Category Archives: Methods in Cultural History

So in delving more deeply into Charles Irons’s argument, I think I may have found an important element that bears on my research project here.  In discussing Thornton Stringfellow’s Scriptural and Statistical Views in Favor of Slavery, he notes that part of Stringfellow’s argument is that enslavement is necessary for the conversion of blacks to Christianity.

Irons states that Stringfellow “was not content, as some in the early national period had been, to argue that evangelicals could make the most of a flawed institution by trying to proselytize slaves.  Instead, he assumed that slavery in the Bible corresponded to American slavery.  Moreover, he asserted that the status of black Americans as slaves was a necessary link in the chain that led to their conversion.  Breaking that link, as abolitionists threatened to do, would disrupt the mission and probably result in catastrophic loss of life.” (my bold, obviously)

If slavery is a necessary pre-condition for black conversion to Christianity, this puts self-enslavement laws in a different light.  One could view them as a necessary legal maneuver to allow for making free blacks into good Christians.  I’m not sure this is the whole impetus behind passing them, but some of the language in Texas newspapers discussing how they are not reluctant supporters of slavery gives credence to that conclusion I think.  For instance, on February 10, 1858—just 2 weeks after the final passage of the self-enslavement law—the Houston Weekly Telegraph argued that “[s]lavery is right in itself,” and more importantly that “slaves are far better as such, than wild negroes in Africa….As slaves, they are humanized and Christianized to a degree entirely unattainable by them as a race in any other condition.  Slaves are better off as such than in a state of freedom in America.”

The key phrase, it seems, is that the “humanization” and “Christianization” offered by slavery is “entirely unattainable,” in the mind of the author, by free blacks in America.

Edit: Stringfellow’s pamphlet/book is published in 1856, as is William A. Smith’s Lectures on the Philosophy and Practice of Slavery that takes a view similar to that of Stringfellow. In the same year, Virginia’s state legislature passes their self-enslavement law. Just a thought.

In looking towards a different historiographical strand, the argument of my paper has become clearer.  As discussed last week, the historiography of free blacks in the Old South discusses self-enslavement laws, with older works using the laws as an example of free blacks’ precarious, deteriorating social position in the late 1850s, and newer historiography demonstrating that the laws were rarely utilized, and tell us very little about free blacks lived experiences.

My argument last week was that historians of free blacks fail to recognize the role self-enslavement laws played in southerners’ broader defense of slavery, as they felt it becoming increasingly besieged in the late 1850s.  Fortunately for this research paper, historians of proslavery arguments fail to recognize their importance as well.  While books like Charles F. Irons’s The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia, and Larry E. Tise’s Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701–1840, provide fantastic analyses of the ways southerners (and Americans more generally) attempted to justify and defend the institution of slavery, they do not acknowledge the (admittedly small) role played by self-enslavement  laws in the support of proslavery rhetoric.

This research paper, then, will attempt to “rescue” self-enslavement laws from the historiography on free blacks, and place it in its proper context within the historiography on proslavery rhetoric.  I feel like I have done a sufficient amount of primary source research into the passage and discussion of self-enslavement laws in Texas and other newspapers, and am now attempting to figure out exactly how the language of these newspaper discussions fits in with the historiography on proslavery arguments.  Any other suggestions on how these self-enslavement laws might fit with the arguments of particular authors, or specific books that might be helpful, would be greatly appreciated.

I have written a rough introduction to my paper, and I’d like some feedback.  In the actual paper, my historiography coverage will be more in depth, I just wanted to get the broad contours for this first draft.  Specifically, I’d like feedback on two things: is my argument about the significance of Texas’s self-enslavement law clear? And also, perhaps more importantly, after reading this introduction, how do you think an argument like that will need to be supported by the evidence? You can give me feedback in the comments, or just in class tomorrow. 

On January 27, 1858, the Texas Legislature passed “An Act to permit Free persons of African descent, to select their own Master and become Slaves.”  Historians have often analyzed these laws in an effort to assess transformations in the social position of free blacks within southern communities.  Randolph B. Campbell argues in his seminal text on slavery in Texas that the self-enslavement law of 1858 reflected white fears about the influence of free blacks on Texas’s slave population, and their notions that blacks were suited only for slavery.[1]  Ira Berlin seems less sure than Campbell that the passage self-enslavement laws in the South offer a lens through which to view free blacks’ social position, and posits, rather, that they served as a way for whites to “affirm their most cherished belief…of the positive-good” of slavery.[2]  Berlin argues that “[n]ewspapers throughout the South avidly spread enslavement stories.  The disproportion of interest to reality suggests that they searched these stories out as jewels to be collected, polished, and displayed as evidence of the beneficence of their society.”[3]  Melvin Patrick Ely largely agrees with this assessment, contending that while many regard self-enslavement laws as reflective of blacks’ declining position, Virginia’s law “signified little.  The state’s self-enslavement law may not even qualify as a concession to white popular sentiment, for it seems to have won little attention at the time.”[4]

Texas’s self-enslavement law tells us little about the experiences of free blacks in the state.  While a few free blacks in the state took the legislature up on this dubious privilege, their court petitions seem to tell us little about the motivating factors, as they generally echoed abstract, white, pro-slavery ideas towards free blacks, if they said anything at all.  What we can glean from the law’s passage, and subsequent newspaper reports of its use, is the way in which it served a rhetorical purpose for Texas pro-slavery advocates, as they felt the institution of slavery becoming increasingly besieged in the late 1850s.  While Berlin is for the most part correct in his contention that southern newspapers highlighted self-enslavement stories as “jewels” to be displayed for the public, self-enslavement stories received nowhere near the press coverage as other issues in their defense of slavery.  Articles discussing self-enslavement pale in comparison to those espousing the benefits of re-opening the slave trade, expressing concerns about the admission of non-slaveholding states to the Union and anxiety about the high price and scarcity of slave labor.

Historians’ desire, my own included, to understand the free black experience in the old South has masked what seems to be the real significance of self-enslavement laws.  Through an analysis of the content of Texas newspapers during the late 1850s and early 1860s, there exists a clear and growing urgency in mounting various defenses of slavery.  The most popular defense took the form of highlighting slavery as a having a positive influence on the enslaved, so much so that they argued that the African slave trade should be re-opened, so that slavery could Christianize and civilize as many blacks as possible.  Another popular defense of slavery as a labor system was the poor social and economic position of free blacks in the North, highlighting their incapacity as productive laborers.  It is only within this larger newspaper campaign to defend the institution of slavery that Texas’s self-enslavement law can be properly understood.  The existence of self-enslavement laws across the South allowed states to cite repeatedly the infrequent examples of free blacks choosing to return to slavery, as a part of their attempt to highlight the benefits of the institution.  Self-enslavement laws allowed southern newspapers to make important rhetorical maneuvers as a part of their much larger pro-slavery campaign in the late 1850s.

Texas’s self-enslavement law as well brings to light an interesting methodological issue, concerning scholars’ use of internet databases in historical investigations centered around newspapers and periodicals.  While these databases are extremely valuable in making hundreds of years of often difficult to acquire newspapers available on-demand, search results can often obscure larger, and more important stories within the documents.  While all of the articles discussing self-enslavement can be accessed through keyword searches—using terms like “return to slavery,” “choose master,” and “become slaves”—those results can be deceiving.  Singling out those articles, fairly easy to do through a database like America’s Historical Newspapers, obscures the fact that self-enslavement stories constituted only a small part of a larger campaign to defend the institution of slavery.