Slavery in the Cities: The South, 1820-1860 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS287 the abolitionists, that the Founding Fathers all bore witness against slavery, or, as did the southern apologists, that the South was capable of throwing off the incubus of slavery by its own effort. He can, therefore, abandon old stereotypes without much psychological cost. But are there, perhaps, new psychological needs which condition his new conclusions, or rather, condition the acceptance of them by the profession? For instance, if he should have a conviction, as many scholars now do, that a deep, impassable gulf between slavery and freedom made a collision (or, as it is now called, confrontation ) between the two morally necessary, he might need to believe, as a corollary of this axiom, that the South was wholly unregenerate as regards slavery and had been so from the beginning. Insofar as the revisionist arrives at a new truth in this way, the wish still has a paternal relationship to the thought, and the new insight is gained less by transcending subjective limitations than by rearranging the subjective context in a way which makes it subjectively possible to see a different but perhaps not a broader, segment of the spectrum of truth. This comment is not intended to disparage an excellent scholarly contribution but only to point out the subtlety of the relationship between intrinsic validity and psychological utility as warp and woof in the fabric of historical "truth." Some truths whose intrinsic validity (in terms of evidence ) can hardly be doubted somehow do not reach a level of visibility until they become psychologically negotiable. Other fallacious versions of history which parade as truth often fluorish despite inadequacies of evidence until a time comes when they have lost the sanction which psychological usefulness gives to them. Not until then does their fallacious character suddenly become self-evident and conspicuous. Because of this factor, new "truths" tend to look better than old ones, because they have not yet faced the harsh test which the loss of their psychological indispensability will later impose upon them. Davtd M. Potter Stanford University Slavery in the Cities: The South, 1820-1860. By Richard C. Wade. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Pp. x, 340. $6.75.) One aspect of American history that has received only scant attention until recently from the historian has been the city. The Jeffersonian ethos, conditioned as it was by an anti-urban bias, diverted most historians from the obvious fact that many of the most dynamic elements of American life, for the last century and a quarter, have been located in the city. From within its confines, forces that have undermined past traditions and have subjected the status quo to corrosive pressures have sallied forth. The role of the city as an agent of change is vividly demonstrated in this study of urban slavery. And as the author concludes, it was an experience destructive of the slave institution, one in which the "total environment . . . eroded slavery." Underlying the subtle relationships embodied in slavery was the threat 288CI VIL W AB HISTOBT of corporal punishment for any slave who infracted the regulations of the system. "The lash in the white hand on the black back," as Wade expresses it "was a symbol of bondage recognized by both races." Ante bellum visitors to southern cities were immediately struck by the complex apparatus of control employed to impress upon the slave his servitude. The symbols of authority were the whipping post, work-house floggings, and, as a final warning for any who would hazard a capital offense, the gallows, an instrument of punishment designed to assure a "very public" execution. Omnipresent , as F. L. Olmsted noted, was a "police machinery" buttressed by "citadels, sentries, passports, grapeshotted cannon, and daily public whippings . . . for accidental infractions of police ceremonies." Despite the comprehensive police system, slavery within the cities underwent a transformation which subverted its coherence. Unlike the plantation where the slave remained segregated from the great world beyond, the city provided escape hatches for the urban slaves. Contact on a social level both with enslaved and free Negroes and, more significantly, with whites at grog shops occurred so frequently that municipal authorities despaired of its control. Efforts to restrain such illicit activity provoked a...