On Slavery – 2

Continuing from On Slavery – 1 here.

Marie Jenkins Schwartz in her OAH Magazine of History article, “Family Life in the Slave Quarters: Survival Strategies,” points out that slave masters attempted to control slave children by disrupting the normal authority they might feel towards their parents.

“Masters and mistresses considered the slave’s most important relationship to be that maintained with an owner. They worried that children reared to respect other authority figures, such as parents, might question the legitimacy of the southern social order, which granted slaveholders sweeping power over the people they held in bondage. Consequently, owners planned activities and established rules intended to minimize the importance of a slave’s family life and to emphasize the owner’s place as the head of the plantation.”

Schwartz further suggests that a number of slave owners referred to their slaves a family members and though not treated as such, this helped in their self–justification of exercising full power and control over every aspect of a slave’s life.