Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South. By James Oakes.
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990. Pp. xxii, 246. $22.95.)
In Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Mrs. Bird asks, "What could induce you to leave a good home, then, and run away, and go through such dangers? The woman [Eliza] looked up at Mrs. Bird, with a keen, scrutinizing glance...` Ma'am,' she said, suddenly, `have you ever lost a child?"' In this telling scene between Eliza and a northern woman who helps her, Stowe struck the moral cord in the hearts of many middle-class, religious families. The destruction of the slave family is one repeatedly analyzed by historians and typically placed among one of the most destructive affects of the peculiar institution. Recently, micro-analysis works such as, "The African-American Family" (1998) by Leslie Owens, have successfully divorced the individual from society, losing its linkage to the bigger picture. In James Oakes' second book, Slavery and Freedom, Oakes declares that the destruction of the slave family is ultimately a result of slaves being `outsiders' from Southern society. Oakes, in a similar light to works such as the eminent historian Kenneth Stampp's Peculiar Institution, examines fundamental questions of Southern antebellum history, the structure of slavery, the relationship between slaves and their masters, as well as the politics of slavery. Oakes argues, "This is not a study of the origins of the Civil War so much as the "southern road" to it...These, then, are essays in interpretation, frankly exploratory and by intent suggestive rather than definitive." (xx)
Oakes convincingly argues that since slavery is always defined as the complete denial of freedom within a society; freedom is "inescapably" tied to the way a society defines slavery. Drawing on lessons learned from other `slave societies' such as ancient Greece and Rome, Oakes writes that the Old South's slavery touched every aspect of life in the south. "It dominated the social structure, drove the economy, and permeated the political system." (40) By the time of the American Revolution, the North and South were at the crossroads of exceptionalism; yet as Oakes writes, "New World slavery was itself the servant of the driving force of capitalism." (52) As Oakes writes, "American masters were the first in history whose power depended on commercial relations with a capitalist world that was ultimately more powerful than all the slave societies put together." (53)
A cogent idea, Oakes lauds the fugitive slaves for forcing change in America and ultimately bringing freedom to four million enthralled peoples. He writes that the reality of fugitives brought the Northern `liberty laws' face-to-face with the Constitutions protection of property. Slave resistance, in the form of runaways, according to Oakes, is ultimately what helped divide the nation toward war and emancipation. Oakes writes, "Many citizens who were perfectly prepared to defend the masters' right to own slaves were increasingly unprepared to let the slaveholders exercise their privileges as masters at the expense of northern liberties and safeguard." (173)
In relations between slaveholders and nonslaveholders, Oakes writes, that the planter class often offered minor concessions in order to solidify the yeomen's support for slavery- a view echoed a decade later by historian Sean Wilentz. However, Oakes contains that it is not these concessions but rather racism that is the ultimate unifier of support for slavery. "Racism thus had the one advantage that all dominant ideologies must have to be effective: it meant such different things to different people that it could bring together those for whom no other terms of agreement were available." (131) While, Oakes discusses the important racism served in unifying the South, he make no attempt to trace the divergence of white supremacy in the North which would only grow stronger as the North looked to keep slavery were it already existed as a way to oppress blacks- slave and free. Southerners, on the other hand, looked to spread slavery through the territories as a way to maintain their own unique form of white supremacy.
Another critique of Oakes' work comes in the form of his perpetuating of the American `yeoman' farmer myth. As the eminent Jeffersonian scholar, Joyce Appleby demonstrates in her article, "Commercial Farming and the `Agrarian Myth' in the Early Republic," historians have placed an over emphasis on the "romantic myth of the rural self-sufficient" farmer. Oakes resists continuing this trend by writing, "Whereas slaveholders produced first for the market and tried in addition to cultivate subsistence crops, yeomen farmers produced first for their own subsistence and tried in addition to cultivate marketable commodities." (107) However, by labeling nonslaveholders of the Old South as yeoman, it derives the very connotation Oakes is trying to avoid.
Nevertheless, Slavery and Freedom is a seminal synthesis of scholarship, were Oakes brilliantly blends the major works into a coherent, highly readable study of slavery. Showing deep reflection, Oakes adds new interpretations as well as new questions to a century-old debate that has raged within academia. Through the use of new and obscure sources Oakes work is thought provoking and significantly helps further ones understanding of slavery's relationship to freedom, and will doubtlessly be a reference for students of the peculiar institution for years to come.
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