Talk:Magnolia Plantation (Derry, Louisiana)

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Forced labor, enslaved people, etc.

@Dhtwiki: has reverted my edit with this explanation: "Not a summary of article (i.e. detail in lead that isn't in article); unsourced (and can we be so specific about who was enslaved), wordy ("enslaved people" instead of "slaves"), etc." That's a good catch on "founded as"; you're right that it's not documented here that the plantation was founded as a forced-labor farm. But it was certainly "Long operated as a forced-labor farm," as the rest of the second sentence (and various of the cited sources) makes clear: "...one of the most intact 19th-century plantation complexes in the nation, as it is complete with a suite of slave cabins..." It is important to be explicit about the source of labor, as some (if vanishingly few) plantations were operated without the forced labor of enslaved people. And you're right that the article contains no sources that plainly state that the owners were white and the enslaved people black, although this can be reasonably be inferred from the American system of slavery of which this plantation was a part. And finally, using two words instead of one ("enslaved people" instead of "slaves") isn't being particularly wordy, and it follows what appears to be the growing consensus way to refer to people who were enslaved: in a manner that "separates a person's identity from his/her circumstance." So for now, I suggest: "Long operated as a forced-labor farm worked by people enslaved by the land's owners..." Sound good? PRRfan (talk) 21:18, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

@PRRfan: I was objecting to so much material being put in the lead that wasn't developed in the body of the article. And it would be nice to have more evidence presented on how the plantation was run before inferring too much from generalities. The use of "enslaved people" still seems wordy. Its formulation seems prescriptive and contradictory, as if arbitrarily changing from "slaves" to "enslaved people" is supposed to lend dignity to those you are also making sure to portray as oppressed. There's also the matter of using "enslaver", "enslaving", etc., to refer to owners who had probably merely purchased or kept slaves, rather than limiting such terms to those who actually reduced people from being free to being in bondage. Dhtwiki (talk) 11:16, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Fair points all. Still, there seems to be no real question that Magnolia was run as a forced-labor camp. To continue to develop this thread in the article body, I've added material from the National Park Service's webpage about the farm, and I note with interest that it uses the formulation "enslaved persons," which, again, and not to overly appeal to authority, is how more and more historians are writing about them. As for "enslaver" being better applied to someone else along the kidnapping-and-bondage supply chain, I'd welcome your thoughts about better ways to name the various roles. But I think that "enslaver" applies just as much to the planter as to the kidnapper or ship captain or trader: the farmer who purchases an enslaved person, brings him to his farm, and holds him there to labor against his will is very much "enslaving." PRRfan (talk) 18:40, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

I've fussed with your recent addition but haven't changed anything significantly. However, I think that it's somewhat confusing, as it doesn't say what fraction of the "over 6,000 acres" was constituted by this plantation, nor how many of Ambrose II's slaves worked here. Also, "Cotton and other crops..." is vague but implies that cotton was the main crop (not sugar with such a large slave holding?, not other crops in rotation or to grow, rather than purchase as so many did, food crops to satisfy the needs of those who resided on the properties?). With regard to the number of slaves owned: no census records that might show breakdown by sex, age, occupation?, no notices of runaways in local papers, the sorts of notices that researchers such as Phillips and Stampp made such interesting use of and which went far toward making individuals out of the slaves when so much other detail was lacking?

"enslaved persons" is just needless verbiage without being adding to specificity ("field hand" (or "half hand", "full hand", etc.), "house servant", "slave woman", etc., are the sorts of terms that would start to make individuals of a mass of people, where "enslaved persons" does nothing of the sort). But that's not as bad as calling all slave owners "enslavers", which takes a term with a specific denotation and applies it where it isn't really applicable, and seemingly to use as evil a term as possible to tarnish all slave owners, who sometimes were benevolent protectors, even if not many were, if the memoirs of those held on other Louisiana cotton farms, such as Solomon Northup and Henry Bibb, are any indication. Dhtwiki (talk) 00:23, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

You seem to have read more than many people about this topic, which leaves me a bit confused as to why you think a person who pays others to kidnap, traffic, and transport people — indeed, whose cohort are the only reason slavery existed — and then who holds those people in bondage and forces them and their children to labor for his profit does not deserve the term "enslaver". I am also a bit confused as to why the conditions of the enslavement might justify not calling one who enslaves an enslaver. PRRfan (talk) 15:47, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I think I've already explained myself. "Enslavement" involves reducing someone from the state of being free to that of being a slave. Solomon Northup's kidnapping would be enslavement; Henry Bibb's selling himself (representing his master at the time) to Francis Whitfield would not. You could say that the demand for slaves perpetuated slavery and that slave owners induced such kidnappings as Northup suffered, but Whitfield was not an enslaver, although he turned out to be the sort of owner who—although he was willing to purchase Bibb and his wife, a crucial pre-condition for Bibb, who didn't want to be separated from her—could give Edwin Epps (Northup's most terrible master) competition for being wantonly cruel toward his slaves. Dhtwiki (talk) 15:53, 21 October 2020 (UTC)