4 - Loyal and Loving Slaves
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
My husband's influence over the slaves is very great, while they never question his authority, and are ever ready to obey him implicitly, they love him!
– Frances Fearn of Louisiana[My mistress] didn't never do anything to make us love her.
– Annie Hawkins of TexasSouthern masters – at least a great many – needed to feel loved by their slaves. Some of the clearest expressions came from Virginia. Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, a political and constitutional scholar, maintained that slaves naturally learned to love their masters through everyday intimacy. John Coalter, a lawyer and planter who had difficulty controlling his slaves, wrote to his wife, “To all who love me and shew it by doing their duty give my love and assurances of best services in return.” The theme continued well into the twentieth century. Lily Logan Morrill described her mother, Kate Virginia Cox Logan, as confident that “the poor darkies adored her.” She effected that “affectionate tone so unconsciously used by southern aristocrats to engender devotion and yet retain respect among colored retainers.” Morrill's illusions did not stop there. The slaves’ “pathetic devotion” deflected attention “from their own race” and turned them “whole-heartedly toward their masters’ families.”
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- Fatal Self-DeceptionSlaveholding Paternalism in the Old South, pp. 60 - 88Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011