Tuesday Voice: The plantation of the mind

It rots more than 
the soul of the South

By Ed Rogers

I was taught in school that a plantation was a very large farm that was owned by one person or one family, and they were normally white. Because of the magnitude of the farm it required a sizable workforce. This workforce came in the form of slaves. Not all slaves were black, as we have begun to think of slaves. In fact, before Africans were imported to the Americas, the slaves came from the prisons of Europe. However, unlike the black slaves that followed, these men and women could work off their sentence within a prescribed number of years – usually seven or fourteen – and become free.
    The idea of freeing slaves after a set number of years became a problem. The crops needed tending and if the shipment of new prisoners was late, the crop could be lost. However, no plantation owner wanted to see one of his own go under, so there was a lot of slave lending. This added an unwanted hardship to both parties, however. The plantation owners married within their peer group and most were related by the time of the Civil War. As an example, Robert E. Lee’s mother married her first cousin, John Carter. After all, these were the Lords and Ladies of the New World, and the blood line, the money, and the power had to remain with the Right People.
    Most of the plantations at the time were located in Virginia, and the livelihood of the towns, and even of the small farmers, seemed to depend on the success of the plantations. So every few months a new batch of convicts would be set free and the locals of Jamestown, Virginia, for example, had to endure the population growth of criminals walking their streets. These people had little or no money, and there was no work for them. Moving west was out of the question – that land belonged to the Indians, and the British Army enforced the Indians’ right to that land.

    Then one night in 1676 these ex-criminals had had enough and rioted. They killed a number of people and burned Jamestown almost to the ground. I believe that this one act caused the plantation owners to start importing black slaves – at a much higher cost, I might add. The white slaves were indentured for only seven years and the Crown was happy to be rid of them. So, for the price of a boat fare to the New World you had a slave for seven years.
    However, there had been problems with using white slaves. For one thing, they had rights under the law, but the rioting and burning of Jamestown gave the plantation owners the power to have laws passed that declared black slaves to be property and not human beings. This removed the threat of the seven-year rioting or the question of how the slaves were treated. It also created a way of thinking that still rots the soul of the South today.
    The Jamestown story and the information about Robert E. Lee I learned while researching my family tree. I read books about “the Great Families of Virginia” and many of the letters of Landon Carter (1710-1778). Lee and I came down the same tree of Carters. In 1800 something – can’t remember the date, but I want to say it was 1850 – people were allowed to free their slaves. One of the Carters living in Tennessee freed 500 slaves. After that, a law went into force that said if you freed a slave after that date you had to give them $25 and transport them across the state line; slaves could not be free in the same state where they had lived. People who may have wanted to free their slaves after that could not afford to do so.
    I’m not sure that the burning of Jamestown was the only reason plantation owners started importing black slaves, but it played a big part in how slaves were treated after that. Plus, the supply of black slaves was larger than the supply of convicts coming from England, and, although they cost more, you had them and their offspring for life.

I call this way of thinking the plantation mentality. I have seen it spread across the land, and while the South has a history of blind faith in those in power, the rest of the country doesn’t have that excuse. We have been sold the idea that those with power or/and wealth got it through hard work. In fact, most inherited their position and money. This money and power will be passed to their children. The circle continues with each new generation gaining more money and more power. Today there is no government by the people and for the people. Bills and laws are decided in board rooms, and then handed to Congress or the Senate along with a handful of money. In their day, the rich plantation owners wrote and paid for laws to enslave people, and today corporations are out to enslave us all.
    Southerners’ belief that their very livelihood depended on the plantation owners made them slaves to a way of life. Today we are led to believe that our corporations must do well and their CEOs must be paid millions of dollars, and only this will give us a good life. In the Old South, what those Lords and Ladies did and said was followed like the Bible. Poor women imagined themselves dressed in fine gowns attending big gala affairs while their men rode their plow horses pretending to be big land owners. There was very little resentment toward the upper class. Instead, poor white people of the South believed that one day they could be the upper class. When the Civil War came it was the plantation owners who became the captains, colonels, and generals who led the poor whites into battle, thus imbedding a lasting curse on the South – a curse that today is showing up in every corner of America.
    When the war ended it was these same plantation owners who came back to a land that was on its knees and began their fight for control. Southerners had hated the Yankees for five years, so it was easy to blame all of their hardships on the North. To this day Southerners will not take responsibility for the destruction of the South. They wore, and still wear their plight of being poor like a badge of honor. Jessie James, Bonnie & Clyde, the KKK, and a large range of gangsters became their heroes. It was then as it is now: “The USA government is to blame for all of our problems, and had the South won the war, things would be so much better.”
    The plantations and the owners of the plantations are not gone – they just changed their name and their way of doing business. Large corporations are the new plantations, and their CEOs are the new field bosses. As in days past, the owners sit in their big mansions being waited upon by their slaves.
    Once more, we are owned, and over half the country thinks this is a good thing.
    Once more, people of questionable character are being held in high regard – people living in swamps killing gators or making fish lures or not paying taxes, telling crazy lies, and waving Confederate flags: these have become the new heroes.
    The Southerner, and now much of the rest of the country, look at this and say: “One day that will be me in the big house.”

Copyright © 2015 by Ed Rogers