CHAPTER 2

“Born and Reared in Slavery”

In recounting their childhoods in bondage, many formerly enslaved people described the experience of a fleeting, liminal period of happiness before they became aware of their slave status.¹ For some, the moment of clarity came when they were separated from a parent by sale or death, leaving children like Harriet Jacobs and Lizzie Gibson suddenly exposed “for the first time” to their “condition … as a slave.”² For many, the realization was precipitated by their relationships with slaveholding children. As a young boy Henry Bibb was hired out to work in order to earn tuition money for his owner’s daughter, his own former “playmate.” For Bibb this first experience of commodification marked his introduction to “sorrow and suffering,” when he “first commenced seeing and feeling that [he] was a wretched slave, compelled to work.”³ By comparing his lot with that of his childhood friend, and realizing that his labor and “suffering” were for her benefit, he became cognizant of his enslavement and the new feelings that accompanied that status. Lunsford Lane experienced a similar epiphany as a child when he began to apprehend the ways that his life differed from those of his “master’s white children,” noting that they were taught to read while he was barred from doing so, and that he could be sold without warning. Grasping those fundamental inequalities had a profound emotional impact on Lane: “all things now made me feel, what I had before known only in words, that I was a slave.”⁴

These revelations occurred before the authors reached adulthood, but each of them felt that their childhood had been truncated by the devastating realization of what it meant to be enslaved. As Bibb and Lane articulated, these rude awakenings about their place in the world also represented an emotional metamorphosis, a transformation from the happiness of childhood to the “sorrow and suffering” of bondage. These discoveries irreversibly altered enslaved children, ushering them into the specific affective norms expected of enslaved people. Those moments also threw into sharp relief just how much their experiences and emotional lives differed from those of children of the planter class.

Having endured his own childhood in bondage, Frederick Douglass observed in his second autobiography that “nature has done almost nothing to prepare men and women to be either slaves or slaveholders,” and that to learn to be slave or master required lengthy and “rigid training.”⁵ Sources from the antebellum period demonstrate that the feelings of slaveholders and enslaved people were individually learned, collectively constructed, and socially embedded in the slave South, and that enslaved people and slavery played a critical role in that socialization process. In the antebellum South, enslaved children, slaveholding children, and even adults who did not grow up in slaveholding households had to be taught the emotions and affective norms of slavery. Slaveholding and enslaved children became versed in the affective rules and expectations that governed them from their parents, from observing the world around them, from other adults, from fellow children, and from the process of play. However, enslaved children and slaveholding children were taught widely diverging lessons about how to feel, what to emote, and what emotions to suppress.

Though they might grow up playing alongside slaveholding children, enslaved children experienced abbreviated childhoods and needed to learn different emotional rules. Enslaved children were inculcated with a set of affective survival skills for negotiating the emotional politics of slavery. This included the ability to cope with loss and hardship, to read emotions, and to identify emotional allies in order to create affectively supportive social networks. Meanwhile children of the planter class may have been encouraged to foster childhood friendships with enslaved children, but part of their maturation process was shedding those friendships and learning how those relationships were inextricably tied to power. Over time they were taught the building blocks of paternalism and how to bring domination and violence to the fore of those affective relations.

This chapter examines how enslaved people learned the affective norms of slavery as children, and how slaveholding children were indoctrinated with the feelings and emotional expressions that were expected of them as members of the planter class. Of course, children were not the only ones in the antebellum South who needed to be instructed how to feel and express emotions. Sources written by enslaved people and members of the planter class indicate a widespread belief that White people who were not raised in the South, or did not grow up in slaveholding households but became slaveholders as adults, had to be taught the affective norms of slavery. Thus the final section of the chapter elucidates how slaveholding adults were taught which emotions were appropriate and inappropriate.

Childhood in the Antebellum South

Historians of slavery have asserted that in order to understand the lives of enslaved people, it is crucial to examine their experiences as children and how their formative years shaped them.⁶ Yet there are many challenges that confront anyone writing about the history of children in general and enslaved children in particular.⁷

First, there is the question of who is defined as a “child,” as childhood itself is a modern concept that is socially, culturally, and temporally constructed as well as heavily contingent on race, class, and gender.⁸ Childhood in the antebellum South not only looked different from childhood in the South today, but also varied wildly for the enslaved and free children living under slavery. Thus it is important to avoid presentism when trying to locate the historical experience of enslaved children.⁹

The second challenge when studying the history of children is the problem of available sources. The study of slavery and children involves limited source material, which is compounded when researching enslaved children.¹⁰ Many of the existing sources about slaveholding or enslaved children are adults’ later recollections, raising questions about the problems of memory.¹¹ As if to counter potential accusations that they did not remember their childhoods, authors of slave narratives often described events from their youth as “never to be forgotten” or leaving a “lasting impression.”¹² Some historians argue that despite debates about the accuracy of memory, adults’ narratives about their childhoods in slavery should not be dismissed as untrustworthy.¹³ Rather, scholars should be aware of the challenges of studying children as historical subjects, and they must read across sources about slaveholding and enslaved children to identify commonalities in their experiences and affective development. Ultimately, examining the emotional development of children in the antebellum South sheds light on the lived experiences of enslaved children and children of the planter class, showing how children are socialized, and the role emotional politics play in learning how to maneuver through social interactions.

Learning Affective Norms

In order to become versed in the affective norms of slavery, children of the antebellum South needed to understand the social hierarchies that structured their world.¹⁴ Identifying who possessed or lacked power was especially important for enslaved children. Enslaved people learned the emotional politics of slavery by reading the feelings of the people around them, a process of observation that began in childhood. Growing up enslaved in Maryland, Frederick Douglass quickly grasped hierarchies of slavery and the particulars of his master, Colonel Lloyd. He did this in part through discerning how the enslaved people around him felt about Lloyd, noting that the “name” of his master “seemed ever to be mentioned with fear and shuddering,” never “with affection but always with fear.” Even before he met Lloyd, he knew how much power was wielded by the man with “the ominous title of ‘old master’” by the emotional reaction other enslaved people had to Lloyd. In this way, Douglass swiftly learned to fear the man and to avoid him.¹⁵

To weather the complex emotional politics that structured the slave South, children first had to learn how the hierarchy of their family intersected with the power structures of slavery. Harriet Jacobs described how her brother William was schooled in the scaffolds of power that surrounded him one day “when his father and his mistress both happened to call him at the same time.” William paused before responding, unsure who “had the strongest claim upon his obedience,” before deciding to answer the call of his mistress. Afterward, their father chastised him for this decision. When William confessed his confusion about who to respond to, their father replied, “You are my child … and when I call you, you should come immediately, if you have to pass through fire and water.”¹⁶ Clearly enslaved parents still sought to hold disciplinary sway over their children, but at a young age William already recognized that his father was not the only person he answered to, nor was his father the highest authority on the plantation.

For enslaved children who had been raised to respect their parents it was all the more sobering when they realized that those parents were also subject to the tyranny of members of the plantocracy. Jacob Stroyer never forgot the “first time” he was “whipped by anyone except father and mother,” when he was beaten by a groom in the stable where he worked. He appealed to his parents for help, leading his mother to be beaten as well. Confronted with this injustice it occurred to Stroyer that his entire family and “the rest of [his] fellow Negroes” were “doomed to cruel treatment through life.” Unable to enlist his parents’ aid in challenging their shared oppressor, Stroyer decided “to appeal to the sympathy of the groom” but to no avail.¹⁷ Once he became cognizant of the relative power that he and his parents possessed, Stroyer, ever the savvy jockey, saw that he had to learn new pathways through the affective norms of enslavement. The passage illustrates that in order to understand the emotional politics of slavery, children in the antebellum South not only needed to determine the social hierarchies of the institution, they needed to calculate the affective hierarchies around them, who would emotionally respond to them, and what feelings to express or suppress.

Learning from Parents

As Stroyer learned, parents were not the only people enslaved children answered to, but they served as the primary source for lessons on affective norms for enslaved children. Enslaved parents taught their children what emotions to repress, they modeled how to create and maintain family ties, and they prepared children for the inevitability of loss. Enslaved children were often urged to mask their sadness and tears outside of the home, particularly if they were in the presence of members of the plantocracy. They were also warned against giving free rein to anger.¹⁸ But many enslaved parents also worked diligently to provide children with a nurturing home environment in which children experienced love and support and could freely express their feelings.¹⁹ As a result of such efforts, family functioned for many enslaved children as an emotional bulwark from the totality of the grim reality of slavery.²⁰ Unlike so many children in bondage, Harriet Jacobs was born and raised in a two-parent household “in a comfortable home,” which led her to feel “so fondly shielded” that she “never dreamed” that she was “a piece of merchandise.”²¹ Living with family also helped fortify Frederick Douglass against the objectification of slavery. Douglass claimed, after being raised by his doting grandparents, “it was a long time before I knew myself to be a slave.” As a result, he knew of “no higher authority over [him] or the other children than the authority of grandmamma.”²² Jacobs’s and Douglass’s recollections demonstrate that it was possible, even if only temporarily, for enslaved families to create a home life that sheltered children from the full extent of their enslavement.

