Southern Slavery gets another Moscow whitewashing

I apologize for coming along a tad late on this post. Sometimes these days I feel like those people at the back of the parade who scoop up behind the horses. Problem is, when it comes to Douglas Wilson on the Southern slavery issue, we’re all much later than we think, and we need far more than a scoop.

A damning quotation from Doug’s old co-authored booklet Southern Slavery as it Was has gotten enough exposure recently that he has been moved to respond. Here is the meat of the offensive quotation here (shortened only for length):

Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its predominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world. . . . Slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes and good medical care. . . . Slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since.

Now I think we can all say that this is at best obtuse even coming from a full partisan and former Board member of the League of the South, as Wilson’s co-author Steve Wilkins in fact was. But I stress, one would really have to strain the exigencies of charity to label this as merely obtuse.

I am not sure what I am more concerned with: nonsense like this perpetuated throughout the book itself, or Wilson’s repeated attempts over the years seemingly to evade accountability for it by suppression instead of outright acknowledgment and repentance.

In the most recent piece, he moves from not acknowledging things to suggesting things that were said were never said to begin with. What leaps out at me most is that in the name of clarifying, Wilson leads readers to think, well, he never really said that the abuses were rare, after all. As he puts it,

But the quote above intimates (although it does not say) that the abuses in the system had to have been rare enough that they could not be taken as characteristic of the system as a whole.

He goes on to clarify that there were indeed “many” abuses, but that such things still should not be used to characterize the system as a whole because, hey, after all, he believes there were also “many” benevolent masters.

I want you to see just what Wilson is not telling you. Particularly, while the selected quotation itself does not directly say the abuses were rare enough that the whole system could be characterized as benevolent as he describes, the booklet does in fact say this expressly, more than once, and the booklet as a whole has as its very thesis to promote that very view.

Southern Slavery as it Was — as it Was

I won’t go far as to call it “doin’ the Dougie,” but Doug is doing some kind of fine dance move here. Here are a few examples of how Southern Slavery as it Was really was:

There was mistreatment, there were atrocities, there was a great deal of wickedness on the part of some — but, as the Narratives make plain, these abuses came from a distinct and very small minority. . . . The surprise for moderns is that the mixture contains such an overwhelmingly positive view of master/slave relations before the War. . . .

R.L. Dabney, William S. White, Charles Colcock Jones, and many other defenders of the South had long acknowledged the existence of mistreatment and wickedness among some slave holders. But they nevertheless maintained that these instances were relatively rare and infrequent.

These are authorities brought in, not just approvingly, but as proof that the abuses are rare and infrequent. They then go on to quote Dabney, again approvingly as proof, directly:

Dabney is careful to note: “Now, while we freely admit that there were in the South, instances of criminal barbarity in corporal punishments, they were very infrequent, and were sternly reprobated by publick opinion.”

This says not only “infrequent” but “very infrequent.” It is simply misleading to pretend, as Doug seems to, that they may have intimated but did not say that “the abuses in the system had to have been rare enough that they could not be taken as characteristic of the system as a whole.” Nonsense. The booklet says exactly that.

Moreover, this claim is the very thesis of the booklet as a whole. After a couple introductory paragraphs outlining a lament that Southern slavery today is remembered only as a system filled with abuses of violence, rape, breaking families apart, etc., the introduction arrives at its thesis and tells you exactly what its purpose is:

The point of this small booklet is to establish that this impression is largely false.

Yes, they make sure to acknowledge that abuses existed; but the whole book is an endeavor to deny they were widespread or common, and to prove, as we just read, that they were “very infrequent” and “rare.”

I have always been all about transparency and intellectual honesty. I am not perfect at it (no one is, really), but some try harder than others. One thing I believe ought to be condemned harshly is when people try to hide their previous misstatements, downplay them, edit or obscure them after the fact, or pretend they never really existed. I know Doug often wants to point people to Black & Tan and away from SSAIW. I have always seen this as a bit of sleight of hand mainly because Black & Tan, while purporting to be clarified views, actually suppresses by silence rather than merely clarifies. It never addresses a great deal of utter nonsense that was in SSAIW. It is like that stuff appeared, then suddenly disappeared, and while a suspicious few of us demand accountability for it, the response keeps booming, “Look over here! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

Now we get this latest round of the same game: well, we intimated something, but the quote never actually said it! Oh, and, be sure to look at Black & Tan (and don’t look at the rest of that other book)!

