Inventing New England's Slave Paradise

Book excerpt: Many 19th and 20th century historians have argued that Northern slavery was mild and that master/slave relations were relatively harmonious. Yet, Northern slavery, like Southern, was characterized by the conflict between the masters' desire to control their slaves and the slaves' resistance to this domination. For a variety of political, social, and intellectual reasons, 19th and 20th century historians ignored this inherent conflict in discussions of Northern slavery. Fitts' research focuses on how and why historians sanitized the history of slavery in Narragansett, Rhode Island, and then shows the inadequacy of these interpretations by examining several of the planters' and slaves' conflicting strategies of control and resistance. Topics include how planters used physical punishment, legislation, and the threat of sale in an attempt to control their slaves, and how slaves resisted through violence, running away, and non-violent crime. Fitts also examines the plantation landscape as a site of symbolic contestation and includes a chapter on slave names. (Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 1995; revised with new preface)