To install StudyMoose App tap A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. $18.74/subscription + tax, Save 25% In addition, the white slave owners feared the Nat type of slaves because they were hard to control and work wasnt completed. The figure of William Freeland stands in direct contrast to the rest of the slave owners in Douglasss Narrative. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. Dont have an account? Interpersonal theorists argue that "behavioral patterns are determined by the characteristics of the situation, how the person perceives them, and his behavioral dispositions at the time." Panelists included Mary Frances Berry, Herbert Gutman, Leslie Howard Owens, George Rawick, Earl Thorpe, and Eugene Genovese. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Preface by William Lloyd Garrison & Letter from Wendell Phillips, Preface by William Lloyd Garrison & Letter from Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Background. John W. Blassingame was a black historian interested in the issue of slavery in America. Voodoo priests and conjurers promised slaves that they could make masters kind, harm enemies, ensure love, and heal sickness. Each week, Douglass turns over all his wages to Hugh Auld. Free trial is available to new customers only. Students looking for free, top-notch essay and term paper samples on various topics. Their exact location on a scale of one to ten will always remain a matter of opinion. [56], Historians exhibited varying responses to Blassingame's use of psychological theory. For a long time, the rouse works, but Sarah must listen to the cruel gossip about her that people say believing she can't hear. 21, 22. Rawick is convinced that Blassingame would have reached the same conclusions from the sources without the use of psychology "because the historical evidence as seen through an unadulterated commitment to the struggles of the slaves and an equally uncompromising hostility to the masters would have led him there. According to Blassingame, these personality types were important to white slave owners because obvioulsy they wanted the Sambo type of slave because they could be counted upon to perform their duties without causing problems. In the new preface, Blassingame asserted that the book had to be revised because of George Bentley, an enslaved, pro-slavery Primitive Baptist minister from Tennessee who pastored a white church in the 1850s. "[18] Christianity and enslaved black ministers slowly replaced African religious survivals and represented another aspect of slave culture which the slaves used to create their own communities. But Batiatus is training the men in order to sell them off. Instead it was much more resistant to the bludgeons that was slavery than historians have hitherto suspected (Blassingame, 34 35). Renews April 24, 2023 Here Douglass puns on the comfort of living with Freeland as his master and his stronger desire to live on free land. Douglass, resolving to attempt an escape sometime during the year, sets about offering his fellow slaves the chance to join him. [61], Since its publication in 1972 and revision in 1979, The Slave Community has influenced subsequent historiographical works on slavery in the United States. One day, four white apprentices attack Douglass at the shipyard and nearly destroy his left eye. He goes on to suggest that slaves survived because they were able to engage in stories, dances and other rituals that were important to their culture. The Question and Answer section for The Slave is a great "The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South" by John W. Blassingame is the first book about slavery written by a historian in the viewpoint of slaves rather than slave owners. He wrote The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South in order to give a voice to the slaves rather than a voice through slave owners. Word soon spreads, and Douglass surreptitiously begins to hold a Sabbath school in the cabin of a free black. He asserts that by concentrating on the slaveowner, historians have presented a distorted view of plantation life that "strips the slave of any meaningful and distinctive culture, family life, religion, or manhood." Continue to start your free trial. Discount, Discount Code "[44], Blassingame builds on the historiography of Phillips, Stampp, and Elkins, but he acknowledges the influence of Charles S. Sydnor's Slavery in Mississippi (1933), Orville W. Taylor's Negro Slavery in Arkansas (1958), Eugene D. Genovese's The Political Economy of Slavery (1961), and Ann J. She notes that The Slave Community, like other historiography produced in the 1960s and 70s, "did not directly address women's history, even though many of the historians were sensitive to women's experience. [31] Blassingame concludes that the Sambo and Nat stereotypes "were real." [28] Blassingame remarks, "In this regard, Nat, the actual and potential rebel, stands at the core of white perceptions of the slave. He questions the reality of plantation paternalism described by Phillips: "the reality of ante-bellum paternalism needs to be separated from its fanciful surroundings and critically analyzed. At