A lesson learned from A TERRIBLE INTIMACY: INTERRACIAL LIFE IN THE SLAVEHOLDING SOUTH, by Melvin Ely

 Small good deeds don't matter as much if the entire system is unjust.

    Sometimes when I'm blogging about the historical lessons of History books, the author themselves do me a favor by spelling out their lesson in the book's opening and closing segments, as Melvin Ely does in his new book A Terrible Intimacy: Interracial Life in the Slaveholding South. This will be a shorter blog than usual as Ely's book does not follow the traditional format of an historical narrative; rather, it is a series of chapters analyzing the courtroom proceedings of Edward County in Virginia during the peak years of slavery (1830-1860). As such, it's a book that will be less appealing to those seeking the standard format, but actually quite gripping to people who love following courtroom drama and testimony. I actually found the book to be a fascinating deep dive into a topic of which I knew little about prior to reading Ely's book (the inner workings of courtroom life in the old slaveowning South). Ely paints a picture of a society that tried to enforce justice but faced tragic limitations, both not of its own fault (the limits of 19th century forensic science and law enforcement capabilities) and VERY much of its own failing (the inability of African-Americans to testify to evidence if it at all implicated the guilt of a white person). As Ely notes, the old slave South did not lack individual whites who would stand up for African-Americans in court, but it was irrelevant in a world where the entire system had been rigged to secure their bondage.

    The various cases Ely analyzes shows the complexities of the social order in the old South, a society whose entire foundations were built on slavery, but also contained all the human messiness of people forming bonds and relationships in the midst of the oppression. In one maddening case where it is difficult to determine who the "villain" is, a white woman accuses a slave of rape (usually an immediately deadly accusation), yet the slave gets the equivalent of a mild punishment when the court deems that as "white trash" her testimony is not reliable. In another case, a slave murders his master, yet receives mercy when the jury determines he was so tortured and brutalized that there were extenuating circumstances--an example that Ely notes when slaveowners would try to assuage their own consciences because they tried to be "good" slaveowners. Perhaps the case I found the most heartbreaking was when one of those said "good masters" tried to throw a fancy wedding for a slave couple, only to find that wedding brutally broken up by an angry white mob because he was allowing a potentially "dangerous" gathering of dozens of slaves together; the master complained in court and received compensation, but Ely uses this as a vivid example of the brutality that was always laying just under the surface of slavery even when people tried to have normal and festive occasions.

    Overall, Ely's courtroom-drama filled book was not the standard historical book I've come to expect, but it was a fascinating and often eye-opening read where I learned much more about the complexities of daily life in the slaveowning South. Ely finds white lawyers who passionately fight for mercy for their accused slaves, yet who also went right out and supported secession and the Confederacy, as if they had convinced themselves that slavery was just because they had tried to ameliorate its worst aspects. Overall, the lesson of the book was unmistakable; whether people tried to be "good" to their slaves or not, the system they were enforcing was absolutely intolerable, and no amount of efforts on their part was ever going to make it justifiable. It's a lesson that's all too applicable to modern situations where people try to convince themselves that some systems will work if only they're properly reformed, whereas in reality they are simply too oppressive by their very structure and are in need of being torn down in favor of new experiments.