Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South

A major landmark on slavery, Stampp's book is too often judged harshly by current standards. The controversial line in the Preface, "...Negroes are, after all, only white men with black skins" obviously falls short in terms of culture, identity and power relations. But back in 1956, asserting equality among peoples was a big advance in understanding compared to Ulrich Phillips' work. Exhaustively using the same kinds of plantation sources as Phillips, Stampp revived the neo-abolitionist interpretation and reshaped our view of US slavery, crafting a book that remains the essential starting point for all later work. Further advances built upon this achievement, notably by using direct slave testimony (personal narratives, the WPA oral histories), but the perspective of later studies such as J. Blassingame, "The Slave Community" and E. Genovese, "Roll Jordan Roll" is similarly sympathetic to those held in bondage. The other main shortcoming is that Stampp deals mostly with the 1830-60 period while assuming it represented the overall experience of American enslavement, which it did not. It is still a monument of 20th-century historiography by any standard.

If you are a "lay reader" first venturing into a study of Southern slavery, then this may not be the place to start. However, for scholars, students, and those with a foundation in the topic, Stampp's "Peculiar Institution" is a must-read. Admittedly, his writing is deep, yet it is vital and relevant. Stamp is a myth-buster busting myths with first-hand quotes, statistics, and primary sources. For an understanding of the true, and tormenting, nature of American slavery, "Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South" is an excellent resource. Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of "Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction," "Soul Physicians," "Spiritual Friends," and the forthcoming "Sacred Friendships: Listening to the Voices of Women Soul Care-Givers and Spiritual Directors."

Stampp's aim in writing this book was not to provide the complete and comprehensive last word on the subject of the American enslavement of Africans and their American descendents, nor to empathize with the oppressed slaves, nor to apologize for slavery, nor to echo the "voices" of slaves, nor to place it in the context of slavery around the world throughout human history (all of which are worthy topics which have been (and continue to be) addressed by other historians. Stampp's aim was to provide information lacking (in 1955, and still scant fifty years later) as to the nature of the institution itself, AS an American institution (which it certainly was up until its final (and sloppily inefficient) dismantling beginning 1863 (in the midst of the civil war). The "Peculiar" Insitution (so dubbed by slave owners themselves, in secret (and embarrassed) acknowledgement of the sheer hypocrisy of this institution. Stampp does not attack the morality of slavery, nor does he "witness" the evils of slavery through statements of slaves or abolitionists (he is not writing a polemic); instead he provides us with something far more useful: empirical data on just what the institution was, how it worked, what its practices were and what putative justifications were offered by its proponents for its existence and nature. In doing so, Stampp gives his readers a far more damning criticism of slavery than any other writer I have encountered since reading Stampp's book for a high school history class in 1969. Stampp expertly strips the subject of the emotion and bias (on both sides) that has obscured the facts (history is distinct from myth and propaganda to the extent that it is about *facts* assembled through valid inferences) about slavery. Some trite but persisting claims about slavery debunked by Stampp are: (1) the myth that all (or even a majority) of Southern whites owned slaves. [A white family had to be fairly well off even to afford owning even one slave; a huge proportion of whites were scarcely better off financially or in terms of workload than were many slaves.] (2) the myth that the institution of slavery was in fact predicated upon "bettering" the lot of Africans, or even "taking care of them"(the view that blacks were incurably biologically, poltically, socially or otherwise "inferior" to whites. [Even thoough these arguments for various policies concerning the treatment of slaves were often argued by defenders of the Peculiar Institution, the facts of the actual practice of slave belie both of these claims. Adding up the actual "benefits" slaveowners offered blacks, the fact is that blacks were not subjected to any sort of "improvement". (Bible study, as Mark Twain -- still a key observer of the *realities* of slavery! -- served to entertain and enculturate slaves -- even subjugate them as a "lower class", NOT as moral or social improvement. Policies (actual practices, whatever the rhetoric) toward slaves did NOT lead towards free

Professor Stampp's book on American Slavery was published in 1956-- two years after the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v Board of Education and at the beginning of the American Civil Rights Movement. At the time of its publication, the book was recognized as a seminal study of America's "peculiar institution". Time has not changed the value of the book.The book attacks a picture of the Old South that attained wide currency after Reconstruction and was carried through American culture in works such as, for example, Gone With the Wind-- that plantation slavery was a benign institution, part of an agrarian way of life, that was accepted by both slave and master. Professor Stampp shows that slavery had an economic, commercial basis, that it was resisted by slaves overtly and covertly, and that led to squalor, cruelty and suffering by the slaves. The peculiar institution does not merit sentimintality in any form.In reading the book a half-century after its publication, and with some benefit of having read subsequent studies, I was struck with the moderate tone of the book. Yes, there were humane masters in an inhumane system and yes,there were variants in time and place. Stampp gives these variants their due, perhaps more than modern students would be inclined to do.I was stuck with the tone of slavery's defenders, pre Civil War and thereafter, describing the institution as "patriarchal". Not only is that description in error, as Stampp shows, but for readers in a time beyond the mid 1950s, it is hardly a compliment to call a society "patriarchal", even if it deserved this characterization.There has been a great deal of writing since the publication of this book on matters such as the nature of the slave trade, the presence, or lack of it, of an indigenous culture among the slaves, and the economic viability of slavery. These studies add to the picture that Professor Stampp has drawn.This is an essential book for the understanding of our Nation's history. Those looking for an introduction to the Ante-Bellum South could not do better than to read this book.

This is a fabulous resource for educators. It is a straight to the point account of slavery. I use it often to teach the Civil War era. It is one of those books that reads like fiction. Super!