Slavery Myths: Southern Slavery and Human Development

American South

This information comes from Time on the Cross: The Economics of Negro Slavery:

Life Expectancy

Did you know that the typical slave born on a Southern plantation had a significantly longer life expectancy than the average “free” laborer in Northern and British cities?

U.S. White – 40
England and Wales, 1838-1856 – 40
Holland, 1850-1860 – 36
France, 1854-58 – 36
U.S. Slave – 36
Italy, 1885 – 35

Austria, 1875 – 31
Chile, 1920 – 31
Manchester, England, 1831 – 24
New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, 1830 – 24

Diet & Nutrition

Did you know that the typical slave on a Southern plantation was less obese and had a diet that was nutritionally superior to the modern American negro diet?

“The slave diet was not only adequate, it actually exceeded modern (1964) recommended levels of the chief nutrients. On average, slaves exceeded the daily recommended levels of proteins by 110 percent, calcium by 20 percent, and iron by 230 percent. Surprisingly, despite the absence of citrus fruits, slaves consumed two and one half times the recommended level of vitamin C. Indeed, because of the large consumption of sweet potatoes, their intake of vitamin A was at the therapeutic level and vitamin C was almost at that level.”

Housing

Did you know the typical slave on a Southern plantation lived in better and more hygienic housing that the typical White working class family in New York City in the 1890s?

“Comments of observers suggest that the most typical slave houses of the late antebellum period were cabins about eighteen by twenty feet …

As late as 1893, a survey of the housing of workers in New York City revealed that the median number of square feet of sleeping space per person was just thirty-five. In other words, the “typical” slave cabin of the late antebellum era probably contained more sleeping space per person than was available to most of New York City’s workers half a century later.”

The Family

Did you know that the typical slave on a Southern plantation was significanly more likely to live in a nuclear family than the modern American free negro?

“Narratives collected from ex-slaves provide support for the prevalence of prudishness in the conduct of family life. “Dem’s moral times,” recollected Amos Lincoln, who was reared on a plantation in Louisiana. “A gal’s twenty-one before she marry. They didn’t go wanderin’ around all hours. They mammies know where they was. Folks nowadays is wild and weak …

That slave live pivoted around stable, nuclear families does not mean that the black family was merely a copy of the white family. No doubt the African heritage of blacks, as well as particular socioeconomic circumstances, resulted in characteristic which were, if restricted to, at least more frequent among black than white families. For example, various bits of evidence suggest that wives played a stronger role in black than white families.”

Infant Mortality

In 1850, there was little difference in infant morality among Southern slaves and Southern Whites:

“The infant death rate of southern whites in 1850 was 177 per thousand – virtually the same as the infant death rate as slaves.”

Suicide

Slaves were far less likely to commit suicide than Northern “free” workers:

“Less than one slave in ten thousand committed suicide in 1850. That was only one third of the suicide rate among the white population.”

Note: The birthrate among the slaves on Southern plantations was significantly higher than the birthrate in much of contemporary Europe. Both the White population and the slave population thrived in the South.

What’s more, the disease environment in the subtropical Deep South – which lacked African levels of malaria and yellow fever – was vastly superior to that of West Africa and Central Africa. Because the slaves were forbidden to own firearms and their access to drugs and alcohol was restricted and whipping was the punishment for adultery and domestic violence, slaves were far less likely to die from homicide.

About Hunter Wallace 12390 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

36 Comments

  1. That book generated a lot of hysteria and denunciation when it came out. Did anyone actually attempt to refute it?

  2. Of what relevance of this today?? Hunter,…these are all nice monographs on the past…but I thought this was a pro white site or at least one reurging the formation of a new nation from from the former confederate states..so why all these articles about how Negro slavery was a great thing.???How about some articles about we southern whites of various faiths can work together huh? These defenses of slavery are really undermining the credibility of this site.

  3. Sulla,

    The blacks didn’t simply disappear when slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865. In the aftermath of the war, the decision was made by the Radical Republicans to transform them into citizens and free laborers under the colorblind Reconstruction Constitution.

    Why is slavery relevant today? Why do you suppose BRA exists? Why do you suppose BRA is tolerated? There is a vast tissue of lies about slavery and segregation that is used to legitimize the present system. It is bound up with the worldview that made abolition possible and which is responsible for a series of catastrophic decisions that have followed.

    WNs can get together, slap each other on the back, and say to themselves “let’s create a White nation” … five seconds later, their wish is confronted by the reality of the present system, the mythology that has been built up for decades about blacks, and the ways these bad ideas have left an impression on modern Whites, which leaves them predisposed to oppose your “White ethnostate.”

  4. HW- Again, a superlative article, that is digging the grave of the Race egalitarian bumpkins, and Yankee Supremacist head in the sand liberals.

