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.