Essay Question No. 4--Due Monday, Nov 4, 2007

One long-standing question in the history of slavery concerns the failure of slaves to rebel against their oppressors during the antebellum period. One (highly controversial, to say the least) proposed explanation is that plantations were like Nazi concentration camps, and terrorized their inmates into abject submission. And then there's John Blassingame's The Slave Community. How does he explain the failure to rebel--if, indeed, he recognizes it at all?