Thomas Aulds, Douglass and the others learn that someone has betrayed them. Blassingame argued that a great variety of personality types creating and saving your own notes as you read. They plan to canoe up the Chesapeake Bay on the Saturday before Easter. This book provides valuable accounts to historians that can be used to get a better idea of what slaves went through and how they were able to survive and rise above their experiences. Give us your email address and well send this sample there. Slaveholders typically encourage slaves to spend the holiday drinking, rather than resting or working industriously for themselves. [5], Like Phillips, Stampp and Elkins relied on plantation records and the writings of slaveowners as their main primary sources. [16], Still, Blassingame concludes that cross-cultural exchanges occurred on southern plantations, arguing that "acculturation in the United States involved the mutual interaction between two cultures, with Europeans and Africans borrowing from each other. A SuperSummary Study Guide - a modern alternative to Sparknotes & CliffsNotes provides so much more -- including chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and important quotes. The book is considered crucial to the study of American slavery and African American history. While Garrison and Phillips make a direct connection between Douglass and the Revolutionaries, Douglass uses a reference to the Revolutionaries to highlight the differences between the plight of slaves and the glamour of the Revolutionaries battle for rights. '"[50], Still, Blassingame's conclusions, methodology, and sources received substantial criticism from historians. Instead, Blassingame suggests that black American slaves were instead forced to endure servant hood at the expense of their culture, family life, religion and life values. Type your requirements and Ill connect you to on 2-49 accounts, Save 30% The Nat type of slaves were rebellious and tried repeatedly to escape from bondage and gave their owners a hard time. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. In fact, statistical analyses rely so heavily on inferences that one must carefully examine the data bases to evaluate the conclusions based on them. As an isolated figure, he appropriately resembles the protagonist of a traditional comingofage story. | The most dangerous of slavery's effects is its negative impact on the former slaves' senses of self, and the novel contains multiple examples of self-alienation. History and African sections. Marian DeB. "[9], According to Blassingame, African culture was not entirely removed from slave culture through the process of enslavement and "was much more resistant to the bludgeons that was slavery than historians have hitherto suspected. I'm thinking this sounds right but I'm not an expert on population. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. Wed love to have you back! If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Finally, Blassingame provides an attempt to show that black slaves werent submissive to white slave owners and were able to hold onto some aspects of their culture which provided much more freedom from restraint and more independence and autonomy than his institutionally defined role allowed. "[68], After the 1976 Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History meeting and the publication of Revisiting Blassingame's The Slave Community in 1978, Blassingame produced a revised and enlarged edition of The Slave Community in 1979. Gardner agrees to fire the free black carpenters. Thanks Writer Lyla you are indeed awesome . The contents of the outline is never to supplant the original book but rather to help readers figure out a smart read. Bentley is a minister with white slave owners Why does blassingame mention george bentley? While ministers preached obedience in the presence of the slaveowners and other whites, slaves often met in secret, "invisible" services unsupervised by whites. The slaves were being compared to three major slave characters, Sambo, Jack, and Nat. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of The Slave Community by John W. Blassingame. "[74], Unless noted, all citations from The Slave Community are from the 1979 revised edition, African cultural retention and slave culture. Stampp admits that "few ask what the slaves themselves thought of bondage. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. "[9] He relies heavily on narratives by Henry Bibb, Henry Clay Bruce, Elizabeth Keckley, Samuel Hall, Solomon Northup, Charles Ball, Jermain Wesley Loguen, William Wells Brown, John Brown, Robert Anderson, William Grimes, Austin Steward, and Frederick Douglass. "[47], In The History Teacher, Keith Polakoff comments that "only with the publication of Blassingame's work do we obtain for the first time a detailed examination of the daily lives of the slaves on large plantations, with some intelligent speculation about the forces to which they were subjected. "[66] White discusses the Mammy and Jezebel stereotypes often applied to African American women by white Americans. His written work is based on authentic accounts from actual slaves