I thoroughly enjoyed Eugene Genovese’s writing about Slave Revolts and his conclusions and justification for his conclusions are quite plausible. Although Ian does a fine job of hashing out some of Eugene’s points, I’m going to disagree a bit on the hierarchy of importance for a slave revolt. While I can understand the importance of knowing how to fire a single shot rifle during a violent revolt, I’m not convinced this lack of knowledge played a huge factor in discouraging slaves from revolting. The vast numerical advantage of whites over blacks created an insurmountable obstacle for those revolting. Guns or no-guns, blacks knew that whites dominated 18th and 19th century America with more freedom (obviously), but also greater numbers. Only two states, South Carolina and Mississippi, witnessed a higher percentage of blacks over whites and even these states maintained a total population with 52-57% slaves (15). Furthermore, Genovese compares the concentration of slaves in the South with that of other British colonies. I think he should have expanded on this point even more than he did because the massive, stereotypical plantation contained a small percentage of the nation’s slaves. Half of slaves worked on farms, probably working alongside their yeoman farmer master, while another quarter lived on plantations of fifty or less (11). Using British Guinea as a case study, blacks outnumbered whites 9 to 1 and I’ve read in other works that the treatment of slaves in the Caribbean far surpassed that of the United States in hostility and violence. The slaves in America were extremely valuable and masters saw senseless violence as a detriment to their financial stance. A prime male field hand was worth close to $600,000 in 2007 dollars {Hugh Rockoff and Gary M. Walton, History of the American Economy,<\/em>\u00a011th edition, (Cengage Learning: Mason, OH, 2010), 231}. As we’ve discussed earlier in class, the mob influence can be very powerful, but only works with a large group of people. Hence power in numbers. \u00a0So, when the most support a revolting party can gather is 500 (using the largest figure Genovese provides although he believes the Louisiana revolt was closer to 180) against an entire controlling population, the revolt is doomed to fail.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most astounding aspect of Genovese’s research was how often slaves viewed emancipation as just around the river bend (I hope you’re all singing the Pocahontas song right now\u00a0http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4DE5a80I8EU). Slaves around the globe felt that the king or ruling faction had actually freed them, yet their master refused to acknowledge this emancipation. To paraphrase Genovese, one is going to act more rationally if there’s a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel. Only when backed into a corner of suffering did slaves consider revolt a more practical option.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I thoroughly enjoyed Eugene Genovese’s writing about Slave Revolts and his conclusions and justification for his conclusions are quite plausible. Although Ian does a fine job of hashing out some of Eugene’s points, I’m going to disagree a bit on the hierarchy of importance for a slave revolt. While I can understand the importance of … <\/p>\n