Slave narratives detailed the lengths some enslaved parents went to in order to create a relatively stable home environment amid the uncertainties of slavery. This was especially challenging for parents who were in “away marriages,” enslaved on different, and often distant, plantations. As a child Charles Ball lived with his mother as his father was enslaved on another plantation. Ball saw his father on weekends only, but his memoirs are a testament to how cherished those abbreviated homecomings were. Ball recalled his father’s “gay social temper” during those visits, suggesting that his father was happy to see his family but also cognizant of maintaining a cheerful disposition during their brief time together. Ball’s father worked to make those nights special, as he “always brought [them] some little present,” including “apples, melons, sweet potatoes,” which, in Ball’s burnished memory, “tasted better in [their] cabin, because he had brought it.”²³ Given the grueling workdays for enslaved people, a visit with his family was already a gift, yet Ball’s father made additional unknown sacrifices in order to provide a tangible present each week. Perhaps it was knowing what his father had given up to sustain these weekly acts of generosity that made those “little present[s] … taste better,” leaving indelible recollections of happiness and affection.

While growing up enslaved outside of St. Louis, Mattie Jackson related that her parents regularly proved that the conditions of bondage, and the nature of their away marriage, would not determine the tenor of their relationship. Mattie Jackson wrote admiringly of her father, Westly Jackson, and his “deep affection for his family.” His commitment to his family was repeatedly tested as he was sold to successive owners who lived farther and farther away from his partner, Ellen Turner, and their three children. Because Westly lived so far away, the then three-year-old Mattie was able to see her father only on the weekends. Father and children alike relished what little time they had together. Mattie noted that she could “well remember the little kindnesses” her father “used to bestow upon” them as well as “the deep affection and fondness he manifested.”

Westly’s visits with his family were perhaps so memorable because they were infrequent and because of the effort he put into making those moments possible. At the time his owner lived twenty miles away from Turner and her children, but the slaveholder allowed the abroad marriage to continue. This meant that to see his family Westly had to walk twenty miles each Saturday night, only to walk twenty miles back on Sunday night so that he could return to the fields on Monday. After a week of backbreaking labor he subjected his body to that journey, all for the sake of his wife and children.²⁴ On a weekly basis Westly Jackson measured out his devotion to his family in footsteps and, in doing so, modeled love and fidelity for his three children. Ball’s and Jackson’s homages to their fathers serve as an important reminder that enslaved children did not just experience the division of their families; they also bore witness to the commitment enslaved people had to keeping families and communities together. In a world of uncertainties, in which a parent might be repeatedly sold, Ball and the Jackson children nevertheless saw that it was possible to preserve family bonds, and that it took diligence and dedication to do so.

Enslaved parents’ efforts to make time for their families, despite their excruciating work schedule, instilled in their children how love could transcend slavery.²⁵ Lunsford Lane hinted that what he remembered most about his mother was her absence, as his “infancy was spent upon the floor, in a rough cradle, or sometimes in [his] mother’s arms.”²⁶ As a result the attempts enslaved parents made to steal away from work to be with their family left lasting impressions on their children. William Wells Brown’s mother frequently told him “how she had carried” him “upon her back to the field” when he was a baby and “how often she had been whipped for leaving her work to nurse” him but how happy he had appeared when she took him into her arms.²⁷ William was too young to remember the brief reunions between mother and son; what he was instead recalling was his mother affectionately describing her daily acts of loving rebellion. In recounting what she went through to care for him she conveyed her feelings for her son and reminded him that though he may not remember them, they had shared happy moments together.

Even brief visits with family provided children with the strength and support needed to endure the harsh realities of slavery. Lizzie Gibson, born in 1852, recalled that she was seven when she was first hired out to cover her owner’s debts. Though this separated her from her mother and siblings it “was not so grievous at first” because they were still able to see one another occasionally. During these reunions the Gibson family fantasized about what life as free people might be like, imagining all the “good things” they would eat at their “new home.”²⁸ For Gibson the most critical emotional succor her family could provide was hope. Though their homecomings were short, that time together was invaluable because her family was able to reunite and collectively envision a future in which food was “good” and plentiful, their home was their own, and they were free from bondage.

One of the most important lessons enslaved parents taught their children was how to anticipate the affective road that lay before them. Some parents did that through stories. The trickster tales that were told and retold in slave cabins helped teach enslaved children about the emotional power dynamics of slavery in parable form, as such fables typically depicted “the victories of the weak over the strong.” Whether human or animal, the heroes of these stories usually succeeded by outwitting their more powerful foe or by knowing the value of concealing their feelings or motives.²⁹ Because of their allegorical nature such stories could be viewed as entertaining by young enslaved children, and innocuous to any slaveholder who chanced to overhear, while older children and adults could see the radical subtext and even get ideas about tactics for resistance. There were moral lessons embedded in trickster tales, often related to respecting family, obeying parents, and honoring the Sabbath.³⁰ But just as importantly such stories could also fortify enslaved children with hope, hope that the dispossessed could fight back and prevail.

Enslaved adults also had to figure out how and when to introduce enslaved children to the prospect of being sold. It was a harsh reality that children needed to be prepared to be sold away from their family, given that enslaved youths represented an increasing amount of interstate slave sales in the antebellum period. Because children cost less, were perceived to be a more liquid asset and a malleable tabula rasa, many enslaved children were destined for the auction block before they reached adulthood.³¹ Enslaved parents found a number of ways to broach the subject of separation with their children. Some parents tried to console their children through faith in religion and with the promise of reunion in heaven. Born in 1816, Tabb Gross explained that when he was about to be sold with his brothers at the age of fourteen his mother gathered her sons to tell them that “they would perhaps never see her again in this world, but she trusted to meet them in heaven.”³² Henry Box Brown recalled that his mother prepared him for sale with a poignant parable about the inevitable change of the seasons. She took him to the woods and, gesturing to the surrounding trees left bare “by the winds of autumn,” explained that “as yonder leaves are stripped from off the trees of the forest, so are the children of the slaves swept away from them by the hands of cruel tyrants.” Her timing was apt and may have been prompted by rumors of an impending sale, as Brown noted that this conversation with his mother was one of the last “enjoyments of maternal feeling” that they shared before he was sold. Because they were parted soon after, Brown may have idealized the way that his mother depicted the issue of separation. No matter how the lesson was disseminated, Brown remembered his mother’s efforts to help him anticipate imminent loss.³³

Some relatives elected not to tell children about a forthcoming sale. Frederick Douglass lamented that when his separation from his grandmother was drawing nigh she “kept the sad fact hidden” from him. Slave narratives contain many descriptions of the terror children experienced when they discovered they were to be sold, so perhaps some relatives remained quiet in the hopes of reducing children’s anxieties. When Douglass learned he was to be taken from his grandmother’s home once he was old enough to work, he claimed that while he could not yet “comprehend the full import of the intelligence … a shade of disquiet rested upon” him, and he was “haunted” by the “dread” of being sold.³⁴ Though not yet able to understand the forces that were taking him from his grandmother, he was gripped with terror. Lunsford Lane experienced similar “fear” when he learned that he “might be sold away from those who were dear” to him. Like Douglass, he could not shake the sense of foreboding: “deep was this feeling, and it preyed upon [his] heart like a never-dying worm.”³⁵ Even children who were thought to be too young to understand the possibility of sale were consumed by dread of it. The constant threat of separation flooded these children with wracking feelings of uncertainty and powerlessness, highlighting the importance of parental preparation and the armor of family bonds.

