Slaves played an extremely active role in shaping the history of American slavery. Visualize that the entire Southern slave populace decided that they were sick of being dominated, and defied all of the slave holders and white men. What could the slave owners have done? Their slaves were their prosperity and their key labor force. Southerners refined life depended upon them. Without slaves, the colossal and lucrative plantations could never have been maintained.
James Hammond's efforts to dominate his slaves never really worked out the way he had envisioned it. Hammond felt that the slave…
