A Landscape of Slavery

As discussed in my previous blog post, we traveled six weeks this February and March in our camper van, mostly in Mississippi and Louisiana. This post concerns our time in the lower Mississippi River Valley. 

As late as 1810 most of inland Mississippi and Louisiana was a sparsely inhabited frontier under varying degrees of colonial French and Spanish rule. Starting around this time, the French were bought off with the Louisana Purchase, the Napoleon-distracted Spaniards were persuaded to leave without too much trouble, the Indians were disposed of via the usual methods, and Americans, initially mostly small-holding farmers and woodsmen, started moving in. Technological innovations such as the invention of the cotton gin and steam-powered transportation then transformed this region so that by the 1840s it was dominated by large plantations. Sugarcane was grown along the wetter and hotter Gulf Coast and cotton was grown further inland. The profits from this plantation agriculture were immense; cotton exports from this region fueled the Industrial Revolution and the resulting prosperity of New England and parts of Europe. The slave labor required to produce these profits and exports was likewise immense. The ongoing need for slaves required continual importation of slaves from the established slave states. This domestic slave trade was highly lucrative and supported the economies of the older slave states.

The lower Mississippi River Valley was the “down river” where as a slave you did not want yourself or your family members to end up. Working and living conditions in the semi-tropical climate were often dismal and mortality rates among the slaves were high. The fields and and some of the buildings these slaves produced are still there; it is a fascinating area to visit with numerous historical sites to tour. The price paid by millions of enslaved persons to produce the bounty that flowed from this region is beyond comprehension. 

Here are some pictures of what the slaves built, in chronological order by approximate date of construction:

These “big houses” are all fine and impressive, but given that the slaves constituted the vast majority of the population on these plantations, where are the relics of their lives? Of course the mansions and the farmlands are themselves the products of their labors.  The artifacts of the slaves’ personal lives are less readily apparent; wooden slave dwellings are less likely to endure than the enslavers’ houses of brick and stone, and slave artifacts were frequently not considered worthy of historical preservation. That seems to be changing; most of the sites we visited seem to be making efforts to discover and curate the stories of their particular enslaved peoples.  The National Park Service seems especially committed to this. Others are not; we took a tour of a Natchez mansion where our hoop-skirted guide did not mention slavery at all and when asked about it referred to the slaves as “servants”. 

Here are some pictures of slave quarters:

Enslaved persons also lived and labored in urban settings. We visited two homes in New Orleans where the tours focused on the lives of the house slaves. While their living conditions were better than those of agricultural slaves, they had to contend with being constantly available to and observed by their enslavers.

We ended the Mississippi River portion of our trip in Natchez, Mississippi. Prior to the Civil War many wealthy planters and slave traders maintained mansions in and around Natchez; the city is reported to have had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the United States.  Natchez escaped damage during the Civil War and many of these mansions are well preserved and open for tourist visits.  While I am sure many of these buildings are significant architectural accomplishments worthy of appreciation, I was more impressed with the thought of what damage must have been inflicted on the lives of generations of enslaved workers to produce these buildings and to support the aristocratic aspirations of the slave-owning class. The central role of slaves in constructing and maintaining these homes was often acknowledged, but at most of the properties we visited there was little discussion of the greater horrors of plantation slavery that made such opulence possible.

Most of these homes are in the Greek Revival style.  There are lots of columns in Natchez.

I suppose everyone wants to be remembered after they have passed on, and everyone hopes to leave some meaningful mark on the world, at least for a while. Of course few people can be historical figures or create lasting art or architecture. For most of us, the legacy that we will leave consists of the imprints our lives will have made on the minds of our remaining family and friends and neighbors, and of the value that our work has hopefully created. The labors of enslaved Americans produced a significant portion of the infrastructure and capital that created American prosperity.  Forbidden by law to become literate, slaves did not produce much written work, but their oral traditions and music and handicrafts have been preserved and elaborated upon by their descendants. These now constitute much of our country’s cultural wealth.  

Postscript: a note on the use of the word slave versus enslaved person.

While on our trip I noticed that many of our tour guides used the term enslaved person rather than the word slave. I asked about this and was told that this is now the preferred usage, the thought being that the word slave can be considered derogatory, reducing a human being to the status of property and defining the enslaved person by a status forced upon them by their enslaver. The use of the term enslaved person corrects this by defining the enslaved as a person rather than as an object. This change in usage has been accepted by many institutions such as the National Park Service and the National Archives. Others disagree, arguing that the replacement of the word slave by the term enslaved person is historically inaccurate, arguably patronizing, and grammatically clumsy. Articles discussing this further are in Slate and The Atlantic.