I did some reading and found out some slaves stayed with their master after slavery ended. They had nowhere else to go. Some masters didn't abuse their slaves. At least with their master they were guarnteed three meals a day and a roof over their heads.
shareAnd some slaves were psychologically messed up by constant abuse so that they couldn't even entertain the idea of freedom. Yeah, it was a pretty much a mix.
shareAnd some slaves were psychologically messed up by constant abuse so that they couldn't even entertain the idea of freedom. Yeah, it was a pretty much a mix.
shareMany slaves had Stockholm Syndrome. If you spent your entire lives living on a plantation or with your master and then all of sudden your given freedom with no education or money, what do you think you would do? A lot of the ex masters convinced their ex slaves to stay by telling them that "this is your home, your like family, stay , I will pay you for your work from now on", and many did because the outside world was an unwelcoming, scary place. You see it even today where kidnapped victims who were taken as children want to stay with their captors or at least feel bad for them when they go to jail.
shareYes. They became sharecroppers with a huge number of poor whites.
For better or worse The plantation was their home where they might have born and had their family and friends.
The Devil you know as they say.
Yeah, sharecropping was another form of "slavery" for blacks after the Civil War, that lasted up until the Civil Rights Movement. Have you seen the documentaries Booker's Place and The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross? You get a small glimpse of the sharecropper's life in those docs. Sharecropping benefitted the land owner much more than the sharecroppers, who were like you said blacks and poor whites. At the end of the harvest, many weren't left with much, especially if they bought supplies from the landlord. There was a lot of frauds/schemes going around at this time which prevented many sharecroppers from paying off their debts, so you had these lifetime debts. You started seeing a mass migration of blacks moving from the South up into the North and Mid-West around the early nineteen hundreds up until 60s/70s.
shareYuan It was just a glorified form of slavery but it gave you a home and food such as it was.
A slave with family and children or the elderly could not just run to freedom... The cold hard facts of keeping fed and housed kept them on the old massa's place.
I would say An adult with no ties and A skill set could conceivably take off and surely did.
I might add a large number of slaves had well paying skill sets... From carpenter to fisherman to cook and nursemaid. They were not all field hands by any stretch.
Whether anyone would hire them is another question of course.
That's a part of why Reconstruction failed. They'd been doing all the work, so they had all the skills. So competing on a level playing field for jobs after the end of slavery was not exactly conducive to the people who'd been sitting on their butts for the last 100 years.
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
That is very true, but majority of them worked the fields. You only had a few doing "skilled" work, like horse trainers, blacksmiths, carpenters, maids, etc. They probably would be the first to leave.
I'll be honest, I'm not very adventurous. I most likely would have stayed were I was familiar, unless I had family or friends who were established in the North or West. I can understand why so many stayed. It wasn't because they liked their ex masters or even enjoyed their life there, it just was all they knew at the time. Some did leave the plantations, but stayed in the area to start their own towns and such.
I would argue that is was more than a few. The Tara Gone with the wind types with hundreds of slaves were rare.
Statistics:
Overall, out of a population of 8 million, only 383,637 owned slaves and there were few individuals in 1860 who qualified as planters, owning more than twenty slaves.
46,000 planters owned twenty slaves
2,200 planters owned 100 slaves
11 planters owned 500 slaves
1 planter owned 1,000 slaves
The vast majority of slaves worked along side a middle class white family doing everything from spinning to black smithing to survive and so would have had a skill to sell when they were free. And these whites worked like dogs along with the slaves.
Though it is true that poor whites were treated poorly by rich whites, your assuming that they share the same experience as blacks which is a little exaggerated. Who were the majority of the people who fought for the Confederacy..... poor whites. Though they never owned slaves they fought for rich whites to keep the Confederacy and its values, even though it was against their own interests. Poor white people were usually the first to go after blacks after the Civil War because they competed for jobs or they wanted to get "revenge" on them for supposed attacks. Now I'm not making this "blacks good, whites bad" argument because it took a collection of people from all walks of life and all races to have defeated slavery, but people can't make it seem like black people were not really in a bad place And that they shared a collective experience with poor white Americans at that time. During the Jim Crow Era, poor whites could still eat where they wanted use the public restrooms when they wanted, sit anywhere on the bus, etc. For a very long time black Americans didn't have that luxury.
shareUnless these were all single men, they had families. Back then especially, these families could probably be quite large. So even though only only 383,637 owned slaves, that's not counting the other members who were not heads of household but had a stake in slave ownership.
But it's always good to remind everyone that slave owners were mostly on the smaller side, and also worked along side those they owned.
Correct.
shareWow- replace plantation with "public housing" and master with "fed governent" and do you see the parallels between slavery and current welfare recipients?
How "free" are the people who depend on the govt for: housing, food, and healthcare?
What happens when they try and break that cycle to improve their lot in life?
1) the govt cuts off all help leaving them w/ nothing.
2) they get accused by family, friends, and neighbors of being an Uncle Tom or trying to be white.
3)they are looked at with suspicion and distrust by average white people for reasons too numerous to list.
So, like the newly freed slave too afraid to leave the plantation, they stay in their place.
Yeah, tons of white folks were begging to be enslaved because slaves had such a great deal. It was basically the definition of a win-win, amiright? I think I remember Brian Williams reporting on this fact... and he would know since he says he was there and has first-hand knowledge.
shareLook up The life of a poor southern white farmer.
shareBeing poor and white is in no way, shape or form comparable to be OWNED! You seem to have a very serious mental block when it comes to comprehending the fundamental significance of being OWNED versus being poor. They're not comparable! And that doesn't even touch the psychological tortures associated with maintaining the underlying institutions (or if you prefer, "white way of life") for 200 years.
