MYTHS & REALITIES OF AMERICAN SLAVERY

REVIEW OF A BOOK BY THAT TITLE, WRITTEN BY JOHN C. PERRY

Some Headaches for Northern Apologists

Book Review by G. Waltrip

In the current popular mythology that passes for history, slavery in the United States was strictly a Southern thing. It is common to see even conservative writers make this insinuation. They like to say that the Founders could not make slavery illegal, lest they lose support of the Southern states; that they had to insert that language in the Constitution about “persons held to service or labor” because of this. What nonsense. Slavery was practiced in all of the thirteen original colonies, and almost all of the Founding Fathers were slave owners. “Slavery as a Southern thing,” endured by a disapproving and morally insulted North, is one of the many falsehoods popularly believed about history today.

One of our compatriots, John C. Perry, grew tired of all the myths and misconceptions about African slavery and decided to seek the truth, whatever it might be. John did not set out to create a new set of mythologies, ones with a Southern tilt. He set out to separate myth from reality and tell the unbiased truth, to the extent this is possible of any human. The result was his book, Myths & Realities of American Slavery: the True History of Slavery in America.

John read many sources on slavery, including those of eye-witness accounts like those of Frederick Olmsted, a New York Times reporter who, in the 1850s, spent fourteen months in the Southern states specifically to study slavery and to report back to the Times on what he observed. John also relied on the Slave Narratives, the actual accounts of 2,300 former slaves that were written down in the 1930s as a WPA project for writers. Other sources included the 1918 study American Negro Slavery by Ulrich B. Phillips, who studied farm and plantation records to produce the first qualitative and quantitative reference source on slavery in the South. He also relied on Time On the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, two distinguished economic historians. Their 1974 study of slave life used quantitative data, computer-assisted research and the best scientific principles of modern economics. What their study found was an embarrassment to liberal academia, because it presented a substantially more favorable view of slave life than that advanced by the Northern myth and abolitionist propaganda.

John Perry did no original research in his book. He relied on the above sources, and many others, to provide a book that is easy to read and understand. John arranged this immense topic in a logical format and discussed many aspects of slavery that are of interest to the Southern movement.

Some of the facts John discusses in this book are these:

1. Slavery in the United States was largely unopposed until about the 1830s.

2. The life span of black slaves exceeded that of whites.

3. Food for slaves was varied and abundant, exceeded that of whites by 10%, and actually exceeded 20^th century levels of nutrients. The daily caloric intake of slaves was over 4,000 calories, disproving the abolitionist myth that slaves were poorly fed.

4. Clothing, housing, health care, working hours and time off were all equivalent to, or better than that, of rural whites.

5. The Slave Narratives are overwhelmingly favorable, indicating good living conditions and cordial relations (and often close relations) between masters and slaves.

6. Great care was taken to preserve the life and safety of the slaves. Far from Jonathan Farley’s recent claims that slaves were routinely murdered or tortured, the exact opposite is true. When slaves were hired out as laborers on such projects as railroad construction, they were specifically kept away from dangerous situations, such as blasting tunnels. Irish immigrants were used instead for those tasks.

7. Slave owners were criminally prosecuted for killing any slaves.

8. Slave families were routinely kept together; the break up of families by selling the members to different owners was a rare occurrence. Stable families benefited both master and slave, by cementing slave loyalty and preventing runaways.

9.  Sexual exploitation of slaves was very rare. The number of children sired by whites averaged only 1% to 2%, dispelling another abolitionist myth that slave women were regularly exploited.

There is much more to John Perry’s book, and a copy of it should be in the library of every history student.

The following references are recommended:

• Myths and Realities of American Slavery, by John C. Perry (2002)
• Time on the Cross, by Fogel and Engerman (1974)
• American Negro Slavery, by Ulrich B. Phillips (1918)
• Life and Labor in the Old South, by Ulrich B. Phillips (Out of Print) (1929)
• The Cotton Kingdom, Frederick Law Olmstead (1861)
• The Slave Narratives, Library of Congress. At this reference you will find the 2,300 slave narratives that were recorded in the 1930s. Since the narratives represent 10,000 pages of print, reading all of them would take some time. (1936 – 1938)

It is common for Yankee historians to attempt to put a spin on the Slave Narratives. We are told that the old former slaves were aged when they told their stories, and probably forgot how bad things really were. Also, they were living in the great depression, and the hard times of the 1930s only made slavery seem favorable by comparison, yada yada yada. John C. Perry examines this Northern spin and does a good job of refuting it point by point.

Okay, enough. Go read the book.