American Literature

Stanley M.Elkins explores the origins of slavery in the United States, its evolution and the formation of Sambo as a type of slave personality in Slavery A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life published in 1959. Elkins altogether looks at slavery from a different point of view, approaching it through a psychological insight which received a lot o accolades across the globe though it is widely rejected today since it is regarded as a conservative interpretation of American Abolitionism. The study on psychological impact of slavery has led Elkins to compare the subhuman conditions of the Blacks with the untold sufferings of the Jews in the concentration camps because the extreme brutality against the slaves in the Southern plantations.

Elkins argues that the British abolitionists were politically effective because they were more pragmatic compared to the American abolitionists. This is because, the British was successful in emancipating the slaves without a war unlike United States.  Brown argues that Elkins criticism of abolitionism is based on a particular predisposition-for reason over moral passion and faith in ordinary social mechanisms in preference to grand moral absolutes. Either one appreciates the romantic temperament that antislavery exemplified, or, with Elkins, one turns from it in dismay. (154)
Elkins talks in great detail about Sambo model which involved infantilizing the slaves and the creation of a dependent personality pattern among the slaves. Sambo, as Elkins described him, was docile, but irresponsible, loyal but lazy, humble but chronically given to lying and stealing, accompanied by behavior full of infantile silliness and talk inflated with childish exaggeration. His relationship with his master was one of utter dependence and childlike attachment it was indeed this childlike quality that was the very key to his being. This model was crafted out of the psychological research carried out by Bruno Bettelheim on the concentration camps in the Nazi Germany where the Jews lost their ability to resist, plan and establish a positive relationship with one another.
Elkins critically examines the legal status of the slaves in United States with respect to marriage and family disciplinary powers and civil rights. Though the slave masters permitted marriage, law had destroyed marriage and family long back. Economics played an upper hand over humanity and hence the slaves had to meekly submit to the subhuman survival conditions. Slaves did not have any standing before law, and no law existed to protect the slaves rights against assault. Slaves also did not enjoy any civil and legal rights. Elkins states that, A slave is in absolute bondage he has no civil right and can hold no property, except at the will and pleasure of his master. (167)

Elkins carefully studies the cocooned environment in which the slaves were carefully wrapped in insulating them from the true spirit of religion and education. The existence of laws which prohibited anyone from teaching the slaves to read and write and permitting them to pray in a constructed restraint established by the white masters and the preachers. Elkins observes that it was illegal to issue any book including Bible to the Slaves in North Carolina. Hence all these brutalities socially, mentally and psychologically reduced the slaves to a dependent child-like status. 

Elkins further compares the slave systems that existed in United States and South America. The slave system in Brazil was akin to the slave system in United States but the difference between the two was the presence of institutions in Brazil to protect the rights of the slaves to a certain extent. There was no institution to govern and regulate the harsh approach of the Southern planters towards the slaves. Elkins explores the legal structures that were holding the slave systems in South America and United States instead of comparing the living conditions of the slaves. He studies the transition in the status of servants both black and white from the colonial America to the free United States of America. The white servants were elevated as free citizens of the United States and around 1710, the inflow of white servants into America came to a halt. On the other hand the black servants were de-elevated to the status of slaves. For the plantation to operate efficiently and profitably, and with a force of laborers all of whom may have been fully broken to plantation discipline, the necessity of training them to work long hours and to give unquestioning obedience to their masters and overseers superseded every other consideration. The master must have absolute power over the slaves body, and the law was developing in such a way as to give it to him at every crucial point. Physical discipline was made virtually unlimited and the slaves chattel status unalterably fixed. (49)
The psychological impact of Sambo is directly attributed to the legal segregation of Blacks in United States after the abolition of slavery which was absent in South America. On the whole Elkins Slavery A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, though rejected in the modern terms, is a revolutionary book which used a comparative approach in studying the living conditions and the status of Blacks in United States before and after the abolition of slavery. Further he uses psychohistory to delve into the psychological status and the historical background of the slaves in United States.