Other enslaved children learned what it meant to be sold through secondhand experience. When Lizzie Gibson was only seven years old she witnessed an event she swore she “never forgot”: a family of enslaved people being dismembered by a slave sale in the middle of a city street. Gibson watched as an enslaved man was unexpectedly told that he had been sold away from his family. Before he could even say goodbye to his wife and children, his new owner took him away. Another man proceeded to buy the enslaved man’s wife and infant child but was unable to afford the couple’s older child, who was brusquely advised “tell your mammy good-bye.” This scene left Gibson paralyzed by emotion, crying “briny tears” in the street. Gibson claimed that the event filled her with her “first dread of slavery,” and from that day forward she lived in fear of being sold away from her own family. Witnessing this abrupt division no doubt convinced her that these separations could come at any time, leaving her in a state of perpetual anxiety long before she ever had to “stand on the block.” Perversely, these feelings may have prepared her for the sale she feared was inevitable. Gibson wrote that when she finally was sold, though she was separated from her sisters and brothers forever, the event was not “so hard” as the sale she had seen in the street.³⁶

This scene is exemplary of how enslaved children learned the emotional terrain of the antebellum South. First, it illustrates that enslaved children were as likely to absorb the affective norms that structured their world from their own observations as from a loved one. Gibson’s writing also indicates that many enslaved children realized at a very young age that theirs was a world fraught with loss and emotional uncertainty in which they were forced to constantly adapt. Finally, Gibson alludes that the horrifying sale she witnessed helped her come to terms with the possibility of being sold, and in some small way it made her own sale seem not “so hard.” This speaks volumes about the methods enslaved children deployed to cope with the emotional turmoil of slavery. This event may have softened the blow of her eventual sale, but there is little doubt that seeing another family being sold and experiencing the division of her own family played a pivotal role in Gibson’s emotional development.

Navigating Emotional Politics Alone

Since they were often deprived of parents or other relatives through death or sale, enslaved children had an even more pressing need to understand how to navigate the emotional politics of slavery, and they had to do so largely on their own. The writings of former slaves demonstrate that enslaved children needed to learn three crucial skills in order to do so: how to read emotions, how to self-soothe, and how to identify potential allies. Like Gibson, many enslaved children discovered the affective norms and boundaries of slavery by studying the emotionally charged interactions and relationships around them. Separated from their families other enslaved children sought methods for self-soothing. Finally, many enslaved children identified new sources of support, including other adults and children who could serve as fictive kin or mentors.

The ability to decipher the emotions of others was vital to survival for enslaved children.³⁷ In the nineteenth century scientists like Charles Darwin were already examining how children interpreted and responded to affective expressions.³⁸ By studying other people’s emotions children learned how to feel, what affective expressions were acceptable, and how to respond to the emotions of others, all of which helped them persevere in a world in which they faced vast power differentials. In describing his childhood in bondage Douglass shed light on how enslaved children read faces in order to make sense of complex affective relations and emotional events. For example, Douglass did not merely describe his grandmother as upset when they were separated, he wrote that his “Grandmamma looked sad” and that this expression was how he “knew she was unhappy.” Enslaved children may have learned how to interpret feelings by watching their loved ones, but they also used those skills to read the emotions of members of the planter class. Douglass’s narratives provide a wealth of information about how children began to pick up on the emotional cues of slaveholders and how they used this affective information strategically. As a child Douglass not only monitored what his owner did, but also observed how his owner felt, claiming that Colonel Lloyd “very early impressed me with the idea that he was an unhappy man. Even to my child’s eye, he wore a troubled” expression that “awakened my compassion.” Douglass emphasized just how “unhappy” he perceived Lloyd to be, remarking that he could feel “compassion” for the man who owned him and had subjected him to so much pain.³⁹

By watching the slaveholder Douglass quickly gathered that Lloyd was prone to intense and dangerous emotions, having “seen him in a tempest of passion” comprising “all the bitter ingredients of pride, hatred, envy, jealousy, and the thirst for revenge,” and Douglass used this affective information for self-preservation. Thus Douglass knew that whenever Lloyd’s “gestures were violent,” Douglass needed to be cautious, for during these spells one “had only to be near him to catch punishment, deserved or undeserved.” Tracking the man’s emotions helped Douglass predict Lloyd’s future affective states and avoid their ramifications. Even when Lloyd displayed the occasional “affectionate disposition,” Douglass remained wary, knowing that “the pleasant moods of a slaveholder are remarkably brittle … they neither come often, nor remain long.” Douglass had only to mentally scan his store of emotional data, collected over time, to know that Lloyd’s “pleasant moods” were transient and not to be trusted.

Douglass believed it was critical to anticipate his owner’s feelings, but this system was hardly infallible: Douglass also recounted situations when he incorrectly inferred how slaveholders would react emotionally. Douglass recalled an incident when one of his enslaved cousins came to Captain Anthony to tell him about an abusive overseer. Douglass “expected to see [Anthony] boil over with rage” at the overseer, but instead he replied to the enslaved woman in “an angry tone” that she had likely “deserved every bit of” abuse. From observing interactions like this Douglass could course-correct perceptions of how his owner would respond and also better predict slaveholders’ future emotions. His memory of this event is evidence that from a young age enslaved people were constantly trying to interpret their owners’ moods and motives. Furthermore, this process had to begin anew each time an enslaved person encountered a new slaveholder, or even after returning to an owner after a lengthy separation. Douglass explained that when he was brought back to Thomas Auld’s plantation, Douglass’s lessons “concerning his temper and disposition, and the best methods of pleasing him, were yet to be learnt.”⁴⁰ Despite their previous time together Douglass believed that affective dynamics could change dramatically over time, so to anticipate Auld’s moods Douglass had to relearn the slaveholder’s feelings. Douglass rebuilt his bank of affective information from scratch in the hopes that knowing his owner’s emotions could provide him with a modicum of predictability and protection from Auld’s “temper.”

While Douglass touted his ability to discern slaveholders’ feelings, he also contended that members of the plantocracy were blithely unaware that those they enslaved were watching and analyzing their emotions. Douglass claimed that Lloyd would never have “thought that the little black urchins around him, could see, through those vocal crevices, the very secrets of his heart.”⁴¹ Perhaps slaveholders like Lloyd could not believe the affective acuity of enslaved people, let alone enslaved children, or perhaps it was too sobering to contemplate being subject to that level of constant emotional scrutiny by the people they enslaved.

Enslaved children also gained crucial affective information from studying the complex relations among members of the planter class and also between enslaved people and slaveholders. Harriet Jacobs suggested that through these observations enslaved people perceived the nexus of hate, jealousy, and fear that had especially explosive ramifications for enslaved girls. Jacobs explained that any enslaved child that worked closely with members of the planter class “will learn, before she is twelve years old, why it is that her mistress hates” certain enslaved women. Jacobs claimed that by listening to the fights that took place between slaveholding couples an enslaved child might learn that her “own mother is among the hated ones.” Nor were young enslaved girls ignorant of “the cause” of such “outbreaks of jealous passion.” As a result Jacobs believed that the enslaved girl “will become prematurely knowing in evil things,” and she will quickly “learn to tremble when she hears her master’s footfall.”⁴² This elucidates the process of how enslaved girls in particular became aware of the intricate and gendered dynamics of the emotional politics of slavery. Perceiving that her mistress “hated” certain enslaved women educated Jacobs about the threat of sexual abuse within slavery while also shaping her own emotions. Guided by knowledge of the root cause of her mistress’s hatred she learned to fear “her master’s footfall,” in the hopes that such wariness might help her avoid sexual assault herself.

As many enslaved children learned, it did not suffice to identify and understand the feelings and relationships of the people around them; enslaved children also needed to grapple with their own emotions, often alone. Separated from their parents by work, sale, or death, enslaved children were compelled to learn how to cope with loss and how to comfort themselves. Some children gained experience in managing their emotions when their parents had to leave them for work.⁴³ These daily estrangements often meant that children were left to deal with their intense feelings about separation alone. As a boy, William Wells Brown was a domestic servant, which he admitted was “preferable” to field labor because he received better clothes and rations, and he was able to get another thirty minutes of sleep. His mother was required to rise earlier, and “though the field was some distance from [the] house,” young Brown “could hear every crack of the whip, and every groan and cry of [his] poor mother.” Brown said that because of these sounds he “wept aloud” alone, yet “found no consolation” except in tears.⁴⁴ The routine theft of his mother was doubly felt as he bemoaned her treatment and had no one to provide him with solace.

In the end Brown “found … consolation,” or at least catharsis, in the unchecked expression of his grief. In pondering how enslaved children dealt with sadness, Douglass asserted that the enslaved child “cries but little, for nobody cares for his crying,” and he “learns to esteem his bruises but slight, because others so esteem them.”⁴⁵ Douglass intended this as proof that enslaved children were comparatively content, but it insinuated that some enslaved children quickly absorbed how to temper their emotions, learning ways to quell tears and feelings that would otherwise go ignored. Unable to seek comfort from their parents, children like Brown and Douglass learned through necessity to control how they felt by self-soothing or by stifling their emotions.

