The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South

by Kenneth M. Stampp

Winner of the Lincoln Prize 
 
Stampp’s classic study of American slavery as a deliberately chosen, practical system of controlling and exploiting labor is one of the most important and influential works of American history written in our time.
 
“A thoughtful and deeply moving book. . . .  Mr. Stampp wants to show specifically what slavery was like, why it existed, and what it did to the American people.”—Bruce Catton

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Civil War, Race, African American, The United States Of America

464 pages, paper

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Kenneth Milton Stampp, Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, was a celebrated historian of slavery, the American Civil War, and Reconstruction.

Reviews

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Classic Study Of The American Tragedy

Professor Kenneth Stampp's book on American Slavery was published in 1956-- two years after the Supreme Court's decision in" Brown v Board of Education" and at the beginning of the American Civil Rights Movement. At the time of its publication, the book was recognized as a seminal study of America's "peculiar institution". Time has not changed the value of the book.

The book attacks a picture of the Old South that attained wide currency after Reconstruction and was carried through American culture in works such as, for example, ?Gone With the Wind"-- that plantation slavery was a benign institution, part of an agrarian way of life, that was accepted by both slave and master. Professor Stampp shows that slavery had an economic, commercial basis, that it was resisted by slaves overtly and covertly, and that led to squalor, cruelty and suffering by the slaves. The peculiar institution does not merit sentimentality in any form.

In reading the book a half-century after its publication, and with some benefit of having read subsequent studies, I was struck with the moderate tone of the book. Yes, there were humane masters in an inhumane system and yes, there were variants in time and place. Stampp gives these variants their due, perhaps more than modern students would be inclined to do.

I was stuck with the tone of slavery's defenders, pre-Civil War and thereafter, describing the institution as "patriarchal". Not only is that description in error, as Stampp shows, but for readers in a time beyond the mid 1950s, it is hardly a compliment to call a society "patriarchal", even if it deserved this characterization.

There has been a great deal of writing since the publication of this book on matters such as the nature of the slave trade, the presence, or lack of it, of an indigenous culture among the slaves, and the economic viability of slavery. These studies add to the picture that Professor Stampp has drawn.
This is an essential book for the understanding of our Nation's history. Those looking for an introduction to the Ante-Bellum South could not do better than to read this book.

Robin Friedman

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very basic survey history of American slavery based on the assumption that a black man is simply as a white man with a different skin colour. In other words Stampp's presents slavery from the common-sense perspective.

Since its publication in 1956 it has been criticized from all sides. A multitude of interpretations based on psychological, sociological, and Marxist models followed all of which quickly aged and became irrelevant. Stampp's book has stood the test of time better than those of any of his critics.

Slavery was abolished in the United States because common sense said that it was morally wrong. The simplistic view was correct in the 1850s and is still correct today.

This does not mean of course that our need to understand the phenomenon is over. It means only that further research should be guided by common sense.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was supposed to read this in college and didn't. My mistake. It is considered the definitive text on the subject and now I know why. Thorough, rigorous and deeply moving. Written back when academics could write lucid English prose. I never realized how much guilt the slave owners had. I always figured they just didn't know any better, but an entire culture performed tortuous intellectual gymnastics to make themselves feel okay about the 'thingification' of other humans. Someone on this site said that every American should read this book, and, while I hesitate to tell other people what to read, I'm sort of inclined to agree. I wish I'd read it when I was supposed to.

[Jackson Childs · Rating 5 out of 5]

There seems to be some confusion about this book. Certainly, since it was published in 1956, it could be considered out of date in various ways. But, at its heart, this book is a careful and comprehensive description of slavery based on very wide research into contemporary documentation-newspapers, agricultural periodicals, census numbers, plantation records, letters, travel books, legal documents, etc.. Since it attempts to provide a description of slavery roughly from the American revolution to the civil war, and across the entire slave-holding south from Delaware to Texas, it is necessarily a general description omitting details and nuance across the whole system of slavery. But it is, in my view, extremely strong and valuable as basic history.

I found this book extremely good at providing a concrete picture-or rather, a series of pictures-of the social system of slavery, how it worked, how slaves, masters, overseers, and non-slave-holding whites lived.

