It's History, Yes, but at Least a Little More Accurate

Last year I was fortunate enough to enroll in an extremely fascinating and in depth class that studied the Civil War and Reconstruction.  Although our class only briefly focused on the details of slavery (we had to get through almost one hundred years worth of information in a semester) I started reading Kindred with some knowledge already of what life on a plantation was like.  What was really interesting to me was that Dana had some of the same initial reactions as I did.  In one scene, the first time Dana walks into the cookhouse, she mentions that “I was glad to see [children] there.  I’d read about kids their age being rounded up and fed from troughs like pigs” (72).  Like Dana, I was relieved that the children in this book weren't fed like animals (which would have given me another reason to despise the Weylins).  But this statement struck me because I remembered reading a slave’s account in my Civil War class, and this was the exact situation the slave described.  (There were some other accounts that related to food, but none so awful as this.  Perhaps, that’s why I remembered this one.) 

I have to admit that like Dana, I noted how much better the slaves on Weylin’s plantation were treated.  Granted, they were still slaves, and the whole idea of slavery is appalling.  Tom Weylin wasn’t a kind slave owner, but he could have been a million times worse.  But it really shouldn’t be that surprising to me.  Many of the slave narratives I read varied.  Some detailed horrible conditions, cruel owners, bad supplies, and the like.  Others described controlling, but kind masters and had generally good living conditions.  One account even mentioned that the mistress of the house would let the slave children eat at the dinner table and she taught them to read.

The thing is, it’s the horror stories that stick in our minds.  It happens even nowadays.  When we think of slavery we think of slaves being whipped every five minutes, doing backbreaking work for twenty hours a day, and having sadistic and cruel masters.  In reality (according to my Civil War professor), most masters were neither excessively cruel nor overwhelmingly nice.  The majority fell somewhere in between.  (The Weylins are a good example of this.)  And it makes sense.  Slave and plantation owners are businessmen in the simplest sense.  You don’t want to destroy your “merchandise” (it sounds awful using that word, but I’m sure that’s how slave owners saw it), but you certainly don’t want it to destroy you. 

So in reality I see much of my own preconceptions in Dana.  History is history and we can only really know what we’re told.  Kindred, in that sense, was interesting.  Yes, it’s based off our ideas of history, but it transcends them.  It presents a more factual picture of life on a plantation (at least in my opinion) compared to other works based on that time period.  But perhaps I’m wrong.  How can I know?  I haven’t been to the past. 

(And now reading over this, I’m wondering if perhaps I should have saved some of this for my term paper.  Hm.  Maybe you’ll forget I wrote this by the time you have to read my paper.)