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
I understand where are coming from but there are more ways of being owned.... They were usually owned financially from cradle to grave by the rich plantation owners.
The Poor Whites of the South lived difficult lives as they struggled to provide for themselves in a society dominated by a few wealthy planters. This group was frequently forced onto the least desirable land or had to farm as tenants on the land of local wealthy planters. They were most often in debt to the planter class, either due to the renting costs of land and equipment, or because they had to charge groceries and goods on credit. Many poor whites moved several times during their lives to seek better opportunities or to escape their debts. Poor whites were often jailed because of their debt, which prevented them from working to pay off what they owed. This class did not own slaves; they relied on the labor provided by themselves and their families. Poor whites suffered from malnutrition and infection. Often called ?lazy,? these whites were likely victims of hookworm, malaria, and pellagra, all of which produce intense lethargy. By the late 1930s medical advances had cured many of these diseases, and the stereotypes of poor white southerners faded.
The plantation owners owned the slaves bodies, the same platoon owners owned the white poor financially.
Once again, what you're describing is "symbolically owned" poor whites. But they had thousands of rights to marry, have children, travel, relocate , etc. One single example (among millions): An older black human (both male and female, I might add) had the RIGHT to be sexually molested and raped by a psychologically twisted white pre-teen without any repercussion whatsoever. Basically, any random white CHILD could make their life HELL! Think about the psychological torture of living under the threat of that type of reality, all day every day.
That's not symbolic! That's the threat of endless psychological and physical torture by every member of white society, at all times! Because they were OWNED! Once again, it was not "hardship" it was "ownership"! No amount of psychological contorting will ever come even close to equating the two concepts!
You're blindly emotionally ranting in defense of the people you care about. But, no amount of ranting will make what you say even close to truth. The reality of American life for slaves and poor whites were not comparable. Because even the poorest whites had "some" rights.
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
Do you think anyone would care if The planters son raped the young child of a cracker white farmer? If a the cracker farmers wife was raped do you think the Law would be on their side against the wealthy land owner?
If he fought back corruption, cronyism and the planter brother hood would make sure he and his family suffered for it.
The poor white man could not depend on impartiality from the judge who had cigars with land owner the other night. And where ever he
tried to go he found the same thing.
Thus examples you gave are just as valid to our white southerner.
And you are incorrect. The planter could and did take advantage of his slaves no doubt but a land owner would not let any other white randomly abuse and injure his property. And it could go to court. It was like injuring or stealing his cow or horse to be blunt.
It was the free slaves who had less protection in my opinion.
There were white slaves and asian and every other race too. Or "indentured servants", They were owned too. If you were a pretty girl ( often a daughter working off a family debt) your " master " is a single man. He might dress you up pretty and keep you by his side in public. But you know they had to do more than look pretty and keep the house clean when they were home. The difference between indentured and slave is ,indentured is working g off a debt likely for their family. But that debt can keep going up. Their owned and their family is also at their will until that debt is paid. That could take many years if the debt keeps going up. And some "masters" made sure the debt was always going up. Hell even in Beauties and the beast a Disney movie, Bell was owned until her father's debts were settled.
shareOne final time, for grins and giggles.
Asian railroad workers were paid, had limited rights (admittedly VERY limited), and could eventually somewhat determine their own future. White indentured servants had limited rights, were eventually paid, and were eventually required BY LAW to be freed to become full citizens. Poor whites were paid, had somewhat limited rights, but were full citizens. In the worst of those circumstances there was at least the possibility of their hardships ending. Native Americans, on the other hand, were declared non-human, had no rights, and were systematically annihilated. THAT CYCLE WAS NEVERENDING! Africans were declared non-human, had no rights, and were treated as property every minute of entire their lives. IT TOO WAS NEVERENDING! How much simpler of picture can we paint here??? Termed indenture was not LEGALLY allowed to be the same as slavery!
Still too complex???
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
No one is denying that poor whites were mistreated. But if you stand all the poor white people in a line and then stand all the poor black people in a line and the wealthier white people are told they can only feed one group of people. Who do you think they will feed? Their own kind. No matter if they are poor or not. In their eyes, whites would always come before blacks. Therefore, black people of that time would be treated in less regard to any white person.
shareYes, it is a shame that those poor white farmers were "protected" by laws that didn't let them trade their freedom to become slaves. Just another example of whitey being kept down by "the man."
Those poor, poor white southern farmers most certainly would have traded their lives for those of the slave. The worst thing is that there were so few options for the poor white southern farmer, as prison systems didn't really exist like they do today and they couldn't simply decide to commit crimes that would get them incarcerated.
Oh... waitasec, there were actually Indentured Servants during this time... I guess the one bright spot is that a poor white person could trade much of their freedom to become an Indentured Servant that was actually protected by laws that insisted they were still human beings. Of course, Indentured Servants ended up being fairly well-compensated and the slave trade would make them quite undesirable by comparison... and I guess that just proves to be another example of black people making lives harder for white people by taking all their jobs and stuff. Yep. We is so smarts.
The slaves was uneducated and treated like animals. When slavery ended they didn't know what to do cause they were totally dependent on their masters.
shareYes, and some women stay with their abusice husbands but that doesn't mean the situation was a utopia. I think many knew that the post civil war era wasn't ideal even for white men, them being a black former slave wasn't going to be any easier. Some do what it takes to survive, regardless of the situation or future.
share