and gives a real account of the experiences of black slaves in America. The The Slave Community Note includes chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quizzes written by community members like you. The Jack type of slaves were dutiful slaves only until their owners began to treat them badly and then they became angry and unwilling to work. This enforced ignorance robs children of their natural sense of individual identity. In American Negro Slavery (1918), Phillips refers to slaves as "negroes, who for the most part were by racial quality submissive rather than defiant, light-hearted instead of gloomy, amiable and ingratiating instead of sullen, and whose very defects invited paternalism rather than repression. [23] Blassingame concludes, "In [the slave father's] family, the slave not only learned how to avoid the blows of the master, but also drew on the love and sympathy of its members to raise his spirits. [57] Rawick states that Blassingame's "first major error lies in adopting the very questionable deterministic social psychological role theories associated with Erving Goffman and Harry Stack Sullivan." The most important component of personality is self-esteem. According to Blassingame, "Sometimes children internalized both the true personality traits and the contradictory behavioral patterns of their parents." 24, 25. "[4] Elkins also dismisses Phillips's claim that African American slaves were innately submissive "Sambos". Even though plantation owners liked to think of enslaved people as docile, white people were still concerned about the threat of general violence and revolts. "[20] Blassingame notes that when a slave couple resided on the same plantation, the husband witnessed the whipping and raping of his wife and the sale of his children. SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. Engerman concedes that The Slave Community "is a book written at a time of transition in the interpretation of slavery and black culture", but "the author at times seems unsure of the direction in which he is pointing." It is customary for slaves to enjoy a holiday from Christmas to New Years. Blassingame explains, "Our sense of self-esteem is heightened or lowered by our perception of the images others have of us." [49] Carl N. Degler writes in the Washington Post that Blassingame's study comes "closer than any previous study to answering the question 'what was it like to be a slave? Southern writers felt a need to defend slavery from allegations of abuse and brutality leveled by northern abolitionists, so Sambo became a common portrayal to justify and explain the need for plantation paternalism. The The Slave Community Note includes chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quizzes written by community members like you. Instruments reproduced by slaves include drums, three-stringed banjos, gourd rattles, and mandolins. Douglass is grateful that Mr. Freeland is not a hypocritically religious man. Retrieved from http://studymoose.com/the-slave-community-by-john-w-blassingame-essay. The extent of submissiveness often depends on the structure of the group to which the person belongs. Blassingame writes: Contemporaries often have a greater appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of statistics than do the scholars who utilize them decades after they are compiled. Douglass's first year with Freeland passes smoothly. He paints the Atlantic as an exceptionally violent place. The men transport their prisoners to Thomas Aulds house. One prominent example discussed by Blassingame is the Ewe story of "Why the Hare Runs Away", which is a trickster and tar-baby tale told by southern slaves and later recorded by writer Joel Chandler Harris in his Uncle Remus stories. While he admits that "slave interviews rival autobiographies in their revelations about the internal dynamics of bondage, the heavy editing of the WPA interviews makes them far more difficult to utilize than black autobiographies. for a group? "[37] Blassingame asserts that through applying interpersonal and role theory to the fugitive slave narratives, historians can determine "the extent to which slaves acted the way their masters expected them to behave" and how the Sambo, Jack, and Nat personality types can be misleading. He asserts that the retention of African culture acted as a form of resistance to enslavement: "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" and "since an overwhelming percentage of nineteenth-century Southern slaves were native Americans, they never underwent this kind of shock [the Middle Passage] and were in a position to construct psychological defenses against total dependency on their masters. In Chapter X we see Douglass working for wages for the first time. "[35] According to Blassingame, the goal of the irrationally organized and understaffed plantation was not the systematic torture and extermination of its laborers, who were "worth more than a bullet". As a result, Blassingames work shows a different account of slavery in the Antebellum South than had ever been written before. Music, songs, and dances were similar to those performed or played in Africa. Blassingame, however, points out that in spite of restrictions, slaves were able to build a strong musical tradition drawing on their African heritage. These autobiographical stories tend to privilege a model of heroic individualism over social interaction and support. However, this book wasnt published without a certain amount of criticism. "[12] He argues that culture developed within the slave community independent of the slaveowners' influence. Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more! He complains that it "parodies the basic complexity of the 'psychology' of the oppressed who simultaneously view themselves in socially negative terms while struggling against the view of themselves and their behavior". george bentley is a problem because he is a slave in support of slavery. In this sense, the slave writers present a participant observers' comments on the larger slave society. They seize and tie Douglass and the rest of the escape party. Kaye, Anthony E. "'In the Neighborhood': Toward a Human Geography of U.S. Slave Society". In these "invisible churches", slaves could discuss freedom, liberty, and the judgment of God against slaveowners. Issel, William. [62] The authors of Reckoning with Slavery (1976) use Blassingame's findings to challenge the assertions of Robert William Fogel and Stanley Engerman in Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (1974). (1973). 'Numbers' and 'accuracy' are not two interchangeable words: Statistical truths are no more self-evident than literary ones. in 1940. Blassingame introduced the whole meaning of the slavery that was taking place. Jacob dies during this trip to Pilitz, and they discover the bones of his wife, reuniting her to Jacob by burying them together. He never receives a whipping from anyone during his remaining four years as a slave. They questioned Blassingame's decision to exclude the more than 2,000 interviews with former slaves conducted by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s. Like a man whistling in the dark to bolster his courage, the white man had to portray the slave as Sambo. This is said to have biased his work towards the slaves and didnt provide enough consideration to the other side of the slavery story. [54] Kenneth Wiggins Porter regards Blassingame's dependence on printed sources as a "major weakness" and believes he does not use enough white sources like plantation records and travel narratives, particularly Frederick Law Olmsted's account of life in the antebellum South. In John W. Blassingames own words, This book describes and analyzes the life of the black slave: his African heritage, culture, family, acculturation, behavior, religion, and personality (xi). Blassingame concludes, "Uncritical use of the interviews will lead almost inevitably to a simplistic and distorted view of the plantation as a paternalistic institution where the chief feature of life was mutual love and respect between masters and slaves. Yet, like many good books, it should have been better. Content Warning: The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South contains dehumanizing, racially-charged language and mentions of physical and sexual violence against enslaved people. On January 1, 1834, Douglass is sent to live with Mr. William Freeland. [38], Blassingame contends that historians have "deliberately ignored" autobiographies of ex-slaves, particularly the fugitive slave narratives. We have had very largely a male-dominated literature about slavery." Douglass recalls that he loved them and that they operated together as a single community. Pushing his suspicions even further, Nietzsche speculates that the valuation originally placed on altruism, insofar as it encourages acting for others instead of oneself, is an expression of what he calls "herd morality" - the morality of the many and the weak, the function of which is to preserve the community and, at the same time, to . Rawick surmises that if Blassingame had consulted the WPA slave interviews, he would have developed a picture of the "heroic struggles of black women on behalf of themselves and of the whole black community". [52], In the Journal of Political Economy, economic historian Stanley L. Engerman complains that the book is not "written by or for economists" and makes "limited use of economic analysis". In a review in the William and Mary Quarterly, George Mullin is especially critical of Blassingame's use of psychology, stating that Blassingame "reduc[es] slave behavior and culture to a question of roles and psychological characteristics". The Slave study guide contains a biography of Isaac Bashevis Singer, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. In practice, plantation owners and managers understood that enslaved people had diverse personalities and had to be controlled using methods beyond brutal coercion. Or lowered by Our perception of the images others have of us. to help readers out... ; s first year with Freeland passes smoothly a result, Blassingames work shows a account... African American history please check your spam folder in these `` invisible churches '', slaves could freedom... 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