The Worst aspect of American Slavery? (war, greatest, general, European)

[equinox63]

In your opinion, what was the worst aspect of American Slavery?

[Grandstander]

The denial of human dignity, the denial of the humanity of the slave, i.e, the idea that perpetual child status may be imposed upon one human by another.

[mco65]

I think its hard to put a finger on it.. it was all pretty bad. One of the things that baffles me is the root of slavery.. not the genesis but the root which is kidnapping. It's hard for me to comprehend where kidnapping is not only ok, but profitable and legal in what was arguably the greatest civilized nations in the world.

Also the mindset of the slaver owner is hard to comprehend. I know there are evil people in this world and there have been evil people since the beginning but of the 4 million or so slaves in North America in 1860, I can't believe that all of their owners were evil... and if not, what was their mindset? How do you justify slavery without an evil disposition?

There was obviously a learned culture of enslavement that Americans were taught from birth. Slaves were not people. At least not like real people and they obviously bought into it.. i guess they had to.. Obviously some were enlightened, but not enough to avoid a major conflict to end the institute.

But like I said originally, it was all pretty bad and its almost unimaginable to try and comprehend...

[NJGOAT]

The marked difference between slavery in Africa as it existed at the time and how it was practiced in the New World was basically what made it worse and what was summed up by Grandstander, it was social slavery. Chattel Slavery as it became known was predicated on generations being enslaved to the same master and a continual conditioning of the slave as inferior. Not just that they are inferior to the master, but they are inherently inferior people.

Slavery in Africa was practiced very differently and while it was far more physically brutal in some cases, it was also limited. A slave held by other Africans would generally be in one of two positions, both of which resulted from war:

1. Slaves were taken following the war and used as labor or as sacrifices. The life was brutal, but it was limited to your life.

2. Slaves were "adopted" as a form of reparation from the loser to the winner of a war. If I lost a son fighting you, you gave me one of yours as compensation for my loss. This "son" was a slave but had many rights and was generally treated as an equal within the household. They were even allowed to marry and their children and wife were not considered slaves or property of the master. This form also had a finite time as when the master died, the slave was free and would often share in any inheritance.

In the New World model, the entire population was held as slaves generation after generation. There was no end whether it be brutal as in the first example of African slavery or peaceful as in the second. The most stinging part of all was that children were born as slaves. The conditioning began from birth so a slave would "know their place" and the older slaves were instrumental on indoctrinating the younger ones and keeping them inline. Ultimately this is what made it so bad, centuries of conditioning that the slave was inherently inferior in all respects.

[cojoncillo]

Black slaves lived ten times better that your regular European peasant at that time, not only that, they were worth 10 times more.
I don't think that slaves were badly treated, since they were worth 10 times more than a poor white peasant.
Sure, there were cruel and sadistic slave drivers, but what about child labour in Europe at that time? What about sexual explotaition of female labour in factories, houses, everywhere? What about forced recruitment for constant and stupid colonial wars? I still remember the day when housemaids were just a toy for elder sons, grandfather and any visit.
Let's remember that at that time, XIXth Century, white children worked in coal mines to sneak in small holes. Children were exploted by their own families or sold to guilds if they had debts.
The ancestor of person that lives 400 meters from my house bought his house, a large three story house in a coastal town near Barcelona (home of many slavetraders), for the amount in pesos he got from the sale of his black maid in Puerto Rico in 1870 or so.
So with the price of a slave women you could buy a large and solid house not affordable to any peasant, artisan, country laborer, fishermen or small business owner.
As to black servants in the Old World, say in the XVIIIth Century, they were "suntuary objects", just like having silk or a balcony at the opera house. Only extremely rich people had blacks and they lived ten times better than your typical white servant, that were treated worse than horses.

