Teaching Slavery Beyond the Textbook

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Teaching Slavery Beyond the Textbook

• Dr. Yohuru Williams, Fairfield University

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Correlating with your CT Content
Standards

• K-4 CT Standards
• Content Standard 1 Historical Thinking
• Students will develop historical thinking skills,
  including chronological thinking and recognizing
  change over time contextualizing, comprehending
  and analyzing historical literature researching
  historical sources understanding the concept of
  historical causation understanding competing
  narratives and interpretation and constructing
  narratives and interpretation.
• gather historical data from multiple sources
• engage in reading challenging primary and
  secondary historical source materials, some of
  which is contradictory and requires questioning
  of validity
• describe sources of historical information
• identify the main idea in a source of historical
  information
• identify ways different cultures record their
  histories, compare past and present situations
  and events, and present findings in appropriate
  oral, written and visual ways
• create timelines which sequence events and
  peoples, using days, weeks, months, years,
  decades and centuries
• write short narratives and statements of
  historical ideas and create other appropriate
  presentations from investigations of source
  materials

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Standard 1 Content Knowledge

• Knowledge of concepts and information from
  history and social studies is necessary to
  promote understanding of our nation and our
  world.
• 1.1 Demonstrate an understanding of significant
  events and themes in United States history.
• Grade 8
• Describe examples of conflicts that have been
  resolved through compromise (compromises over
  slavery, social reforms).
• High School
• Describe the forces of migration within the
  United States (e.g., westward movement,
  African-American Diaspora, urbanization,
  suburbanization).
• Trace the evolving nature of citizens rights
  (e.g., Alien and Sedition Acts, civil rights
  laws, womens suffrage/rights).
• Assess the influence of geography on the
  development of the United States (e.g.,
  settlement patterns, natural disasters,
  resources).
• Compare and contrast various American beliefs,
  values and political ideologies (e.g., political
  parties, nativism, Manifest Destiny).

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Methods we will cover today . . .

• ESP Historiography
• Historical Fingerprinting
• The Intersection

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Historiography
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The Historical Dialectic History as a debate

• Dialectic is a Greek word that means
  conversation. Philosophers use the term to
  describe the way thinkers look for truth by
  exchanging differing points of view. Historians
  typically utilize such comparisons of opposites
  to shape arguments about the past. Significantly,
  the dialectic or conversation between historians
  is what most distinguishes what historian Zachary
  M. Schrag calls, a mere recitation of facts from
  interpretive claims about the past.

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The Historical Dialectic

• In the next hour or so I would like to explore
  some of the dialectics used by historians as
  outline by Professor Schrag as means of showing
  students how narratives are constructed and how
  their study of the past has real value in the
  present and for the future.

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The Historical Dialectic

• Schrag postulates, The value of dialectics are
  that they force a critical perspective. Comparing
  a source from 1919 to one from 1936 by definition
  requires the historian to see things in a way
  that the creator of the 1919 source could not.
  Comparing the viewpoints of two historical actors
  demands a perspective distinct from those of
  either actor. The magic of historical scholarship
  is that the historian can know more about an
  event than did the participants themselves. What
  power!

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Opposing forces

• According to Schrag, One common type of
  comparison juxtaposes the words and deeds of two
  or more actors or groups of actors who disagreed
  about some point. Schrag provides a useful
  example of opposing forces at work using
  historian Alan Taylors Liberty Men and the Great
  Proprietors. Taylor argues that the tensions that
  developed in the new Republic in the years after
  the Revolution, revolved around two competing
  interests. On one side were the gentlemen of
  property and standing who sought to exercise
  control over the new nation by concentrating
  wealth and power in the hands of the few. Their
  challengers were the small yeoman farmers, who
  sought a more equitable distribution of land
  ownership and power.

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Opposing forces

• Schrag further notes, Another common use of the
  opposing-forces comparison is in the history of
  technology. Historians often list the pros and
  cons of two competing technologies or systems, to
  explain why people chose one over the other.
  Sacks of grain or grain elevators, wooden
  airplanes or metal airplanes, and septic tanks or
  sewer systemsall were debates demanding
  resolution.

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Opposing forces

• For Schrag, A thesis concerning two opposing
  forces should explain why people disagreed about
  an issue and, ideally, how they resolved their
  disagreement. Taylor, of example, argues that,
  faced with the conflict between agrarians and
  elites, Jeffersonian politicians reframed
  political ideology in a manner that permitted
  compromise legislation and defused the
  confrontation. Keep in mind that that resolution
  may have been amicablecompromise or
  persuasionor coercive, with one side driven into
  bankruptcy, chased out of office, or defeated in
  the courts or on the battlefield.

