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PHILIP C. DOLCE and RICHARD HARMOND,’ The Bewildering Problem o j Negro Slavery: A Review Article. In the last twenty years a new phase of scholarship dealing with the American

Negro began to develop as fresh approaches and concepts were introduced by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and many others. The rebirth of interest in black history was but a part of the growing concern about the Negro’s overall role in American society. As the Negro shed his docility toward second class citizen- ship and entered the non-violent civil rights stage of his struggle for equality, he stirred the American conscience.

White Americans, so long complacent about their country’s inherent nobiIity and progressive destiny, re-discovered that the black man was a living contradiction to that national myth. At first, liberal Northerners were content to admit that one section of their country did not measure up to the idealistic notions of the rest of the United States. The stereotype Southern bigot with his open racism served as a temporary whipping boy for the rest of the nation. In the 1950’s and e&rly 1960’s white Northern liberals were positive that if they supported the non-violent civil rights movement in the South the nation would be re-united in a common bond of nobility.

The civil rights laws were enacted and the nation was re-united, but it was a unity of despair. The relative success of the civil rights movement had only ended the sectional nature of the Negro “problem” and i t now could be clearly seen for what it always was, a national tragedy. The Negro, himself, was not static during this transition. Indeed, as younger Negroes began to reject the civil rights approach and turned to black militancy, the urge to understand and seek wisdom in the past became imperative. Soon every possible aspect of the black heritage was being investigated. Of special interest was the very real travail of the American Negro, the slave experience. While all the new concepts and viewpoints have increased our knowledge about slavery, they have also tended to add contradiction, confusion, and distortion to an already muddied picture.

As Winthrop Jordan has stated, a lack of evidence is not as great a problem in writing about slavery as are the attitudes and assumptions historians and others have inflicted on the past. Jordan points to a classic example of the present in- flicting itself on the past. Most historians in the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries assumed that white prejudice against Negroes was innate and occurred prior to enslavement. After World War I1 many people felt that this attitude had to be disproved. For men of good will who wanted to advance the Negro’s cause, prejudice simply had to be an outgrowth of enslavement or else all their action programs for racial harmony would be badly compromised. Hence, many recent studies are marred by assumptions based on current necessity rather than his- torical evidence.

1st. John’s University, Jamaica, N. Y.

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The Jordan article is part of one of the books under review, American Negro Slavery: A Modern Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 196S), edited by Allen Weinstein and Frank Otto Gatell. The point of this book is to bring together a representative selection of writings on Negro slavery and make them more readily available to the reading public. The editors chose to impose certain limitations on their work. They deliberately did not try to focus on the problem of slavery in the North and therefore, most of the readings concern slavery as it existed in the South, Also this is a “modern reader” which means that with one notable exception no selection was written prior to 1952 and a majority after 1960. Certain problems are inherent in such a work and one of them is that excerpting seven to ten pages of a book leads to some distortion of an author’s viewpoint. The editors’ decision to discount almost everything written prior to 1952 means that some important selections on which “modern” research rests are not included.

Yet despite these difficulties this is an excellent book which serves its defined purpose well. The selections were carefully chosen and are uniformly excellent. The real merit of this work, besides offering the reader the cream of modern his- toriography, is that it is clearly designed to exhibit the problems inherent in trying to understand American Negro slavery. Historians such as David Brion Davis, Richard C. Wade, John Hope Franklin, Eugene D. Genovese, and many others test their skill on such enduring and controversial questions as: what was the origin of American slavery? Was Southern slavery completely unique or compatible with other forms of enslavement found in the new world? Was the Southern slave system profitable as an economic system? Was slavery slowly dying in the South prior to the Civil War and if so, was the war itself necessary? What were race relations like between black slaves and white masters? How did the slave experience affect the bondsman as a human being? The selections in this book clearly show that there is no consensus on any of these questions and perhaps there never will be. Yet the challenge seems to draw more and more authors into the controversy to both en- lighten and confuse the reader.

One of the authors whose forte seems to be more towards enlightenment than confusion is Edgar J. McManus. In his excellent book, A Historg of Negro Slavery in New York (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1966), McManus attempts to prove that slavery in the Empire State was a flexible, efficient, and profitable system of labor from its earliest colonial origins. An economic viewpoint dominates McManus’ discussion of the slave system and he attributes almost every aspect of the institution’s development to a businesslike origin. Slavery was introduced by the Dutch to overcome an acute scarcity of labor which continued to be the main obstacle to New York’s economic progress up until the American Revolution.

