FREE ESSAY ON SLAVERY IN TEXAS

SLAVERY IN TEXAS

AN EMPIRE FOR SLAVERY
In the book, An Empire for Slavery, Randolph B. Clark describes the way in which Texas
slaves coped with life under oppressive circumstances. Some of the topics discussed in
the book include how slaves approached daily chores and provided for their material and
physical condition. Also, it is demonstrated how slaves tended to their psychological and
spiritual well being and how they displayed their feelings towards this Peculiar
Institution.
Some slaves in Texas approached responsibility for work in such a manner that they were
given a great deal of leeway for their own daily job assignments and were even given
supervisory positions over other slaves. Some bondsman, working as managers, tended to
plantations and farms in the absence of the owners. This practice is quite remarkable
when we sometimes visualize a slave as a blackman with a chain and heavy ball attached to
one foot. The conception of manager slaves apparently was propagated in such an
encompassing manner that some proponents of slavery found it to be very disconcerting.
Some slave owners felt too much liberty was being given to the interned hoard. 
In 1858, state senator Henry E. McCulloch introduced a bill to outlaw the practice. The
bill passed, but had little effect because it had little support in the white community.
Some blacks, if not managers, were more in the order of middle managers known as drivers.
Drivers were specialty supervisors who oversaw operations related to chopping cotton
(cultivating), plowing, planting and harvesting. As slavery progressed many slaves
graduated to other jobs that required a different degree of responsibility, such as
carpenters, blacksmiths, personal valets, and housekeepers and the like. So it would
appear bondsmen were perfectly capable of accomplishing any task given to them by their
tormentors.
Material conditions and physical treatment of slaves can be broken down into five main
categories: food, housing, clothing, health and physical punishment.
As would be expected, rural farm life provided food in quantity as well as variety.
Domestic farm animals such as cattle, pigs, and chickens provided the main course.
Gardens and row crop fields provided a variety of produce such as beans, peas, sweet
potatoes, okra, corn and the like. Corn could be ground into meal for cornbread.
In addition to farm raised meat and vegetables, nature itself contributed to the larder
in the form of whitetail deer, bear, rabbit, squirrel, coon, opossums, quail, dove,
turtles, and fish. Wild nuts and berries could be gathered at certain times of the year.
Slave women would prepare the meals in addition to their normal chores and no doubt
created what would later be known as that delicious soul food.Yummy. In summary, slaves
appear to have had food that was in both good in quality, quantity and variety to provide
for what amounted to one of the best parts of their lives.
Housing on the other hand was a dismal proposition at best. While food roamed around on
the hoof, building materials were hard to come by. In the 1830's there was no
infrastructure in Texas, few settlements, no interstate highway systems, nowhere, within
a reasonable distance was facilities to purchase even the most basic needs such as tools,
nails, and lumber. As a consequence of remoteness, slave owners and bondsmen apparently
made do with what the land provided. Cabins were built out of material that was
indigenous to the region. Log cabins were built and gaps between the logs were chinked
with straw and mud. Since there were no sawmills, no flooring was used. There were no
glass windows or screens. Latrine facilities may have been the nearest bush. Housing
then, would have been wholly inadequate perhaps improving as time traveled on. Indoor
plumbing, cold water heaters, central air conditioning and heating were right out. 
Clothing, as with other aspects of slave life, was very basic indeed. Each male slave was
supplied with two sets of clothes; shirt and pants made of cotton or wool. A hat and a
pair of brogan shoes would complete the ensemble. No underwear or socks were supplied.
Women were supplied with dresses of like material. Black seamstresses, using crude
equipment made clothing.
It would have been very difficult for slaves to laundry clothes, so not only were the
clothes ill fitting and uncomfortable, but probably smelled to high heaven too.
Slaves in Texas suffered from a wide range of medical conditions, ranging from minor
ailments such as colds and fever to more serious conditions such as cholera and yellow
fever. Giving birth was dangerous to women. Children suffered from whooping cough and
other childhood diseases.
