Free or Not to Be Free?

1
Free or Not to Be Free?

• Freedom was actually the aberration rather than
  the norm in the 1600s. In what ways would people
  be not be free? Yet England prided itself on
  being a free country without slavery. So how
  do the English colonies become slaveholding ones?

2
Slavery is not Static or Monolithic

• Why did so many students and historians tend to
  view all slavery as antebellum slavery. What are
  some of the ways that you would expect slavery to
  change over time and place?

3
Look At The Numbers

• 75 of Southerners did not own slaves. Yet they
  generally viewed slavery as an institution worth
  preserving. What factors would explain this?
  What sources do we need to consult?

4
Nobodys Average

• The average slave did not belong to the
  average owner. How do we explain this? How
  might a slaves life change if he went from being
  owned by a planter with over 100 slaves to being
  owned by a man with only 2 or 3 slaves? What
  changes would he experience?

5
Slave-owning Presidents

• Nine of our first 12 presidents owned slaves.
  What does that say about the institution and the
  United States early history?

6
Extremes

• Slavery is easy to take to extremes. Should
  historians avoid them?

7
Part of the Big Picture

• What are the dangers of studying slavery in a
  vacuum? How can we better integrate it into the
  overall story of American history?

8
Orlando Patterson and Eugene Genovese