Through their discussions of the many losses and separations that enslaved children endured, slave narratives illustrated that enslaved children often experienced intense feelings that exceeded their nascent coping strategies.⁴⁶ That affective unpredictability, combined with physical and emotional deprivation, led some enslaved children to experience bouts of depression. In his second narrative in particular Douglass detailed the profound desperation he felt as a child. Douglass’s feelings of loss began at a young age, as he poetically observed that “early did clouds and shadows begin to fall upon [his] path.” These stormy emotions intensified with age, and as he “grew older and more thoughtful” he spent more time dwelling upon them. According to Douglass, “The cruelty of Aunt Katy, the hunger and cold I suffered … together with what I almost daily witnessed, led me, when yet but eight or nine years old, to wish I had never been born. I used to contrast my condition with the black-birds, in whose wild and sweet songs I fancied them so happy! Their apparent joy only deepened the shades of sorrow.”⁴⁷

As he would throughout his second autobiography, Douglass lyrically invoked nature to convey the emotions slavery provoked. Scholars have argued that Douglass, like so many authors of slave narratives, was heavily influenced by sentimental literature, which placed emphasis on empathy and sorrow.⁴⁸ But in this passage Douglass was describing feelings not just of sadness, but also anger and bitterness. The “black-birds” he saw made him feel “deepened … sorrow,” but only in contrast to their joy and “wild[ness],” which he envied acutely. The “wish” that he “had never been born” was a melancholy sentiment, but also a violent one.

Some children responded to overwhelming feelings of sorrow and anger by acting on such despondent and violent impulses. When they were both quite young, Moses Grandy’s brother was sold to a man who was notorious for how he “very much ill treated many colored boys.” His brother was subjected to severe punishments: when some cattle were lost his brother was flogged and was informed that he would be whipped each day until they were located. Perhaps unable to find them, and fearing being flogged again, or perhaps out of defiance of his master, Grandy’s brother “piled up a heap of leaves, and laid himself down in them, and died there.” Grandy reported that his brother “was found through a flock of turkey buzzards hovering over him; these birds had pulled his eyes out.”⁴⁹ It is unclear how the story got back to Grandy or how anyone could have known that Grandy’s brother intentionally “laid himself down” to die. Nevertheless, regardless of how Grandy learned about his brother’s fate, or whether his brother’s death was by suicide, it is telling that Grandy believed it was plausible that one so young could be distraught and determined enough to will themselves to die. Of course, if bondage could make young Douglass wish that he “had never been born,” other enslaved children might also have felt that death was preferable to the emotional and physical brutality they endured.

Fictive Kin and Supportive Allies

Enslaved children found other ways to exert a small measure of control over their affective lives. This was done through a two-pronged campaign of seeking out allies and attempting to emotionally influence the people around them. Some enslaved children sought fictive kin for protection or as an alternative support network if they had been separated from family.⁵⁰ Fictive kin figures could provide a wealth of information about how to maneuver through the emotional landscape of slavery, particularly relations with slaveholders. Douglass’s narratives provide a window into the affective process for children as they worked to identify allies and potential sources of emotional and physical sustenance. Having lost his mother and grandmother, Douglass knew how crucial loving relationships were to surviving slavery. He saw the ability to forge emotional bonds as divine, claiming that “the germs of affection with which the Almighty … arms the helpless infant” were to be used to combat “the ills and vicissitudes” of slavery. Cast into the unfamiliar world of the Lloyd plantation, Douglass “gradually” embraced new sources of assistance with “the little tendrils of affection, so rudely and treacherously broken” when he was taken from his grandmother’s home. He also learned that kindness could come from unlikely sources, as he found that even Aunt Katy, who deprived him of food when he first arrived at the plantation, “was not destitute of maternal feeling” and eventually showed him affection. Other “sympathizing old slaves” supplied him with extra food when they could, as well as encouragement, offering “the comforting assurance” that he would “be a man some day,” and to “never mind, honey—better day comin’.” Douglass observed that such “gentle” gestures helped “to convince him that though motherless, he was not friendless.”

Finding sympathetic mentors and creating fictive kinship networks helped enslaved children manage their emotional lives and cope with loss, but the process also taught enslaved children a critical survival technique: how to inspire affection in others, including slaveholders. It is clear from Douglass’s narratives that enslaved children realized from a young age that endearing oneself to a member of the planter class could yield a variety of advantages, from emotional aid to more tangible support. Douglass noted that in addition to the comforting “words and looks” he sometimes received from Lucretia Auld she also occasionally slipped him “a piece of bread and butter.”⁵¹ Similarly, Douglass benefited from his relationship with his owner’s son, Daniel Lloyd, because the young Lloyd shared food with Douglass and functioned as a “sort of protector,” shielding Douglass from the harassment of “the older boys.”⁵² Slaveholder Edward Pollard also wrote about bestowing favors upon enslaved children. Pollard described an enslaved boy named Tom as his “best friend,” recalling, “I had a great boyish fondness for him, gave him coppers, stole biscuits for him from the table, bought him a primer and taught him to read.”⁵³ The gifts of extra food to a no-doubt-undernourished child and of reading lessons to a person systemically denied a right to literacy were invaluable. Douglass and Tom would have been keenly aware that they relied on a combination of the largesse of members of the planter class and of their own abilities to provoke and sustain “fondness.”⁵⁴

For a child starved for affection as well as food, it might have been difficult to differentiate between an affective caregiver and a food provider. It is evident in Douglass’s and Pollard’s accounts that members of the planter class also conflated gifts of food with affection. Regardless of what Pollard and the Lloyds felt toward the children they gave “biscuits,” protection, and “coins” to, enslaved children like Douglass learned that they could convert slaveholders’ sympathy into food and other advantages. It is also impossible to know how Tom felt about Pollard, or if Douglass genuinely saw Daniel Lloyd and Lucretia Auld as friends, but these passages underscore how complicated and vital friendships between free and enslaved children could be.⁵⁵

Emotions, Friendship, and Play

Children of the antebellum South also learned about the emotional strictures of slavery through interactions with other children, testing their nascent knowledge of affective norms in the social laboratory of play.⁵⁶ Play helped children grasp and adapt to the emotional politics of slavery because it prepared them for their future roles and work, it helped them transgress social boundaries, and it could function as a source of comfort. Enslaved children were subtly educated in the affective boundaries of slavery through the myriad ways that play and work overlapped.⁵⁷ Some enslaved children pretended to set tables and bake, preparing them for the tasks that lay ahead.⁵⁸ Play and work became particularly intertwined, and emotionally loaded, for children like Linda Brent, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Keckley, and Sella Martin who served as caretakers for children of the planter class. Tasked with attending to another child, it could be difficult to tease apart the bonds of friendship from the obligations of work.⁵⁹ Enslaved children were also aware that their slaveholding playmates might someday be their legal owner. Moses Grandy was close to his owner’s son from birth because they were born just two days apart. Moses recalled how they “used to play together,” and that his companion’s slaveholder father “always said he would give” Grandy to the son following his own death. The boys’ friendship was encouraged, but it was overshadowed by constant reminders of the true, unequal basis of their relationship: ownership.⁶⁰

Some authors of slave narratives insisted that early in their childhood interracial friendships flourished between slaveholding and enslaved children in the transitional period before slavery had intruded fully into their consciousness. Lunsford Lane claimed that he spent his “early boyhood in playing with the other boys and girls, colored and white,” before any of them “had learned that they were of a superior” race and he “of a subject race.” Douglass argued that race did not matter to children, as much as their need for friends. He stressed how simple the criteria for friendship were for children, asking “are you a child with wants, tastes and pursuits common to children… ? Then, were you black as ebony you would be welcome to the child of alabaster whiteness.”⁶¹ Ultimately these depictions of picturesque childhoods, whether real or idealized, contrasted with the moment when enslaved children became aware of their chains. Perhaps such descriptions of a singular epiphany about one’s slave status were primarily a literary trope, intended to invoke the sympathy of mostly Northern readers who were steeped in a sentimentalist culture that adulated children and childhood. Romanticizing their childhoods as a period of color-blind play, a happy respite from slavery, would certainly heighten such readers’ umbrage at the fact that these contented children had been robbed of their carefree youth. Or maybe these writers really remembered experiencing a transformative moment of realization about their enslavement. There was perhaps a grain of truth in these scenes, speaking to the authors’ senses, as adults, that their childhoods had been abbreviated at best, and that they had never been like the childhoods of their slaveholding playmates.

Play could also provide a forum for children to challenge members of the planter class. In a 1934 interview Jeff Hamilton, a ninety-year-old man who was a former slave of General Sam Houston, recalled playing with Houston’s daughter, “Miss Nancy.” As a child Hamilton played a prank on her that nearly caused her “to drown.” He explained that Houston owned a “very spirited horse” that would become “enraged if anyone spit in his face.” One day, when he was “feeling mischievous,” Hamilton convinced Nancy to do just that. She spat at the horse, which “reared up on its hind legs and advanced towards her, snorting in anger.” Backing away in terror the girl tumbled “into a deep part” of a creek. Hamilton managed to drag her out, but not before the sound of her screams attracted her “family … to see what the trouble was.” They did not see that Hamilton had saved her, only that he had endangered her life, and because of this “Gen. Houston gave [him] a thrashing.”⁶² Though Hamilton chalks his behavior up to “feeling mischievous” he deliberately tricked his master’s daughter into doing something he knew would provoke a temperamental horse. At the very least, he knew the “very spirited horse” would scare Nancy, but he might have anticipated that the horse would react with physical violence. Whether he intended her harm or not, Hamilton pushed boundaries by placing a member of the planter class in danger. Within this loaded context his actions were not taken as “playful.”

