nach oben

Journal of African American Studies

Erschienen in:

01.06.2015 | ARTICLES

Slave Religion, Slave Hiring, and the Incipient Proletarianization of Enslaved Black Labor: Developing Du Bois’ Thesis on Black Participation in the Civil War as a Revolution

verfasst von: Errol A. Henderson

Erschienen in: Journal of African American Studies | Ausgabe 2/2015

Einloggen

Aktivieren Sie unsere intelligente Suche, um passende Fachinhalte oder Patente zu finden.

search-config

KI-gestützte Suche

Aus

Abstract

WEB Du Bois argued that black participation in the US Civil War was “the largest and most successful slave revolt,” but he did not link the causative agents of black participation in the war to those that motivated other major slave revolts in the antebellum USA. In this essay, I focus on how two factors contributed to such revolts: (1) slave religion, which provided an ideological justification for overthrowing the slave system and mobile slave preachers to articulate it, and (2) the system of hiring out slaves—especially slave artisans, which increased their disaffection with the slave system, while expanding networks across plantations and rural and urban slave and free black communities. I argue that these two factors provided ideological motivation and institutional coordination for the antebellum revolts and for the slave revolt of the Civil War, as well.

Vorheriger Artikel The CEO of Self: Herman Cain, Black Conservatism and the Achievement Ideology

Nächster Artikel You Moved Up, Did You Forget Us?: The Influence of African American Intra-familial Social Mobility on Extended Family Relationships

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

For estimates of the number of black troops from northern and southern states, see Berlin et al. (1983).

For Colburn (1994: 6), “revolution is the sudden, violent, and drastic substitution of one group governing a territorial political entity for another group formerly excluded from government, and an ensuing assault on state and society for the purpose of radically transforming society.” Also, see Goldstone (2001).

Genovese (1981: 4–5) notes that “[b]y the end of the eighteenth century, the historical content of the slave revolts shifted decisively from attempts to secure freedom from slavery to attempts to overthrow slavery as a social system,” with “[t]he great black revolution in Saint-Domingue mark[ing] the turning point,” and “[t]he nineteenth century revolts in the Old South formed part of this epoch-making transformation in the relations of class and race in the Western Hemisphere.” Specifically, “the black demand for the abolition of slavery as a social system was something new and epoch-making” (p. xx).

McPherson (1991: 35) argues that the revolutionary quality of the Civil War was the result of the “enlistment of black soldiers to fight and kill their former masters,” which impelled Lincoln to change his initial limited war aims to “the revolutionary goal of a new Union without slavery” (p. 34).

He added: “Yet one would search current American histories almost in vain to find a clear statement or even faint recognition of these perfectly well-authenticated facts” (p. 717).

Du Bois (1995 [1933]: 543) lamented that Marx did not focus “first hand upon the history of the American Negro” and concluded that Marxism “must be modified in the [US] and especially so far as the Negro group is concerned.”

Starobin (1970: 89) highlights several revolts and conspiracies involving industrial slaves after Turner’s revolt, and while some may have been exaggerated by whites, actual cases such as the slave conspiracy in 1856 was “especially significant, since it involved industrial slaves almost exclusively.”

Sidbury (1997: 88) rejects the claims that the revolt was rooted in “artisanal republicanism.”

On whether Gabriel was hired out, contrast Egerton (1993: 24–5) and Sidbury (1997: 83).

Interestingly, after escaping from Richmond, Gabriel was helped by a white boat captain and betrayed by a hired-out slave artisan. Gabriel and more than 30 other conspirators were hanged. In the aftermath, the legislature restricted slave hiring and limited the residency and movement of free blacks.

Several authors—most prominently Johnson (2001)—have argued that the Vesey conspiracy was a fabrication of white politicians, but this claim has been challenged, most convincingly, by Spady (2011).

A similar argument is made by Raboteau (1980: 163) and, more recently, Harris (2001), among others.

Ironically, the key informant, George Wilson, was a blacksmith, a class leader in the AME church, and a founding member of the church (Pearson 1999; Robertson 1999).

