The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South

One of John W. Blassingame’s reasons for revising and expanding The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South was to further investigate the role of religion in the history of slavery and the history of the South. Religion was crucial in understanding how plantation owners perceived and tried to manage slavery. As Blassingame writes in his preface to the new edition, “The white church quickly emerged as the key institution which had to be analyzed in order to understand the most crucial aspects of Southern antebellum society” (viii).

Blassingame emphasizes that religion is a powerful tool for control, survival, and resistance. White enslaved people in Islamic nations were torn between their native Christianity and the pressure to convert to Islam, with some assimilating into Arabic culture and becoming devout Muslims (60). For African American enslaved people in the South, Protestant Christianity helped them become acclimated to Southern culture—but also helped them develop their own interpretations of Christianity and their own culture. This is in contrast with the experiences of enslaved people in Latin America, where Christianity was more closed off to them (65-71).

Protestant Christianity also influenced how plantation owners treated their enslaved people, as it drove wealthy Southerner guilt over slavery (268). This guilt was recognized as enough of a threat to the continuation of slavery that politicians like John C. Calhoun and white ministers tried to separate Christianity from the issue of slavery and promoted religious pro-slavery messages (79-83). Christianity became a vehicle for enslaved people to hope to change their “earthly situation and divine retribution for the cruelty of their masters” (133). Although both Black and white ministers were encouraged to preach obedience to enslaved people (132), images and narratives from the Bible such as God’s liberation of the Jewish people from Egypt were used in spiritual gatherings and by leaders of slave revolts like Nat Turner (144-46, 221). Christianity may have initially been used by the plantation owner class to try to control enslaved people—however, its images and narratives fueled slave solidarity and acts of resistance.