At the same time, they never actually retract anything from that other book. Every word of what it did say is still there. You just have to work hard to find the old book to begin with. And one gets the suspicion that while you go digging, those guys are over there actually snickering together behind that curtain. But in this way, accountability is completely evaded for all those ridiculous things that were once said and never retracted. It’s nice in my opinion when they resurface on occasions like this and force themselves to be dealt with. I am just disappointed when another golden opportunity at public repentance is lost.

New Verse, Same as the Old

You could deduce that by finally admitting the abuses were “many,” Doug has effectively retracted the former view that they were “very infrequent.” Yet he has all but denied they actually said that to begin with—and that is neither repentance nor respectable. In my view, one ought to face up squarely to what they did say, and if it is wrong (especially if it is as very wrong as this), retract it.

But if he is in fact retracting that view in general, then the whole booklet of SSAIW has to be jettisoned and rejected as well. We just never get a straight answer on any of that.

Moreover, the overall position has not shifted much at all. The previous booklet intended to argue that while abuses occurred under Southern slavery, there were nevertheless many Christian slaveowners who did not abuse their slaves but maintained them paternally and benevolently and should be welcomed under biblical standards within the churches. Ironically, the new, slightly-modified view argues exactly the same thing. Conceding that there were simply more abuses than before leaves the overall position pretty much untouched while providing some new, slightly more socially-respectable window dressing. So, with what selected bits of information he has chosen to present, a few concerned souls may be put at ease over the offensive quotation, and yet the old guard, League of the South-type following who include hard core Dabneyites aren’t too put off either, and in fact many of them are still snickering along with those old authors of SSAIW. I do congratulate Doug for being a skilled politician in this regard, but that much was never in doubt.

So Much More to Say

There are of course a few outstanding matters some probably would like addressed from Doug’s article. The slave narratives are one of them. I have addressed them, and you can download that essay for free here. Suffice it to say that they are almost universally understood to be problematic as historical sources, for various reasons. That Doug leverages them at face value the way he does is simply not responsible in general, and certainly not for drawing the level of conclusions he does from them.

Likewise, Doug’s position that we must accept that conscientious Christians could and frequently did operate within that system in a godly way is simply not tenable. While there are many things that could be said on this score, one of the most outstanding evidences against it is that while the abuses all around were most definitely not “infrequent and rare,” as Doug now admits, Southern sermons against abuses in fact were among the rarest of infrequencies imaginable. Activism on it was very costly. After 1830, anyone who did speak out would have been defrocked, run out of town, and/or possibly killed—no exaggeration.

The churches, however, did encourage and engage in the system they knew very well was full of “many” abuses, without saying hardly a word. In some cases, the churches engaged in institutional ownership of slaves in order to pay their ministers, and some southern Presbyterian churches rented out their slaves to masters who were known to be abusive. There are cases where church members openly abused their slaves (e.g., castration), and the church did nothing about it—no admonition, no teaching, no sermons, no church discipline. On top of many things like this, the most outspoken voices in favor of Southern slavery were the ministers. The most definitive monograph I’ve seen on the subject lists some 275 clergymen who published defenses of the system. Of all proslavery publications, clergy authored about half. These were almost all conservative, Bible-believing pastors; and the proslavery works of 154 out of those 275 just mentioned were published in official, denominational publications.

So, while the “many” abuses were going down all around the Old South, and while the churches and church members themselves were engaging in at least some of them, we have the leadership of the Christian churches actually providing the most unified chorus of defense of that system.

Meanwhile, Doug and Steve were also quoting these ministers from those Southern churches as the authorities to prove that, hey, abuses were rare an infrequent. Now that Doug has realized this point at least is in error, I wonder if he will follow through to find out how many other lies Dabney and his friends told. I know a good book that shows that Dabney was likely a conscious liar on this score. It’s going to be quite a ride to realize that many of the abolitionists and liberal historians (even many of the Marxist historians!) have been right on so many things all these years.

But be warned: the consequences of following through may not be infrequent or rare, and are certainly not light.