Soul By Soul Analysis

In Johnson’s book, Soul by Soul, slavery can be seen as a rising economic and social way of life for nineteenth-century Americans. Through slavery, Americans were able to transform into a higher social class and economically benefit, which would in turn also fulfill their diverse hopes and desires. Since there were many slaves in trading pens, the slaveholding owners needed to have a general idea of what type of slave they were looking for and what task they were needed to fulfill. Most Americans in the nineteenth century found a need for slaves to in order to improve their reputations, to work in their fields, to fulfill their desires and to get rid of the patriarchal society that existed at the time.
As found in Johnson’s book, nineteenth-century …show more content…
Around the nineteenth century, cotton was starting to become a staple crop for the south and it was improving America’s economy. With the rise in cotton came the need for slaves to work the fields rather than just being worked on by the owner and their family. According to Johnson’s book “ planters care for nothing but to buy Negros to raise cotton and raise cotton to buy Negros ”(Johnson 79). This reflects how society, specifically in the south, was an agrarian society whose economic profits came from cash crops that were planted and harvested by slaves. Through this insight of the planter’s point of view that Johnson has written, we can also see the desire that slaveholder planters had to make a surplus amount of cotton and other crops in order to receive a surplus amount of profits in return. This desire for wealth through cash crops also reflects the fears that these planters had of not producing enough crops and the fear of economically failing. Because planters were afraid of not producing enough crops to make money, some of the slaveholders at times showed paternalistic ideals and they expected “hard work and good behavior in return for their benevolence”(Johnson 198). This paternalism ideal can show how much the cash crop business meant to these slaveholding planters that they were willing to do anything that was possible to keep their …show more content…
In the 1800’s several women decided to separate their financial accounts from their husbands and become slaveholders themselves. According to Johnson, “some women used slavery to dismantle patriarchy”(Johnson 97). These actions that were taken allowed for women to have separate finances than their household’s finances. This reflects the way that some of the female members of the society feel towards a patriarchal society. Through this, we start to see a rise in the dissatisfaction that woman have to live in a patriarchal society. The fear to have to live in their husband’s shadows their whole lives and the desire to have a separate, independent economy is what sparks the action of women becoming more than just the wives of slaveholders, but for them to become the slaveholders