The Slave Community

Examples of The Slave Community in the following topics:

• Forming a Slave Community

  • Despite brutal circumstances, African slaves formed strong communities that often served as methods of resistance.
  • The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South is a book written by American historian John W.
  • The importance of The Slave Community as one of the first studies of slavery from the perspective of the slave was recognized by historians.
  • Culture developed within the slave community independent of the slaveowners' influence.
  • Despite harsh conditions and brutal circumstances, slaves found ways to build strong communities.

• Slave Families

  • In The Slave Community (1979), historian John W.
  • 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.
  • This image shows a receipt for the sale of a slave.
  • Describe the formation of slave families as presented by John W.
  • Blassingame in his book The Slave Community

• Skin Color in the South

  • In many Southern households, the way in which slaves were treated depended on their skin color or on their relation to white individuals in the home.
  • In many households, for instance, the way in which slaves were treated depended on the slave's skin color.
  • Darker-skinned slaves worked in the fields while lighter-skinned slaves worked in the house and had comparatively better clothing, food, and housing.
  • A woodcut from the abolitionist Anti-Slavery Almanac (1839) depicts a slave patrol capturing a fugitive slave.
  • Explain how skin color and the relationship between slave and master shaped the slave community

• Slave Culture

  • Slave culture stressed the primacy of family and cooperation; indeed, the development of families and communities formed the most important response to the trauma of being enslaved.
  • Music, folktales, and storytelling provided an opportunity for the enslaved to educate each other in the absence of literacy, and songs and enthusiastic public worship were often used as a way of channeling and coping with hardships and voicing grievances to others in the slave community.
  • Runaway slaves formed what were called “maroon” communities—groups that successfully resisted recapture and formed their own autonomous groups.
  • The most prominent of these communities lived in the interior of Jamaica, controlling the area and keeping the British away.
  • In these respects, slave communities were formed that stretched across plantations and slaves developed a culture of cooperation and opposition to coercive white rule.

• Slave Religion

  • The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South is a book written by American historian John W.
  • The book contradicted those historians who had interpreted history to suggest that African-American slaves were docile and submissive "Sambos" who enjoyed the benefits of a paternalistic master-slave relationship on southern plantations.
  • Slave owners and state governments tried to prevent slaves from making or playing musical instruments because use of drums signaled the Stono Rebellion in 1739.
  • 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. " Blassingame asserts that the most significant instance revolved around Protestant Christianity (primarily Baptist and Methodist churches): "The number of blacks who received religious instruction in antebellum white churches is significant because the church was the only institution other than the plantation which played a major role in acculturating the slave. " Christianity and enslaved black ministers represented another aspect of slave culture which the slaves used to create their own communities.
  • Explain the growth of slave religion in the United States according to Blassingame's argument

• Forms of Resistance

  • Rebellions were rooted in the exploitative conditions of the Southern slave system.
  • As a direct result of the fear the rebellion inspired among slave owners and supporters of the institution of slavery, Southern states passed legislation prohibiting the movement, assembly, and education of slaves, and reduced the rights of free people of color.
  • One of the largest slave rebellions in U.S. history took place in 1811.
  • Slaves shared folktales, religion and spirituality, music and dance, and language among themselves and their families as a means of lightening burdens, sustaining hope, building community, and resisting control.
  • Examine the traditions that shaped the African-American community and slave-resistance movements

• Resistance to Slavery

  • The militia suppressed the rebellion after a battle in which both slaves and militiamen were killed, and the remaining slaves were executed or sold to the West Indies.
  • If so, this common background may have made it easier for Jemmy to communicate with the other slaves, enabling them to work together to resist their enslavement even though slaveholders labored to keep slaves from forging such communities.
  • In the wake of the Stono Rebellion, South Carolina passed a new slave code in 1740 called An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes and Other Slaves in the Province—also known as the Negro Act of 1740.
  • In addition, one in five New Yorkers was a slave, and tensions ran high between slaves and the free population, especially in the aftermath of the Stono Rebellion.
  • Seventy slaves were sold to the West Indies.

• Early Opposition to Slavery

  • The slaves' owners had suspicion of the uprising, and two slaves told their owner, Mosby Sheppard, about the plans.
  • That slave did not receive the full reward.
  • Fears of a slave revolt regularly swept major slaveholding communities.
  • Prior to the rebellion, Virginia law had allowed education of slaves to read and write, and the training of slaves in skilled trades.
  • The very existence of free blacks challenged the conditions of slave states.

• Treatment of Slaves in the United States

  • The treatment of slaves in the United States varied widely depending on conditions, time, and place. 
  • After well-known rebellions, such as that by Nat Turner in 1831, some states even prohibited slaves from holding religious gatherings due to the fear that such meetings would facilitate communication and possibly lead to insurrection or escape.
  • In 1850, a publication provided guidance to slave owners on how to produce the "ideal slave":
  • Following the prohibition placed on the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the early nineteenth century, some slave owners attempted to improve the living conditions of their existing slaves in order to deter them from running away.
  • In the mid-nineteenth century, slaving states passed laws making education of slaves illegal.

• Slave Codes

  • Slave codes were laws that were established in each state to define the status of slaves and the rights of their owners.
  • Slaves codes were state laws established to regulate the relationship between slave and owner as well as to legitimize the institution of slavery.
  • They were used to determine the status of slaves and the rights of their owners.
  • Occasionally slave codes provided slaves with legal protection in the event of a legal dispute, but only at the discretion of the slave’s owner.
  • Any slave attempting to run away and leave the colony received the death penalty.