The Dutch system of slavery in New Netherlands was mild and marked by harmonious relationships between the races. The Dutch did not develop a formal slave code nor did they try to resolve the theoretical inconsistencies of defining human beings as property. No laws circumscribed the movement of slaves and no special punishments were enacted for them. Since the Dutch were primarily inter- ested in a labor force, slavery in New Netherlands in many ways resembled an indenture system. The pragmatic Dutch even developed a system of half freedom under which the slave was released from bondage and able to enjoy full personal liberty in return for an annual tribute of labor. The preponderant economic nature of slavery continued under English rule. The English deliberately stimulated the

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use of slave labor until by 1746 New York had the largest slave population of any British colony north of Maryland.

However, the market. for slaves in New York was far different from the Southern colonies. There was no demand for gang labor in New York but rather for highly skilled bondsmen. The slave population was more widely diffused in New York than in any other colony. By 1755 only seven slaveholders in the entire province owned ten or more slaves. Since most slaveholders were small farmers or petty artisans it was uneconomical to own large numbers of bondsmen. With ownership so broadly based, slaves were used for every possible labor need and they became proficient in virtually every field of human endeavor. Thus slavery proved to be an efficient, adoptable, and profitable system of labor which promoted the province’s economic growth.

Although the British treatment of bondsmen was not as good as the Dutch, they strove to keep the slave system as humane as possible. In fact, whites in general, whether Dutch or British, built up a creditable record of fair treatment towards slaves. However, white benevolence was not solely responsible for the way Negro slaves were treated. I\/IcManus makes it clear that the bondsmen, them- selves, helped determine their own destiny and bent the slave system to fit their own needs. The large number of skilled slaves could never be managed efficiently by coercion alone. Threats and punishments could force a certain amount of physi- cal exertion but could never guarantee the quality of performance.

Masters and colonial officials were forced to make unofficial and a t times illegal concessions to their slaves in order to obtain their labor. They closed their eyes to minor breaches of discipline and even paid bribes to their slaves in the form of clothes, liquor, and money to obtain efficient service. Most highly skilled slaves were able to bargain with their masters and could force concessions on the most important matters. Bondsmen hired out their own time, accumulated property, bargained for their freedom and in general managed to control a portion of their own destiny. While these concessions were won by skilled bondsmen, they never- theless affected the entire slave system. These unofficial privileges brought a certain flexibility to the slave system which made it more humane in everyday operation. English colonial laws theoretically regulated every aspect of the slaves’ existence. However, the gap between statute and practice was so great that the bondsmen’s everyday lives were scarcely affected by the laws.”

McManus’ work suffers when he turns from the economic to the social effects of slavery. He believes that slavery itself debased the individual bondsman despite the flexible and generally humane nature of the system. The principal detrimental effect was that it distorted the bondsman’s social outlook. Male slaves became dependent on their masters to support wives and children. Under the institution of slavery family life became meaningless and sexual immorality increased. Many slaves also sought immediate satisfaction and began to squander their savings on fine clothes and liquor. Slavery no doubt did have a debilitating effect on the social outlook of bondsmen but McManus’ attempts to explain the reasons for it are inadequate.

Primarily, he relies on Stanley Elkins’ thesis that slavery “infantilized” the values of bondsmen and therefore, distorted his view of life. This is confusing since Elkins was writing about the closed system of Southern plantation slavery where the bondsman was totally dependent on his master. This had very little

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in common with New York’s slave system which was not only flexible but to a degree open ended. The second explanation McManus offers for the slave’s social behavior is that the system made him an “institutional rebel” who rejected the white man’s laws and values. This, of course, contradicts his first point because Elkins premises that Southern slavery “infantilized” the bondsman until he com- pletely accepted the system and came to rely on his master without question. R!IcManus has documented the economic manhood of the New York slave too well for the reader to be convinced by his approach to the bondsman’s social behavior.

The author believes that although philanthropy and idealism were partially responsible for ending slavery in New York, the principal reason it was abolished was economic. He reasons that a high birth rate and a sharp rise in white immi- gration increased the supply of free labor to the point that slavery actually became uneconomical. When this condition occurred the upper class elite couId affort do embrace emancipation and become properly idealistic. McManus’ economic approach is most convincing but a t times he seems to underestimate the importance of other factors which influenced the slave system.