Oates (1975:161) argues that “[t]hose who describe Nat as a skilled slave are wrong. In 1822, Nat was valued at $400—the price of a good field hand. During his trial for insurrection, he was valued at only $375. By contrast, a slave blacksmith also tried for the rebellion was valued at $675. Moreover, Nat mentions nothing in the Confessions about ever being a skilled slave; rather, he refers to himself as a field hand at work behind his plow” (p. 38).

Similar laws were enacted across the slave states, contributing to the vast illiteracy among slaves such that most slaves freed by the Civil War were illiterate.

On networks, skilled labor, slave hiring, and religion, see Schermerhorn (2011).

For a useful synthesis of discussions on enslaved artisan workers and networks of communication, see Buchanan (2004).

The more formal clandestine networks, such as Webb describes, culminated in the Underground Railroad, which by the 1850s “had developed into a diverse, flexible, and interlocking system with thousands of activists residing from the upper South to Canada” (Bordewich 2005: 5).

Aptheker, H. (1966). Nat Turner’s slave revolt. New York: Humanities Press.

Barnes, D., Schoen, B., & Towers, F. (Eds.). (2011). The old South’s modern worlds: Slavery, region, and nation in the age of progress. New York: Oxford University Press.

Berlin, I., Reidy, J., & Rowland, L. (Eds.). (1983). The black military experience: A documentary history of emancipation, 1861-1867. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bordewich, F. (2005). Bound for Canaan. New York: HarperCollins.

Breen, P. (2003). A prophet in his own land. Support for Nat Turner and his rebellion within Southampton’s black community. In K. Greenberg (Ed.), Nat Turner: A slave rebellion in history and memory (pp. 103–118). New York: Oxford University Press.

Buchanan, T. (2004). Black life on the Mississippi: Slaves, free blacks, and the western steamboat world. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Colburn, F. (1994). The vogue of revolution in poor countries. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Creel, M. W. (1988). A peculiar people: Slave religion and community—culture among the Gullahs. New York: New York University Press.

Douglas, F. (1855). My bondage, my freedom. New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1969 [1935]). Black Reconstruction in the United States, 1860-1880. New York: Atheneum.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1985 [1936]). The Negro and social reconstruction. In H. Aptheker (Ed.), Against racism: unpublished essays, papers, addresses, 1887-1961 (pp. 103-159). Amherst: University of Massachusetts.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1995 [1933]). Marxism and the Negro problem. In D. Lewis (Ed.), W. E. B. Du Bois: a reader (pp. 538-44). New York: Henry Holt & Company.

Egerton, D. (1993). Gabriel’s rebellion. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Egerton, D. (2003). Nat Turner in a hemispheric context. In K. Greenberg (Ed.), Nat Turner: A slave rebellion in history and memory (pp. 134–147). New York: Oxford University Press.

Flournoy, H. W. (ed.) (1890). Calendar of Virginia State papers and other manuscripts, Vol. 9. Richmond, VA.

Franklin, V. P. (1992). Black self-determination: A cultural history of African-American resistance (2nd ed.). New York: Lawrence Hill.

Genovese, Eugene (1981). From rebellion to revolution: Afro-American slave revolts in the making of the New World. New York: Vintage.

Glattharr, J. (1992). Black glory: The African-American role in Union victory. In G. Boritt (Ed.), Why the Confederacy lost (pp. 133–162). New York: Oxford University Press.

Goldstone, J. (2001). Towards a fourth generation of revolutionary theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 4, 139–187.CrossRef

Greene, H., & Hutchins, H. (2004). Slave badges and the slave-hire system in Charleston, South Carolina, 1783-1865. Jefferson: McFarland & Co.

Hahn, S. (1997). ‘Extravagant expectations’ of freedom: Rumour, political struggle, and the Christmas Insurrection Scare of 1865 in the American South. Past and Present 157 (November): 122–158.

