Slavery was called the "peculiar institution," and it was stoutly defended by those who benefited rom it, the white plantation owners in the South, just as is was vehemently oposed by abolitionists in both North and South who saw it as an evil. Racism developed out of the slave era, though some find that racism was less a feature of that era than we might expect today and that racism developed after the freeing of the slaves as a way of keeping them separate from whites. Slavery was a business for some, an economic necessity for others, and for those enslaved, a way of life from which they could only rarely escape.
Attitudes of superiority were used to control the slave population. Some historians paint a picture of a slave population made submissive by the conditions that existed as the slaves had their African heritage destroyed and were made into helpless dependents in the New World. Historians more recently have found a different picture. Considering the harsh punishments meted out to slaves attempting to escape, the vast number that did try and even succeeded shows a rebelliousness at odds with the picture of a submissive population. Fear of slave revolts was a permanent part of plantation life, and there was an intricate and powerful system in place to control the slaves. The slaveowners used this system to maintain their labor supply and their way of life. The system was both subtle and crude and involved every device that social orders use to keep power and wealth in their own hands. The system was both physical and psychological. Slaves were taught discipline and were also impressed over and over with the idea of their own inferiority and to "know their place." They were taught to see blackness as a sign of subordination, to be awed by the power of the master, to merge their interests with those of the master, and to ignore their own individual needs. Among the means for effecting this were the discipline of h...