Fatal Self-Deception

by Genovese, Eugene D.; Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth

• ISBN13: 9781107605022
• ISBN10: 1107605024
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-10-24
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

Slaveholders were preoccupied with presenting slavery as a benign, paternalistic institution in which the planter took care of his family, and slaves were content with their fate. In this book, Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese discuss how slaveholders perpetuated and rationalized this romanticized version of life on the plantation. Slaveholders' paternalism had little to do with ostensible benevolence, kindness, and good cheer. It grew out of the necessity to discipline and morally justify a system of exploitation. At the same time, this book also advocates the examination of masters' relations with white plantation laborers and servants - a largely unstudied subject. Southerners drew on the work of British and European socialists to conclude that all labor, white and black, suffered de facto slavery, and they championed the South's "Christian slavery" as the most humane and compassionate of social systems, ancient and modern.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Abbreviations	p. xi
Manuscript Collections	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
"Boisterous Passions"	p. 6
Edmund Burke's Cautionary Tale	p. 11
Morals	p. 14
Apprehensive Parents	p. 16
Young Gentlemen in Fields and Stores	p. 19
Weighed in the Balances	p. 22
The Complete Household	p. 25
Paternal Authority	p. 28
Property in Man?	p. 30
Household Problems	p. 35
Slave Sales	p. 37
Strangers within the Gates	p. 40
Sundry White Servants	p. 40
Governesses and Tutors	p. 44
Hired Laborers	p. 48
Overseers and Their Families	p. 51
Loyal and Loving Slaves	p. 60
Masterful Forbearance	p. 61
Mutual Dependency and Manipulation	p. 67
Souls	p. 75
Grief and Money	p. 79
Tests of Faith	p. 81
Dangerous Wishes	p. 86
The Blacks' Best and Most Faithful Friend	p. 89
A Stagnant Race	p. 90
Black Incapacity	p. 92
Black Thoughts, According to White Critics	p. 95
Views of Emancipation	p. 98
News from Africa	p. 102
The Fate of the Indians	p. 105
The Specter of Barbarism	p. 109
Guardians of a Helpless Race	p. 111
Vindication from the Free States	p. 112
Abolitionism Indicted for Racism	p. 116
Persistent Fears of Black Extermination	p. 119
White Recognition of Black Achievement	p. 122
An Incongruity	p. 128
Devotion unto Death	p. 131
Armed Slaves: Friends or Foes?	p. 131
Concern for White Women	p. 138
Mounting Crises	p. 139
Body Servants in War and Propaganda	p. 141
The Confederacy Opts for Black Troops	p. 142
Notes	p. 147
Index	p. 211
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