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The Treatment of Slaves

Whenever any human society is scrutinized, a biblical view of man would teach us to expect to find sin and evil. However, a partisan critic will seize upon any such problems and magnify it as though it were representative of the whole. We see this pattern today in feminist treatments of marriage, socialist treatments of the effects of free markets, and so forth.

In the South, there were times when slaves were punished, and when this happened, they were commonly punished by means of whipping. But Engerman and Fogel place this practice in context for us.

Some whippings were severe. In other instances, whipping was as mildly applied as the corporal punishment normally practiced within families today.21 Although some masters were brutal, even sadistic, most were not. The Slave Narratives are overwhelmingly favorable in the judgment of masters as "good men." In fact in the Narratives, out of 331 references to masters, 86% refer to their masters as "good" or "kind." Quite a few would not allow whipping at all, and many only allowed it in their presence.

But it was far more in the master's interest to motivate his slaves by positive means. Far more important than whipping in managing the slaves was figuring out how to motivate. No plantation owner wanted slaves who were sullen, discontented, and hostile, who did just enough to get by. They wanted devoted, hard-working, responsible men who identified their fortunes with the fortunes of their masters. Such attitudes cannot be beaten into slaves. They had to be elicited.

To achieve the desired response the planters developed a wide-ranging system of rewards. Some rewards were directed toward improving short-run performance (prizes for the individual or the gang with the best picking record on a given day or week). The prizes were such items as clothing, tobacco, whiskey, and very often cash. When slaves worked during times normally set aside for rest, they received extra pay — usually in cash. Occasionally planters even devised elaborate schemes for profit sharing with their slaves.

All this evidence points to the fact that slaves lived at various levels of income. The average pecuniary income received by a prime field hand was roughly fifteen percent greater than the income he would have received for his labor as a free agricultural worker. Some slaves saved their money and were quite wealthy after the war. Simon Phillips, a slave from Alabama says, "People has the wrong idea of slave days. We was treated good. My Massa never laid a hand on me the whole time I was wid him... Sometime we loaned the Massa money when he was hard pushed."

Data in the 1850 census suggest that the economic condition of the average free northern Negro may have been worse than that of the average free Negro in the South. A comparison between New York and New Orleans reveals that New York Negroes lived in more crowded housing, had a lower proportion of craftsmen, and less wealth per capita than free Negroes in New Orleans .

Nearly every slave in the South enjoyed a higher standard of living than the poor whites of the South — and, had a much easier existence. Most slaves worked under the "task system"