Much of the book consists of his travel experiences, going on horseback through Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama. Rarely was he able to stay in a hotel, and had to rely on the hospitality of strangers (for a consideration). One of the slaveowners stood out from the rest: his slaves had a great deal of freedom, education, and his admiration.
The great cotton planters were not so wealthy as appeared, and thanks to perverse incentives were frequently ruining the value of their land and their slaves in a fixation on cotton sales.
The latter part of the book is his analysis, economic and sociological, of the claims for the wisdom and beneficence of slavery that were current in his day.
A few snippets:
"Visited sixty families, numbering two hundred and twenty-one souls over ten years of age; only twenty-three could read, and seventeen write. Forty-one families destitute of the Bible. Average of their going to church, once in seven years. Several, between thirty and forty-five years old, had heard but one or two sermons in their lives. Some grown-up youths had never heard a sermon or prayer, until my visit, and did not know of such a being as the Saviour; and boys and girls, from ten to fifteen years old, did not know who made them. All of one family rushed away when I knelt to pray, to a neighbour’s, begging them to tell what I meant by it. Other families fell on their faces, instead of kneeling."
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"I was told by a gentleman in Washington, not long ago, that he was travelling in a county not a hundred miles from this place, and overtook one of our citizens on horseback, with, perhaps, a bag of hay for a saddle, without stirrups, and the leading line for a bridle, and he said: 'Stranger, whose house is that?' 'It is mine,' was the reply. They came to another. 'Whose house is that?' 'Mine, too, stranger.' To a third: 'And whose house is that?' 'That's mine, too, stranger; but don’t suppose that I'm so darned poor as to own all the land about here.'"
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"Were there no Free States, the white people of the South would to-day be slaves."
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"There is one other characteristic of the Southerner, which is far more decided than the difference of climate merely would warrant, and which is to be attributed not only to the absence of the ordinary restraints and means of discipline of more compact communities in his education, but unquestionably also to the readiness and safety with which, by reason of slavery, certain passions and impulses may be indulged. Every white Southerner is a person of importance; must be treated with deference. Every wish of the Southerner is imperative; every belief undoubted; every hate, vengeful; every love, fiery. Hence, for instance, the scandalous fiend-like street fights of the South. If a young man feels offended with another, he does not incline to a ring and a fair stand-up set-to, like a young Englishman; he will not attempt to overcome his opponent by logic; he will not be content to vituperate, or to cast ridicule upon him; he is impelled straightway to strike him down with the readiest deadly weapon at hand, with as little ceremony and pretence of fair combat as the loose organization of the people against violence will allow. He seems crazy for blood. Intensity of personal pride—pride in anything a man has, or which connects itself with him, is more commonly evident. Hence, intense local pride and prejudice; hence intense partisanship; hence rashness and over-confidence; hence visionary ambition; hence assurance in debate; hence assurance in society. As self-appreciation is equally with deference a part of what we call good breeding, and as the expression of deference is much more easily reduced to a matter of manners and forms, in the commonplace intercourse of society, than self-appreciation, this characteristic quality of the Southerner needs to be borne in mind in considering the port and manners he commonly has, and judging from them of the effects of slavery."
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There really was something which, with some sort of propriety, could be termed a gentry in Carolina and Virginia in their colony days; yet of the names which are now thought to have belonged to it, as descended of brave, loyal, and adventurous cavaliers, some I once saw in London upon an old freight-list of a ship outward bound for Virginia, with the addition of tinker and tailor, poacher and pickpocket, all to be sold for life, or a term of years, to the highest bidder when they should arrive. A large majority of the fathers of Virginia were unquestionably of this class.
3 comments:
Virginia and coastal Carolina were stratified, hierarchical. Back in Wessex there had been something very close to slavery in the servant class, leading to distinctions of status among them we would find risible now.
Cotton may have done as much as tobacco to ruin our national character. The cotton plantations really were something different from what had been going on in Virginia and Maryland, and different from what was going on up in the mountains. Lord knows they had problems as well, but the settlement of the lands leading out to the Mississippi were a real degeneration into an earlier culture.
The factories of the north (and England) were abusive, but people having to, getting to live together, and being under at least some observation kept it from falling quite so far, and bringing in people to fix it up. It shows how far we all might fall if not held accountable. It is the great lesson of the stories of King David, how remarkable he was when held accountable, how depraved he was when not.
In Olmstead's observation there was even a difference between the cotton growers in the small farms and in the great plantation complexes. In the latter, there were few women slaves, and little attention paid to the financial benefit of "natural increase" in the number of slaves. He didn't write much about the sugar cane plantations--I'm curious if he'd have seen much difference.
And in the end, he cites sources that said that much of the wealth cotton brought in was used for buying up more land and buying replacements for the worn-out men slaves, so all was a giant bubble, puffed up by the sacrifice of human lives.
Exactly. They were wealthy on paper, but had no wealth.
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