[nightbird47]

Originally Posted by cojoncillo

Black slaves lived ten times better that your regular European peasant at that time, not only that, they were worth 10 times more.
I don't think that slaves were badly treated, since they were worth 10 times more than a poor white peasant.
Sure, there were cruel and sadistic slave drivers, but what about child labour in Europe at that time? What about sexual explotaition of female labour in factories, houses, everywhere? What about forced recruitment for constant and stupid colonial wars? I still remember the day when housemaids were just a toy for elder sons, grandfather and any visit.
Let's remember that at that time, XIXth Century, white children worked in coal mines to sneak in small holes. Children were exploted by their own families or sold to guilds if they had debts.
The ancestor of person that lives 400 meters from my house bought his house, a large three story house in a coastal town near Barcelona (home of many slavetraders), for the amount in pesos he got from the sale of his black maid in Puerto Rico in 1870 or so.
So with the price of a slave women you could buy a large and solid house not affordable to any peasant, artisan, country laborer, fishermen or small business owner.
As to black servants in the Old World, say in the XVIIIth Century, they were "suntuary objects", just like having silk or a balcony at the opera house. Only extremely rich people had blacks and they lived ten times better than your typical white servant, that were treated worse than horses.

Good point. When you take the world view, it was not such an aberation. Until WW1, which shattered the social conventions, those who worked as servants who had children expected them to go into service. They became 'merged' into the upstairs family and the rules were inforced by the upper servants. Those who couldn't got turned out into the street where they survived as they could, at a time when slow starvation or death from the other things because they were weak was common. Read Dickens. The reason the streets were full of thieves was there was, for many of them, no other way to way to survive.

That value did buy black slaves something others didn't get. In the American south, after the Irish immigration, dangerous jobs were done by Irish work gangs, paid a tiny amount. The Irish had to find work to eat so they took it, but these were the jobs like canals where there was a high risk of death or injury. You didn't risk damaging property. Just as during the time when white indentured slaves (as they were refered to at the time) worked with black slaves the work where death or injury was likely was given to the indentured. In some span of years they lived, they were free. The early planters favored child indentured for the tabacco fields since they seldom survived the indenture to 21. Why risk perpetual property?

We must not forget it was a cruel world for the servant classes of the world, and the poor and the serfs (serfdom coexisting in time with American slavery in Russia and eastern europe). They were thought of with little value except what work could be gotten from them. If they didn't work out and died it was not the 'master's' problem.

The one legalized difference is the perpetuity of passing it on to other generations. There were options for some (not all) of those who compared. For serfs there wasn't and usually when there was the options made servitude preferable. But the psychological effect of being born a slave and with no expectation of change would be devistating.

I've always thought it was very much a condition of denial that Northern US society found southern slavery so heidonous, but working immigrants in buildings for 12 or more hours a day for barely enough to feed themselves was fine. And if you had a fire there were always more. And you didn't have to worry about the baby or grandma or the sick. A win win all the way for the companies who exploited them.

I think in the end this is what slavery itself would have mutated into if the south had not clung so hard to their 'image' and culture and industirialized. Ultimately, it cost less to set them free and only pay the ones who could work.

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by cojoncillo

Black slaves lived ten times better that your regular European peasant at that time, not only that, they were worth 10 times more.
.

You are overlooking the aspect which I raised and upon which NJGOAT amplified. The most wretched European peasant was still counted as a human being with a minimal amount of individual rights. The peasant's master could not sell your wife or sell your children, the slaveowner could. The peasant's master did not pass laws which made it illegal for a peasant to aspire to a higher station, or which made it illegal for a peasant to learn to read, or made it illegal for x number of peasants to gather or travel as they pleased during their leisure time. The slaveowners did.

If American black slaves were actually living well, why were there so many runaways? Why did a 175,000 free black men volunteer to fight for the North during the Civil War?

Given a choice of being an 19th Century European peasant, or a 19th Century American black slave, I would opt for the former in an instant. At least I would have a chance, however remote, of bettering myself if some stroke of fortune presented me with the opportunity. At least I would be regarded as an adult capable of making my own decisions about many things. At least I could marry someone of my own choosing and my boss would not be able to exercise a legal right to remove my wife from my home and turn her into his mistress whenever he pleased. If I refused to work any further for my boss, I could at least quit. I would get thrown off the land, loose my cottage and income, but at least I would not be whipped and forced to go back to work. I would not be tracked down, brought back in irons and perhaps have a foot cut off to insure no future attempts at escape. Maybe extreme poverty might force me to sell one of my children, but at least I made the decision and got the money, rather than my master making the decision and pocketing the profit.

Several million European peasants were able to escape the poverty cycle of their lives in the 19th Century and come to America where opportunities to better oneself might be found. If a black slave attempted an escape, he or she was subject to capture and return, even if they made to a free state. (Fugitive Slave Act.)