As Hamilton learned, because play could be used to test the limits of slavery and free status it could have serious consequences.⁶³ The very real impacts of play were clear in an event from James Pennington’s childhood in bondage. Pennington recalled “an extremely cruel” overseer who was never without a “long hickory whip.” One day Pennington chanced upon one of the whips on the ground, so he “picked it up, and boy-like” pretended to ride it like a pony until the overseer found him, absorbed in his game of make-believe. The overseer proceeded to beat young Pennington savagely. This did not appease the overseer, who commenced a campaign of terror against the boy who had dared to play with his whip. Pennington explained that after that he “lived in constant dread” of the overseer, who took every opportunity to “show how much he delighted in cruelty by chasing [Pennington] from [his] play with threats and imprecations.”⁶⁴ When Pennington picked up the hickory stick and imagined it as his horse the boy may not have intended his actions to be subversive, but it certainly angered the overseer. Because Pennington had defied the man by playing with a tool of discipline, the overseer set out to abuse the boy physically and emotionally. Whether it was because the overseer felt mocked, or because he recognized the liberatory possibilities inherent to play, Pennington’s game of make-believe was viewed as threatening enough to warrant punishment and policing, ensuring that Pennington’s future play was undergirded by fear.⁶⁵

Rather than using play to challenge members of the slavocracy, and their violent forms of discipline, some enslaved children longed to play at being a master themselves. Jacob Stroyer remembered an enslaved boy named Gilbert who was, in his words, “a cruel boy” who delighted in taking smaller enslaved boys into the woods to whip them “until their backs were all scarred.” Several times a week Gilbert would play the role of slaveholder or overseer, beating the boys and then threatening them with further violence if they told anyone. This continued until the day that Gilbert decided to whip Stroyer. When begging for mercy did not work Stroyer ran to tell a relative about Gilbert’s reign of terror. As a result, “Gilbert was brought to trial, severely whipped,” and then made to apologize to all his victims.⁶⁶ Stroyer does not specify whether the punishment was ordered by his owner or overseer or whether justice was meted out by members of the enslaved community, though both would have disapproved of Gilbert’s ad hoc brutality for different reasons. A slaveholder might be angered by Gilbert’s impudence and by any damage done to the boys, who were valuable property. The enslaved parents of Gilbert’s victims would also want to see the “cruel boy” punished, albeit for hurting their children. It is not clear if Gilbert was also disciplined for daring to act out a fantasy of being master, not mastered.

Play served as an emotional outlet from slavery for many enslaved children. Douglass described how “play and sports” often took him “from the corn and tobacco fields … where scenes of cruelty were enacted and witnessed.”⁶⁷ By removing him from the site of so much “cruelty,” play offered Douglass temporary emotional, and perhaps physical, respite. Play also helped him adjust to life at Colonel Lloyd’s plantation. Brought there to be separated from his grandmother, Douglass was suddenly surrounded by an excited assembly of children who were eager to greet the “new comer,” demanding that he “play with them.” He declined at first, hesitant to spend his last moments with his grandmother playing with strangers, but she insisted that he join them, reminding him that some were even related to him. His separation anxieties were warranted, as his grandmother snuck away while he watched the other children play. Perhaps she knew that he would need to start acquainting himself with his estranged family in order to establish new support networks once she departed. It was his cousins and other children who tried to cheer him up, telling him “don’t cry” and offering him fruit, though Douglass recalled that he was so distraught that he tossed aside their gifts and “refused all their kindly advances.”⁶⁸ Even if they had never been abandoned in a similar fashion the other enslaved children were quite familiar with the instabilities that characterized their world. It is possible that the children knew all along that Douglass’s grandmother was preparing to leave and purposefully tried to distract him. In a society where children had little power or certainty they sought to comfort Douglass with the few methods they had at their disposal: “kind” words, food, and the diversion of play.

Slaveholding Children and Affective Norms

Like enslaved children, slaveholding children were indoctrinated in the affective norms of the antebellum South, learning the emotional strictures of society from personal observation, from their parents, and from other adults and children. But while enslaved children were being taught affective survival skills, children of the planter class were schooled in emotional mastery and dominance. A passage from Fanny Kemble’s diary of her time on her husband’s three Georgia plantations shows how quickly children of the planter class comprehended the emotional politics of slavery. Kemble remarked that she did not know how or where her daughter “gathered her information” but she remarked that “children are made of eyes and ears, and nothing, however minute, escapes their microscopic observation.” As a result, one day her daughter announced to an enslaved woman named Mary “some persons are free and some are not … I am a free person, Mary—do you know that?” The woman replied “yes, missis,” but the child continued to press the issue, asking if Mary was aware that not all people were free.⁶⁹ Just like enslaved children, free children recognized the power dynamics that existed within and outside of their families. Kemble’s daughter understood that she, at three years old, had rights that an enslaved woman did not. She had also already learned that power only functioned if others acknowledged it, as her repeated questions to Mary all served to highlight their unequal positions.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries both abolitionists and proponents of slavery worried that early exposure to the hierarchies of slavery had a deleterious effect on children of the planter class, arguing that the power dynamics of slavery did irreparable damage to their character and emotional capacity. In Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson expressed concern that being raised amid the “tyranny” of slavery had a pernicious and lasting impact on slaveholding children.⁷⁰ Writing over seventy years later, an author in Southern Planter offered a similar caution, that after extended intimacy with enslaved people “an impression is made upon the mind and heart” of slaveholders that was “sown in their hearts … in the days of childhood.”⁷¹ Some authors were more explicit about how slavery irrevocably altered the disposition and temperaments of slaveholding children, contending that slavery did not merely influence their emotions, it deadened them. In his Southern travelogue Frederick Law Olmsted observed that people who were “accustomed from childhood to see men beaten … to see other men whip women without … any expression of indignation, must have a certain quality, which is an essential part of personal honour … greatly blunted, if not entirely destroyed.”⁷²

Olmsted suggested that because the system was characterized by such ignominious actions, a child raised by slaveholders could not help but become “accustomed” to cruelty. This in turn stunted them emotionally and “blunted” their ability to possess “honour” or to fully “express” certain feelings. Solomon Northup claimed to have witnessed this phenomenon in action, observing that his owner’s son “possessed some noble qualities” but had become “pitiless” while growing up on a plantation. Nor did Northup think this was mere anecdotal evidence. He believed that if one was raised abusing enslaved people then as an adult “the sufferings and miseries of the slaves will be looked upon with indifference.” In this way Northup believed that slavery “necessarily fosters an unfeeling and cruel spirit” in members of the planter class.⁷³ So slavery not only “blunted” one’s sense of “honour,” but also apparently robbed one of the ability to feel pity, and left one “indifferen[t]” and “unfeeling.”

To counter arguments that slavery perverted young slaveholders, some proslavery authors asserted that the social conditions of slavery were instructive, helping children of the planter class to develop emotional mastery of themselves and of others. Thomas Roderick Dew challenged Jefferson’s claim that the “tyranny” of slavery emotionally impaired children of the planter class, arguing instead that “there is nothing which so much humanizes and softens the heart, as … authority.”⁷⁴ Similarly, Daniel Hundley reasoned that the very character and “dignity” of the Southern planter stemmed from “his habitual use of authority from his earliest years.” According to Hundley, wielding that “authority” imbued young men of the planter class with a “sense of the responsibility and … obligations” that was necessary to teach them “first to control themselves” and then, inevitably, to exert control over others.⁷⁵

Many proslavery authors argued that in order to achieve lasting, inter-generational bonds between master and slave the seeds of such relationships must be sowed in childhood friendships. In his defense of slave society James Henry Hammond asserted that childhood relationships with slaves helped master and slave alike “cultivate the tenderest and purest sentiments.”⁷⁶ Daniel Hundley’s proslavery essays were a paean to the trope of the loyal, enslaved childhood friend. He waxed romantic about the supposed lifelong bonds of enslaved people and “young gentlemen,” how they played side by side, enslaved people “shadowing” their masters. As they grew older, the relationship began to evolve. The enslaved person now followed the slaveholder to school, and instead of playing they hunted together.⁷⁷ Southern Planter magazine was less sentimental when justifying friendships between slaveholding children and enslaved people. One author suggested that such relationships were beneficial to the growth and self-esteem of children of the planter class, who enjoyed the company of enslaved children or adults in part “because the deference shown them makes them feel perfectly at ease.” The author even intimated that their childhood interactions with enslaved people were perfectly suited because even enslaved adults were, in his view, so childish that the “subjects of conversation are on a level with [the] capacity” of slaveholding children.⁷⁸

