330
S
lavery, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1918) declared, was a benign
institution.“Severity was clearly the exception, and kindli-
ness the rule,” he declared. Kenneth Stampp (1956), writing as
the civil rights movement of the 1950s was gaining momen-
tum, repudiated Phillips’s thesis. Stampp insisted that slavery
ripped apart families, reduced human beings to chattel, and
eroded the slave’s sense of self. Stanley Elkins (1959) took this
argument further still, comparing southern slavery to the sub-
jugation of inmates in Nazi concentration camps. Slavery was
so absolute that it crushed the psyche of African Americans
for generations. Two major works in the 1970s challenged this
rendering but in different ways. Eugene D. Genovese (1974)
argued that masters and slaves were locked in a system of
mutual dependence. Slaves were bound to their owners “in
an organic relationship so complex and ambivalent that nei-
ther could express the simplest human feelings without refer-
ence to each other.” Their emotional ties, however
complicated, were real. Herbert Gutman (1976) disagreed.
Slave parents, children, and other relatives formed enduring
bonds. In the past decade, scholars have shifted away from
this simple pro-con argument. Scholars now focus on the
regional and generational differences in slavery and in the
way it influenced gender roles. Because it is hard to know
what people really felt, the issue resists historical analysis:
How did the slave girl feel about the child in her arms?
Source: Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, American Negro Slavery(1918); Kenneth
Stampp,The Peculiar Institution(1956); Stanley Elkins, Slavery(1959); Eugene D.
Genovese,Roll, Jordan, Roll(1974); Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery
and Freedom(1976).
DEBATING THE PAST
Did Slaves and Masters Form
Emotional Bonds?
■ ■ ■ ■ ■than $200 million worth of goods annually. In 1859
the northeastern states alone produced $1.27 billion
of the national total of almost $2 billion.
Manufacturing expanded in so many directions
that it is difficult to portray or to summarize its
evolution. The factory system made great strides.
The development of rich anthracite coal fields in
Pennsylvania was particularly important in this con-
nection. The coal could be floated cheaply on
canals to convenient sites and used to produce both
heat for smelting and metalworking and steam
power to drive machinery. Steam permitted greater
flexibility in locating factories and in organizing
work within them, and since waterpower was
already being used to capacity, steam was essential
for the expansion of output.
American industry displayed a remarkable recep-
tivity to technological change. The list of inventions
and processes developed between 1825 and 1850,
included—besides such obviously important items as
the sewing machine, the vulcanization of rubber, and
the cylinder press—the screw-making machine, the
friction match, the lead pencil, and an apparatus for
making soda water.
In the 1820s a foreign visitor noted, “Everything
new is quickly introduced here, and all the latest
inventions.... The moment an American hears the
word ‘invention’ he pricks up his ears.” Twenty years
later a Frenchman wrote, “If they continue to work
with the same ardor, they will soon have nothing
more to desire or to do. All the mountains will be
flattened, the valleys filled, all matter rendered pro-
ductive.” By 1850 the United States led the world in
the manufacture of goods that required the use of
precision instruments, and in certain industries the
country was well on the way toward modern mass