Treatment of slaves in the United States

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The treatment of slaves in the United States often included sexual abuse and rape, the denial of education, and punishments like whippings. Families were often split up by the sale of one or more members, usually never to see or hear of each other again.^[1]

Antebellum public debate In the decades before the [American Civil War], defenders of slavery often argued that slavery was a positive good, both for the enslavers and the enslaved people. They defended the legal enslavement of people for their labor as a benevolent, paternalistic institution with social and economic benefits, an essential bulwark of civilization, and a divine institution similar or superior to the free labor in the Northern United States.^[2][3]

Some slavery advocates asserted that many slaves were content with their situation. African-American abolitionist J. Sella Martin countered that apparent "contentment" was a psychological defense to the dehumanizing brutality of having to bear witness to their spouses being sold at auction and their daughters raped.^[4][5]

After the Civil War and emancipation, white Southerners developed the pseudohistorical Lost Cause mythology to justify white supremacy and segregation. This mythology profoundly influenced the mindset of white Southerners, influencing textbooks well into the 1970s.^[a] One of its tenets was the myth of the faithful slave. In reality, the enslaved people "desperately sought freedom". While 180,000 African-American soldiers fought in the United States Army during the Civil War, no enslaved person fought as a soldier for the Confederacy.^[7]

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