Attempting to interpret motivation is an important but tricky business. This is all too apparent when one compares RIcManus’ thesis on emancipation with Arthur Zilversmith’s soundly researched study, The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1967). Contrary to McManus, Zilversmith feels that idealism was the major factor which caused the abolition of slavery in the North. It can be demonstrated that by the Revolutionary War era slave labor was less essential to the economy than during earlier periods. Nevertheless, Zilversmith shows that slaveowners still were con- vinced that the system was profitable.

Slaveowners not only continued to pay high prices for bondsmen but also stubbornly resisted the campaign for abolition. This was especially true in New York and New Jersey. The former did not adopt a program of gradual emanci- pation until 1799, and New Jersey did not fall into line until 1804. According to Zilversmith, the growing demand for abolition in the North was principally caused by the idealism of the age. The legitimacy of the slave system was first questioned by the Quakers and their moral objections were later strengthened by the liberal- humanitarian ferment of the Revolutionary period. Many Northerners readily understood the incompatability of revolutionary idealism with the perpetual enslavement of Negro bondsmen. The reformers prevailed in the end, according to the author, because slaveowners were a minority and hence could be forced to yield to the progressive notions of the age. What one misses from Zilversmith’s work is an adequate discussion of how the reformers were able to overcome white racism in order to make emancipation a reality.

The difficulties Northern abolitionists encountered were increased ten fold when a new generation of reformers appeared in the 1830’s and seriously began to challenge slavery in the Southern states. Gerda Lerner’s, The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina, (Boston: Houghton Riliflin Company, 1967) deals with two of the more interesting members of this group. Professor Lerner’s deftly written study of the Grimke sisters is the first up-to-date, scholarly treatment of these pioneer female abolitionists. One of the book’s values is that it reminds us that not all abolitionists were bearded New Englanders attacking an evil hundreds of miles from their own communities. Though born to a wealthy and influential Southern

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family, Sarah and Angelina Grimke grew increasingly alienated from their native society. They were particularly appalled by the cruelties of the slave system which they were forced to witness almost daily. Deciding that they could no longer live in South Carolina, both sisters journeyed north to Philadelphia where they joined the Society of Friends. However, the narrow and bigoted world of Philadelphia Quakerdom did not suit the sisters either, and they gradually gravitated towards the abolitionist movement.

By 1836 their commitment to reform was so strong that they decided to be- come agents of the American Anti-Slavery Society. For the next few years the sisters travelled through the Northern states lecturing about the evils of slavery, and the religious-moral necessity for immediate abolition. Their reform instinct extended beyond emancipation and they also condemned racial discrimination and prejudice. Thus when Angelina married the famous abolitionist, Theodore Dwight Weld in 1838 she and Weld insisted that the wedding be attended by both their white and Negro friends. Along with their opposition to slavery and racism, the sisters also stressed the need to liberate another depressed group in American society-women.

Since Sarah moved in with the Welds, Angelina’s marriage did not separate the sisters. However, the marriage did mark a turning point in the lives of Weld and the sisters. Priorities changed; now Weld had to earn a living, while much of the sisters’ time was consumed in the usual round of household drudgery. Despite this the trio did not surrender their active committment to reform. They retained their interest in the anti-slavery movement, continued to support the cause of feminism, and for a time lived in Raritan Bay Union, one of the numerous ante- bellum utopian communities. Moreover, during the Civil War Sarah and Angelina were active in efforts to rally American women to the Union cause.

Professer Lerner clearly sympathizes with the Grimkes, but she does not overlook their foibles and faults. One of the more interesting points of the book is that the author clearly shows the interconnection of the various reform movements of the period. Thus Sarah and Angelina once caught up in abolitionism could naturally become involved in such causes as feminism and communal living. It seems that the existence of such a gross injustice as slavery shocked some indi- viduals into an awareness of other inequities in society.

However, what one does miss from Professor Lerner’s writing is a more subtle and systematic analysis of motivation. Why, one wonders, out of the thousands of upper class Southern women did the Grimke sisters choose to revolt against their society? It would have been helpful if the author had attempted to use psycho- logical and sociological insights to explain the reform mentality. Despite this reservation and the further fact that the book a t times traverses familiar terrain, The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina is a useful contribution to the literature. Elbert €3. Smith’s The Death of Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), on the other hand, is a book of lesser utility.