Sources from slaveholders and formerly enslaved people suggest that many slaveholding parents agreed with authors like Dew, Hundley, and Hammond, as they encouraged friendships between their slaveholding children and enslaved children. Edward Pollard nostalgically recounted how he “was trained in an affectionate respect for the old slaves on the plantation.” He “was permitted to visit their cabins, and to carry them kind words and presents.”⁷⁹ Though Pollard’s parents “trained” him to go “visit” enslaved people himself to maintain relations with them, other slaveholding parents were more directly involved in ensuring proper affective ties between slaveholding and enslaved children. The Auld parents made clear their investment in forging bonds between their son Thomas and young Frederick Douglass, who was charged with caring for Thomas. Douglass was presented as a gift to Thomas, who “was affectionately told by his mother, that ‘there was his Freddy,’ and that ‘Freddy would take care of him.’” Douglass in turn “was told to ‘be kind to little Tommy.’”⁸⁰ Thomas may have become attached to Douglass out of love for his “present,” or because he now had another child to play with, but Douglass’s narrative emphasized that their introduction and their first feelings about one another were mediated by Lucretia Auld. She subtly guided the growth of their relationship by speaking of Douglass “affectionately” and by giving them both nicknames. Of course, the difference in their status was also delineated. Douglass was referred to as “his Freddy,” underlining that he was more than a friend or caretaker: he was “Tommy[’s]” possession. While Douglass was warned to be “kind” to his new master, Thomas was not issued a similar injunction. In doing so, Mrs. Auld was instructing them in what emotions were expected of people in their positions, emphasizing that the job of human chattel like Douglass was to provide affection, to “care” for Thomas in every sense of the word. The effort Mrs. Auld put into the first meeting between Douglass and her son indicates how invested some slaveholding parents were in orchestrating the emotional relations between slaveholding and enslaved children.

Interactions with enslaved children had a profound emotional impact on children of the planter class. Pollard wrote enthusiastically about playing with his “sable companions” as a child, but a description of his time spent in solitude revealed even more about what he felt about his enslaved associates. Pollard recalled that when engrossed in his “own boyish enjoyments,” while “having a pleasant ride … or feasting on delicacies,” his pleasure was sometimes interrupted when it occurred to him that his “poor little slave companions” were hard at work. He also thought about “what poor food they had, and with what raptures they would devour ‘the cake’” with which he was “pampering” himself. Overcome by these thoughts, young Pollard reported feeling “gloomy, embittered, and strangely anxious to inflict pain and privation” on himself.⁸¹ Perhaps when a young Pollard contrasted his comfortable existence with that of his “slave companions” he was overcome by guilt. It is also possible that as a child Pollard used these meditations on difference and the emotions they provoked in an attempt to simulate what he thought his “poor little slave companions” felt and thus empathize with their “pain and privation.”⁸² Or perhaps Pollard described how “gloomy” and “embittered” he had felt as a child because he was writing in the sentimental mode, which romanticized sorrowful feelings and sympathy in particular.⁸³

Given the complex relations that could form between slaveholders and enslaved people, it is little wonder that some parents of the planter class were anxious about the intimacy that existed between slaveholding and enslaved children. Harriet Jacobs claimed that she “loved” her child mistress, who “returned [her] affection,” but the Flint parents were wary of Jacobs’s emotional influence over their daughter. One day Jacobs overheard Dr. Flint refer to his daughter’s “attachment” to Jacobs, while Mrs. Flint countered that the “attachment … proceeded from fear.” This upset Jacobs, as it made her wonder, “did the child feign what she did not feel? Or was her mother jealous of the mite of love she bestowed on me?” Jacobs eventually decided that Mrs. Flint’s assessment was rooted in envy, assuring herself that children were incapable of emotional guile.⁸⁴ This passage showcases the conflicting feelings planter parents could have about their children’s relationships with enslaved people. Though Dr. Flint thought his daughter was devoted to Jacobs his wife argued that this affection was false and coerced. Of course, the conversation also reflected the larger web of emotional politics in the Flint household. Since Dr. Flint was already sexually harassing Jacobs he had a vested interest in encouraging his daughter’s attachment, thereby ensuring Jacobs’s continued place in the household. The jealousy that Jacobs perceived in Mrs. Flint’s comment might have had as much to do with her worries about her daughter’s affections as they did with her growing concerns about Dr. Flint’s own “attachment” to Jacobs.

Slaveholding children also established relationships with enslaved adults, sometimes because of tensions within their families. Pollard exposed the competing affective relations of his childhood when he described his “poor ‘mammy’” who “would protect … and humor” him when he was “chided … by [his own] mother.”⁸⁵ Though his mother may have held authority over Pollard (and the enslaved woman), during emotional conflicts Pollard knew the enslaved woman would give him the “protection” and solace he desired when his mother sought to discipline or scold him. Pollard does not address the power dynamics inherent to the situation, that the enslaved woman was charged with looking after Pollard and thus had reason to be reluctant to “chide” her possible future owner. Nor was Pollard the only member of the planter class who found enslaved allies. Josiah Henson explained that his master, “Mr. R,” was the legal guardian of Francis, the master’s wife’s young brother. Unfortunately for the orphaned Francis, Mr. R was an abusive alcoholic who did not give him enough food. Henson recalled how Francis frequently sought him out, “tears in his eyes, to tell me he could not get enough to eat.” Henson explained that he made the boy his “friend for life, by sympathizing in his emotions” and “sharing” his family’s small ration of food with him.⁸⁶ When the boy needed it most, Henson provided him with emotional and physical sustenance, nurturing him in ways that his own family would not. Pollard and Francis may have found true comfort and care in the homes of enslaved people. Of course, they may also have suspected that enslaved people would be hard-pressed to turn down a request of food or sympathy from a member of their owner’s family.

Slaveholding parents may have encouraged friendships between their children and enslaved people, but planter parents were also clear that they expected these childhood relationships to end with the onset of adulthood. When Douglass returned to Baltimore and was reunited with his former friend, “Little Tommy,” it was clear that “the loving relations” they once shared had dissolved. Douglass attributed this change to the fact that Tommy now “felt himself a man” who now demanded “more suitable associates,” so “the time had come when his friend must become his slave …we must now take different roads.”⁸⁷ An enslaved child may have been a “suitable” youthful companion, but the process of becoming an adult member of the planter class entailed the evolution of relations with enslaved people, from friendship to domination. Other authors suggested that slaveholders did not organically outgrow their enslaved friends; rather, they were told what kinds of emotional relationships with enslaved people were appropriate. For example, Lunsford Lane described how his former playmates “began to order” him about, because they “were told to do so by [his] master and mistress.”⁸⁸ Evidently some slaveholding parents were explicit in urging their children down the “road” to proper slaveholding and away from their childhood relationships with enslaved people.

Saying goodbye to one’s childhood playmates was a harrowing experience for some young members of the planter class. Virginia slaveholder John M. Nelson detailed this difficult process “from painful childhood sympathy to manly callousness.” He confessed that as a youth “he would try to stop the beating of slave children,” and when they were whipped he would “mingle [his] cries with their, and feel almost willing to take a part of the punishment.” After his father chastised him repeatedly for his excess of “compassion,” Nelson “became so blunted” that he “could not only witness their stripes with composure” but also “inflict them … without remorse.”⁸⁹ Nelson’s father was unequivocal that one was not supposed to feel “compassion” for enslaved people, and he may have even ordered his son to “witness” or “inflict” punishments in order to correct those feelings. Over time Nelson learned to check his tears and feel no “remorse” at watching or administering beatings. It is telling that Nelson did not describe his feelings toward slaves as having been altered, but rather “blunted” by deliberate repression. This illustrates how slaveholding parents used enslaved people as vehicles for an emotional transition, teaching slaveholding children how to be the master of enslaved people and of their own emotions.

The primary way that parents taught slaveholding children about the emotional politics of slavery was by example. Many proslavery authors stressed the importance of modeling healthy affective relations between master and slave, for as Hundley cautioned his reader “children learn a great deal more from example than precept.”⁹⁰ This was far from a newfangled idea; almost eighty years before, Thomas Jefferson advised that children learned how to emotionally relate to enslaved people from observing their parents interact with enslaved people. According to Jefferson, when slaveholders failed to check their emotions in the presence of enslaved people “children see this and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal…. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.” Because of this, Jefferson recommended that a parent should “restrain” their “passion towards his slave,” at least whenever “his child is present.” All too often, however, parents did not guard their tempers when their children were watching. Instead, “the parent storms, the child looks on” and “catches the lineaments of his wrath,” only to later reenact this “wrath” on their own on “smaller slaves.”⁹¹ Here Jefferson warned that if parents did not control their feelings toward enslaved people then slaveholding children would swiftly absorb these emotional lessons and treat enslaved children with the same “passion” they had seen their parents display. In Jefferson’s view this was a problem of plantation management and of child development, a sign of how slavery tainted future generations.

