All of this is complex and cannot be summarized with a single paragraph or two. Your comments are excellent, especially the divide between slaves taught to read and write and all others. One unfortunate outcome of the abolition movement was the enactment of anti-manumission laws which brought an end to a practice of freeing selected slaves. I think that patronizing is a good choice of word to characterize the attitude of white society, especially among the women.
My wife’s 2d great grandmother was a plantation owner and slave owner. Her husband had been killed in a gunfight in Falcon, Arkansas in 1858. When the Union Army began to make an appearance in Southwest Arkansas, she packed up the entire household: children, cousins, slaves, and the livestock and went to Bastrop, TX where relatives lived. Her grandson wrote a story in a Wild West magazine about their journey. He wrote that his grandmother freed her slaves at the end of the war and when she returned to Arkansas, most of the former slaves wanted to go with her.
Bunk. The Union Army freed her slaves and they didn’t want anything to do with the good old life on the plantation (It had been burned anyway). When she left, none of the former slaves went with her.
Again, I’m really enjoying your posts & this thread as a whole.
You say’ “patronizing is a good choice of word to characterise the attitude of white society, especially among the women.”
That comment touches on other complex issues WRT the peculiar institution.
White Christian women married to plantation owners had to produce an heir or two, then feign a ladylike disinterest in sex, while pretending not to notice the strong resemblance to her husband & sons all the light-skinned little “pickanninnies” on the plantatation bore.
The white women knew the slave women were attracting their husbands’ attention & even genuine affection in some instances.
The offspring of these liasons were more likely to be freed, not only because they were part white, but to get rid of them, lest they try and claim any inheritance.
So, yes, I’d agree, patronizing/ condescension does aptly characterise even the more compassionate treatment of slaves by their white masters.