The Peculiar Institution is a book about slavery published in 1956 by academic Kenneth M. Stampp of the University of California, Berkeley and other universities. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South describes and analyzes all facets of slavery in the south, from the seventeenth century through the mid-nineteenth century, including demographics, lives of slaves and slaveholders, the southern economy and labor systems, the northern and abolitionist response, slave trading, and political issues of the time. An interesting element of the book is how Stampp analyzes the... standard view of historians such as Ulrich Phillips that many southern slave owners were very kind to their slaves, and provided well for them. It was sometimes known for slaves to have lives as good as or better than poor northern workers. However, Stampp examines this issue mostly to show this behavior as a selfish strategy, easing the lives of some slaves, in order to prevent dissent among slaves, or possible legal action for mistreatment of slaves. In fact this treatment did little to convince slaves that their lives were acceptable, and dissent and opposition were common among slaves.
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