The book is also an examination of the cultural beliefs and mentality that lay behind the institution of slavery. In this sense the book becomes more novelistic and also more philosophical. Stampp tries to understand the experience of slavery for everyone involved: the owners, slaves, overseers, white employers, non-slaveholding whites. In doing so he considers the arguments of slavery's defenders, as well as their more frank admissions, with a spirit of inquiry that could be offensive to readers who are not carefully considering his methods. To them it might seem he is giving standing and credibility to loathsome and odious beliefs that should only be deplored. They might feel-with some reason-that such arguments don't even deserve the respect of being heard. That's not what this book is about. However, I didn't notice a single instance where Stampp agrees with the various pro-slavery arguments he considers. Here are some examples:

-The idea that Africans were somehow uniquely suited to servitude (Stampp disagrees based on evidence).
-The idea that Africans were more suited to the malarial climates of the south (Stampp disagrees based on evidence).
-The idea that slavery was actually a money-losing proposition for the ownership class. Stamp comes to the opposite conclusion-that it was consistently profitable across the whole antebellum period, and also, that slave agriculture in particular was able to dominate the market. Smaller farmers either got more slaves and expanded or withered away in general. (Stampp shows this was simply not true across most of the ante-bellum period).
-On the last pages he considers the argument that Negroes somehow suffered less in bondage than whites would have, or that, even further, "the whites were really more enlaved by Negro slavery than were the Negro slaves." Stampp's response sums up his whole attitude I think:

"This post-slavery argument, like the ante-bellum proslavery argument, is based on some obscure and baffling logic. It is not unlike James H. Hammond's confident assertion that "our slaves are the happiest human beings on whom the sun shines"; or his complaint that "into their Eden is coming Satan in the guise of an abolitionist."

Stampp may seem understated and measured in his rejection of the whole pro-slavery mentality. For this reader that makes his case more devastating, because it is based on a mastery of the historical evidence balanced with careful critical thinking. Because ultimately his rejection of the pro-slavery argument is married to a clear-sighted view of the southern class distinctions that built on and were propagated by the system of slavery: the rule of ownership over labor. The "rights of property" before the "rights of humanity." This theme comes to a head at the end of the book and it is well worth reading the whole thing to get to that point.

[David Lessard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This seminal work is worth reading today to prevent any reimagining of what happened and/or why it happened. This scholarly work is well-researched, full of quotations to show examples (of both unusual situations and the norm), and has footnotes to show where each quotation was found. It's easy to see why so many scholars still reference it today.

[Ushan · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I took American History in college 20 years ago, the professor recommended this book; it is in fact really good. It is a short but comprehensive history of slavery in the antebellum Southern United States, drawing upon a large quantity of diaries, letters and other documents. About 40% of the population of these states, in 1860 less than a quarter in Tennessee but more than half in South Carolina, were slaves, which is to say humans reduced to the status of cattle, or chattel. Only about a quarter of Southern families owned slaves (again, this proportion varied from state to state), and half of these had fewer than five, but slavery was none the less a sine qua non of Southern economy and society. The purpose of slavery was the extraction of labor from the slaves. The stereotype of a Southern gentleman-cavalier notwithstanding, successful planters were shrewd businessmen, organizing their captive labor force like a factory owner. A yeoman farmer who owned one slave could do all farm jobs together with him; a large plantation had specialization. Some slaves were skilled coopers and carpenters; some domestic servants; however, even the work of the looked-down-upon farm laborers required skill. In 1841, a free black New Yorker was kidnapped and sold into slavery; freed in 1853, he wrote a memoir; when told to pick cotton, he picked "not half the quantity required of the poorest picker." In order to force them to labor for the owner, the slaves had to be subjected to massive brainwashing, which no military or corporation could dream of, that being black, they belong to an inferior race doomed to bondage. Both free blacks and whites who associated with slaves were transgressing the racial hierarchy, and thus threatening the established order; there were motions to expel or enslave the former and punish the latter. Where brainwashing failed, force succeeded: beating, whipping, even branding and castration; the object was, in the words of one slaveowner, "to make them stand in fear." Apologists for the peculiar institution claimed that slaves had no concept of freedom and were contented in bondage; Stampp says that there is plenty of evidence that this was not so: when offered freedom, the vast majority accepted it whatever the conditions, even emigration to Liberia. True, and there were tens of thousands of runaways, but why were there so few slave rebellions, even in the face of the advancing Union Army? There are fascinating yet disgusting discussions of the slaves' yearly cycle of labor, of their personal life, of the sale and purchase of slaves (one slave trader made his human merchandize pluck out the gray hairs or dye them black so they would look younger), of their health (infant mortality among the slaves was about twice that among the whites). Overall, the peculiar institution made business sense, which is why it took a bloody war to destroy it.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first history of slavery in the USA which I ever read, it having been recommended in junior year American History at Maine South High School. The copy read was from the library.

