Slave Breeding

For this blog I’ve chosen H-Slavery. I followed the thread “Query II on Slave Breeding”. A teacher opens up the discussion by recalling a past question which he posted and a consensus was reached. On the terms of slave breeding the respondents to the earlier query confirmed that slave owners would tend to shy away from forced mating because it “…would have produced morale problems” (Motter 9/5/2000). He goes further to discuss that in his Afro Americans in history course they came about a passage which in fact does give evidence of a specific slave owner buying a female in order to impregnate her, in which the children would be valuable assets. He questioned whether this was a just a rare case, or if this was a “dirty little secret” kept from historians.

The first response was from a Catherine Clinton who did not offer any titles. She believed that male slave holders and their relations with their female slaves was a underrepresented in scholarly literature. She gave the specific example of Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Heming’s. She goes further to claim that she was reached “enough evidence” to state that slave master’s were willing to interfere in any part of a slave’s life. How much is enough evidence? What would have been helpful are the resources that helped her come to this conclusion. However she does make the good point that a nickname was given by slaves to other slaves who would breed for their masters. Why would a nickname be given if it was not a common practice? She did not state where she found this information concerning nicknames.

From here it reaches to a debate between Paul Finkelman (who states that he is a distinguished professor) and Clinton. He claims that the particular evidence offered by Douglass was not enough to claim “breeding”. In his next post he argued that “Catherine is really wrong” pertaining her claim on Thomas Jefferson. He states that Jefferson did not use Sally for breeding and that poor word choice was being used.

Clinton was quick to respond, claiming that Finkelman misread her. She states that he confused her comments on Jefferson and that their may be in fact more evidence to the contrary of slave breeding. She does not offer any once again.

In the next post Finkelman apologizes to Clinton. He however does claim that she has not offered solid evidence. He seems to challenge Clinton. I did notice that the topic swayed from slave breeding to Thomas Jefferson. Clinton responds by stating that she is too busy to answer these questions at the moment. She makes a final note to promote her book. I would understand is she was in fact too busy but did she ever respond to Finkelman’s challenge?