Overseers

Contract between planter Ebenezer Davis and Booker Flippin

So, in doing a little research early Saturday morning on Ancestry.com, I found my way to the 1860 Census and took a look at Townships 2 and 3 (1 and 2 W). These areas include most of the planters I have been studying--Hull, Minor, Clayton, and Crump, as well as Matthews. I noticed that one of the wealthiest planters in Township 2, Alexander Clayton, employed the services of R.A. Phlippin as "farm manager." (Nowhere in the census for these two townships did I see the word overseer.) I also noted that another planter, Andrew Jackson, also in Township 2, employed a Thomas Phlippin in the same capacity, and I am aware that yet another planter, not located in either of these two townships, employed in 1860 a Booker Flippin.

It would appear to be the case then that the Flippin or Phlippin family specialized in farm management. What might this mean? Does it mean that they were professionals? That they used a system that ultimately resulted in large crops? That the Flippins/Phlippins were much sought after because of this? Or, to the contrary, does it mean that they were fierce and kept the slave population in order by threat of the lash?

Perhaps there are hints that might suggest an answer. The image above, a contract between Ebenezer Davis and  Booker Flippin, contains the language: "to treat the slaves as kindly as their conduct will allow." There is in the language of the document, which also contains instructions on how to care for the slaves (instructions including the overseer's duty to see that the slaves keep good hygiene), is paternalistic in character. This quality is in agreement with what Eugene Genovese wrote of both the master/slave relationship and the complicated relationship between overseers and the slave community that they worked. In the contract, Davis seems to be creating some latitude for both slave and overseer. At one end of possibility is "care." At the other end, the whip. In any case, the document at once indicates slave agency; they are to some extent in charge of their own conduct and therefore will suffer consequences of it. On the other hand, they are treated like children who cannot take care of their own hygiene without assistance. Above all, the contract would seem to exonerate Davis himself of treatment that is not kind, by providing him an alibi of sorts or a cushion. If things do not go according to the contract, he can place the blame on the overseer, on the slaves, or both. Little fault would seem to fall to him. What's more, by employing a language of care, i.e. "treat the slaves kindly," he may maintain his role as uninvolved patriarch. In short, his hands are clean and he may maintain the stature of Southern gentleman. The overseer was then scapegoat, and perhaps he remains so today.

Upon whom was the title of Southern gentleman bestowed? Those who had money enough to create this sort of distance between themselves and the ugly realities of slavery. And yet, slave narratives suggest that blacks could often see through the guise of the Southern gentleman and lady. Regularly, former slaves refer to their masters and mistresses as mean, a description that would seem to suggest that when they were not treated kindly they knew who ultimately was to blame.

Harriet Tubman/Lowry...Second Reading Day

I am getting used to Lowry's narrative voice. I do not dislike it; it is instructive. It's like she is explaining how she went about researching in the process of her writing the biography. To me, this is an anthropological style. It is also what we might call self-reflexive. She is being critical about her own manner of writing and research.

An example of this would be when she talks about language. She writes for instance that "own" is a painful word to use. You'll recall in class that I mentioned an NPR interview with Isabel Allende on her 2009 novel Island Beneath the Sea, where a caller takes her to task for using the word "slave," the politically correct term these days being "enslaved." I was disappointed with how quickly Allende agreed with the caller, which made me think that she wasn't as confident as she might have been with writing about slavery. One may take Lowry's self-critical voice in this same way. She does a lot of explaining of her choices. In choosing to use a word like own, she says that she is using the language of the time because it was the legal condition. However, she also says that a present perspective can be maintained, meaning one can both read the language of the times and also reject that language as not belonging to this time. In essence, Lowry is both telling Tubman's story and creating a separate and connected conversation about how she is going about creating the story. In this sense, the book is taking place in the historical present and real present simultaneously.

I find myself being less patient when she complains more than once that her writing must rely on court documents written by old white men. Here, I see Lowry herself falling into political correctness. I would rather she use the same reasoning as she does with the language. The documents she relies upon are the documents of the time, and while she might look at them as limiting, they are not. Tubman lived during a time when institutions were dominated by white men, so this is not a fact that she should feel the need to adjust in any way. I would be more interested however in Lowry finding ways that the voices of the oppressed speak even in situations of domination. I am confident, having read this book once before, that she later does just that. Would that her researcher voice was more confident. At one point, she writes, "All slaves old or young were the same." Huh? This is true, in my opinion, in only the most superficial sense. To be in the social role of slave connected one to others in that same oppressed state, yet every enslaved person was different, human, and of varying character and talent. So, what does Lowry mean exactly, and how can she feel this way when she is writing about an enslaved woman who so very clearly was different than most, one who did not accept her objective social condition? Lowry finds a way out of her own conflictedness when she writes, "The data comes scattered and for the most part will not stand on its own but must be applied, interpreted, and merged across the years." Yes, that is her task as a writer of history attempting to educate a contemporary audience.

