Existing comment:
Living in Fear
Although slaveowners asserted that their workforce was loyal, they also lived in constant fear of a revolt. White southerners prohibited enslaved African Americans from learning to read, restricted their movement, prevented them from meeting in groups, and publicly punished runaways. Slave codes also punished white Virginians who assisted blacks in violating the codes or who emancipated their slaves.
"We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is one scale and self-preservation in the other."
-- Jefferson Jefferson, 1820 |