Between Slavery and Freedom

Philosophy and American Slavery

Howard McGary, Jr., Bill E. Lawson, Howard McGary

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 1993
• ISBN:
  9780253012791
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Using the writings of slaves and former slaves, as well as commentaries on slavery, Between Slavery and Freedom explores the American slave experience to gain a better understanding of six moral and political concepts—oppression, paternalism, resistance, political obligation, citizenship, and forgiveness. The authors use analytical philosophy as well as other disciplines to gain insight into the thinking of a group of people prevented from participating in the social/political discourse of their times.

Between Slavery and Freedom rejects the notion that philosophers need not consider individual experience because philosophy is "impartial" and "universal." A philosopher should also take account of matters that are essentially perspectival, such as the slave experience. McGary and Lawson demonstrate the contribution of all human experience, including slave experiences, to the quest for human knowledge and understanding.

NOTES

Philosophy and American Slavery

1. See, e.g., William J. Anderson, Life and Narrative of William J. Anderson: or, Dark Deeds of American Slavery Revealed, Written by Himself (Chicago: Daily Tribune Book and Job Printing Office, 1854); Charles Ball, Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life of Charles Ball, a Black Man, Who Lived Forty Years in Maryland, South Carolina, and Georgia as a Slave (New York: John S. Taylor, 1837); Henry Bibb, Narrative of the Life of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself (New York: By the author, 1850); Linda Brent, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Boston: By the author, 1861); Isaac Brown, Case of the Slave Isaac Brown: An Outrage Exposed! (n.p.: n.p., 1847); Jane Brown, Narrative of the Life of Jane Brown and Her Two Children: Related to the Reverend G. W. Offley (Hartford: Published for G. W. Offley, 1860); William Wells Brown, Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1847); Annie L. Burton, Memories of Childhood’s Slavery Days (Boston: Ross Publishing Company, 1919); William Craft, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (London: W. Tweedie, 1860); Dinah, The Story of Dinah, as Related to John Hawkins Simpson, after Her Escape from the Horrors of the Virginia Slave Trade, to London (London: A. W. Bennett, 1863); Frederick Douglass, Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself (Boston: Boston Anti-Slavery Office, 1845); Elleanor Eldridge, Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge (Providence: B. T. Albro, 1847); Josiah Henson, Truth Stranger Than Fiction: Father Henson’s Story of His Own Life (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1858); Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes by Elizabeth Keckley, Formerly a Slave, but More Recently Modiste, and Friend to Mrs. Abraham Lincoln: or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (New York: G. W. Carlton, 1868); Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841 and Rescued in January, 1853, from a Cotton Plantation Near Red River in Louisiana (Buffalo: Derby, Orton and Mulligan, 1853); Ralph Roberts, “A Slave’s Story,” Putnam’s Monthly 9 (June 1857), 614–20; and Sojourner Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern Slave, Emancipated from Bodily Servitude by the State of New York, in 1828 (Boston: By the author, 1853).

2. See, e.g., R. M. Hare, “What Is Wrong with Slavery?” Philosophy and Public Affairs 8: 2 (1979), 103–21, and John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).

3. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1918; rpt. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969).

4. John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972).

5. For a discussion of the value of looking at what slaves had to say about their enslavement, see Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., The Slaves Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

6. For a discussion of the value of slave narratives, see Marion Wilson Starling, The Slave Narrative: Its Place in American History (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981).

7. John Blassingame, “Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves: Approaches and Problems,” in Davis and Gates, The Slaves’ Narrative, pp. 78–97.

8. John Blassingame, Slave Testimony (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), p. lxv.

9. Robert B. Stepto, “Distrust of the Reader in Afro-American Narratives,” in Sacvan Bercovitch, ed., Reconstructing American Literary History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 300–22.

10. In Gilbert Osofsky, ed., Puttin’ On Ole Massa (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 10.

11. Ibid., p. 12.

12. Ibid., p. 11.

13. John Blassingame notes: “Because of this high proportion of exceptional slaves among the black autobiographers, their stories must be used with caution. It does not follow, however, that they should be dismissed as totally unrelated to the experiences of most slaves. Research based on this principle violates logic and accepted historical canons. Historians frequently draw their portraits of American character from the autobiographies of such exceptional whites as Benjamin Franklin, Mary Antin, Davy Crockett, Andrew Carniegie, Lincoln Steffens, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Adams. Yet, some scholars reject the narratives because they were allegedly written by the most perceptive of former slaves. Historians cannot have it both ways. Logically, the comments of exceptional whites and exceptional blacks have the same strengths and weakness. An argument for or against using one applies equally to the other.” Blassingame, Slave Testimony, pp. xli-xlii.

14. See, e.g., David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966); Ann Lane, The Debate over Slavery: Stanley Elkins and His Critics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971); and James C. Morgan, Slavery in the United States: Four Views (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1985).

15. Sociologist Orlando Patterson attempts to show the impact of slavery on the psychological and sociological well-being of blacks. See Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).

16. Stanley Elkins, Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 82.

17. See, e.g., James D. Anderson, “Political and Scholarly Interests in the ‘Negro Personality’: A Review of The Slave Community,” in Al-Tony Gilmore, ed., Revisiting Blassingame’s “The Slave Community” (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), pp. 123–34.

18. John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972); George P. Rawick, From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972); Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 (New York: Pantheon, 1976); Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll (New York: Random House, 1972); Leslie Howard Owens, This Species of Property (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 to the Stono Rebellion (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974); Sterling Stuckey, “...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Philosophy and American Slavery: An Introduction
• One. Oppression and Slavery
• Two. Paternalism and Slavery
• Three. Resistance and Slavery
• Four. Citizenship and Slavery
• Five. Moral Discourse and Slavery
• Six. Forgiveness and Slavery
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index