Slaves, however, do not appear to have been neglected medically. Records show slaves were
given the best medical care available at the time. Not from some overwhelming
humanitarian compassion by the slave owners, but probably because the slaves were the
single most valuable asset the slavers owned.
Human beings in captivity were subjected to an assault on their psychological and
spiritual well being on a daily basis. Bondsmen in Texas coped with mental quandary in
three important ways: Family life, religion, and music. Families made it possible for
slaves to endeavor to endure the hopelessness and harshness of life in the mid 1800's.
There is strong evidence from slaves and slaveholder alike, which suggests most slaves in
Texas, spent most of their time in a traditional family setting. Masters usually ordered
or gave permission to bondmen and women to marry and propagate. However these families
were created they tended to be large in number, as were white families of the same
period. Family units provided love and support as well as the emotional strength to carry
on.
As with families, religion played a pivotal and important role in the slave's sphere of
existence. Bible teachings spoke of people being delivered from the bondage of slavery,
and must have been extremely comforting. Church meeting allowed slaves form different
parts of the countryside to fellowship, exchange ideas, and perhaps take the first small
steps to literacy. Indeed, some of the most important spokesmen and women for the black
cause would come from the religious community.
Music also played an important part in the slave's daily routine. Slaves expressed their
emotions through songs and tunes. When working in the fields, songs served as a
communication device as words spread across the tilled terraferma like a wave on the open
ocean. More often than not, Negro songs expressed protests against bondage and the hope
of a better day.
Bondsmen displayed their feeling toward slavery in three major ways. The first way was to
simply accept their predicament and to become fateful servants to their masters. These
slaves apparently gave up psychologically and turned over any self-respect and personal
identity they may have had to their owners. In contrast, some slaves rebelled against
bondage in every way possible. They refused to work, ran away to Mexico, back east, and
some even lived in the surrounding countryside. The final method of displaying feeling
regarding slavery was to neither accept or rebel. These slaves simply sought to survive
in the best manner possible. They relied on the help of one another, their families, and
faith in God to make the best out of the worst condition imaginable. It was with undying
conviction to these institutions slaves were able to hold on to the belief that the
future for themselves, there children and generations to come would be better, and indeed
such would be the case.
Relationships between masters and slaves probably had a good deal to do with the way
slave reacted to bondage. There is clear and convincing evidence to show genuine caring
relationships between blacks and whites during this period. Some slaveholders no doubt
regarded their slaves as members of their own family, and treated them as such. On the
other end of the spectrum owners could be tremendously cruel and uncaring, to the point
of being psychopathic about the whole thing.
The period of time in Texas history from 1821 to 1865, with regard to slavery, is indeed
disturbing and will always be to the everlasting disgrace of the people involved. A few
points make this snapshot in time a little easier to bear. Of the population in Texas in
1860, fewer than one quarter of the farms had slaves on the premises. It would be easy to
imagine the planter elite sitting on the porch of a palacial mansion, sipping mint
juleps, while in the vast cotton fields Negro slaves toiled for the benefit of their
owners bank accounts. However, according to records of the time, per capita valve of all
farm crops harvested in 1860 from slaveholder farms amounted to $102.20 or $8.51 per
month. Not exactly setting the farm on fire financially. Regardless of the outcome of the
civil war and all of the arguments concerning states rights and slavery, slavery in this
country was a dying institution. Technological improvements and the oncoming industrial
revolution was posed to create a paradigm shift on the order of our own computerized era.
Steam powered locomotives for transportation and steam tractors would have made ownership
of slaves economically unfeasible.
The important lesson here is that everyone now can and does have equal access to the
opportunities created by the greatest system of government the world has ever known, a
government that was helped to be created by the efforts of everyone. Our constitution
guarantees the PURSUIT of happiness. However, we must pursue.
Bibliography
Retired, 42 years, college student with consentrations
in history, government, finance and marketing.