... been generally happy with their condition and had rarely resisted, or even wished to resist slavery. Ulrich B. Phillips' 'American Negro Slavery' in 1918 perhaps best exemplifies the early twentieth century view of slavery, dominating its interpretation for around the next thirty years. Phillips depicted a plantation system in which slaves were generally contented with their lot and unlikely to resist. Those rare occasions in which resistance did occur were more likely the result of slaves having lazy or criminal characters rather than any legitimate complaint about their condition1. Twinned with these early views was the idea that slaves were in fact incapable of responding and resisting, thus showing their submission to slavery. Phillips described the Negro as suffering from inherited ineptitude, whereas James Schouler saw slaves as being "incapable of deep plots, sensuous, stupid, obedient to the whip, children in imagination."2 Other historians have presented a slightly different version ...

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