The major social crises I was aware of while growing up were the Cold War, overpopulation, nuclear contamination, environmental destruction and domestic race and class relations. Under the rubric of the Cold War are included the various cases of aggression by our government against such countries as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Laos, Vietnam etc. While still a grade-schooler I pretty much took everything the way the Chicago Daily News, Time and Life covered them. By high school, however, the mainstream media and my understandings of the nature of these problems had radically diverged.

My nuclear family lived in unincorporated Kane County until I was ten, but Dad's mom and her husband, grandfather having died, lived in Park Ridge, next to the city. Weekend visits to their home on Prairie Avenue were common. When there, often spending the night, one of my jobs was to go to Thompson's grocery for the paper. Much of my existential understanding of what was going on in the South during the fifties and early sixties comes from reading those papers on the way home. The pictures especially got to me: policemen with dogs attacking what appeared to be ordinary persons. It was incredible, upsetting and it instilled in me a prejudice against the southern states at an early age. Martin Luther King had yet to come to Daley's Chicago and the extent of northern hostility was as yet unapparent to me.

By the time I got to high school American history and Stampp's book, things had changed. Black power and black separatism contested with Gandhian integrationism both in the political movements I identified with and in my own heart. My natural inclinations have always been nonviolent and peaceful. Stampp helped me understand why so many black people were so fed up.

[becca 🍂]

I hate this book and I hate its ideology. I read it for the historiography part of one of my assignments at uni. The idea that the White slaveholders were more victimised by the slave trade than the slaves themselves, and were suffering from the moral oppression more than the physical oppression suffered by the slaves is utter bullshit. I found this book almost comical, I don't understand how any historian can seriously write a book on the slave trade and believe that the white slaveowners didn't have a choice in the matter, that they weren't in the wrong. As a historian, I should take every approach into consideration, but this is one that I won't be referencing to back up my own opinions.

[Tyrone Everett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Be prepared to be educated by a book that was banned in the south until 1975!

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

In general I have enjoyed the books I have read by this author and this book is no different.  In writing about slavery and exposing its evils, it is difficult for many people to demonstrate a sense of compassion and empathy not only for those who were unjustly enslaved but also those who were the owners of slave and (however reluctant) supporters of the racially based social system of the South.  Hating the sin and loving the sinner are not easy to both hold in place at the same time but the book does a good job at being honest but not cruel towards the slaveowners whose diaries he uses as sources of his exploration of the peculiar institution of the South.  Those that appreciate detailed primary source reading to demonstrate a point will find much to appreciate here.  The real telling thing is that this book manages to be both fierce and fair-minded while having sources that are heavily skewed to slaveowners sources and travelers to the South who were at least somewhat sympathetic to it.  Using sources like James Hammond's diaries (which appear dozens of times here) as a way of demonstrating anti-slavery points is a savvy move.

Coming in at a bit more than 400 pages, this book is divided into ten chapters.  The author begins with the setting of his book (1), giving the context on how it was that the South went from being part of a nation that was involved in slavery in various aspects to an area whose slaveowning culture was a peculiar institution that was nearly alone in the Western world.  After that the author talks about the working conditions of slaves and how that varied based on the size of the slaveowning involved (2) as well as the many ways in which slaves served as troublesome property (3).  The author discusses how it was that frequently outnumbered whites sought to make slaves stand in fear (4) and also how it was that the personhood of slaves was frequently in tension with their status as property (5).  The author talks about the way that slaveselling served as an unpopular but necessary part of the slave culture of the South and how it was judged as profitable (6).  After that the author reflects on mortality and morbidity as it related to slaves (7), the way that blacks and whites found themselves between two cultures (8), questions of profit and loss (9), and finally a look at the end of slavery and what it meant for blacks and whites involved in the system.

