Comparative Questions

COMPARATIVE QUESTIONS

Document Links

Document 13-1: Madison Hemings Recalls Life as Thomas Jefferson's Enslaved Son

Document 13-2: Plantation Rules

Document 13-3: Fanny Kemble Learns about Abuses of Slave Women

Document 13-4: Nat Turner Explains Why He Became an Insurrectionist

Document 13-5: The Proslavery Argument

  1. How did Bennet Barrow's plantation rules compare with the experiences of Madison Hemings and Nat Turner and with the statements about slavery made by James Henry Hammond? Did Barrow, Hemings, Turner, and Hammond express similar views about slaves and their motivations?
  2. How did Hammond's account of slavery compare to that of the slave women who visited Fanny Kemble? How might Hammond have responded to Kemble? How might the slave women and Kemble have responded to Hammond?
  3. What similarities and differences characterized slaves' experiences on the plantations of Thomas Jefferson (Madison Hemings document), Bennet Barrow, and Pierce Butler (Fanny Kemble document)?
  4. Judging from the documents in this chapter, to what extent did the slave South embody values embraced throughout American society? To what extent were the values of black and white Southerners distinctive? Why?