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Eugene Genovese’s “Slave Revolts in Hemispheric Perspective” is a detailed analysis of why slave revolts in the Old South were much rarer than in other slave-holding areas. It is clear that Eugene is very well-versed on slave revolts and his research appears to be immense. I enjoyed how he approached the question of why large-scale slave revolts occurred in some areas, but not others. He provided several conditions that made slave revolts more favorable such as blacks outnumbering whites, economic struggles, the number of slaves approaching two hundred per farm, and political instability among the ruling class. Next, Genovese explores some of these conditions in particular and describes how specific situations accentuated his points.
I particularly liked how Genovese described how political divisions could affect the potential for slave revolts. Genovese showed how the United States (specifically the elite Southern slave holders) held the appearance of one big unified structure. While European countries were constantly at war with each other (which dictated that they turn their enemies’ slaves against them), the United States was on the other side of the Atlantic with a centralized government capital located far north. I just think that this reasoning was very effective because it showed a major contrast between the American states and the European powers that struggled to keep slave revolts down.
I also thought that Genovese’s analysis of the leaders of the major slave-revolts in the U.S. was strong. He took us into the minds and backgrounds of Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, and Nat Turner. He showed why each was fit as a slave-revolt leader. Vesey, in particular, had the credentials to lead. He spoke several languages, was well read politically, he had an outstanding group of men directly below his command, and had visited many countries while he was still a slave. Genovese did a good job of showing how these men were qualified to lead, which then made me realize that the lack of slave revolts may be due to a lack of these over-qualified leaders.
Genovese mentions the slaves’ religion a few times throughout the piece. He does an excellent job of explaining how the American slaves developed their own sort of Christianity that did not exactly promote rebellions. The slaves morphed their traditional African folk beliefs into a new Christianity of “love and mutual support,” that emphasized their value as human beings and encouraged an attitude of survival.
Overall, I think that Genovese’s article was detailed and explained exceedingly well. I do not think that his organization was first-rate, but once I followed where he was going, I bought his arguments.
Ian Solcz (Rochester, NY) makes an interesting point at the end of his post next week. He compares and contrasts white and black rebellions and revolutions that we have studied thus far in class. I think he touches on an excellent point of freedom of speech. Slaves lacked the freedom to speak out against their condition, which is obviously a severe handicap for them. Yet, Ian says that their only option left to speak out was through rebellion. While rebelling was probably the most obvious and effective way, I believe that there were other things that slaves could do as well. Teaching each other to read and write, slowing down their pace of work, and organizing networks of communication with other slaves are just a few things that they could do to fight back. Ian makes a good point, I just think that there were more options (not great options though), than he lets on to.