It is worthwhile for us to reflect on what slavery did, even if it has not been around in the United States for more than 150 years.  The repercussions of slavery and its end still reverberate within American politics and culture, and the resentment over slavery and the way it was ended are still matters that divide Americans.  The author seems content not to comment on contemporary matters but to focus his attention on the nineteenth century, which is definitely a good decision for the excellence of this book.  The beginning and end of this book are probably the best when it comes to developing a sense of compassion for the people involved, but those who want to see a telling look at slavery and what it did to black and white Americans will find much to appreciate here.  This book was praised solidly by some excellent historians (like Bruce Catton) and it deserves such praise.  There are certainly many books that one would want to read about slavery, and this book quotes some of them (like Northrup's classic Twelve Years A Slave), but this book should be at least one of the books one reads about slavery, to be sure.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clint Smith in his book "How The Word Is Passed" mentioned this book approvingly several times. That brought back memories. This was the first book I read about American slavery. I read it when I was in high school and it influenced my opinions on slavery since then.

Stamp convinced me that violence was at the bottom of slavery, that non-slaveholding Southerners had as much of an investment in slavery as plantation owners, that the myth of the kind slave owners was mostly a lie and , to the extend it was true, it was insignificant, that slaveowners owned slaves to make money, that slave owners, no matter how hard they tried to deny it, made money as slave breeders, that slaves where not better off than factory workers in the North and that slavery was growing, not fading, in the 1850s.

I was impressed rereading this book fifty years later. I still have the paperback copy I read in high school. I was going through an underlining phase. I underlined about half of the book. It was published in 1956. I read it around 1972. It was already an older book.

Stamp proceeded like an historian. He scoured the archives of Southern state historical societies, universities, national archives, libraries and private papers. He was able to read the letters, diaries, business records, account books, plantation books and account books from about 200 slave holding plantations.

He reconstructed slave life from those primary sources. He describes their work in the fields, their huts, their diet of pork and corn, the discipline and laws that controlled them. He explains how the slave trade operated and its central role in the institution of slavery. Each of the chapters is fortified with quotes and evidence from the contemporary records.

Stamp works hard to describe what life was like for the slaves and their owners. What did slaves think about their owners and overseers? Why did so many slaves not try to escape? What did white slave owners think about their slaves? What about white non-slaveowners? How did the laws of Southern states deal with the inherent contradictions of human slavery?

Much of the well rounded picture is from small details piled up. Christmas was the slaves only real holiday. Slave traders where considered as shady as used car dealers. Slaves could not testify against white men but could testify against other slaves. Slaves on the Louisiana rice farms had the highest mortality rates. Masters frequently specified in writing how many lashes of the whip an overseer could deliver without prior approval from the master, because excessive whipping caused scars which reduced the sale value of the slave and could decrease the slave's productivity.

The picture Stampp paints is of a society which was dominated by human slavery. The book is so powerful because Stampp writes with very little overt passion. He has a clear lucid style. He seems to be a first rate professor calmly and convincingly describing a horror.

I have read many book on slavery since this one. The research is, of course, dated after 65 years but I still think this is the best description of what it was like in the slave world of the Ante-Bellum South

[James D Bohling · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few months ago, I was at a local used bookstore sipping some coffee and came across the 1956 imprint of "The Peculiar Institution". I picked it up thinking it would be a good little book about the civil war, and to be honest I had few expectations.

What a surprise this book has been! I have read a lot about the civil war since I was a child. While most books talk of slavery in the abstract, Stampp took it down to the functional level. He talks about the actual institutional working of slavery in the antebellum south in a lucid and clear prose. This is not a polemic, but a real work on "How did the institution of slavery in the South effect the culture and people? How did it work? What were its reasons for existing as long as it did?"

A few eyeopening things for me was the eighth chapter where Stampp talked about the actual economics of slavery, and how that the owners did turn a profit from it (something many say is not true today!), and the various social and legal controls in place to keep not only the enslaved in their cast, but the non owning free people from interacting to much on a personal level with the slaves. To often apologists will try to put in their own views on that period (for instance slavery was tottering and could not survive), without actual reflection on how it was. Yes, many owners felt guilty. Few freed the slaves. Yes, some owners treated their slaves well, most did not. Yes, many in the south hated tariffs, but the Civil War was not fought over that but over slavery (a controversial statement in some colleges today!)

I have since found that this volume used to be a common college text. I would highly recommend it to those with an interest in history, and how the cultural norms that were put in place in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century to control the slave population gave rise to some of the problems we face today.

