Toward an understanding of American slavery

Nearly 136 years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery remains the unhealed wound on the American soul. Every discussion of racial equality in America has its taproot in slavery. No wonder it is a subject regarded with trepidation and dread by whites and African-Americans alike, even when the debate is ostensibly about affirmative action, apologies and reparations, or the stars-and-bars of the defeated Confederacy.

And no wonder the ``peculiar institution'' that once threatened to break the back of this nation remains a topic of much discussion. In recent years, several high-profile books and films have sought to illuminate our understanding of American slavery. Charles Johnson won the 1990 National Book Award for his novel ``Middle Passage,'' about a free black man who accidentally stows away on a slave ship bound for Africa. Last year, Steven Spielberg's sorely undervalued ``Amistad'' unearthed the story of an 1839 slave mutiny and its aftermath. This month, Oprah Winfrey will star in a film adaptation of Toni Morrison's elegiac ``Beloved,'' her harrowing tale of an escaped slave and the murdered child who haunts her. And on Oct. 19, PBS begins a four-part documentary, ``Africans in America.''

Into this period of renewed interest come two books from Ira Berlin, one of this nation's foremost scholars on the slave era. ``Many Thousands Gone'' examines the first two centuries of slavery, while ``Remembering Slavery'' is a compilation of interviews conducted in the 1930s with former slaves. Both are profound additions to our national historiography.

With ``Many Thousands Gone,'' Berlin presents a thorough and extensive examination of early slavery. Almost every work dealing with this sorrowful chapter in American history focuses on the antebellum South -- the years between Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1792 (which made slavery a much more important part of the nation's economy) and the beginning of the Civil War. Certainly, these are important years, the times when the abolitionist movement wrestled with the national conscience, and when Americans on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line came to understand that the issue could be settled only through bloodshed.

But Berlin, a history professor at the University of Maryland, considers the evolution of slavery, and the changing nature of how slaves were treated. Though he never understates the violence and domination practiced by slaveholders, Berlin introduces the notion that slavery during its first two centuries was ``a negotiated relationship,'' even if that relationship was ``so profoundly asymmetrical'' that most discount even the ``notion of negotiation'' between the owner and the owned. He argues that ``while slaveowners held most of the good cards in this meanest of contests, slaves held cards of their own. And even when their cards were reduced to near worthlessness, slaves still held that last card, which their owners well understood they might play at any time'' -- which is to say, violent insurrection. To consider anything less, Berlin writes, is to underestimate the power of the slaves, who fashioned life, culture, and traditions even under the watchful eyes of their masters.

Berlin divides his study into four geographic regions: the North; the Chesapeake region; the coastal low country of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida; and the lower Mississippi Valley. Each territory relied on plantation farming, and the demand for a given product dictated how entrenched slavery became in each. The first black communities in America were composed of ``Atlantic creoles,'' peoples of African and European descent Berlin refers to as the ``charter generation.'' They were indeed slaves, but not in the manner most people understand today. Atlantic creoles were multilingual and multicultural people. In many instances, they were more like indentured servants. Some became artisans and craftsmen; others kept their own cattle and substantial tobacco crops. One Creole used money from his crops to win his freedom, then became wealthy and had slaves of his own.

One of the most important distinctions Berlin makes is the difference between ``societies with slaves'' and ``slave societies'': Within the former, slavery was considered just one type of labor, and the harsh treatment of slaves was emblematic of the treatment afforded all subordinates, whether they were indentured servants or the poor in general. Still, they were capable of earning a living and gaining their freedom.

In slave societies, however, ``slavery stood at the center of economic production, and the master-slave relationship provided the model for all social relations: husband and wife, parent and child, employer and employee, teacher and student,'' Berlin writes. ``Whereas slaveholders were just one portion of a propertied elite in societies with slaves, they were the ruling class in slave societies.'' What preceded the transformation of one society to another was the discovery of a commodity for which there was an international demand. For instance, the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased the profitability of cotton farming, and thus the need for slave labor, at a time when the institution was on the wane.

Slavery's revival, and its final brutal years, are recalled in ``Remembering Slavery,'' as vital and necessary a historical document as anyone has ever produced in this country. Along with Marc Favreau and Steven F. Miller, Berlin has gathered interviews with former slaves conducted by the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s and 1940s. (Some of the original interviews were done by such luminaries as Zora Neale Hurston.) For decades, these written and taped interviews sat in the Library of Congress, though they have been used as source material for writers and researchers.

Morrison and Johnson's novels about slavery are harrowing and unforgettable. But they pale in comparison to the actual words and memories of former slaves who for decades survived unspeakable inhumanity -- rape, torture, the destruction of families. They tell their stories with a plainspoken eloquence that contrasts vividly with the horrors they recount. One woman, Harriet Smith, recalls whippings that could be heard a mile away. Speaking about babies and children snatched from their crying mothers, she says, ``I could tell you 'bout it all day, but even den you couldn't guess de awfulness of it.''

The book covers such areas as family life, slave culture, and the Civil War. Perhaps the most poignant chapter, ``Slaves No More,'' has former slaves remembering their first sweet taste of emancipation. Tom Robinson was born into slavery in North Carolina, and sold away from his mother before his 11th birthday. He was a slave in Texas when his master, Dave Robinson, whom he describes as having been ``good to me,'' walked up to him in the field and informed him that he was, at last, free. Unable at first to comprehend the news, he wandered away to see if other blacks were also ``all free alike.''

``You can take anything. No matter how good you treat it -- it wants to be free,'' Tom Robinson says. ``You can treat it good and feed it good and give it everything it seems to want -- but if you open the cage -- it's happy.''