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Internal Contradictions

• According to Schrag Not all debates take place
  between opposing forces. Just as psychologists
  portray peoples minds as soups of conflicting
  impulses, historians have traced ways in which
  people have found themselves torn between
  contradictory goals.

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Internal Contradictions

• Schrag notes that in his book In the Shadow of
  the Poorhouse A Social History of Welfare in
  America (1996), historian Michael Katz identifies
  four primary goals of U.S. social welfare policy
  since its inception including relief of misery,
  preservation of social order and discipline,
  the regulation of the labor market and
  political mobilization . . . Katz then goes on
  to demonstrate the internal contradictions in
  these aims noting that they have always been
  inconsistent with each other, and how the
  unresolved tensions between them have undercut
  virtually all attempts to formulate coherent
  welfare policy.

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Internal Contradictions

• In his well documented study American Slavery,
  American Freedom, historian Edmund Morgan
  purports to deal with one of these internal
  contradictionsAmerican Slavery. As he
  conceptualized the problem how could a people
  have developed the dedication to human liberty
  and dignity exhibited by the leaders of the
  American Revolution and at the same time have
  developed and maintained a system of labor that
  denied human liberty and dignity every hour of
  the day.

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The debate over slavery

• Morgans work fits into a much larger
  historiography or debate over the origins of
  slavery in the Chesapeake. The following unit is
  designed to help you students uncover this
  dialectic and come to their own conclusions about
  how slavery emerged.

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Historiography at work The Origins of Slavery in
the English Colonies

• Oscar Handlin and Mary Handlin, "Origins of the
  Southern Labor System," William and Mary
  Quarterly 7 (1950), 199-222.
• Carl N. Degler, "Slavery and the Genesis of
  American Race Prejudice," Comparative Studies in
  Society and History 2 (1959), 49-56.
• Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black American
  Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812, chapter 2.
• Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American
  Freedom, pp. 154-57 ch.15.
• Russell Menard, "From Servants to Slaves The
  Transformation of the Chesapeake Labor System,"
  Southern Studies 16 (1977)

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"Did American freedom rest upon American
slavery?"

• This contradiction of American Slavery did not
  escape the notice of the Founding Fathers
  contemporaries. How is it observed Samuel
  Johnson, that we hear the loudest yelps for
  liberty among the drivers of negroes? Samuel
  Johnson, Taxation Not Tyranny, in The Yale
  Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson (1775 New
  Haven Yale University Press, 1977), 10454.

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Paradox Defined

• How could the founding fathers who envisioned a
  nation where all men are created equal also
  hold other human beings in bondage and preserve
  the concept of slavery? This is a question that
  has plagued historians for decades.

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The Paradox of American Slavery

• As Lawrence Goldstone provocatively makes clear
  in Dark Bargain, to a significant and
  disquieting degree, Americas most sacred
  document was molded and shaped by the most
  notorious institution in its history.

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What made the founding fathers experts on Liberty?

• The great paradox of the Revolution was slavery.
  The Founders were aware of this. They spoke often
  about it, limited its extension into new
  territories, but paradoxically ensured its
  survival under the new Constitution. They also
  advocated for its suppression at some future
  date. Article 1 section 9 for instance allowed
  for the continuation of the slave trade for 20
  years after the ratification of the new
  Constitution.

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The Paradox of American Slavery

• Not everyone was comfortable with this. No great
  admirer of slavery Benjamin Franklin, for
  instance became president of the Pennsylvania
  Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery
  and the Relief of Free Negros Unlawfully Held in
  Bondage. George Washington, in the meantime, in
  his will provided for the emancipation of his
  manservant William Lee upon his death. He further
  provided that his other slaves would be freed
  upon Marthas death. John Adams, who was morally
  opposed to slavery, nevertheless shared his fear
  in a letter to two Quaker abolitionists how
  emancipationand agitation for itmight result in
  violence and disorder. All three men at expressed
  support for African colonization during their
  lives.

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The Paradox of American Slavery

• And again to Jefferson, who writes in 1809 that
  he has come to believe that black Africans "are
  on a par with ourselves" and that this awareness
  among citizens will hasten "the day of their
  relief." Someday. How one judges these men is
  problematic they have been lauded and condemned
  for their words here.

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Imperfect gods?