Since stumbling on this work, I am ordering a lot of Stampp's books on the Civil War.

[Vicky Shimmield · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book did a great job at laying all the facts out straight when it comes to slavery in the antebellum South. There was no bias detected on my part. The author had a very "common sense" approach to his narrative, and I feel that is the best way to write about these controversial aspects of our history. I say controversial, not because I believe it is, but because a lot of people (as we all know) are still racists to this day. The whole peculiar institution at its initial development was controversial, and when creating a book detailing a historical event that is seen differently by so many people, I believe it is important to approach it matter-of-factly without personal bias. It is the only way to get it through some individual's skulls, especially when it comes to something that is so unfortunately engrained in Southern American culture.

Even a racist who reads this book cannot deny the evidence presented by Stampp - the statistics, the first-hand accounts, the prescient knowledge that we have today. Everyone in America should either read this book or one that is as close to this as possible because it presents the true picture of what our country was founded upon. I also appreciate the fact the prose was easy to read, therefore not inhibiting others (who may not have great of comprehension) from learning.

Of course, I don't think this is one true book about USA slavery, but taking into account the time it was written I'd say it did a great job. Now more than ever is when people should be reading things like this (seeing as the current rise in bigotry in the USA is ever increasing). This book felt very much like an introduction to antebellum slavery, a prelude to the real meat & bones of what happened. There is so much to unpack when it comes to this point in America's history, and Stampp does a good job at setting the groundwork for the reader to gain a better understanding.

If only history didn't repeat itself.

[Brian Anton · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the book The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South, Kenneth M. Stampp provides deep insight into the institution of slavery. The book explores the negative impact of slavery on both whites and blacks in the Antebellum period and is largely about dispelling myths created by previous historians of the 1940’s and 1950’s who attempted to show that the African-American experience as slaves was not burdensome to them as it was to whites.

Stampp neatly organizes his argument that slavery had a negative effect on the south into ten chapters. The first one, titled “The Setting” deals with the origination of slavery in the south. He writes that slavery developed because the south’s climate created an agrarian economy thus leading to the necessity of plantations. Plantations needed laborers, and due to their cost, blacks were eventually enslaved. Slavery did not occur all at once but was built slowly over a period of years, step-by-step and decision-by-decision. He explains that southerners made themselves feel better about slavery by explaining that they did not come up with the idea and they were not the first to use it. Finally, he writes that slavery was a failure because of the negative social consequences that it created.
The next chapter, “From Day Clean to First Dark” details the daily lives of slaves and shows the conditions that they worked by explaining that they were most often overworked and that freedman who were hired for pay were treated worse because they were not the property of the owner. The third chapter, “A Troublesome Property” explains the slaves’ content or lack thereof with their lives in bondage. Stampp writes that they would say whatever they thought would make their master happy in order to avoid discipline. Alternatively, they would show their discontent with working conditions by doing their work poorly, or faining sickness, which the author believes, proves that bondsmen were unhappy with their condition.

Chapter Four, titled “To Make Them Stand in Fear” describes the way owners controlled the lives of their slaves. Some examples of this include proving their superiority over slaves with the use of force, psychologically with the use of solitary confinement, and with the use of religion and the Bible as the justification of slavery. In “Chattels Personal,” Stampp writes about the legal relationship between owners and slaves; the slave must submit to the owner and in return receive proper food, shelter, and clothing. They were treated as personal property and when the owner did not provide the necessities, there were very few instances where they would be punished. Because slaves were considered personal property, they could legally be sold. The chapter, “Slavemongering” deals with the problems that the slave trade created mostly through the separation of families. Chapter Seven, “Maintenance, Morbidity, Mortality” deals with the conditions that slaves endured while being raised, essentially they were treated like animals instead of humans, lacking appropriate health care and diets consisting of cornmeal and pork fat.

The next chapter, “Between Two Cultures” explains the social structure in the Antebellum South by showing that status was based on the number of slaves that each white person owned and that some slaves looked down on poor whites. Another problem in this chapter deals with miscegenation and rape, which led to familial problems in the plantation household such as jealousy by the owner’s wife and the ensuing sale of slave mistresses. Chapter Nine, “Profit and Loss” deals with dispelling the myth that owing slaves was more costly than not having any. Stampp details the facts that this was not true by using subjective methods and writing that records were confusing and that household expenses were often added to business expenses in ledgers. In the final chapter, “He Who Has Endured,” Stampp writes that although whites in the Antebellum South did not live in good conditions they were not slaves and clung to some freedom. Blacks faced conditions forced on them and passed down through the decades before the 1860’s. In essence, he writes that whites experienced better conditions than blacks because they had the choice to do so.