Believing that historical phenomena are “manmade or at least man-affected,” Smith, in his brief and fast-paced volume, argues that the Civil War was avoidable. He blames the abolitionists, particularly William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown, and the Southern radicals, such a John C. Calhoun, for provoking the conflict. Predictably, Smith’s heroes are the moderates and compromisers of the period especially Henry Clay and Thomas Hart Benton. This is a respectable interpre-

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tation on the cause of the Civil War which enjoyed greater popularity in the 1930’s and 1940’s than it does today. The major problem one confronts in this work is that at crucial points Smith’s data does not support the interpretation he espouses. In fact, some of the author’s statements strongly imply the necessity if not the inevitability of war.

No one should be surprised by the fact that Smith’s major interpretive diffi- culty comes when he deals with the issue of slavery. He suggests, for example, that slavery was not merely an economic institution but also a system of race control. The author concedes that “the simple fear of losing a status of power and inherent superiority over large numbers of other people was a significant part of the Southern attachment to slavery.” Under these circumstances it is difficult to understand how Southerners would have relinquished their peculiar institution except by force. The author sees slavery as an inflexible system and therefore believes that industrialism, among other things would have eventually forced the South to abandon it. What he does not realize is that Southerners were already combining their agrarian way of life with a budding industrialism, both of which rested on slavery.

This factor is the main point of Robert S. Starobin’s work entitled, Industrial Slavery in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970). By studying the use of slave labor in Southern industries from 1790 to 1861, the author uses a new perspective to re-examine perennial problems such as: what was the character of the political economy in the old South? How flexible was the slave labor system and was it a cause of the Civil War? Starobin makes it clear that industrial slavery was not merely a sectional question but it was related to such national issues as the protective tariff, the expansion of slavery into the territories, the re-opening of the African slave trade, and finally to the idea of separate Southern nationhood. Though predominately agricultural, the South by 1860 contained 15y0 of the nation’s industrial capacity and the value of her manufactured goods alone had tripled in twenty years. Starobin attempts to prove that industrial slavery was a profitable, efficient, and economically viable system of labor for its time.

Many Southerners were interested in building up an industrial potential based on slave labor not only for economic reasons but also to protect existing class and race relationships in the region. While Southerners wanted to complement the plantation economy with industrialism, they also wanted to maintain a closed society. Therefore, they resisted the creation of an industrial bourgeoisie or free industrial labor force. If either group had come into being they might have chal- lenged the slaveowner’s domination of southern society. Starobin feels that South- erners were able to accomplish these joint goals without financial loss. The employ- ment of slaves in industries was generally more economical than using other avail- able labor forces in the South. The industrial use of slavery proved how adoptable and versatile the Southern brand of bondage really was. Through such practices as slave hiring, integrating labor forces, coupling foreign technicians with trained slaves, exploiting slave women and children, and fully utilizing surplus slaves Southern industries were able to improve their competitive position.

Starobin casts doubt on several commonly held historical interpretations. He disputes the belief that there was a general trend in the South to replace slaves with free white laborers. On the contrary, many companies that tried to-use free white labor eventually converted back to slave labor. White workers proved to

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be more troublesome and less economical than slaves. Whites, especially immi- grants, were unreliable, more difficult to control, and generally demanded more services than slaves. They tended to try and organize themselves into unions and the danger of strikes bothered Southerners more than anything else. The author admits that “in the long run, extensive industrialization would have been difficult, if not impossible, under a rigid slave system.” However, he believes that the South never reached the point where slavery was economically detrimental to industrial- ization.

Starobin has made a substantial contribution by refuting the theory that slavery reduced the flexibility of capital and the mobility of labor. He has found that slave based industries were primarily funded internally by slaveowners Southern slaveowners, not merchants or bankers, were the chief source of capital for the region’s industries. This usually involved a simple transfer of bondsmen from farming to manufacturing. The author also casts doubt on the theory that industrialism or urbanism were breaking down the slave system in the South. In fact, instead of dying the Southern system of slavery was gaining new strength from such forces as industrialism.

