1
James Jordan
CW522 K001 Sum 06
The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South by Kenneth M. Stampp
Kenneth M. Stampp does more than just examine slavery in the Ante-Bellum South; his seminal work defines the “peculiar institution.” Immediately addressing the central question of “why,” Stampp contends that it was not geography, climate, commercial agriculture, or chance that entrenched race-based slavery in the Old South: it was a conscious decision, “a deliberate choice (among several alternatives) made by men who sought greater returns than they could obtain from their own labor alone” (5). Slavery was “above all a labor system”—an institution primarily economic in nature—which manifested itself in a brutal, “systematic method of controlling and exploiting labor” (34, 73). Despite the Revolutionary Era’s rhetoric and fervor leading to gradual emancipation for bondsmen in the North, “slavery and tyranny went hand in hand” in the South because it was profitable and also because it brought an elevated social status to all whites (141). Thus, even the poorest, most illiterate, ignorant Caucasian backwoodsman assumed that he was innately superior to the “best” black man in the land. He firmly believed in “white supremacy,” and “maintained a high degree of caste solidarity to secure it” (332). Securing this birthright was not always easy, though.
Stampp expertly highlights the inherent contradiction of “human property” and how it posed many problems for the master class, specifically, the constant struggle of maximizing their bondsmen’s economic output. Because slavery had to exist “within the framework of human relationships,” the author wisely acknowledges that there was no universal slave experience. While it is accurate that some slaves were well-treated and lived “better” lives than some northern laborers, Stampp cautions the reader in mistakenly generalizing from these cases that were few and far between. The truth is that “the records of the plantation regime clearly indicate that slaves were more frequently overworked by callous tyrants than overindulged by mellowed patriarchs” (81). At its core, then, slavery was not a benevolent institution that endowed its willing subjects with civilizing qualities, but was “a process of infantilization,” the aim of which “was to impress Negroes with their helplessness, to create in them ‘a habit of perfect dependence’ upon their masters” (327, 147). This tragic arrangement was always upheld by the threat of violence—usually the bullwhip—a power that “the state conferred upon the master,” and without which “bondage could not have existed” (171). Nevertheless, the slaves did what they could, where and when they could to try and exercise some degree of agency in their lives. For the bondsmen, this daily pursuit of human dignity could include running away, feigning illness, purposefully injuring themselves, breaking tools, theft, working as slowly as possible, and, in some cases, even resorting to violence. However, just because they didn’t all participate in rebellions such as Nat Turner’s at all times does not prove their acceptance of the status quo. Unfortunately, the consequences for violent insurrection were all too plain, always ending “not in liberty, but in death” (132). One’s life was too precious to risk; and so Stampp reasons that “If slaves yielded to authority most of the time, they did so because they usually saw no other practical choice” (91).
Stampp draws his evidence from a variety of sources, including runaway slave advertisements, planter diaries and records, newspaper clippings, speeches, interviews, trade journals, travelers’ observations, church records, and Census data. His eye for detail serves him well, particularly marked in his integration of the historians whose work he seeks to build upon, and, in some cases, refute. Owing to his insightful syntheses and adept interpretation of sources, modern scholarship on slavery owes a great debt to Stampp’s masterpiece on the peculiar institution. Nevertheless, his conclusions regarding slave life and culture must be subject to some revision. Stampp claims that slavery was such an oppressive, destructive, dehumanizing experience that the bondsmen lived in a state of “cultural chaos” (340). Furthermore, the author argues, “In slavery, the Negro existed in a kind of cultural void. He lived in a twilight zone between two ways of life and was unable to obtain from either many of the attributes which distinguish man from beast” (364). Much modern scholarship on the subject has specifically focused on slave life and culture, and while many scholars do not necessarily agree on the extent to which the bondsmen were able to create an identity distinct from that of their masters, most generally concur that slave cultures existed.[1] Also, Stampp claims, “In short, the religion of the slaves was, in essence, strikingly similar to that of the poor, illiterate white men of the antebellum south” (377). Again, slave religion has been substantially researched in recent years, the results of which tend to point toward a separate notion of the divine for those held against their will in perpetual bondage.[2]
Notwithstanding The Peculiar Institution’s very few shortcomings, Kenneth Stampp provides a strikingly clear and accurate picture of slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. Stampp’s pioneering work laid the foundation for generations of scholars interested in understanding this perennial subject that continues to haunt the nation. This book is recommended reading for students of all levels concerned with how slavery and freedom could coexist in a county based on the proposition that all men are created equal.
[1] See, for example, Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (University of North Carolina Press, 1998).
[2] See, for example, James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed (Seabury Press, 1975) and Sylvia Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830 (University of North Carolina Press, 1998).