Author | Book or School of Thought | Argument | Ulrich Bonnell Phillips | American Negro Slavery (1918) | “Negroes, who for the most part were by racial quality submissive rather than defiant, light hearted instead of gloomy, amiable and ingratiating instead of sullen, and whose very defects invited paternalism rather than repression” American Negro Slavery is infused with the racial rhetoric and upholds perceptions about the inferiority of black people which was common in the southern US at the time. | Kenneth Stampp | The Peculiar Institution (1956) | Stampp analyses the standard view of historians such as Ulrich Phillips that many southern slave owners were very kind to their slaves and provided well for them. Stampp examines this issue mostly to show this behaviour as a selfish strategy, easing the lives of some slaves in order to prevent dissent amongst them or possible legal action for mistreatment of slaves. | Stanley M. Elkins | Slavery: A problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1958) | He concluded that most Slaves adopted a personality – docile, submissive, child-like, loyal and completely dependant on their masters. He did not argue that slaves were naturally this way, but instead argued that slavery had transformed their personalities in the same way it occurred amongst prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. | John W. Blassingame | The Slave Community (1972) | One of the first historical studies from perspective of the slaves. He contradicted historians such as Elkins who suggested Negro slaves were docile and submissive who enjoyed the master-slave relationship. He concluded that an independent culture developed among the enslaved and that there were a variety of personality types exhibited by slaves. He argued family life was essential in allowing slaves to retain