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Slavery and The South

Added Nov 07, 2012 •

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this house in the mid-nineteenth sensory areas in the western world wealthy landowner but that is not the case  we tend to think of plantations are very large with a lot of flame turn your average side Plantation had at the most 25 we have to also remember that beginning at the turn of the 19th there are still this massive movement of slaves from the upper South to the Lower South and then from Eastern sections of the Lower South out we're so that even on the eve of the Civil War their trip there are areas where someone who's moving out to the they only have one or two sway white pillars mansion that wouldn't be much more rough-hewn with the man and the woman the plantation owner and the mistress actually working and living in there Close Quarters with their slave working alongside them in the field that slaves were to be free if you are and living in that circumstance it is the status quo or your Congressman for one tournament and then you're the honorable feeling so direct your life and he's owners had meaning in terms of your place in society  honor hasn't even brought a meeting among white male Aristocrats it represents a code of ethical behavior in Brave wake me up in the social statue or the manhood of a white Southern male is often the occasion renewal fire  do you like to kill your opponent to demonstrate your willingness to die yourself the name of the first modern family or the honor of the group that surround you the code is cold of Honor governs almost every aspect of social interaction among the aristocracy was traveling to another location with her family and her servant stop one of her husband turn down the door and hear the bay in distress and gentlemen welcome to rain in the race civil tension I know this is great trouble for you but if you would only help us out and I think that it would only be fair if I give you $3  add the money because this that there would be no further obligation because money exchange in that fashion broke any kind of further connection the same as and how do women's hair with in this highly structured social border the social order they were the ones who come in the house and we don't want when they can also control their husband your husband  the typical white Southerner however is not a great planter in slaveholder but a modest farmer no doubt something play morning whites resent the planter Elite is rare what does a black toe would have to be deferential to their betters LeBron something you got to borrow some cash to get your comp in figure beholding to the individual a rabbit class hatred someone who helps sell the one bale of cotton that you produced along with his 300 Bales who buys hay so he can keep his feels and cotton and still finish last I married your third cousin twice removed is Virgo to work on Google play against the person like that with whom you feel some kinship a neighborly bonds  however pool miserable these white Southerners maybe they can still look down on the black population of the region and feel the bond with their fellow the same person is a slave is to say that person is on that person is dominated that person is legally defined as property and that domination of course is backed up by a monopoly of fourth of a Napoli of violin with the save holder the kind of job that they did we know that most slaves tend to be used in agricultural labor there's a significant question approaching 20% of men who work in cities or towns and who work as Artisans who are trained as will be trained as a blacksmith's as tinsmith sometimes and skilled craft other kind with confirm after they can purchase a loan freedom but secretly when that is forbidden can at least live reasonable that isn't true for Plantation labor which is where most played managed to eke out an existence full episode does which slaves live in make their lives very very very very different and those differences work that way down in terms of the material circumstance the play that is the kind of food they eat of kind of housing they have the kind of medical care they can expect that they manifest themselves in the possibility of those slaves that gaining their freedom  in the South slavery as an institution established and regulated by law very precise law constructed in an extraordinarily asymmetrical system in which Masters have all the power and slaves of not that goes from all the rights to hold property to the right to discipline your property and other word slave holders holding played cards in Missouri main game on the other hand that having construct a system of linear totalitarian power the question how do you enforce it and we know of course this is a system in which enforcement is often worked out on the ground volume law that governs the behavior with people you may not sell liquor to a Flavor Flav may not congregate may not be away Plantation without a pass to the advantage of their slaves from Plantation to Plantation that is the slave more valuable to drive a wagon from one place to another there laws against the slaves practicing certain trade so but again the Masters advantage to have a skilled rather than an unskilled slave and if the rules are not followed after the punishment was a place on the plantation so they're whipping all forms of violence use to coerce black one  routine institution of slavery and if a slave actually was killed in the process by slave master slaves generally receive at least enough basic necessities to move in work cornmeal and salt pork to eat cheap shoes to wear and crude cabins in which to live life for women in the slave community may take on many different rules most people talk about them and having at not to between jobs the physical since the physical labor they do Ossining sometimes in the house at the second job they do in the care which they must give to themselves turn it down children and the third is off in sexual and a sexual abuse but you know requirement for a sexual relationship the bleeding function which is required of many slave women especially as the Superbowl gets toaster and the slave trade itself is eliminated African women among Africans and often among whites are they were  root herb specialist and great deal of our pharmacopoeia comes from Native American and west understandings I'll even such a important thing as conquering smallpox goes right back to West African practices the conditions of slavery in the cities differ sharply from slavery in the countryside places that Master they go find where they give their Master a portion of their earning and then they keep it in from one week to the next might not see a black population of people who are cold free people of color that population grows greatly in the US bake the Piccoli the states of the upper South looking at the Fourth of July celebrations looking at the rhetoric of the speeches that this was a point of Pride they were implicated of course in system slavery play benefit from it because the the prophets were enormous by the 1840s and 50s from the slave state from the cotton Kingdom one can imagine public terrified of African American men being freed of African-American men competing with poor whites labor call himself northern states did not have slavery and that became a powerful point of difference between North and South the slave trade increases dramatically as the agricultural lands of the Southwest on development now that migration probably is almost as great as the number of Africans brought to to the mainland that is almost a million men and women and holdren off possibly ripped out of what has become their Homeland and transported again in the same kind of rough that they would transport across the Atlantic into this and knew more lucrative Plantation area and in the process of course it's enormous Leitrim enormously disruptive I'll families are destroyed a communities or destroyed so much so that probably if you are play parent on the chances are probably one in three that you will not see your child after 8 14 or 15 The Auction Block becomes the great nightmare of the African American people slave owners like to argue that slaves are generally