Likewise, however, she admits that she has only scraps of information to work with, and she says that it is difficult therefore to provide a chronological or linear story. This is yet another feature of the book that, for me anyway, needs little explanation and no apology.

Lowry continues, using her story-teller and researcher voice to inform her reader about slavery, so she takes on I suppose also a teacher's voice. She explains slavery to us. For example, she explains why it is that the woman whom the world knows as Harriet Tubman was born on a plantation that was not that of her owner. Edward Broadas was not, when she was born, old enough to yet be recognized as master, according to Lowry. So, her mother and father lived on the property of her father's owners. Lowry also explains the law, rights, inheritance, the land, and injustice. One question her readers might ask is whether this voice is more instructive than it is intrusive.

Roll Jordan Roll...Our Black Family...A Duty and a Burden

The next two sections I assigned myself are related to the last. "Our Black Family" and "A Duty and a Burden" basically examine an underlying social idea and order at the foundation of slavery: patriarchy. Genovese explains that white masters, especially of the genteel or gentleman class, considered themselves not only fathers of sorts of their slaves but also of their own families. This sort of view harkens back to medieval order in which a landed gentry served as Lords. Genovese quotes one master who writes an English earl,

Like one of the Patriarchs, I have my Flocks and my Herds, my Bond-men and Bond-women, and every Soart of Trade amongst my own Sevants, so that I live in a kind of Independence on everyone but Providence.

Underlying patriarchy is an inherent belief in the inferiority and superiority of humans. This being the thinking, masters felt it a duty and yet a burden to serve in this capacity. Burden is not to be defined as something undesirable but something along the lines of noblesse oblige. To whom much is given, much is demanded. This is not meant materially but rather in terms of intelligence and inheritance. Those who were of the planter class felt that they had inherited, maybe even by God, the role of master and that, so assigned, they had no right not to fulfill the duty. If they felt at some point that slavery was wrong, such thinking and feeling was cured by accepting it as a natural and ordained duty.

In addition, underlying this order was a related concept of bondage, which would appear to come directly from the concept of the bond, perhaps related to indenture. A bond defined a financial relationship between people. It might be looked at as today's loan. Today, we speak of being a slave to our creditors. A bond might be seen as an interest in a person's life or livelihood. (Refer to the bonds that Elizabeth Hull for instance mentions in her will. These bonds influenced relationships even among family members; they were not to be overlooked, and they had to be paid.)

Other key ideas in this section:

• As patriarchs, slave owners viewed their slaves as their black family and their relatives as their white family.
• As "fathers," slave owners felt punishment was a necessary evil. The same type of rationale for sparing the rod with children was applied to slaves. Such punishment was viewed as necessary to keeping order, not just the order on the farm or plantation but what slave owners viewed as a natural, God-given hierarchy.
• Overall, the South denied the widespread practice of cruelty, feeling it was more an exception than a rule. Wealthier planters in particular publicly and privately suggested disagreement with cruelty. Genovese explains that the preferred view was that most masters were Christian and humane.
• Genovese implies very subtly that slavery required constant rationalizing. The idea of duty and burden was but one. Another was the idea that slaves needed protecting (physical security, basic needs), and it was of course the master's duty to fulfill this need.

To better help us understand Patriarchy, we might in fact ask ourselves if and/or where it continues to exist today.

Roll Jordan Roll...Farmers, Planters, and Overseers

So, we are doing some heavy-duty reading to go along with our writing project. Not knowing much about slavery, we are making a study of it this module, and I assigned myself Eugene Genovese's important book: Roll Jordan Roll.

The section I am covering is ony the plantation "leadership." I put this word in quotes because who was in charge of the operation of sites where slaves were worked is questionable, and that I would say is the main point of the section.

It begins by explaining that most slaves lived on farms, not plantations, the latter being large operations where at least 100 enslaved persons were kept. There were many such places in the U.S.; however, they were not in the majority. In the Caribbean and in South America large plantations, containing even hundreds of slaves was normal. By comparison, Genovese says only about a quarter of blacks lived on large plantations in the U.S. So, here, the depiction of the plantation that we get from Gone with the Wind is somewhat of an exaggeration. Right along with the myth of Tara is the myth that slavery made masses of whites incredibly wealthy. Many whites, even some owning slaves, were scratching out an existence. Many masters, later President Ulysses S. Grant is even an example, worked right alongside slaves.