Enslaved people also testified to the profound impact parents’ behavior had on slaveholding children’s views of affective relations between master and slave. One of Solomon Northup’s owners, a man named Epps, maintained a campaign of sexual violence, harassment, and physical abuse toward an enslaved woman named Patsey, a fact that was well known on the plantation. One day Epps demanded that Northup whip Patsey while the Epps children stood nearby with Mrs. Epps, who watched the beating “with an air of heartless satisfaction.” As other enslaved people and the Epps family looked on, all cognizant that Patsey was being punished for Epps’s infidelity and his wife’s jealousy, Northup whipped her at his master’s behest. The Epps children might not have known the full extent of their father’s relationship with Patsey, but they may have noticed that their mother was “satisfy[ied]” by the spectacle of the beating.⁹²

Northup emphasized that witnessing these daily scenes of violence left their mark on slaveholding children, noting that “the effect of these exhibitions of brutality on the household of the slave-holder is apparent.” He had watched as the oldest Epps son, on the brink of puberty, delighted in “chastising” enslaved people, especially an older man named Abram. If Epps’s son deemed the enslaved man guilty of some offense then the boy mimicked his father, “sentenc[ing] him to a certain number of lashes,” which he administered himself. The tangled knot of family ties and violence was even clearer when the boy accompanied his father into the fields “with his whip, playing the overseer, greatly to his father’s delight. Without discrimination … he applies the rawhide, urging the slaves forward with shouts, and occasional expressions of profanity, while the old man laughs, and commends him as a thorough-going boy.”⁹³

As a boy becoming a man and growing into his planter status, Epps’s son was already exploiting the authority that he possessed over an elderly and esteemed man. He may have been imitating his father’s method of punishment when he whipped Abram, but when he joined his father the dynamic grew more complex. If he had not already begun to associate pleasure with enslaved pain from watching his mother and father’s interactions about Patsey he would no doubt do so once he was repeatedly praised by his father for whipping and verbally abusing enslaved people.

As the recollections of Nelson and Northup show, as young men of the planter class grew up, enslaved people’s bodies often became a vector for father-son bonding. Enslaved people were acutely aware that they bore the brunt of the process of indoctrination as young people of the planter class who yearned to win their fathers’ love and approval learned how to be slaveholders. As a young man William Wells Brown was hired out to a Major Freeland whose favorite method of disciplining enslaved people was to tie them “in the smokehouse,” whip them, and then burn “tobacco stems” to “smoke” them. According to Brown, Freeland euphemistically referred to this ritual torture as “Virginia play” since it involved his home state’s cash crop. Brown experienced this “play” firsthand after running away. When Brown was caught Freeland “flogged [Brown] to his satisfaction” before fetching “his son Robert, a young man eighteen or twenty years of age, to see that” Brown “was well smoked.” As Robert explained to Brown, “this … was the way his father used to do his slaves in Virginia.” Clearly Freeland had taught his son that this was the best way to discipline enslaved people, and Robert saw the perverse delight and “satisfaction” his father derived from whipping enslaved people before subjecting them to smoke inhalation. It is unclear why Major Freeland made his son perform “Virginia play” rather than doing so himself. It is also unclear how Robert felt as he forced Brown to breathe in the noxious fumes. Perhaps he was reluctant, or feared disappointing his father, or perhaps he too felt pleasure and even pride at being entrusted with his father’s beloved exercise in nostalgia, domination, and violence. Regardless of how Robert felt, Brown found the son to be a quick study, proclaiming him “a ‘chip off the old block.’”⁹⁴

Through observing how adults physically and emotionally disciplined enslaved people, slaveholding children absorbed the affective norms of slavery and began exercising their ability to provoke enslaved people’s feelings, particularly fear. Pollard recalled that as a child he and his brother tormented enslaved people with what he termed “practical jokes,” ranging from pelting them with apples to ordering them to go on fake “errands” that took them away from their work.⁹⁵ Though he swore these “jokes” were not rooted in “cruelty” he confessed that they were at times motivated by vengeance. Pollard explained that enslaved adults were sometimes tasked with punishing Pollard and his brother; thus the siblings “perpetrated revenge for such ‘rough kindness’ on the old ill-natured blacks.” Even as a child Pollard experienced a specific shame or anger at being disciplined by an enslaved person. Tellingly, his response was to reassert his status, sending enslaved people on “fools’ errands” to underscore the authority he possessed over them.⁹⁶

Throughout Pollard’s narrative it appears that the “practical jokes” perpetrated against enslaved people were dress rehearsals for wielding authority and fear as slaveholding adults. Pollard wrote at length about a devout enslaved woman named Judy and how he and his brother “thoughtlessly” and “wrongly—delighted to tease and annoy her.” His brother Dick in particular targeted Judy for her religious fervor, calling her the “‘Preacher,’ or sometimes ‘Old Nat Turner,’” ominously reminding her about “the tragic fate of Nat Turner.” Not content with mocking her faith, Dick also felt compelled to intimidate the woman with warnings that if she was too outspoken she would be hanged like the insurrectionary Turner. The references to Turner reflect how much slaveholding children learned from their parents about the emotional politics of fear. Dick’s threats were meant to frighten Judy, but also betrayed slaveholders’ anxieties that any charismatic religious leaders like Judy might lead the next slave rebellion.⁹⁷ Little wonder then that Pollard believed that their bullying of Judy “was sometimes replied to in great bitterness.”⁹⁸

Young slaveholding girls also learned how to terrorize and intimidate enslaved people.⁹⁹ While traveling, Olmsted met an adolescent girl of the planter class. As they spoke an old enslaved man walked by, and she stopped him to “demand to know where he was going, and by what authority” before commanding the man to “return to his plantation.” When the enslaved man “hesitated,” she responded with “turbulent anger … threatening that she would have him well whipped if he did not instantly obey. The man quailed like a spaniel, and she instantly resumed the manner of a lovely child with me, no more apprehending that she had acted unbecomingly, than that her character had been influenced by the slave’s submission.”¹⁰⁰ This passage speaks volumes about how children of the planter class understood the nexus of feelings and power that operated in the slave South. Olmsted watched as the girl initially experienced anger, which made the enslaved man feel fear, or at least led him to “quail … like a spaniel,” in a manner so convincing that the young girl and Olmsted were fooled. She was quick to don the role of authority figure but also was swiftly appeased by the enslaved man’s obvious terror. Though only twelve, the young girl knew how to adopt different demeanors when interacting with enslaved people. As she seamlessly returned to being “a lovely child” while chatting with Olmsted she made manifest that she had learned what emotions were appropriate and inappropriate when addressing Black people or White people.¹⁰¹

While Pollard’s, Olmsted’s, and William Wells Brown’s writings demonstrated that slaveholding children recognized how to inspire fear in enslaved people, sources also indicate that some enslaved people sought to influence children of the planter class by frightening them. A Southern Planter article on the management of enslaved people cautioned that “the witch and ghost stories so common among negroes, excite the young imagination and enlist the feelings” so parents should be mindful of what fairy tales enslaved people told to slaveholding children.¹⁰² In his memoir Pollard recalled that there were a number of enslaved people on the plantation who scared him as a child, including one woman whose fables would “fill [their] youthful minds with awe, superstition, and an especial dread of being alone in dark rooms.” As he said, “We are told by her of every variety of ghosts, of witches that would enter through the key-hole … and worse than all, of awful and terrible visions that had been afforded her of the country of the dead.”¹⁰³ It is notable that these stories made Pollard and his siblings feel “awe,” which the woman may have intended. She clearly wanted them to believe that her powers were uniquely hers and not accessible by all, as she proclaimed that she was “afforded” “visions … of the dead.” Her legends may also have been calculated to keep them suspended in a state of “dread.” She spun yarns in which “ghosts” were ubiquitous and “witches” could access any room. She also told the Pollard children that a local bird that was known for its “plaintive” song was no ordinary creature; rather, it contained “the transmigrated soul of a little child that had been the victim of the cannibalism of its parents.” The enslaved woman told the Pollard children that if they listened closely they could hear the birds describing their fate in their song:

My mammy kill me,

My daddy eat me,

All my brudders and sisters pick my bones,

And throw them under the marble stones.¹⁰⁴

Many of the woman’s tales had the same effect, instilling slaveholding children with apprehension about the mundane, including fear of the dark, of birds, and of their own parents, who might eat them. All these stories shared the ominous theme that the children’s world was more frightening than they imagined and that the enslaved people around them might be more powerful than they knew. Similarly, another enslaved woman frequently told Pollard that she could speak to his dead sister, Rosalie, and that she often did.¹⁰⁵ Perhaps the enslaved woman was hoping to scare him or trying to establish some power over him as the sole channel for communicating with his sister. Such stories may also have been intended as a creative way to punish or reward a slaveholding child that they were not permitted to discipline.¹⁰⁶ In either case these enslaved women were portraying themselves as people to be feared and respected by the children who might someday be their legal owners.