Any work as far reaching as this one suffers from certain shortcomings and there are substantial ones in Starobin’s book. Foremost among these is the fact that the author never defines what he means by industrialism or industrial slaves. He overextends industrialism to include many plantation agrarian pursuits such as sugar and rice milling. If this is accepted the plantation would have to be re- defined as a farm. Starobin seems to believe that any type of work not involving house chores or tilling the soil can be included under the heading of industrialism. Hence, he seems to include city workers such as garbage collectors and artisans such as blacksmiths in his appraisal of industrial slavery. Another problem is that a t times the author seems more intent on proving the horror of Southern industrial slavery than analyzing it. He makes a strong point that slaves were forced tto toil excessively and this is probably true. However, many of the examples he uses really involved seasonal work or labor of short durations such as steamboating or sugar refining. In fact, the horrors of industrialism during this period were common to free and slave labor alike, regardless of geographic location. Starobin acknowl- edges this but dwells a t such length on the problem that he makes the treatment of industrial slaves sound unique.

Another serious drawback to Starobin’s work is his interpretation of the slaves’ reaction to industrialism. He grimly admits “that apparently most industrial bondsmen grudgingly acquiesced in their condition and did not seem to present masters with insoluble disciplinary problems.” It is quite evident that the author does not like this fact so he attempts to find more subtle forms of resistance. Star- obin believes that carelessness, negligence, outright refusal to work, and feigned sickness are examples of that resistance. Pilferage to the author is elevated to “a more or less conscious form of protest.” He therefore concludes that whether blind or reasoned these were manifestations of the bondsman’s hostility to both slavery and industrialism. Forty years ago the historian, Ulrich B. Phillips, attrib- uted these same traits to Negro inferiority. Neither the extreme position of Phillips nor Starobin really explain what the average bondsman’s reaction to slavery was.

Interestingly enough, Starobin probably could have found substantial slave resistance if he was not also out to prove how mean and tricky slaveowners were.

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He insists that the master initiated any action which led to actual work by the slave. Holiday and cash incentive payments are interpreted solely as techniques of slave control. However, is it not possible that while the bondsman acquiesced to his enslavement he attempted to bend the system by forcing concessions such as these? A crucial point that the author fails to make is to distinguish adequately between skilled and common labor. Skilled industrial workers, as i\lIcManus pointed out, could never be forced to work and therefore could demand certain privileges in return for their labor.

Starobin’s book is excellent while i t focuses on the economic aspects of slavery but, as with so many others, i t falls short when he attempts to view slavery from the bondsmen’s point of view. Instead of evidence, so many authors have given us their assumptions, predictions, prejudices, and even their wishful thinking. At the turn of the 20th century writers who dealt with‘ slavery for the most. part tried to prove that the bondsman was less than human. Today so many authors feel in- clined to attribute heroic proportions to their sketches of the average !Negro slave. Unfortunately many authors have not heeded Eugene D. Genovese’s admonition that the proper function of the scholar is “not to invent myths, but to teach each people its own particular contradictory truth . . . [for] Until a people can and will face its own past i t has no future.”

ALFRED J. MARROW, The Practical Theorist: The Life and Work of Kurt Lewin. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1969. Pp. 290. $8.50. The PracticaE Theorist is a warmly appreciative biography of Kurt Lewin

written by his long-time friend and colleague Alfred J. Marrow. The author, writing in a direct and economical style, traces the strands of Lewin’s thought and activity from Stumpf’s laboratory a t Berlin to the Research Center for Group Dynamics a t RUT. The main achievement of the biography lies in the skillful integration of the many aspects of Lewin’s life. By demonstrating the continuity of his interests as well as the growth of his ideas, Marrow has replaced the fragmentary sketch which had previously existed with a convincing portrait.

Biography is an especially effective approach to the evolution of Lewin’s thought, as few psychologists have moved with such ease from the experiences of everyday life to the construction of theory, or from abstract schema to concrete problem-solving. The continuity of Lewin’s interests is as striking as the inter- action among them. His concern with social problems dates from his student period as does his interest in psychology and the philosophy of science. Marrow makes it clear that the basis of much of Lewin’s creativity was the continual inter- action of these contrasting levels of abstraction and modes of thought.

Marrow has drawn on the reminiscences of almost fifty former students and colleagues to reconstruct Lewin’s life. I n addition, a careful reading of Lewin’s published works is evident from the capsule summaries of significant experiments which are woven into the text. Supplementing these two sources are some materials from family records and from correspondence files relating mainly to the action- research of the American years. Although Marrow has kept the scholarly apparatus to a minimum in the text, he has appended forty-six pages of materials which will delight the specialist: a bibliography of Lewin’s works, a summary of the Berlin experiments, a list of the members of the Topology Group, annotated bibliographies of the Iowa studies and the publications of the Commission Qn Community Inter-