American Slavery - by Volney Gay (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The real reason Americans owned slaves was not just financial. They did it because they liked it.

For the first two centuries of American history, starting with the colonists, slavery was a part of the social, economic, and governmental order. Looking back, many of us find it more comfortable to view slave owners as evil or sociopathic. The startling truth is that many were otherwise admirable.

To understand America's struggles with race relations, we must take an uncensored look at our country's involvement with slavery. We examine three questions:

- What were the pleasures of owning slaves?

- How did freedom-loving, American Christians explain ownership to themselves?

- How did they defend themselves against this double contradiction?

Answering those questions will help us face our future with greater clarity.

From the Preface to On The Pleasures of Owning Persons: The Hidden Face of American Slavery:

This book is a study of the pleasures that slavery gives to owners. This is a demanding, if not an unfathomable topic that rests upon a simple, self-evident truth. The unfathomable part is because slavery seems remote from us now in the 21st century we struggle to imagine its workings from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The self-evident truth is that millions of Americans, over a span of nearly four centuries, owned slaves because they wished to. They actively chose and maintained a way of life which they felt merited protection and permanency. A small number of these people were sociopathic, most likely between 2 and 4 percent, the usual norm for large populations.[i] Most were not. Indeed, outstanding persons, among them undoubted geniuses like Thomas Jefferson, engaged in slavery all their lives. It is difficult to understand sociopathic persons, but the vast majority of owners were like you and me, normal. Great men who laid the foundations of American freedom defended to their graves the institution of slavery. This book addresses three questions: what were these pleasures; how did freedom-loving, American Christians explain ownership to themselves; how did they defend themselves against this double contradiction?

[i] Buckels, Erin E., Paul D. Trapnell, and Delroy L. Paulhus. "Trolls just want to have fun." Personality and individual Differences 67 (2014): 97-102. They conclude, "Thus cyber-trolling appears to be an Internet manifestation of everyday sadism" p. 97.

Review Quotes

"Much has been written about the horrors of American slavery. But rarely, if ever, has a serious writer examined what psychologically 'normal' people who owned slaves derived from their power, or how they justified their participation in the South's peculiar institution even as they saw themselves as genuine Christians. Volney Gay's On the Pleasures of Owning Persons is a remarkable and penetrating look at that question and an important book for anyone trying to fully understand the nature of slavery and slaveholding in the United States." -Mark Potok, Senior Fellow, Southern Poverty Law Center "Volney Gay's achievement in applied empathy focuses upon the pleasures that Erich Fromm saw in numerous encounters: the exercise of power over another, "the power which makes him do what we want, feel what we want, think what we want; which transforms him into a thing, our thing, our possession" Dr. Gay's courageous investigation . . . reveals the fascination, revulsion, excitement, and indignation of this tragedy of the human condition." -Gilbert Herdt, PhD, Graduate Program in Human Sexuality, California Institute for Integral Studies; Chair of the Board, International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society (Lima, Peru) Volney Gay's central thesis that slaveowners took pleasure in owning slaves provides fertile ground for future scholars and artists to till. This is a necessary book, born out of Gay's experience as psychoanalyst practicing for three decades in the South. This volume will provoke significant conversations; it provides a new lens to examine events, artifacts, and writings from the antebellum South. -- Alice Randall author of The Wind Done Gone Fascinating and original. It is consistent with two observations I make as a teach of ethics: most people do what they want to do as often as they can; most people also need a view of themselves as morally good to sustain themselves, and will go to great lengths to confirm this self-righteousness. Volney Gay's book is in a noble tradition of uncomfortable truths. -- Larry R. Churchill, Ph.D., Ann Geddes Stahlman Professor of Medical Ethics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center