The Peculiar Institution is an important addition to the study of the history of the south because it opposed the revisionist historians of the 1940’s and 1950’s who wrote that the lives of slaves were not as terrible as previously thought and that the institution burdened whites more than it did blacks. Because of its interpretation of slavery, the book received mixed reviews. The major criticism that Stampp’s book receives pertains to his subjective interpretation of primary sources and the lack of available secondary sources in the field as well as a lack of detail in explaining his interpretation. In essence, he uses broad and sweeping generalizations instead of detail to prove his thesis. On the opposite side, other reviewers applaud his use of primary sources, writing style, format, and editing. After reading reviews it is easy to determine that they were biased toward one side or the other, lending to their positive or negative reaction to the book.

Stampp’s writing style is a positive aspect of the book because it makes it very readable and attention catching. He tells the stories of slaves with many primary sources, especially those of Frederick Olmstead who ventured through the south and had much to say about its environment and conditions. The topic alone is a popular and interesting one lending to a good read. One of his goals in the book was to make a connection of past racial issues with those in the Civil Rights Era and he does a good job of accomplishing it. His negative view of slavery is very believable and the support that he provides is sufficient. Coming out of the early Civil Rights era the book dealt with a significantly pertinent topic that is still relevant today. The study of the philosophy, ideas, causes and effects of slavery are interesting topics on their own and Kenneth M. Stampp does an excellent job of portraying all of them in The Peculiar Institution.

[Jindřich Zapletal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a classic, and it is beginning to show its considerable age.

What you will find: a broad stream of well-sourced anecdotes illustrating many facets of the peculiar institution. These are apparently selected to document the great variety of slave condition in the South and to combat various "myths", some of which sadly have currency even 70 years after the book was published.

What you will not find: an in-depth study of any specific plantation or any specific bondsman's life. Any outline of economic and ecological geography of the South (this would have organized and explained the great variety of stories neatly, and I had to look for it elsewhere). The book also mostly treats the South in isolation, so do not expect any analysis of the underground railway, or impacts of British abolition or Haitian revolution etc.

If you want to get a general feel for the tragic peculiar institution, this book is a classical and reliable source. But if you want to see actual social mechanisms in their function and motion, you need to look elsewhere.

[Daphne Vogel]

An important book whose author has done me the service of doing all the work: reading dozens and dozens of ledgers, diaries and journals, collating the data, presenting myth versus fact, presenting exceptions as the rarities they were, and calling out supposition. On the other hand, it's important to keep the context of the book - published in 1956 - in mind. I liken it to trying to examine something with a microscope while wearing two pairs of scratched sunglasses. A book this dense with facts and stats doesn't deserve a standard "star rating"; that would be absurd. But I'd definitely recommend it highly to anyone who's trying to better understand the daily life of a slave in the South, the business practices of the plantation owners, the proliferation of sentimental myths during the Jim Crow era, and the rationalizations used by slave owners to help them sleep at night while committing a grievous crime against a huge portion of humanity.

[Suzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing and credible book written in 1956. Especially helpful was the references, of which there are many, are at the bottom of each page indicating the exact thoughts and words of slaveholders written in their diaries and journals.
To me, the most profound statement in the book, “A former slave once pronounced a simple and chastening truth for those who would try to understand the meaning of bondage: “Tisn’t he who has stood and looked on, that can tell you what slavery is, — ‘tis he who has endured.” “I was black, he added, “but I had the feelings of a man as well as any man. One can feel compassion for the antebellum southern white man; one can understand the moral dilemma in which he was trapped. But one must remember that the Negro, not the white man, was the slave, and the Negro gained the most from emancipation. When freedom came—even the quasi-freedom of “second-class citizenship”—the Negro, in literal truth, lost nothing but his chains.