    Bravo.

  5. If the blacks were that badly off they would have been in constant revolt. Like Helots, French peasants, or Irish potato eaters, Jamaican hillbillies or Haitians. The nigs do not appear to have lifted a finger on their behalf. One or two incidents that’s all. Nothing like Haiti, even though blacks had sufficient numbers to overwhelm local forces.

  6. This “argument from benevolence” that African Negro slavery was good because it improved the health of Africans and increased their reproduction and longevity is weak if they are considered to be fully human, and spiritual!

    If bringing them here to work (for our profit) is good BECAUSE IT IS GOOD FOR THEM (as they are helped by us to reproduce more and live longer lives with less disease than they would have in Africa or in the North as free negroes, etc.) AND THEY ARE FULLY HUMAN — then how are we being good to them by enslaving them if we CANNOT allow them the uniquely human good (FREEDOM) that we ourselves treasure above all? We KNOW it is better to be poor, ill, short-lived AND FREE than to live many years in health and luxury under even the MOST BENEVOLENT despotism.

    The “benevolence argument” for slavery is strongest if African Negroes are NOT considered to be human and spiritual at all, but only “like the beasts that perish” — and then ANY method of treatment that is efficiently productive using them is justified (good), the same as for any other livestock, which could never grow fat and sleek on their way to slaughter, or even exist in the first place, if the farmer didn’t RAISE them.

    The THIRD “benevolence” perspective, that most of the regular commenters on OD seem to take, is that African Negroes ARE human but permanently child-like or mentally or emotionally “challenged,” and that lifelong firm discipline by white masters in the institution of slavery may be the best or most efficient way for them to acheive their full reproductive potential, best health and longest lifespan. Therefore slavery is good because it is good for them (and for several other reasons).

    A fourth view is that the pursuit of wealth for its own sake, whether through slavery or other means is always wrong, and therefore the Africans should never have been imported for that purpose in the first place, and their descendents would otherwise have continued living “feral” or FREE in their homeland environment to this day.

    Any other possibilities? Now, who takes which position?

  7. Hunter seems to be striving for historical accuracy, presenting facts that may be unpopular but true nonetheless, and many of us react with our “value judgements,” especially those of us who despise even the most benevolent despotism, and consider Africans to be human.

  8. Haiti only occurred due to incitement of the slaves by the regicide revolutionaries of France, especially the members of the Society of the Friends of Blacks.

    http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/chap8a.html

    Abolitionist Yankees wanted to recreate the white genocide in Haiti in the South with their support for John Brown. The Beecher Bibles (rifles) New Englanders eagerly bought and shipped south were intended to be used by negroes to exterminate white Southerners.

    The negroes in the South never took the bait. They were too happy in their slavery.

    Anti-white malice in the North would need a brutal “total” war to realize its full potential. Once sanctified by the blood sacrifice of the anti-slavery jihad, yankee anti-white malice has continued unhindered and unchecked to present day BRA.

    The Yankee Northeast remains a very steadfast anti-white white stronghold.

    Deo Vindice

  9. I consider Africans to be human.

    They’re a different race of humans. They are not the same as us. They are not “equal” to us. I don’t believe in a shared “human nature.”

  10. “These aren’t my arguments. I’m just reading books and posting some interesting stuff to educate readers.”

    They are arguments, nonetheless. I know they are not YOUR arguments, but the reader may react to the presentation of facts as though there was some implication that slavery is benevolent, and even that slavery is GOOD because it is benevolent. Nevertheless it is just historical research….

  11. “They’re a different race of humans. They are not the same as us…. I don’t believe in a shared ‘human nature.’”

    Genetic identity (being of the same species, able to interbreed normally) is common.

    Their differentness: Besides lower average intelligence, perhaps the Freedom we treasure (“Give me liberty or give me death!”) is not valued so much by them (“Let slaves adore and love a despotism”)?

  12. Generations of liars have exaggerated the severity of slavery while glorifying “free” labor. The authors are simply using modern statistical methods to quantify these issues to determine the truth.

  13. I don’t see the importance.

    We are genetically related to every species of the planet. Species is a term we use to describe one level of variation. Genus is another term. Race describes an even finer level of variation.

    There are no other human species around because their lineages were exterminated by modern humans in prehistory. It is an endless cycle of species fracturing into new species and wiping out rival species and races.

    There isn’t an essential human nature. Instead, there is just a cline along which things like height, weight, intelligence, skin color, and behavior vary, which would shade into other races and species if they were still around today.

  14. “There are no other human species around because their lineages were exterminated by modern humans in prehistory. It is an endless cycle of species fracturing into new species and wiping out rival species and races. There isn’t an essential human nature. Instead, there is just a cline along which things like height, weight, intelligence, skin color, and behavior vary, which would shade into other races and species if they were still around today.”