On the other hand, there were wealthy slave owners, and we refer to them as planters. This distinction between farmer and planter becomes very important post war as well; the planters were the true landed gentry, and one cannot understand Reconstruction without understanding the role of class in developing race relations after the war. The question would become whether the planter class would "side" with poor whites or with blacks...but that is another story I suppose.

As for overseers, some aspired to slave-owning, and, when so, overseeing could be a sort of training. In many cases, Genovese writes, overseers were relatives of slave owners. The author spends quite a bit of time in this section discussing the relationship between the overseer and the slaves. While African Americans have focused greatly on the relationship between slaves and their masters, Genovese concludes, surprisingly, that the overseer actually had reason to "curry favor" with the slaves. Two things, he says, were important when it came to evaluating an overseer: (1) whether a good crop was produced, and (2) what slaves thought of the overseer. One that was not liked would have a hard time getting blacks to work, and a favored slave might give very bad reports to his master of the overseer's doings. While the overseer could retaliate with beatings, many masters frowned upon too much beating to the point where slaves would not work. There is no way to know whether Genovese's depiction of the overseer is correct other than by reading other literature. Comparing his view to that of Charles Sydnor, there would seem to be agreement. Ultimately, cotton farming with slave labor was a business, and half-dead workers could not produce a crop.

Other important ideas in this section:

• Large plantations in America are mostly found in South Carolina.
• Genovese says there was not as much specialization (of "occupations") on small farms. Where there were ten slaves or less, there wasn't much division of labor.
• The author mentions "slackers, the inept, and troublemakers." Slaves apparently were not homogeneous, and as in all times there were those who did not accept their condition and found ways around it.
• Genovese also discusses absentee masters and resident masters. He doesn't spend much time on this, but he does say that non-residency was frowned upon by some planters, yet he writes that most absentee masters checked on their plantations regularly. A very wealthy planter might have plantations in neighboring counties.
• Between 1/3 and 1/4 of rural slaves worked under overseers.
• There could be close relationships between an overseer and slaves, though an overseer's treatment of slaves as equals was not acceptable. Likewise, Genovese writes, blacks might have white "friends" who helped blacks at times. These were typically poor whites.

Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life

Today, my Special Topics in Writing class begins reading Beverly Lowry's Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life. I read this book about five years ago and greatly enjoyed it. This time, I hope to read a bit more closely. I'd like to think about how Lowry goes about telling this story. This will be a study and a model for me and for my students.

So, I began reading last night, and I paid attention to how Lowry opens the book. She sets a tone maybe with Owasco Lake. Perhaps that is her intention. She provides a bit of the landscape (literal and figurative) of Tubman's old age. Lakes are usually thought of as calm. Lowry suggests that old age has set in with Tubman so there is an involuntary calmness about her maybe. She says that calmness has characterized Tubman throughout her life. She has been "indifferent to all surrounding circumstances." However, moments later, Lowry writes that "the constant cut of fear" has taken its toll. This contradiction early on in the book, in the drawing of Tubman's character, Lowry seems unaware of. Is Tubman unshakable, fearless, or fearful and deeply bothered? Perhaps she is both, which it seems to me would make her completely normal. But again, I'm not sure Lowry is herself aware of the contradiction. Still, I think the lake could be a useful metaphor for all of the complexity that lies just beneath the surface, and I am sure that Lowry uses it to frame Tubman's life for just this purpose. Hopefully, thinking about this tool will encourage my students to visit the landscapes of their subjects. (They too are writing about specific individuals as they study and write about slavery.)

Another feature I'm paying attention to is Lowry's narrative voice, which seems interesting. She is telling Tubman's story; she is narrator, but she is using material from an earlier biographer--Sarah Hopkins Bradford--who wrote of Tubman's life in 1901. So, she is actually in the first chapter telling of Tubman meeting with Hopkins Bradford and her brother at Lake Owosco. Lowry imagines Tubman's trip there, involving both the Lehigh train and a boat ride. Lowry is in a sense telling two overlapping stories--one of Tubman and one of Tubman's biographer's process. Lowry seems also be evaluating if not judging Hopkins Bradford's intentions and therefore her work. She suggests that the early biographer is snobbish and also not above the casual "racial stereotyping of her time." In this, I see Lowry justifying the need for her own biography.

Harriet has come to lunch at the Hopkins summer house to tell new stories, for example, one that she has remembered on the boat ride over. There will be a new edition of the biography. Her lake is deep, and it takes time for memories to come to the surface.