Learning the Affective Norms of Slavery in Adulthood

Children were not the only ones who needed to learn the affective norms of the slave South. The writings of enslaved people and members of the planter class share the widespread notion that White people who did not grow up in slaveholding families but became slaveholders as adults had to be taught the emotional expectations of slavery, as well as how to interact properly with enslaved people. These authors contended that nonslaveholding White Southerners, Northerners, and foreigners who were transplanted to the South did not know either how to feel about enslaved people or how enslaved people were supposed to feel about them. Discussions of how newcomers to slavery were cruel or inadequate as slaveholders are indicative of the importance placed on learning the affective norms and practices of the antebellum South.

Planters found novice slaveholders to be a convenient scapegoat, while enslaved people also castigated them, with Douglass noting that “of all men, adopted slaveholders are the worst.”¹⁰⁷ While enslaved by Thomas Auld, Douglass saw the effects of such inexperience firsthand. Douglass specified that “Auld was not a born slaveholder” because he had inherited slaves through marriage. Because of this, Douglass posited that Auld did not know how to emotionally manage enslaved people, instead he “was cruel, but cowardly … at times rigid, and at times lax.” Douglass pointed out that Auld seemed aware of these norms and strived to adhere to them in order to be perceived as a feared and respected slaveholder. But Douglass found Auld’s performance wanting, noting that though Auld’s “airs, words, and actions, were the airs, words and actions of born slaveholders,” Auld could not fully or naturally embody the correct demeanor, and as a result Douglass claimed Auld “was an object of contempt” among slaveholders and enslaved people. Furthermore, Douglass claimed that enslaved people’s “want of reverence” had a profound impact on Auld, making him “fretful” and even more inconsistent. This implied that one could never truly obtain the appropriate behaviors and emotions of slavery if one was not born into a slaveholding family. Auld’s inexperience served as a cautionary tale to would-be slaveowners: if they could not instill fear, then enslaved people would disrespect them, their peers would hold them in “contempt,” and they would be “fretful” and unhappy.¹⁰⁸ According to Douglass, people who became slaveholders later in life also needed to learn how to feel about the people they enslaved. Douglass’s mistress, Sophia Auld, came from a more modest, nonslaveholding family. As a result, she did not know how to behave toward enslaved people, nor could she recognize what was and was not emotionally appropriate. Douglass outlined Sophia Auld’s atypical affective relations with enslaved people to exemplify what was considered inappropriate. First, Douglass pointed out that unlike other slaveholders Auld did not demand emotional censorship from enslaved people, because she “did not deem it impudent or unmannerly for a slave to look her in the face.” Nor did she suppress her own feelings; Auld listened to the travails of the people she enslaved, and “there was no sorrow or suffering from which she did not tear.” Rather than keep enslaved people at an affective distance, Auld offered material and emotional care to those who needed it, providing “comfort for every mourner” so that “none left without feeling better for having seen her.”¹⁰⁹ She was particularly unsure of how to feel about Douglass, her son Tommy’s companion. Douglass argued that it was difficult for her “to feel” that the enslaved boy “who was loved by little Tommy, and who loved little Tommy … sustained to her only the relation of a chattel” because she could not reconcile Douglass’s status as property with the way she felt about a child who was integral to her household and family.¹¹⁰ In detailing Auld’s unusual affective responses, Douglass shed light on the complex emotional relations that developed between slaveholding and enslaved children, and within slaveholding households, while implying that experienced slaveholders knew how to handle those affective tangles.

Douglass also witnessed how quickly new slaveholders embraced the affective norms of slavery and how that affectively altered them. Though he initially believed Sophia Auld to possess “the kindest heart and finest feelings” he bemoaned that she swiftly socialized, evolving into a cruel slaveholder. According to Douglass, this emotional metamorphosis manifested physically, as her “cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage” and her “tender heart became stone.”¹¹¹

Some slave narratives discussed the inculcation process of Northerners and foreigners who moved to the South, describing how people who had not been raised in slave states had even more to learn about the emotional expectations of slaveholders. Harriet Jacobs claimed it was “a miracle” that one slaveholder showed kindness to her family. Though he owned many enslaved people Jacobs swore that he “was not quite deaf to that mystic clock whose ticking is rarely heard in the slaveholder’s breast,” implying that unlike most slaveholders he listened to his heart in matters concerning enslaved people. In order to explain such exceptional sympathy on the part of a slaveholder Jacobs noted that “this gentleman was a Northerner by birth” who had married into a slaveholding Southern family, and that his anomalous affective reactions stemmed from this upbringing.¹¹² Similarly, in addressing why one of his owners exhibited excessive sentiment toward enslaved people, Sella Martin claimed that his mistress was a “simple-hearted lady, who had been brought up in the North” and only recently come to the South: “therefore, she had little knowledge of slavery, and still less the feelings of slaveholders.” Martin was more critical of an Italian man who bought him, deriding him because he had not been “born and bred” as a slaveholder. Rather, “he had come from a land that held no slaves” and had deliberately chosen “to stain his hands with the iniquities of slavery for mere gain.”¹¹³ Here Martin hinted that foreign-born slaveholders were worse than those raised with the institution and its norms because they could not claim they had inherited slaves or been steeped in the institution since childhood. Martin suggested that such outsiders naturally possessed a more objective perspective on slavery, and they should therefore reject the brutal system. If they still elected to become slaveholders then they were, in his view, motivated solely by greed.

Though authors of slave narratives might attest that outsiders, whether Northern or foreign-born, did not possess “the feelings of slaveholders,” they also discussed how rapidly newcomers adopted the emotional relations and practices of slavery. Jacobs remarked to her readers that “when northerners” traveled to the slave South “they soon imbibe the sentiments and disposition of their neighbors.”¹¹⁴ James W. C. Pennington declared that Northerners did not just learn to mimic Southern-born slaveholders: they quickly exceeded them in brutality, and Northern transplants “readily become the most cruel masters.”¹¹⁵ Defenders of slavery remarked on this supposed phenomenon as well. In a proslavery essay Thomas Roderick Dew declared that it was a “fact, known to every man in the south, that the most cruel masters are those who have been unaccustomed to slavery.” Because of this, he claimed that it was universally believed that Northern men who married “southern heiresses, are much severer masters than southern gentlemen.”¹¹⁶ Likewise, Hammond opined that the “Scotch and English are the worst masters among us, and next to them our Northern fellow-citizens,” arguing that because they were not “born and bred” around slavery, they were less “humane.”¹¹⁷ In this way formerly enslaved people and proslavery authors simultaneously blamed any excesses of slavery on outsiders, and they demonstrated the extent to which they believed that the affective norms of slavery were socially constructed.

* * *

Since emotions like happiness, trust, and fear were used to both challenge and maintain slavery, it is little wonder that so much emphasis was placed on children and novice slaveholders becoming adept in the affective norms of slavery. Of course, children of the planter class received very different emotional training. Like enslaved children, they learned the affective norms of the antebellum South from observing daily interactions on the plantation, from their parents, from older enslaved people, and from enslaved children. But though some enslaved and slaveholding children may have shared playtime in their youth, for children of the planter class such friendships served as a dress rehearsal for their future master-slave relations. Beginning in childhood, members of the planter class were taught how to master emotions, their own and those of others. Meanwhile, enslaved children developed an arsenal of affective tactics that they could use to ward off punishment, gain rewards, or seek comfort and affection. These techniques proved crucial for weathering the daily interactions, conflicts, and negotiations of slavery, and they also helped them survive and resist the institution as adults.

Throughout their childhoods enslaved children bore witness to the power of emotions and what sorrow, rage, love, and jealousy could do, but the majority of them also experienced a childhood that was cut short by the realization of their condition. Just as enslaved children experienced the epiphany of recognizing they were enslaved, they would also come to understand that their feelings were contingent on their bondage, that the people who enslaved them expected them to feel and express emotions differently.

From a young age enslaved people learned that the emotional politics of slavery dictated that they suppress emotions like anger or sorrow, which were deemed undesirable by slaveholders. In place of those emotions enslaved people were expected to embody a performance of happiness that was believable enough to make their owners forget it was being compelled.