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Book Review
The Slave Community
Plantation Life in the Antebellum South
Pages 436
John W. Blassingame.
Details sexual behavior, courtship rituals and wedding ceremonies, childrearing,

familial responsibilities, vocabulary, and discipline in Black pre-Civil War culture and the

slave family. Slave personalities came in a variety of shapes and sizes. All of them was

Sambo. Rather than fully identifying with his master and submitting to him, the slave retained

many aspects of his African culture. The slave was able to maintain his personal autonomy

thanks to his relative independence. This is one of the first books to tell the story of slavery in

America from the perspective of the slaves. This study posed a challenge to historians who

believed that Black Captives on Rural south were placid and servile, and flourished from a

fascistic master-slave bond. The author uses psychiatry to deduce from escaping slave

narratives published in the nineteenth era that the enslaved created their own civilization and

that slaves had a variety of personality types. He argues that historians have distorted the

picture of plantation life by concentrating on the slaveholder, thus "robbing the slave of any

meaningful and distinctive communal identity."

"Slaves battled their masters for cognitive and emotional survival on the plantation.

Slaves fought in different ways to maintain their manhood despite being uneducated,

unarmed, and outnumbered." The war is examined through the experiences of the captives

themselves in this fascinating and special study. The author disproves the portrayal of the

slave as a weak, cuddly creature with no incentive, purpose, or integrity. He follows the

evolution of the slave's personality traits, explores enslaved ideology robust approach, and

strongly suggests that the subject had a rich values and norms background that was hidden

from his slave oppressors. This book goes inside the slave quarters to reconstruct the slave's
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family life, music, religion, and folklore, unlike many other accounts of slavery that

concentrate on the outside. He shows how well the slave was able to assert control over

facets of his own life though wearing a costume of subservience dictated by the grim realities

of the estate. The author uses socio-psychological viewpoints to redefine master-slave

connections. He incorporates the perspective of the planter and the impression of the traveler

to create a three-dimensional image of plantation life that effectively distinguishes mythology

from historical fact. — taken from the book jacket

Black autobiographies and other historical sources are used to examine the personality

and history of the plantation slave. And the best that scene about this book is how

Blassingame employs psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan's interpersonal theory to explain the

actions of slaves on antebellum plantations in The Slave Community. According to Sullivan,

"significant others" were the primary determinants of conduct. The dominant-submissive

axes govern interpersonal activity.

I recommend readers and interested parties to drink the outwitted wisdom in this text

and learn more about the wisdom spilled in the text. The book, like most personal records,

offers a glimpse into the wider world. In this way, the slave writers present the observations

of a participant observer on the broader slave society. As an eyewitness, the author introduces

the reader to a wide range of issues encountered by the slaves and thus knowledge and sense

is instilled.