A Note on Genovese's Account of the Slaves' Religion

A NOTE ON GENOVESES ACCOUNT OF THE SLAVES' RELIGION John Jentz Eugene D. Genovese's Roll, Jordan, Roll is a major contribution to the recent redefinition of the whole historical debate about American slavery.1 Vast in scope and broad in research, it deserves the most thorough critical attention. Yet its very monumental quality appears to have discouraged such criticism. This note is an attempt to partially rectify this defect by analyzing one argument interwoven in his path-breaking discussion of the slaves' religion.2 The argument finds the religion of the slaves unconducive to millennialism and provides part of his explanation for their lack of a revolutionary political tradition. This argument as well as his conception of millennialism are open to question. Genovese analyzes the slaves' religion within the overall framework of his model of paternalism, which required mutual accommodations and obligations between master and slave. These reciprocal relations were worked out through constant power struggles, both open and submerged, and legitimatized by the planters' paternalistic ideology. This ideology was itself a powerful phenomenon that both masked and helped to define the relations of classes. Ironically, however, the reciprocal relations built into the paternalistic system refuted the very rationale of slavery by recognizing the slaves as human beings: "Theoretically, modem slavery rested, as had ancient slavery, on the idea of a slave as instrumentum vocale—a chattel, a possession, a thing, a mere extension of his master's will."3 Yet people who could make and respond to accommodations and obligations were no mere instruments.4 1 Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Shves Made (New York, 1972, 1974). Other major works contributing to this redefinition are Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Shvery (Boston, 1974); Edmund S. Morgan, American Shvery, American Freedom (New York, 1975); and Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Shvery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (New York, 1976). 2 For an analysis of Genovese's account of the slaves' religion within an overall critique of his model of paternalism see Eric Perkins, "Roll, Jordan, Roll: A 'Marx' for the Master Class," Radical History Review, III, No. 4 (Fall, 1976), pp. 41-59, particularly 52-57. 3 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, p. 4. 4 ¡bid., pp. 3-7, 594, 658. 161 162CIVIL WAR HISTORY Functioning within the confines of this larger paternalistic regime , the religion of the slaves was the main vehicle through which they asserted their humanity and built their culture. Given Genovese 's idea of paternalism, the slaves' religion became subversive (although not necessarily revolutionary) almost by definition because it protected the slaves' humanity. In the Old South the slaves' need for their own protective culture was especially strong because paternalism and racism uniquely intersected to divide and dehumanize them: ". . . the slaves forged weapons of defense [against paternalism and racism in America], the most important of which was religion that taught them to love and value each other, to take a critical view of their masters, and to reject the ideological rationales for their own enslavement."5 Yet, as a defensive weapon , the slaves' religion was also part of their larger accommodation to the paternalistic system.6 Thus, in Genovese's analysis, the slaves' religion contained two interdependent aspects, illustrated by his view of slave religion in Brazil: "Here as everywhere, religion provided a two-edged sword for the enslaved. It enabled them to accommodate with some measure of cultural autonomy and personal dignity, and, more rarely but ominously, it provided the war cry for determined insurgents."7 For Genovese, therefore, the slaves' religion was a vehicle of both protective accommodation and potential rebellion, a defensive—but threatening—weapon. Much of his analysis of slave religion in the United States seeks to explain why the weapon of rebellion was so rarely used. Genovese assumes, but unfortunately does not define, a potential for revolutionary politics in American slave life. Along with social and political circumstances, like the sheer strength of the planter regime, the slaves' religion helped frustrate the realization of this potential because it was not conducive to millennialism, particularly in its revolutionary manifestations.8 Millennialism was the form which radical...