• The Slaves also exercised agency. Despite the
  provision in her husbands will, Martha
  Washington chose to free her slaves two years
  later.  According to Abigail Adams this was
  because Martha feared that one of the slaves
  might be induced to hasten their freedom by
  harming her. As historian Fritz Hirschfield
  explains, despite their wishes neither George nor
  Martha had the power to free the dower slaves
  because they were held in trust by the Custis
  estate.   (Fritz Hirschfield, George Washington
  and Slavery, University of Missouri Press,
  Columbia.1997, 214)

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Dark Bargain created a fatal defect

• But in failing to address the issue of slavery
  fully in the hopes of securing a new
  Constitution, the founders allowed a deadly
  infection to continue to breed that would
  eventually result in the Civil War.

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A Crime Scene on a Global Scale

• Adjusting your tool kit to deal with a large
  crime scene . . . What you will need
• Some historiography
• A variety of primary sources including charts and
  graphs
• Images
• Some imagination

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Showing your students the sausage being made . . .

• What you will accomplish
• Showing your students how narratives are
  constructed and how history (a patterned coherent
  account of the past based on available evidence
  and intended to be true) works.

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Lack of Freedom not Unusual

• Oscar and Mary Handlin wrote their influential
  article in 1950. What if any can the time period
  in which an article or book is written tell us
  about the interpretation offered by the historian?

Oscar Handlin and Mary Handlin, "Origins of the
Southern Labor System," William and Mary
Quarterly 7 (1950), 199-222
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Broad Historigaphical Trends
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The Consensus School

• Responding to Cold War politics, and the ideas of
  containment, the nuclear family emerged. A
  typical 1950s family was one in which the female
  stayed at home, and the male was the head of the
  household--the breadwinner.
• It was a period of economic boom. America's role
  as a superpower with its many available
  resources, made up for the previous decade of
  decreased production. Housewives, with saved-up
  money, felt the need to spend. What had been
  consumer durables became accessories. Now the
  lady of the house could have Tupperware to match
  her curtains. And the man of the house could
  match the color of his car to the paint of his
  garage.
• Source A description of the 1950s from
  http//design.art.utexas.edu/projects/designhistor
  y/1999/vvmj/1950eco.html

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The Consensus School

• Everyone seemed to share in America's prosperity.
  Suburban houses offered a piece of the good life
  2.5 children, a car in every garage and a chicken
  in every pot--all complete with a white picket
  fence.
• The 1959 International Exhibition in New York was
  a celebration of American Consumerism. A replica
  of an American Ranch Style house symbolized the
  advanced life that a democracy led--it also
  sparked the famous Kitchen debate between
  Kruschev and Nixon.
• Source A description of the 1950s from
  http//design.art.utexas.edu/projects/designhistor
  y/1999/vvmj/1950eco.html

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The New Left 1960-2000

• History from below is a form of historical
  narrative that emerged as a result of the Annales
  School. It became popular in the 1960s. A form of
  social history, studies in this area tend to
  focus on the experiences and perspectives of
  ordinary individuals as well as individuals and
  regions that were not previously considered
  historically significant. This includes the
  working class, women and African Americans and
  regions of the world such as Africa and India.

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White Over Black The Simultaneous Invention of
Slavery and Racism

• Englishmen found the natives of Africa very
  different from themselves. Negroes looked
  different their religion was un-Christian their
  manner of living was anything but English they
  seemed to be a particularly libidinous sort of
  people. All these clusters of perceptions were
  related to each other, though they may he spread
  apart for inspection, and they were related also
  to circumstances of contact in Africa, to
  previously accumulated traditions concerning that
  strange and distant continent, and to certain
  special qualities of English society on the eve
  of its expansion into the New World. The most
  arresting characteristic of the newly discovered
  African was his color.

Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black American
Attitudes Toward the Negro 1550 - 1812,
(Baltimore, MD Penguin Books Inc., 1968).
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A framework of discrimination

• Prejudice against men of color, whether free or
  un-free, preceded the legal establishment of
  slavery in the 1660s, and it was this framework
  of discrimination, (Degler pg. 52) that is
  referred to as the leading cause behind the
  enslavement of African Americans specifically.

Carl Degler, Neither Black Nor White Slavery and
Race Relations in Brazil and the United States,
(New York MacMillan,1971).
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Romantic Racialism The Black Image in the White
Mind
George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the
White Mind The Debate on Afro-American Character
and Destiny, 1817-1914. (Middletown, CT Wesleyan
University Press, 1987).
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The paradox of American Freedom

• In American Slavery and Freedom Edmund Morgan
  moved the origins-of-slavery debate away from
  sectional differences and deep roots, relocating
  it in relation to the undoubted fact that
  late-eighteenth-century Virginia gave America its
  foremost exemplars of liberty. The link between
  what they proclaimed and how they lived was not,
  he suggests, mere happenstance or a regrettable
  but minor contradiction. It was fundamental.

