American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment, and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime

American Negro Slavery is Ulrich Phillips? attempt to provide an overview of the practice and institutions of slavery in the Americas from its inception through the 19th century. Writing in 1918, Phillips hoped to provide an account of slavery based upon historical evidence and modern methods of research, rather than polemics or ideological motivations. He thus drew his evidence from the plantation records and letters of slave owners, contemporary travel accounts, court records and legal documents, newspaper articles, and in some instances the recordings of slaves themselves, rather than what he viewed as more biased sources such as abolitionist writings and other agenda-driven polemicals. While this approach was not systematic, and led him to base many of his conclusions upon anecdotal evidence and an over reliance upon particular chroniclers of the South such as Frederick Law Olmsted, the bulk of his findings are supported by subsequent scholarship. Indeed, in the descriptive portions of the work, Phillips was generally on target though lacking in depth. It is in the analytical portions that latter-day historians would take exception to his findings, as they are based more upon his personal beliefs concerning race, rather than documented evidence. Phillips mainly concerns himself with the economic and political aspects of slavery; the bulk of the book is therefore devoted to an examination of how westward expansion (from European exploration through American settlement) coincided with economic development and resulted in the creation of legal institutions protecting slavery in those regions where a deficit of labor and a surplus of arable land combined to make it a viable method of production. He seldom concerns himself with the experiences of slaves themselves, though where he does he finds that most were well provided for materially and treated with less than brutality by their masters, who for both economic and moral reasons had an interest in the happiness and well-being of their property. He does not deny that slaves were whipped, performed dangerous or tedious tasks, or were separated from their families, but indicates that such occurrences were the exception rather than the rule. Nor does he find that slaves were particularly susceptible to laziness or criminality, or that the threat of slave uprisings was as great as contemporary whites assumed, since the racial characteristics of slaves included loyalty, geniality, and a predisposition to manual rather than intellectual labor. Phillips also explores the profitability of slavery as an institution, but finds that further investigation is required, as while the tendency of slave owners to keep their capital invested in slaves rather than industry resulted in a lack of economic diversification in the South, it also resulted in great profits during times of high demand for agricultural products. Despite his racial assumptions, Phillips was certainly no apologist for slavery. He is