Plantation Life in the Antebellum South

As Blassingame maintains, despite the senior pilot having almost arrogant power over the slave from a legal berth, he was "dependent on the slave's labor for his frugal survival, the planter ordinarily could not afford to starve, torture, or field him to death."[2] This picture of the master-slave traffichip stands in contrast to many others, including slave narratives, but Blassingame's sources also include the autobiographies of former slaves in addendum to planter's autobiographies and travel reports.

Blassingame provides a fascinating section on the parallels surrounded by the institution of slavery and other total institutions such as concentration camps and prisons. In doing so, he examines slavery from another perspective and shows that greater mutuality and accommodation are evident in the master-slave relationship than many individuals believe. The author also demonstrates that power relations in any institution between those in absolute power and those they control does not necessarily result in total subordination of the powerless group simply because they are not powerless as he shows with slaves. As Blassingame writes of this phenomenon,

From the comparison, it would see that there is no deterministic relationship between institutional sanctio

Blassingame, John W. The Slave familiarity: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979.

other unique aspect of Blassingame's interpretation of cultural and personal t all(prenominal)ing of American slaves during the antebellum period is his belief that specifically because of their "community," they were sufficient to offer a staunch form of resistance to slaveholders, rase though they were classified as property and of inferior side legally. As Blassingame writes, the community of American slaves was so entrenched and placeable at times that slave owners often remarked on them, "master frequently noted the sense of community in the quarters; they reported that slaves usually shared their few goods, rarely take from each other, and the strong helped the weak."[4] Slaves also refused to tell on each other and respected each other out of eccentric person not out of fear, as with the respect offered masters in most instances.

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