Slavery in Virginia
NOTE: One of the classic challenges for today's history teachers is the tendency of students to assume that the values of current society were also accepted as the "normal" values in all societies in all times, and people in the past should have behaved acording to modern values. Discussions in the 21st Century on slavery in the 19th Century can trigger emotional eruptions regarding the moral character of Southern slaveowners and Northern capitalists, with unspoken assumptions that everyone knows slavery is a moral evil...
Filtering one's understanding of the past by the standards of today is known as "presentism." In future centuries, everyone may know that use of oil as a fuel is evil, and condemn those who used gasoline to drive to work. So before reading about slavery in Virginia, recognize that personal judgements today on the behavior of the past could cloud our understanding.
Douglas Deal addressed the question of the "good" or "moral" slaveowner in a posting on the VA-HIST listserver in June, 2007: ...we always define or judge our own values and beliefs with reference to "benchmarks" in the past. There is, after all, nothing else to use as a standard than that which has already happened. So, using the past to arrive at judgments about ourselves is perfectly appropriate. But reversing the procedure--judging the past by the standards of the present--is not. It is rather like trying to speak to the past from the present: we won't be heard and nothing will change.1
Slavery, as an institution, changed in Virginia between 1619 and the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, after the Civil War. The "peculiar institution" evolved and metamorphosed under both internal and external pressures, economic and social. "By the end of the seventeenth century, Virginia was changing from a society that used bound labor to a slave society based on black labor and perceived inferiority."2
Before 1660, most slaves lived on plantations with 1-3 others, and most slaves were male. Interactions with whites were common and restrictions based exclusively on race were not rigid. By the 1680's, however, the status of "slave" was clearer and interactions with whites were restricted. By 1710 the average slaveholder owned 8 slaves, and there was a higher percentage of women in Virginia's slave population, so there was a greater possibility of some form of family life despite the greater restrictions.3
Gabriel Prosser
Links
- Antebellum Slavery in West Virginia
- British Broadcasting System (BBC) - The Story of Africa
- Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 (at the Library of Congress)
- chronology of slavery
- City Paper (Washington, DC)
- Classics on American Slavery
- Bruce, Philip A. Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry into the Material Condition of the People, Based on Original and Contemporaneous Records. New York: Macmillan, 1896. Chapter IX: "System of Labor: The Slave"
- Common-place, The Interactive Journal of Early American Life
- DAACS: Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery
- Documenting the American South First-Person Narratives (from University of North Carolina)
- From Slave Cabin to the Pulpit. The Autobiography of Rev. Peter Randolph: the Southern Question Illustrated and Sketches of Slave Life
- John Jasper: The Unmatched Negro Philosopher and Preacher
- Life, Including His Escape and Struggle for Liberty of Charles A. Garlick, Born a Slave in Old Virginia, Who Secured His Freedom by Running Away from His Master's Farm in 1843
- Lott Cary, The Colonizing Missionary
- Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped from Slavery, Enclosed in a Box 3 Feet Long and 2 Wide. Written from a Statement of Facts Made by Himself. With Remarks Upon the Remedy for Slavery. By Charles Stearns
- Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself
- Remarks on the Subject of the Ownership of Slaves, Delivered by R. R. Collier of Petersburg, in the Senate of Virginia, October 12, 1863
- Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky; or, Fifty Years of Slavery in the Southern States of America
- Slavery Era Insurance Registry; A Database of Slaveholders in the States of AL, AR, GA, KY, LA, MO, MS, NC, SC, VA, and Washington DC, Who Insured Slaves As Property, With Insurance Companies Licensed to do Business in California During the Slave Era (useful for "reparations" research)
- Social Life in Old Virginia before the War
- The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va.
- The Life of Rev. John Jasper, Pastor of Sixth Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Richmond, Va., from His Birth to the Present Time, with His Theory on the Rotation of the Sun
- Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware
- Freedmen and Southern Society Project
- Geographies of Family and Market: Virginia's Domestic Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century
- Geography of Slavery in Virginia
- H-Net
- Public Broadcasting System
- Register of Free Blacks, Augusta County, 1803-65 (part of the Valley of the Shadow project)
- Slavery on Long Island
(New Amsterdam/New York)
- Teaching Slaves to Read
- US National Slavery Museum
- Virginia Black History Archives (Virginia Commonwealth University)
- Virginia Historical Society
- Voyages, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
References
1. Douglas Deal, "Re: Madison's slaves (and black descendants?)" posting on VA-HIST listserver, June 11, 2007, listlva.lib.va.us/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0706&L=VA-HIST&D=0&T=0&X=25658E52A6D10017AC&Y=cgrymes%40gmu.edu&P=7791 (last checked June 27, 2007)
2. Croghan, Laura A., "'The Negroes to Serve Forever': The Evolution of Blacks's Life and Labor in Seventeenth-Century Virginia," Masters Thesis, William and Mary, 1994, p.24
3. Croghan, p. 24
slave quarters in Williamsburg, near Governor's Palace
Population of Virginia
Virginia Places