    HW- Mosin raises some very good arguments, that cut through the crap of egalitarianism, like a hot knife through cold butter. But I fear that you are incorrect in your assessment of ‘essential human nature.’ From the Christian standpoint, there is only ONE nature that is human- that is, Adam’s.

    If the Negro and the Sinoid, the Mestizo and the Englishman all share that Adamic nature, then slavery poses some rather thorny problems to minds which consider the negro our ‘brother.’ This mindset is what animated and made abolitionist sentiments have a measure of legitimacy, back in the 19th Century. The 20th Century merely wedded incomplete scientism to this theological construct, and gave us ‘Civil Rights’ and the final planks in the program launched by Lincoln et al., in 1865.

    But that same scientific knowledge, growing by leaps and bounds, clearly shows a different approach to the consideration that all hominids are, (by definition) Humans.
    So, too, the Talmudic rationales of souls of the [sic] Jews, and the souls of the [sic] Goyim. As to the former, have you read Avdeyev’s recent massive tome, “Raciology”? You should. Coming from a former Communist Russian perspective, it is quite free of the pussyfooting egalitarianism of the post-LBJ West.

    It clearly shows that the races are DIFFERENT hominids, on many different levels, from the composition of the blood, to the length of the skeletal structure, to the folds of the brain of the different races. It (raciology) also makes clear that, while inter-breeding is ‘possible,’ the reality of miscegenation (using the biblical term) is horrific, when applied to Man/hominid crossings, especially from the standpoint of Adam’s seed. A case of ‘Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.’

    From the latter p.o.v., (the Talmudic, which relies on the thought patterns of the O.T., even as it is misdirected as to ‘whom are the Jews?’- and that, by one group who have the most to lose if it be proven they are NOT who they say they are… [Rev.2:9]) it seems only logical that there exists only ONE race that is predestined to be the race from which Messiah was to come- that is, Adam’s seed and David’s line.

    Both the Talmudicists and the Christian Identity hold that this is absolutely fundamental in ANY consideration of ‘Man (Adam) qua man (hominids),’ and the relationship of the said hominids to Adamkind- i.e., Cain’s wife, for example. These two opponents differ, however, in that the [sic] Jews consider themselves to be that divinely appointed race, whereas the Whites who understand CI rightly, believe it is to Us ‘… and our posterity’ that the promises apply- both by our culture, civilization, science, inventiveness, as well as by the fact that it is only in the confines of what is known today as Europe- i.e., the White Lands- that such blessings are/were concentrated… until (of course) the fallacious lies of the Jews, Liberals, and other godless individuals ‘turned us aside from our first love.’

    That Christ Himself- the Incarnate Son of God- comes ONLY from this Adamic seedline, is not confined to the CI’ers, but is replete in every commentary from the Gospel Writers (John1:1ff.) on down through the Patristic Fathers (athanasius ‘De Incarnatione), the early medivalists (including Augustine), and the subsequent schism authors, both Catholic and Protestant. (Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, etc.) The Incarnation is the SOLE DELIMITER that separates Apostate Talmudism from Christianity.

    And so, the idea that there is a ‘different flesh’ for the Adam of God, and the ‘goyim’ around us, is not foreign to the Gospel [I Cor. 15:39] or the Church of the First Millennium- for both St. Paul’s quote (which should not be confined merely to matters pertaining to the Resurrection, given the O.T.’s clearly defined prohibition against Adulteration of the species, in the command, ‘Thou shalt not commit ADULTERY.’ This command from YHWH against species amalgamationism, is only foreign to post-filioquist Rationalist Catholi-schism, and her protestant successors.

    A point I have tried to make on this forum before…. and which Mosin, in his/her own way, is trying to make as well…..

  15. However you wish to explain it, the difference between the races is more than skin deep, enough to indicate a basic ontological difference, as both Mosin and Fr. John are perceptive enough to observe.

    One can easily see a wide variance between the habitual social behaviors and organization of relationships within each race. Liberals busy constructing their post-racial utopia are constantly flummoxed by the intransigence of black behavior, values, and attitudes, which are incompatible with white expectations.

    This is more than just a “cultural” phenomenon. If left to their own devices, blacks begin regression to savagery regardless of whether they are in the Congo, Haiti, or Detroit. Chimpout is a universal negro occurrence that has no parallel among whites.

    Whites do not share the same destiny as the negro. Whatever the limits of scientific classification may be, this difference transcends the mere scientific understanding of any racial differences. Besides, doesn’t adaptation inevitably involve a differentiation that extends to ends as well as means?

