American Antebellum Slavery

Images in contemporary life, mostly from Hollywood, have tended to portray the life in the American south as a natural aristocratic society, however this reflection of slave life could not be wider of the mark. Thankfully, much literature has been written over the years regarding the notorious subject, which has provided a much more accurate reflection of plantation life, representing the slave owners as arrogant, selfish, brutal, and uncaring for human existence. There is a …

…children were separated from at least one parent in the upper South. Slave owners possessed an almost schizophrenic quality, by the fact that their behaviour ranged from a paternalistic master, possessing love and care, to being capable of inflicting the most evil forms of cruelty and punishment. Kolchin argues that, “if absolute power proved essential to the paternalist’s sense of duty, the loss of that power threatened to turn benevolent paternalists into domineering bullies” .