After the American Revolution, American society was characterized by strong ideas about and pride in their widespread freedom and yet the South was still home to thousands of slaves. The so called Peculiar Institution was, no doubt, economically imperative for the region through the nineteenth century; over 60 percent of cotton was grown in the American South (Davis 184). However as the debate between supporters of slavery and abolitionists intensified during the nineteenth century, slave owning southerners began to attempt to justify slavery by using the principles of the new nation.<\/p>\n

People who supported slavery used ethnology in order to support the morality of slavery, claiming that the naturally inferior black race depended on the regulatory influence of whites to prevent the “progressive decline and decay” which would result if slaves were emancipated and left to fend for themselves (Davis 189-190). Slavery, therefore, possessed a quasi-paternalistic aspect which was unique to the American South. In fact, “several traders noted that American masters wanted above all to be ‘popular’ with their slaves – a characteristically American need that was probably rare in Brazil and the Caribbean” (Davis 195). I would argue that the American preoccupation with being liked by their slaves and being “paternalistic” was a result of the disparity between the institution of slavery and the principles of liberty and freedom which took hold of the nation during the revolution. Abolitionists in\u00a0 Great Britain often exploited this disparity in order to renounce slavery and the validity of Americas claims of being an equal society. The paternalism of southern slavery was a defensive reaction against this, attempting to integrate slavery into the new national rhetoric.<\/p>\n

I found it interesting that Davis occasionally pulled from modern society in analogies dealing with slavery in nineteenth century America. These projections into the modern day sometimes clarified claims, such as Davis’ comment that “If slavery had persisted into the later twentieth century…one can only…imagine large corporate planters passing out ‘overseer evaluation forms’ to the slaves” (Davis 195-196). However, I question the applicability of these comparisons. In class we discussed the danger of applying modern systems of beliefs to peoples from the past who possessed completely different systems of beliefs and different circumstances. By drawing comparisons between nineteenth century America and modern America, without taking into account the evolution in moral thought which occurred, Davis is in danger of drawing conclusions from faulty evidence.<\/p>\n

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After the American Revolution, American society was characterized by strong ideas about and pride in their widespread freedom and yet the South was still home to thousands of slaves. The so called Peculiar Institution was, no doubt, economically imperative for the region through the nineteenth century; over 60 percent of cotton was grown in the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Paternalism in the American South”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,225,274],"class_list":["post-526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abolitionists","tag-paternalism","tag-slavery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}