Weep for the slaves, not the plantation houses

The Nottoway plantation burning has led to many online discussions about plantation houses and the horrors they held, so why do so many people love plantations?

By Jake Boyette

On May 15, the largest antebellum plantation built by slaves, Nottoway Plantation, burned down due to electrical issues. The 166-year-old plantation turned resort was a host to many guests and weddings, many of whom mourned its destruction. 

However, the burning of Nottoway also brought many posts on social media, celebrating the destruction of the mansion, which once held 155 slaves according to 64 Parishes.  

These online discussions turned to arguments over whether or not the burning of Nottoway was deserved as a retribution for enslaved people, or a tragedy of a beautiful house and it’s history burning down. 

What gets lost in these arguments is why people love plantation houses in the first place. These plantations may be beautiful and full of history, but the tainted legacy of slavery is being ignored for a romanticized version of the antebellum South. 

It is undoubtedly a fact that plantations housed some truly horrific scenarios for enslaved people. Suffering abuse, torture, and even death, as they worked to cultivate and grow cash crops for their owners. 

Despite this, plantation tourism in the southern United States is big business, with 375 houses open for touring, according to Geography and Sustainability. Many of these plantations offer a romanticized experience of the antebellum South through their venues while ignoring the enslaved people who were there. 

The main issue is that the topic of slavery in America was never reckoned with fully. The history of the atrocities committed against slaves in the antebellum period is often under-taught, with core concepts about slavery missing in textbooks, according to Education Week. 

Lack of education about slavery extends primarily to the school systems, where school boards and lawmakers pressured many textbook companies to avoid talking about slavery in textbooks, according to The American Scholar. 

This played into the Lost Cause myth created by former Confederates and supported by the Daughters of the Confederacy. The Lost Cause myth is about promoting a more favorable view of the Confederacy and states that the war was about secession, not slavery, according to the Encyclopedia Virginia. 

The Lost Cause myth had the intended effect of obscuring the history of slavery during the antebellum period. Purposely downplaying the brutal history of slavery, making many students and adults not even realize how terrible these plantation houses were for the slaves. 

Some plantation houses, like the Whitney plantation, offer a tour of the house that illuminates the history of slavery. This would be the best way to treat these old plantations, offering the beautiful landscape with the old houses, while still showing the truth of what occurred in them. 

However, plantations like Nottoway continue to hide the history of slavery. Even on Nottoway’s history section on their website, there is no mention of slavery. 

While Nottoway doesn’t state a reason for not including the information, it also doesn’t mention the 155 slaves kept on the property. It is easy to understand how the history of slavery could ruin the luxury wedding venue’s appeal. It is an uncomfortable history that many people find difficult to listen to. 

This aversion comes from many different places. In the classroom, many teachers find it hard to teach their predominantly white students the concept of white privilege, according to NPR. These students can also become defensive, thinking they’re to blame, pushing against the teaching, but not understanding it isn’t their fault. 

This guilt is uncomfortable for many to wrap their heads around, especially since the perpetrators were usually white men, though there were black slave owners, too. This leads to even historical plantation tours, which teach about the slavery that happened there, receiving pushback as participants try to defend the slaveowners and, in extension, themselves, according to Vox. 

Although the history of slavery is hard to listen to, ignoring it has only caused America to fall into the romanticization of the antebellum period, driving a larger wedge between the reality of slavery and its understanding of it. 

Antebellum imagination is a type of marketing of the antebellum period, according to Jason M Kelly. This marketization plays with plantation life as a peaceful and beautiful period, with long flowing white dresses for the girls and suits for the men. 

Films like “Gone with the Wind” and, more recently, “Gods and Generals” reinforce this, using the Lost Cause myth to continue to place the Confederacy and plantation owners as the victims of the Union’s attack on their freedom, while the slaves fall into the background 

This softening of history has also led to mass marketing with food companies, playing off of slave stereotypes to sell their products. The most famous example, Aunt Jemima, stayed as a symbol for the mammy slave caricature on the plantation who served food for the family until 2020, according to the Jim Crow Museum. 

This romanticization of slavery is what makes it so easy for many people to see plantations as a gorgeous getaway. The idealized version of beautiful gardens and amazing mansions stands like a monument, casting a shadow over the people who were worked to death on those houses. 

As sad as it is to see the Nottoway plantation house burn, just for its historical value, it’s no wonder that many also cheered for the loss. 

What should happen is that people need to be educated about the history of slavery. The celebrations of plantation houses come from a warped sense of reality about the lives lost to the brutal system. 

Educating yourself and others should be a high priority. It may be uncomfortable, but you’re not at fault for slavery, no one alive in the US is. However, we should place blame on the systems put in place to obscure history and fight against it. 

We don’t want to burn away the history of millions of people who died while enslaved, we want to show it truthfully.