    From landing on the moon to the great masterworks of art such as Michaelangelo’s
    Pieta to great architectural achievements such as the Pantheon of Rome, whites have embodied a very different mode of life from negroes, who are completely lacking in any comparable attainments. This is no accident.

    Fifty years of liberal equality and “cibbil rights” have only served to demonstrate compellingly that racial differences are completely intractable. Which is precisely why negro emancipation imperils the continuation of white civilization, as most here can clearly recognize.

    Deo Vindice

  16. “A point I have tried to make on this forum before…. and which Mosin, in his/her own way, is trying to make as well….”

    Edit: “Mosin in HIS own way” Otherwise well said, Fr John.

  17. lived in better and more hygienic housing that the typical White working class family in New York City in the 1890s?….

    In New York City in 1990s— in the 2000s, one can still rent a 20 foot room (for about $2000.00 a month. The idea is that it is such a desirable and wonderful city, with so much to offer (even though it is only 4% wasp and half the population does not speak English at home)—- that it’s worth living in that manner.

    A single person, eating like on the 1865 census, would spend $400.00 a week or something on groceries.

  18. “I don’t see the importance. We are genetically related to every species of the planet. Species is a term we use to describe one level of variation (…) There isn’t an essential human nature. Instead, there is just a cline along which things like height, weight, intelligence, skin color, and behavior vary….”

    Then there couldn’t be any “essential RACIAL nature” either, no white identity, but just a cline of variation along which everyone is related to everyone else and everything else on the planet, more or less. Fr John, on the other hand, posits something more concrete.

  19. No human nature at all, then? Nothing in common that makes all humans human? No humanity, then, but only individuals? There can be no racial identity either, then. No ethnicity, no nationality, no society — but only individuals, whose traits vary along a cline.

  20. Mosin- my apologies for confusing your humanity, by confusing your gender.

    Of course you are male. You are cogent, intelligent, and quite linear in your thought. You are clearly Caucasoid, as well. How stupid of me not to notice….

    lol

    I stand corrected.

  21. Mosin if you want to go this way, how can you be sure you exist? As an individual?

    “I think therefore I am” days the Cartesian.

    But if what you perceive as the outside world is just electrical stimulation of nerves, how can you be sure the outside world exists? If the outside world doesn’t exist how can you be sure you exist? Asks the skeptic.

  22. John, that’s really not my position. I was being ironic, not serious, about the reductio. I was responding to Hunter’s view of non-existence of “human nature.” If there is only individual variation “along a cline”, then there are no racial or ethnic natures either. Fr John suggests the solution of at least TWO different, SPIRITUAL natures.

  23. Again, John, I have been disputing, NOT agreeing with, the view of “nonexistence” of the natures. Natures are at least commonsensical if not demonstrable objectively, and even illiterate rioters immediately recognise them as you said.

  24. “Then there couldn’t be any “essential RACIAL nature” either, no white identity, but just a cline of variation along which everyone is related to everyone else and everything else on the planet, more or less.”

    These clines are sometimes a bit discontinuous. Groups of traits that clump together are referred to as ethnicities or populations. They correlate quite well with language. God knows the racially aware posters on this site often obsess over these closely related but different groups.

    Swedes on the whole differ from Irishmen both phenotypically and genetically but are quite close when compared to say Japanese. Genetic and linguistic maps show these relationships quite clearly;

    http://www.corrupt.org/drupal/files/images/europe_variation.jpg

    http://hivskeptic.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/cavallisfworldgeneticswiki.jpg

  25. With the Irish there are definitely large numbers of Scandinavians. Big ruddy Viking types. Noway has a lot of Irish looking people.

    Iceland is a perfectly wierd mélange of Scandinavian-Irish-Scot-Dane. They must have carried off slaves from all these places in equal number from what I’ve seen.

  26. “lovers posing as WN’s on this blog”: This “benevolence argument” for slavery (better off, live longer, reproduce more, etc.) appears to be just that.

  27. “But if what you perceive as the outside world is just electrical stimulation of nerves, how can you be sure the outside world exists?”

    Because everyone else experiences the same stimuli. Because cleverly built instruments show the same results through repeated experiments. Because Taylor Swift singing pop tunes comes out of your car radio shows that frequency modulation of the electro-magnetic spectrum exists. Because the wise child does not step out in front of the speeding cross town bus. Don’t be solipsistically moronic.

  28. Rudel,

    It’s from an early John Carpenter film, Mommy Professor. Lt. Doolittle is attempting to disarm the Nuke by teaching it phenomenology.

  29. I actually thought all of
    that info was interesting. the federal gov really screwed up during the reconstruction period.what I was trying to locate was what kind of poultrices and home remidies were used by the slave in case they were sick or injured maybe from the lash i know the “master’ was supposed to take care of the slave and send for a doctor but some just didn’t do the right thing for his so called property

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