[cojoncillo]

I don't think that my great-great-great granparents, that were peasants and tilled land in high mountain and descended from wretched and famished peasants from Tolosa de Llanguedoc (Tolouse), that wandered into Spanish Catalonia because they earned ten times more thanks to the American silver differential, were considered human by the upper and bourgeois classes living in Reus, Tarragona and Barcelona. Yes, peasants at that time in remote areas lived in a semi-feudal regime renting land from landed owner or the church, they could fall into indenture for debts, and girls and boys in domestic service were abused.


Those that were fortunate enough to have some property to sell and depart to a big city or to the Americas were a minority until the XXth Century. In many regions, the "Senyor" or the "Lord" had almost feudal authority upon his subjects, that's why there were many peasant revolts.

Blacks slaves lived much better that the anti-slavery literature makes us believe, in many cases they even tilled land for them, could hunt and live a more independent life. Some blacks obtained freedom and had black slaves. There were blacks that were considered part of the family, at least in Spanish America, the so-called "negrito de la casa" (house n-word).

Turn into his mistress? Ja, ja.. Any beautiful peasant girl in Europe at that time was employed as a "maid" and raped by the entire family, from the growing child to the grandpa....In many cases, the Lord took care of his bastards in a "loose" manner and provided some economic relief to the "legal husband" (called "golden horn" or "gilded cuckhold"). This was quite common quite recently, 50 or 60 years ago. Just as most AA are mulattoes, the "lineage" of most Europeans in as false as Judah's kiss because there were many illegitimate children from "legal rapes" (extremely common during the XIXth Century)....So Europeans are not different from AA, and most wear a wrong last name.

Any Lord or Rich owner could kill a pesant, say while driving a cart or riding, and nothing happened to him, he had just to hand some small change to the family (I'm a witness). Oh yes, blacks lived much better, ate much better and in a general manner, they were treated much better.

Human dignity? There's a saying in Spanish...."Dame pan y dime tonto" (Give me bread and call me stupid).

[cojoncillo]

[quote=cojoncillo;24737425]I don't think that my great-great-great granparents, that were peasants and tilled land in high mountain and descended from wretched and famished peasants from Tolosa de Llanguedoc (Tolouse), that wandered into Spanish Catalonia because they earned ten times more thanks to the American silver differential, were considered human by the upper and bourgeois classes living in Reus, Tarragona and Barcelona. Yes, peasants at that time in remote areas lived in a semi-feudal regime renting land from landed owner or the church, they could fall into indenture for debts, and girls and boys in domestic service were abused.


Those that were fortunate enough to have some property to sell and depart to a big city or to the Americas were a minority until the XXth Century. In many regions, the "Senyor" or the "Lord" and the Church had almost feudal authority upon his subjects, that's why there were many peasant revolts.

Blacks slaves lived much better that the anti-slavery literature makes us believe, in many cases they even tilled land for them, could hunt and live a more independent life. Some blacks obtained freedom and had black slaves. There were blacks that were considered part of the family, at least in Spanish America, the so-called "negrito de la casa" (house n-word).

Turn into his mistress? Ja, ja.. Any beautiful peasant girl in Europe at that time was employed as a "maid" and raped by the entire family, from the growing child to the grandpa....In many cases, the Lord took care of his bastards in a "loose" manner and provided some economic relief to the "legal husband" (called "golden horn" or "gilded cuckhold") (I have seen it in my own family since my great uncle had many illegitimate offsprings with married women). This was quite common quite recently, 50 or 60 years ago. Just as most AA are mulattoes, the "lineage" of most Europeans is as false as Judah's kiss because there were many illegitimate children from "legal rapes" (extremely common during the XIXth Century)....So Europeans are not different from AA, and most wear a wrong last name.

Any Lord or Rich owner could kill a peasant, say while driving a cart or riding, and nothing happened to him, he had just to hand some small change to the family (I'm a witness of one of those accidents). Oh yes, blacks lived much better, ate much better and in a general manner, they were treated much better.

Human dignity? There's a saying in Spanish...."Dame pan y dime tonto" (Give me bread and call me stupid). You only have to see the height of AA, most people in large areas of Western Europe over 70 or 75 years are "dwarfish" and have bad teeth because they did not have access to protein. I can ascertain wether someone over 75 to 85 suffered famine because the height.

[Bideshi]

Racism today.