The Meaning of
Slavery in the North
Edited by
David Roediger and Martin H. Blatt
The grim shadow that slavery has cast over American
history has obscured the reality of what textbooks used to casually
refer to as "America's peculiar institution." Most
Americans have chosen to think of slavery as a regional aberration
rather than a national phenomenon. The essays in The Meaning
of Slavery in the North do not seek to lessen the South's
culpability regarding the horrors of slavery, but they insist
that the so-called free states of the North were full partners
in the viability of the slave society of the South.
The opening essays in this collection
examine in detail how the economic interests of the industrial
North complemented or directly intersected with those of the
agrarian South. Even after Northern ships no longer engaged in
the slave trade, there were substantial connections to the slave
South involving textile production, the maritime industry, and
interstate commerce of various kinds. In short, the slave system
functioned as a national economic entity based in the South but
not regionally restricted.
The concluding set of essays demonstrates
that the notion of African racial inferiority generated by slavery
was not a sectional prejudice, but a national consensus of the
dominant European culture. Various secular and religious movements
assailed this consensus with vigor. Although successful to some
degree in rallying moral outrage against slavery per se, they
failed to significantly alter the racial views of white America.
Uniting the essays in terms of the
labor movement is what they reveal about the attitudes of industrial
workers and small farmers in the North regarding slave labor.
These groups remained largely indifferent to the effects of slavery
upon their economic well-being until the land beyond the Mississippi
River became available for development. At the point free labor
concluded that it could not compete in this new arena with slave
labor working on behalf of the plantation aristocracy, economic
self-interest necessitated that free labor became antislavery
or at least against the expansion of slavery. The essays in The
Meaning of Slavery in the North examine the failure of this
economic conviction to be transformed into a political commitment
of full citizenship for Americans of African origin. Like the
various industrial and financial leaders of the North, free labor
would have allowed the South its slaves as long as labor was
confined to regional economic sectors involving cotton, tobacco,
and sugar production.
Although the abolitionists and Radical
Republicans were briefly able to set the agenda after the assassination
of Abraham Lincoln, their views never evolved into a permanent
national ideology. The emotional dynamic of the decade following
the Civil War was one of national healing. The major priority,
North and South, became the political reunion of the European
populations that had fought in the war. The reconstruction of
Southern society, which would have involved full rights for Americans
of African origin, was sacrificed to this end, most obviously
in the electoral Compromise of 1877. One long-term consequence
of genuine reconstruction was the probability that African Americans
would have been invited to the North for jobs ultimatley allotted
from 1880 to 1924 to millions of European immigrants. Given the
emphasis on reunion, many of the antebellum tradeoffs and compromises
reappeared in new garb, setting the stage for another century
of racial exploitation.
By demonstrating that the institution
of slavery and the psychology it generated were always national
in character. The Meaning of Slavery in the North illuminates
much in subsequent and contemporary American history. These essays
argue that the dominant culture has always lacked the will to
resolve the issues formented by slavery in a manner consistent
with the political contract embodied in the Declaration of Independence
and the Bill of Rights. The obviously disadvantaged in this process
have been African Americans. Less obviously the general American
working class in the North and South has also been profoundly
disadvantaged by directly or indirectly having to compete with
an underpaid and otherwise economically exploited sector of national
labor numbering in the millions. Part of the process of finally
altering this political and economic syndrome involves identifying
its tap roots in the first seventy years of the republic. The
Meaning of Slavery in the North is a contribution to that
process.
MARTIN H. BLATT, formerly chief of professional services/historian
at Lowell National Historical Park, is presently chief of cultural
resources/historian at Boston National Historical Park. He is
the co-editor, with Martha Norkunas, of Work, Recreation,
and Culture: Essays in American Labor History (Garland, 1996)
and the author of Free Love and Anarchism: The Biography of
Ezra Heywood ( University of Illinois Press, 1989).
DAVID ROEDIGER teaches U.S. history and chairs the American
Studies Program at the University of Minnesota. His recent books
include The Wages of Whiteness (1991) and Towards the
Abolition of Whiteness, (1994) both from Verso.
The Meaning of Slavery in the
North, 0-8153-2345-X hardback
$40.00, 192.
return
to Useful Book about the NPS
|