[KaWoodtiereads · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book took me 2 years to read...not because of its content but because I lost my copy...twice!!! While reading this book I was repeatedly astonished it was written in the 50s by a white man. The book is a historical review of slavery in America via analysis of primary sources from archives. It gives a very clear picture of the economical and social aspects of the institution and brings to life both the pro and anti arguments of the time. Because of the way it was researched, this kind of writing holds up 65 years after it was first published. It's still astonishing to me to read about this system and the damage inflicted on our society both in its inception and in the wake of its demise with reconstruction, Jim Crow, and still prevalent racism in America.

[Ted Bushman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Peculiar Institution was published in 1956, but remains one of the most thorough studies of slavery ever written. It is not written with pathos. It is not a tirade. It is not an anthem or a eulogy. It is information, mountains and mountains of it, researched and clear and thorough. The author takes us across the centuries-history of African slavery in America and paints clear images of every step of the way. Only in brief glimpses is one able to see the incredible empathy of the author for those who suffered humiliation, torture, and degradation - and his objectivity serves as an incredible salve to the shouting and tumult of all discussions of this issue. In our quest as we continue to shape our nation to match its dreams, this should be the first book on race relations on the list.

[itsthatoneperson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Peculiar Institution is considered a book that changed the views of society. During its time, the 1960s, seldom was there much on the true understandings and controversy that surrounds slavery as we know it today. The works before this work by Stampp, like Ulrich B. Phillips, all surrounds on the premise that slavery was, in some ways, good through paternalistic means. However, Stampp would challenge that belief, among many others, as he delves into his study on slavery through first-hand accounts, documents, and more. Reading this work has truly opened up many possibilities (as there was no such things as a "regular" slaveholder) of a day-to-day life as a slave and a slaveowner, and the various sub-institutions that came from slavery.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent survey of American slavery, it has held up better than most of the revisionist work which followed it. The book needs to be complemented with several other recent works, such as Wright’s “Political Economy of the Cotton South” for the economics, Gutman’s “Black Family,” and lots of recent work on slave culture, for a comprehensive picture. With the hindsight available, Kolchin’s “American Slavery” is a more complete survey, but Stampp’s work is one of the most enduring history texts of the twentieth century.

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

some of the writers choices will feel a little dated by modern sensibilities, but this still stands as the definitive account of institutional slavery. this is not an emotional look at what slavery was, but instead a look at the economics and primary reasonings behind institutional slavery as an economic system and social construct. An inescapable text if you wish to understand slavery as it existed.

[Thomas Roth · Rating 5 out of 5]

My basic understanding of how slavery in America started has changed as I read more books about it. More and more I lean towards the blame focusing on religious abuses. People had to be taught to be a slave holder by those that had the most to gain financially. That the hate still continues is indicative that humans cannot learn from their mistakes because their “leaders, betters” surreptitiously continue to espouse that whiteness is the only right.

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor Kenneth Stampp in the 1950's did us a great service by providing a scholar's in-depth analysis of virtually all aspects of the hideous, immoral institution of slavery in the American South. Comprehensive and well-documented, Stampp made no excuses for the American Slave industry as he explored it from multiple angles...each damning the institution as the anti-human practice it was.

[Harlow]

Listening to “Washington: A Life” (2010) and the narrator just read “peculiar institution.”

Thinking about this book that was a college textbook when I was in my 20s.

While President, Washington enslaved 170-180, including indentured servants. Looking forward to reading “The Only Avoidable Subject of Regret” (2019) and “Never Caught” (2017). A visit to Mt. Vernon is in my future.

[Bill V · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a very good read. The author knows how to write in an interesting fashion. He examines the institution of slavery in essentially every possible facet. He breaks down the analysis from moral, economic, legal consideration, among others as well as view how this impacted the relationships between Blacks and Whites (both slave holding and non slaveholding). I'm glad to have read this.

[Henry SmithT · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book for the understanding of our nation’s history. I think the scariest and most applicable parts of this book are quotes by southerners at the time. I was struck by the way that they made up their own twisted logic to defend an institution that they benefitted from and had no desire to see go away.

[Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

If one wants to change the course of Americas current direction they only need to pass out copies of these literature. If that does not change the individual then know your are in the presence of evil and guard your soul.

[Bookmore B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful although I have read historical fiction regarding slavery that touched on a lot of the topics Stampp covered. I did learn some new things. It is not fiction, so it can be a bit dry but educational.

[Bronwyn Echols · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant book!!!