their plantations and farms. Although they published articles for one another about how and when to plant certain crops, use fertilizers, hire overseers, motivate and discipline their black labor force, in response to their most perplexing and intractable
...more
It is not difficult to understand how slave owners became so attached to the conspiracy theory. It fitted neatly into their political struggle with the North; it absolved them of blame for slave discontent; and it offered a simple explanation for a complex human problem. Thus, despite the profusion of runaways in their midst, they could deny that blacks were resisting slavery.
In 1860, there were about 385,000 slave owners in the South, among whom about 46,000 were planters. Even if only half of all planters experienced a single runaway in a year, and if only 10 or 15 percent of other slaveholders faced the same problem (both extremely conservative estimates) the number of runaways annually would exceed 50,000. Add to this the number of slaves who, like Sam King on Morville Plantation, continually ran away, and it becomes clear that Olmsted’s impressionistic observation was far more accurate than the “scientific” data provided in the United States Census.
Masters were forced to explain how “contented” and “well cared for” servants abandoned them in such large numbers.
Estimates of the number of slaves who made it to freedom in the North vary considerably. It is probable, however, that perhaps one or two thousand per year were successful during the post-1830 period. Not all of them traveled along the routes of the Underground Railroad, however. Whatever the exact number, it is clear that the fugitives who made it to freedom in this manner represented, as one historian said, a “mere trickle from among the millions of slaves.” By
contrast, tens of thousands of slaves ran away each year into the woods, swamps, hills, backcountry, towns, and cities of the South.
