Richard Follet’s The Sugar Masters discusses how slave owners in Louisiana maintained both paternalistic and self-interested attitudes in the way that they treated their slaves. Although the North viewed the South and its slavery regime as static and unprogressive, slave owners believed that they were acting in capitalistic ways. They felt as though their construction of the plantation created a system in which slaves had incentives to work hard and not disobey the rules. Slave owners used both carrots and sticks.
The Sugar Masters illuminates a group of actors who viewed themselves in a specific way and created a collective consciousness. Like the founding fathers who owned slaves, these slave owners may have believed in freedom, yet they were able to convince themselves that enslaving African Americans did not violate that belief. Do we think that these slave owners believed in both political and economic freedom and equality? Were they simply using slavery for economic gains or were they convinced that African Americans could not take care of themselves? Follett states “Southern slaveholders could damn their chattel as lazy beggars to be ‘licked liked blazes,’ watch their slaves perish in frightening numbers, and brutally exploit their bondswomens’ bodies, but they still believed themselves to be paternalists bound to their slaves by mutual obligations and reciprocal duties,” (152). I am not sure if I am convinced of this and hope to discuss this in class.
I found the discussion in the last chapter about the purchases slaves made particularly interesting. With the little money they had, they bought clothing and other decorative items. How did these visual purchases both create a class consciousness and also encourage divisions amongst slaves? We have seen throughout the semester various instances in which groups work to distance themselves from the lowest. Emma Christopher discussed how both black and white sailors tried to distinguish themselves from slaves. In The Anti-Slavery Debate, we saw how a rising middle class worked to differentiate themselves from the lower class. In these examples, and there are many others from this semester, how important is a visual distinction?
Finally, I think we should discuss how slaves exercised agency within this system. Whether is was women taking contraceptives, making negotiations with masters, or stealing and selling machine parts, slaves found certain ways to take control of small pieces of their lives. Are the slaves actions working to create a collective change? Also, in Scraping By, we saw how the poor would use almshouses to their own advantage. Does working with slave owners to improve an individual situation inhibit the possibility of a change in the system?
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