content with servitude but it is clear that the vast majority are not slaves from play beginning from the time that they leave Africa resist and hold Riot e of different ways that resistance so we'll take place Starship the resistance will take place on Landing docks at resistance will take place on plantations and that resistance will take a variety of the form that everything from breaking tools a to burning up on the two running away to spiti soup to confronting directly your owner or the Agents of the owner that is an overseer steward a confronting them directly and violently and in the course of things perhaps organizing a rebellion now rebellions are always rare particularly rare in Mainland North America in part because the vast majority of the population is white is free on slaveholders can call upon non slaveholders the two to join them in the putting down rebellions because they describe the three bedrooms in racial terms by the aging dories and that one of your time frame you have beginning of the The Liberator William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper which was the first political uncompromising Abolitionist Movement by will not Retreat a single that will be heard for the lives of his first editorial statement 1831 also saw that turn around the longest slave revolt in August making 31 in Southampton County Virginia or able to kill 55 white folks and strike Terror in the hearts of millions of people who but she lived around slavery in American Sign it made them to be extremely defensive as nothing else probably would have this song will feel absolutely terrified and will begin to make the system even more coercive and brutal than before and their variety of ways in which did they make the law of blacks were free and slave without even more miserable there's a perception not unjustified that in the late 19th century lynchings became exceptionally brutal with burning alive mutilation torture just extreme violence against the victims within 2 months white Southerners before the Civil War did that to African American slave who were accused of participating in in planned flavorful how are there obvious reasons why lynchings and the truth extreme violence against African-Americans was different than slavery one is it master has the economic investment enslave far better to have the state execute to slave because the slave master was paid for the loss of his property so does economic incentives to use the courts for slave masters and this is outrageous because that for some Northerners end of the humanity block for freedom-loving people that they aspire to the same kind of positive life that's white did slavery open at Leah's dad for many millions of people and of course the violence which is rained upon them and hideous and I've seen in the in the vilest no sort of way and that's one thing we have to say about slavery and we could never forget about slavery but slavery is never of that slavery is also life on this very narrow grounds of slaves create a culture that is the rich Nexus of Kinsman family that is other religious tradition that is the political tradition of philosophy the music the Dan the entire Nexus of of the culture of a slave from language to philosophy religion persisted overwhelmingly among the first members of the family to be brought from West Africa and when they do ombre Christianity at least initially their response is to Fashion a kind of a mixture of elements of traditional African religion with Ellen turn on typically from having shower pole Christian in the 19th century we have African ancestry on the slave quarters conducting their own separate worship and we have a feeling chances of actual separate black churches in gathered religion clearly something that was very important because if you look Christianity Christianity teaches equality fill whatever the master said about I am mastering you enslave the Old Testament preseason turn created equal same way that the Declaration of Independence says because everyone is in is equal before God and God is master not to slave master of course the same christian messages used by their masters to inculcate submissions and subordination and so pledged sword  the other crucial institution of black culture is the slave family there flame what has no right to fam no right the Mary I know right certificate roll over their children or no right to have any say about their ability to love to affect their parents lives if they get older and we know that slaveholders the deal their slaves so like so many cards in a deck without breaking their marriages and a separating parents and children but on the other hand if you attempt to separate parents and chill turn the TV head to separate a husbands and wives if you attempted to abuse at the slave a marriage a bad that you're going to have a very unhappy play that may push a slave to what run away that may push a slave to say this just isn't worth it I'm ready to play play last card Masters are very Losa to do that so that all low slaveholders have all of the power in law in practice of slaves were able to begin to carve out for themselves this more Mitch's where they can control us some of their alive it is a a process of which is extraordinaire Aliya fragile and extraordinary contingent on manything amazing thing that African-Americans managed to survive in and when the families were broken up it would come back together by creating fictive so people who were not there blood kin really became their kin and wife laid Matthew Myers taking him anyway given a name to Ashley person named woman's child but within the slave community that I was given a name a by its mother and it was recognized the least Among Us American people slaves able to create the ice family life laser able to create a religious light slavery able to create the theology slaves are able to create a music the cuisine a philosophy a whole matters of things on these small area which they're able to a begin negotiations with their owners paternalism on their caring for their slaves their Workforce which they put themselves in contrast with the workforce of the north of the industrial class but I would have to say that most of the concern was over whether white and black people could ever live together on any equality in the answer usually with know that if it wasn't slavery what was it going to be  from whatever angle it is viewed Life as a you really have to think what it meant to live where rape and violence 2-person and and kill erazno pains is there not a metaphor the very real what makes what you hear low pop up can I go bring salt pepper to rub your back and hear the pain  how long do we have to take a bath a.m. turn on music and we have to think about the impact on society because  Southern Society becomes very violence aside what happens to a white child growing up on a plantation of whippings taking place on a daily basis seeing people get and there's no accountability for it and what does that mean for the the the wife of the lightness and what is a dude to herself when the master is is cavorting any flea Academy she can take it out on hand she has no recourse except to play me talk about a fully loaded cost accounting we really have to think about the effect of this kind of violence turn this kind of power the effect this has not just African-Americans but on the society and some societies home when one who can just run rampant on and on the challenges us to think of an institution which at once is so hideous and singing and violent and destructive of human life and at the same time and institution which becomes the seedbed of so much activity and so much we come to appreciate and love about American life so slavery is both of those things and then trying to understand you know how our deepest nightmare is the source of some of our richest and most creative culture is a very challenging very challenging thing for all of us that understand The Unfinished Nation 52 part American history series for more information about this program and accompanying materials call +1-800-576-2988 or visit us online at w are you w intellicom org

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Slavery and The South

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