The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South

An important part of slave culture was family. African and Southern influences and the circumstances of slavery, which demanded that children learn complex lessons to survive while holding onto some dignity, came together to shape the enslaved family. For example, the father in West African and Southern white cultures had authority over the family, while among enslaved people, men and women tended to share authority (178). Even in family life, Blassingame argues that enslaved people were not submissive or without agency in forming relationships and raising their children. Instead, parental lessons and survival strategies among enslaved families were complex and sought to preserve some degree of independence.

Blassingame argues that enslaved people in the South formed families more easily than their Latin American counterparts. In Latin America’s slave population, males outnumbered females, but in the South, the gender ratio was more even. Southern plantation owners usually allowed enslaved people to form marriages and families, either out of Christian morals or because they believed enslaved people who were fathers were less likely to run away. White plantation owners would also force themselves on Black women or make them concubines. If these women had children, the men would sometimes recognize and educate them as their own.

The enslaved people themselves combined Southern courtship rituals with “African courtship and betrothal practices” (157). As a result, men initiated courtship, but women controlled the pace and success of the courtship. There were West African practices that ran against Christian morality, such as some cultures tolerating premarital sex; other cultures from Africa shared Protestant Christianity’s taboo against women losing their virginity before marriage and encouraged them to have children post-marriage.

However, while enslaved people were largely free to form romantic and sexual partnerships, a major threat to slave unions and families was separation. Enslaved men sometimes tried to marry women from other plantations, but plantation owners often forced them to marry enslaved women slaves they already owned. This arrangement made it possible for an enslaved person’s spouse or children to potentially be sold to another plantation—which challenged Southern Christians, who promoted lifelong marriages and families. For enslaved people, the danger of separation strengthened their respect for the institution of marriage: “Because they were denied all the protection which the law afforded, slaves had an almost mythological respect for legal marriage” (171).

The separation of families was arguably “the most brutal aspect of slavery”—and was common enough that “practically all of the black auto-biographers were touched by the tragedy” (173). Because of the control plantation owners had over enslaved families, the traditional control men had over their families in West African and Southern cultures was shaken. Blassingame argues that this led to “the creation of America’s first democratic family in the quarters, where men and women shared authority and responsibility” (178).

As for enslaved children, their upbringing was complex. They were sometimes treated well by their master and their master’s family, but sometimes they were reminded of their status by being punished for approaching their master’s house (183-84). As such, the children were taught not to tell any white people about what was discussed in the slave quarters. Still, Blassingame argues that enslaved parents “did not teach unconditional submission. Instead, children were often taught to fight their masters and overseers to protect their relatives” (188). As with other aspects of their lives, enslaved people faced reality but also retained their independence.

The enslaved people who didn’t accept bondage participated in slave revolts or attempted to escape. In Chapter 5, Blassingame further argues against the idea that enslaved people were docile. To him, enslaved people not only understood what freedom meant but had an “undying love for freedom” (192). This is demonstrated by Blassingame’s stories of slave resistance.

One of Blassingame’s main sources is Helen T. Catterall’s Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro, which documents instances when enslaved people escaped, died by suicide, or engaged in violence against their white oppressors (195). Many enslaved people who escaped only did so temporarily and had to accept punishment when they returned. Those who managed to escape had to resort to tactics like throwing pepper on the ground to hide their scent from plantation owners’ dogs (200).

Enslaved people who escaped sometimes joined maroon communities. These communities, formed by other people who escaped slavery, would join forces with Native Americans and poor whites and commit acts like raiding plantations. One such maroon community in Florida brought about the Second Seminole War (213). Still, Blassingame notes “there have been considerably fewer large-scale slave rebellions in the United States than in Latin America” (214) because of a lack of military forces and a larger population of enslaved people than whites in Latin America. Nonetheless, there were “at least nine slave revolts in America between 1691 and 1865” (220)—including a 1712 slave conspiracy in New York City and Nat Turner’s 1831 revolt in Southampton County, Virginia.

According to Blassingame, Black rebel leaders were often “young, literate, married, charismatic men” who also tended to be relatively trusted, privileged enslaved people (221-22). They drew from biblical imagery of God freeing the Israelites and claims of conjurers of folk magic. Culture and religion were powerful frames of reference for enslaved people and their resistance to oppression.