American Slavery Essay 2

Historian Peter Kolchin, writing in 1993, noted that until belatedly historians of slavery concentrated more on the behavior of slaveholders than on slaves. Part of this was related to the fact that most slaveholders were lit epochte and fitted to leave behind a written record of their perspective. well-nigh slaves were illiterate and unable to create a written record. in that location were differences among scholars as to whether slavery should be considered a benign or a harshly exploitive institution. Kolchin described the state of historiography in the too soon twentieth century as follows: During the first one-half of the twentieth century, a major component of this approach was a lot simply racism, manifest in the belief that blacks were, at best, parrotlike of discolours. Thus Ulrich B. Phillips, the eras most celebrated and influential technical on slavery, combined a sophisticated portrait of the white planters sprightliness and behavior with crude passing generalizations about the life and behavior of their black slaves.

[104] Historians James Oliver Horton and Louise Horton described Phillips mindset, methodology and trance: His portrayal of blacks as passive, inferior people, whose African origins made them uncivilized, seemed to allow historical evidence for the theories of racial inferiority that supported racial segregation. Drawing evidence exclusively from plantation records, letters, southern newspapers, and early(a) sources reflecting the slaveholders point of view, Phillips depicted slave masters who provided for the welfare of their slaves and contended that true affection existed between master and slave.[105] The racist attitude concerning slaves carried over into the historiography of the Dunning School of reconstruction history, which dominated in the early 20th century. Writing in 2005, historian Eric Foner states: Their account of the era rested, as one member of the Dunning school put it, on the assumption of negro incapacity. Finding it impossible to believe that... If you demand to get a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay

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