Hahn, S. (2009). The political worlds of slavery and freedom. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Harris, F. (2001). Something within: Religion in African-American political activism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Johnson, M. (2001). Denmark Vesey and his co-conspirators. William and Mary Quarterly, 58(4), 915–976.CrossRef

Kaye, A. (2007a). Joining places. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Kaye, A. (2007b). Neighborhoods and Nat Turner: the making of a slave rebel and the unmaking of a slave rebellion. Journal of the Early Republic, 27(Winter), 705–720.CrossRef

Levine, L. (1978). Black culture and black consciousness: Afro-American folk thought from slavery to freedom. New York: Oxford University Press.

Litwack, L. (1980). Been in the storm so long. New York: Vintage.

Lofton, J. (1983). Denmark Vesey’s revolt: The slave plot that lit a fuse to Fort Sumter. Kent: Kent State University Press.

Martin, J. (2004). Divided mastery: Slave hiring in the American South. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

McCurry, S. (2010). Confederate reckoning. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

McPherson, J. (1991). Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.

McPherson, J. (1993). The Negro’s Civil War. New York: Vintage.

Moses, W. (1993). Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Mullin, G. (1972). Flight and rebellion: Slave resistance in eighteenth century Virginia. New York: Oxford University Press.

Nolan, C. (1995). The Longman guide to world affairs. White Plains: Longman.

O’Donovan, S. (2011). William Webb’s world. New York Times http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/william-webbs-world/.

Oates, S. (1975). The fires of jubilee. New York: Harper & Row.

Parramore, T. (2003). Covenant in Jerusalem. In K. Greenberg (Ed.), Nat Turner: A slave rebellion in history and memory (pp. 58–76). New York: Oxford University Press.

Pearson, E. (1999). Designs against Charleston: The trial record of the Denmark Vesey Slave Conspiracy of 1822. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Raboteau, A. (1980). Slave religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Robertson, D. (1999). Denmark Vesey. New York: Knopf.

Robinson, C. (1983). Black Marxism. London: Zed Books.

Schermerhorn, C. (2011). Money over mastery, family over freedom: Slavery in the antebellum upper South. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Sidbury, J. (1997). Ploughshares into swords: Race, rebellion and identity in Gabriel’s Virginia, 1730-1810. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef

Sidbury, J. (2003). Reading, revelation, and rebellion: The textual communities of Gabriel, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner. In K. Greenberg (Ed.), Nat Turner: A slave rebellion in history and memory (pp. 119–133). New York: Oxford University Press.

Spady, J. (2011). Power and confession: on the credibility of the earliest reports of the Denmark Vesey slave conspiracy. William and Mary Quarterly, 68(2), 287–304.CrossRef

Starobin, R. (1970). Industrial slavery in the old South. New York: Oxford University Press.

Starobin, R. (Ed.). (1988). Blacks in bondage: Letters of American slaves. New York: Markus Weiner.

Stuckey, S. (1987). Slave culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

Webb, W. (1873). The history of William Webb, composed by himself. Detroit: Egbert Heokstra. Reprinted by Academic Affairs Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Wilmore, G. (1983). Black religion and black radicalism. Maryknoll: Orbis.

Titel: Slave Religion, Slave Hiring, and the Incipient Proletarianization of Enslaved Black Labor: Developing Du Bois’ Thesis on Black Participation in the Civil War as a Revolution
verfasst von: Errol A. Henderson
Publikationsdatum: 01.06.2015
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Journal of African American Studies / Ausgabe 2/2015
Print ISSN: 1559-1646
Elektronische ISSN: 1936-4741
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-015-9299-8

Springer Professional

Abstract

Bitte loggen Sie sich ein, um Zugang zu Ihrer Lizenz zu erhalten.

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Weitere Artikel der Ausgabe 2/2015

Slaves to the Community: Blacks and the Rhetoric of “Selling Out”

Educational Expectations Among African American Suburban Low to Moderate Income Public High School Students

You Moved Up, Did You Forget Us?: The Influence of African American Intra-familial Social Mobility on Extended Family Relationships

The Racial Exceptionalism of Barack Obama

The CEO of Self: Herman Cain, Black Conservatism and the Achievement Ideology

Examining the Value of Social Capital and Social Support for Black Student-Athletes’ Academic Success

Premium Partner