March 16, 2023
Led by Linda Freedman
This book is an important resource as of one of the few journalistic observations of slavery conducted and written before the Civil War. While descriptions of slavery in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" swept the nation, it described life on one slave farm. These writings were an effort to provide a broader observation of numerous farms in several Southern states.
Readers find interviews and descriptions of farms, slaves, slave owners, and farmers using labor methods other than slavery in Southern states. These bring forth many compelling details of 1850s Southern farm lives, without knowledge of the impending war and its outcome that slavery would be abolished. While the descriptions are provided with journalistic integrity, the results helped enrage readers against slavery. While there are slaves expressing varying degrees of satisfaction and misery, and there were slave owners who cared more about their slaves than others (most often in the smaller farms), the brutalities reported about cruel masters and overseers shocked sensibilities. Even Olmsted broke observation neutrality in reporting a debate with a slave owner who noted the law then permitted him to beat both his wife and his slave, so he sees no difference, to which Olmsted felt compelled to reply that the law will act to protect the abused wife but no Southern laws then acted to protect the abused slaves.
Olmsted delivered a mathematically descriptive analysis that slavery was not economically efficient. Paying slave labor low incomes for life produced workers little motivated to work hard. Using violence as a motivation only produced workers who worked at levels just enough to avoid punishment. Slaves farms were further inefficient as owners provided housing and care to slaves for life meant that only a portion of the slave population was economically productive. One farm, rather than risk their life investment in slaves, hired Irish itinerant workers for dangerous work, The author provided examples and data showing that farms that had higher paid non-slave workers were far more productive and more profitable. In addition, the existence of a large number of low income employees was a damper on the Southern economy as they had little purchasing power to purchase goods.
The book editor Arthur Schlesinger notes Olmsted hoped the Southern states would recognize the inefficiency of their slave system and end it on their own accord. He observes some abolitionists denounced these writings for not taking a moral stance against slavery. These were meant as depictions as to what was observed without commentary. They remain as a great collection of slave life descriptions published before the Civil War
Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2015This is a profound book. It's shocking in its content. It's not any intellectual arguments that make the book great. Just the descriptions of what Olmstead finds day in and day out on his travels is enough. The moment Olmstead crosses into Virginia the roads stop, there are no towns, no infrastructure, and the whole countryside seems primitive. There is no incentive in the South to build civic institutions, even roads. As Olmstead travels deeper into the South, into the new South, the frontier of Mississippi and so on, conditions get worse and worse. To me the description of the poverty of the South alone was an indictment of the plantation system and the independent poor farmers who lived there as well. The book is a bit heavy plodding (for me anyway), but Olmstead can show a sense of humor, and I remember in particular his description of a day in Virginia when he is prancing in delight on a beautiful morning on a fine filly and he gives a blow by blow of his trying to find a plantation house when there are no directions, no roads, but it's the description of the day that was delightful and telling. This type of original source is essential reading to understand what history books will never be able to tell you… what it was really like.
Frederick Law Olmstead travelled extensively throughout the south during the antebellum period, as reflected in this book. He considered the effects of slavery on both blacks and whites and found it to have pernicious effects on both. Although written prior to the Civil War, the book (actually a series of extensive selections from the three original volumes based on his newspaper articles written during his travels)provides a rather indepth and refreshing look at well-known history and looks at the diverse roles played by blacks, white southerners, (and northerners!) in slavery. He also examines their views on the slave issue itself: some nascent Southern abolitionists and colonialists, as well as advocates of slavery, appeared rather intelligent and some otherwise. Many considered slavery an insoluble problem and others defended it as a necessary evil which benefitted blacks and whites alike(!). After completing his tour (including a rather interesting situation in which a black slave seriously injures a biracial runaway, has him clapped in irons and sent to jail - much to the amusement of some white southerners - & an enlightening discussion, especially in light of Talty's research showing persons of pure white descent, including adult foreigners and children who were originally indentured were kidnapped or illegally sold into slavery, of how demeanor would be an adequate determinant of whether or not a "white" slave was really free or not), he provides a critical analysis of slavery and its effects on the south.
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Critical review--
If you admire Olmstead, this is worth the effort to read his actual impressions of the south. Most of his biographies touch on this, but few explain the importance of this experience in his later life.
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