Week 2 Blog Post

Week 2 Blog Post

Comments on A Hard Fight for We by Leslie Schwalm

     I am generally not too fond of historical gender studies written by feminists since they tend to overemphasize women’s lack of equality with men and insist that history would have been better off if that had not been so. Schwalm avoids that trap. Instead of bemoaning women’s oppression, she elevates the female labor above the male in the South Carolina rice fields. Contrary to the usual sexual division of labor in European history, the Negro women in SC did a great deal of physical labor as prime field hands. Schwalm attributes this division to the roles of their African ancestors. Female slaves brought over from Africa brought the knowledge of rice and indigo cultivation with them. Without their knowledge, rice would not have been grown in the colonies and later the United States.

     Although Schwalm’s focus is on women, she does not neglect to describe the male roles on the rice plantations. This helps the reader get a more complete picture of the division of labor. The sexual division supports her thesis that women were the backbone of rice cultivation since most males were engaged in maintenance, logging, or artisan roles. The author also describes in detail the daily lives of slaves who served in the plantation house.

     Schwalm uses plantation journals and WPA records to relate the interpersonal relationships between slave and master that evolved through the task system. Both sides co-opted the task system to their advantage. The task system differed greatly from the labor practices of cotton plantations where the field hands worked from dawn to dusk.

     It was no surprise to me that slave men looked to their wives to do all the domestic work. I got tired just reading about the black women’s lives! I would not have survived it. I like her quote on page 57 from Robert Smalls who said, “My idea was to have a wife … to have somebody to do for me and to keep me.” It was the first time I had read that slave women had to sew their own clothes from the cloth provided by the master (Schwalm, p. 59). I agree with the author that it is important to consider women’s after-task labor and field labor as an integrated whole. As any working mother knows, energy for evening activities depends a lot upon how hard one works during the day. On the plantation, without electricity for artificial lighting, as much as possible had to be done during daylight. Women had to work hard and fast in order to have daylight hours to do family chores. Schwalm makes the point that the SC slaves were better off than their female cotton-picking contemporaries who had no daylight hours left for their families when they were done in the fields.

Comments on Documents in Perman and Taylor's  Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction
     The documents in Perman and Taylor amply illustrate the sectional division between North and South during the 1850’s up to succession. They make easy to understand how both Northerners and Southerners could get offended by what the other side published about them. Frederick Law Olmsted’s (a white Northerner) essay from 1854 is filled with stereotypes. He refers to the Southerner as having “a large but unexpansive mind.” (Perman & Taylor, p. 31) Whereas, Olmsted associates the Northerner with “progress” and “doing.” (p. 31) Each side wishes to claim itself superior to the other as evidence by Helper’s and Hammond’s essays. (Perman & Taylor, pp. 33-35)

     George Fitzhugh’s essay (P & T, pp. 35-36) is an expression of Southerners priding themselves on not being a part of an industrialized, free labor society with the associated problems of trade unions and strikes. It was true that many low wage workers were on the verge of famine in industrialized France, Britain, and Northeastern cities. As a Southerner, Fitzhugh neglects to mention that not all were well-fed or well-housed and that the “benevolence” of masters varied greatly.

     J. D. B. DeBow (P & T, pp. 36-38) exposes that slavery existed for much more than economics. Keeping blacks in the inferior status of slavery kept the status of the white non-slaveholder high. This was one of the reasons DeBow thought non-slaveholders should support slavery – to keep the white race superior. (p. 37).

     It is truly incredible that proslavery clergymen could blame abolitionists for causing slave traders to be cruel to slaves. (P & T, pp. 39-40) Even if a master is not “obliged to treat his slaves cruelly,” it does not mean that he doesn’t. (p. 39) Rice dismissed cruelty to slaves as just “human nature” of a trader provoked by abolitionists. (p. 40) Rice should know that God does not excuse cruel acts of human nature without repentance.

     James McPherson’s “Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism” (P & T, pp. 41-50) is an informative but rambling essay which lacks a thesis. Because it is by the same author as Ordeal by Fire, it duplicates much of the information but presents it in a less organized manner. McPherson accurately points out many of the differences between North and South, but to what end? His closing sentence that the Civil War’s aftermath “transferred the burden of exceptionalism from North to South” doesn’t make sense. (p. 50) I understand that the South was ousted from what McPherson calls “mainstream” after the war; however, that was due to its devastation. In my mind, “Exceptionalism” as in “American Exceptionalism” should refer to the good qualities in our country which distinguish it from others. McPherson twists the semantics of the term “exceptionalism.” I do not consider the war destruction and unwanted social upheaval of the American South as good, however exceptional, qualities.

     Steven Deyle makes an excellent point in his essay “The Domestic Slave Trade.” (P & T, pp. 50-63). Once Northerners viewed a slave auction for themselves, they were much more likely to view slavery as morally wrong as they see families torn apart. (p. 56) For this reason, the Upper South played a dual role in fostering the domestic slave trade and motivating the abolitionist movement. Harriet Beecher Stowe emphasizes the heart wrenching devastation to slave families from being sold apart in her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. (p. 58) Deyle points out that it was impossible for Southerners to hide the unpleasantness of a slave auction from the public because it was a public entity. Since the auctions were advertised, even abolitionists could attend. The abolitionists could find ample proof that the separation of families was not an isolated incident.

Written by Molly Kettler