Edmund S. Morgan American Slavery, American
Freedom The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia, (New
York W. W. Norton Co., 1975).
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Plato and the Founding Fathers

• 1The visible world is what surrounds us what we
  see, what we hear, what we experience this
  visible world is a world of change and
  uncertainty.
• 2The intelligible world is made up of the
  unchanging products of human reason anything
  arising from reason alone, such as abstract
  definitions or mathematics, makes up this
  intelligible world, which is the world of
  reality. The intelligible world contains the
  eternal "Forms" (in Greek, idea ) of things.

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The Ancestry of Inferiority

• In an article entitled, The Ancestry of
  Inferiority (1619-1662),which appeared in From
  Shades of Freedom Racial Politics and
  Presumptions of the American Legal Process Leon
  Higginbotham explored whether black people faced
  legal inferiority and legal discrimination before
  slavery became codified. While agreeing that the
  earliest black Virginians were servants, he found
  evidence to indicate that their the legal status
  of blacks and whites diverged very rapidly.

A. Leon Higginbotham. Shades of Freedom Racial
Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal
Process. (New York Oxford University Press,
1996).
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Supply and demand

• Russell Menard, "From Servants to Slaves The
  Transformation of the Chesapeake Labor System,"
  Southern Studies 16 (1977)

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Primary Sources
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Turning a debate into a narrative
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The Origins of Slavery in Virginia

• Here is a textbook account of the origins of
  slavery in the Chesapeake. See if you can find
  the various interpretations offered by historians
  we have discussed in the narrative.
• The English did not immediately enslave the
  Native Americans when they arrived at Jamestown,
  nor did they bring slaves from Africa in the
  first years. A Dutch ship is often credited with
  bringing the first slaves to Virginia, in 1619
  (though there is some debate about the
  possibility that blacks arrived earlier). The
  concept of slavery was not a new one to the
  English.

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The Origins of Slavery in Virginia

• The Portuguese had been importing slaves from
  Africa for over a century, and the Spanish had
  enslaved the Indians in Central and South America
  to work the mines and to grow crops. However, the
  colony lacked a legal framework for slavery until
  40 years after that date, and the great increase
  in the slave population did not start until
  1700.

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The Origins of Slavery in Virginia

• As plantation agriculture spread up the Potomac
  River, the demand for field workers exceeded the
  supply of people in the colonies and England
  willing to do such work. The economic solution
  was to obtain laborers from another source -
  slaves from Africa, imported through the
  Caribbean islands as well as directly from that
  continent.

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The Origins of Slavery in Virginia

• In the 1660's, the demand for labor in Virginia
  exceeded the supply of indentured servants from
  England after the end of the civil war there. The
  Virginia colony revised its laws in that decade
  to establish that blacks could be kept in slavery
  permanently, generation after generation. An
  influx of slaves was spurred at the same time by
  a drop in the value of sugar grown on Caribbean
  islands, causing the planters there to sell their
  "property" to the tobacco farmers in Virginia.

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The Origins of Slavery in Virginia

• There is a continuing debate regarding whether
  racism against blacks preceded the adoption of a
  legal system supporting lifetime bondage, or
  whether the practice of slavery triggered the
  colonists' racist attitudes. Blacks were not
  automatically slaves in the early colonial days.
  Some held property, married, and raised families
  outside the institution of slavery.

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The Origins of Slavery in Virginia

• In the 1660's, however, the government of the
  colony (not the officials in London...)
  established the legal framework for perpetual
  servitude based on color. "Every year between
  1667 and 1672 the General assembly enacted
  legislation which increasingly defined a
  Virginian's status by skin color. Similar laws
  followed in 1680, 1682, and 1686. By the final
  decade of the seventeenth century, those
  characteristics most associated with the
  plantation society of the eighteenth century were
  already evident.
• Source The Origins of Slavery in Virginia,
  http//www.virginiaplaces.org/population/slaveorig
  in.html

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Can you identify

• Oscar and Mary Handlins influence on this
  narrative. How about Carl Degler? George
  Frederickson and Russell Menard?

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Bibliography

• - Handlin, Oscar and Mary F., "Origins of the
  Southern Labor System," William and Mary
  Quarterly, April 1950, pp. 199-222
• - Morgan, Edmund S., "Toward Slavery," American
  Slavery, American Freedom The Ordeal of Colonial
  Virginia
• - Vaughan, Alden T., "The Origins Debate Slavery
  and Racism in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,"
  Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 97
  (1989), pp. 311-354
• - Walsh, Lorena S., "The Chesapeake Slave Trade
  Regional Patterns, African Origins, and Some
  Implications," William and Mary Quarterly,
  January 2001