This reminds me of the argument that slavery wasn’t great for the slaveholders, either, because they constantly had to worry about the enslaved workers organizing and fucking killing them, which happened pretty often.
Not very often in the American South.
Sadly, the system of slavery in the Americas was exceptionally brutal, even by the low standards of slavery - but in the USA, it had an additional component ‘protecting’ the slavers - intense racism based on phenotype.
In many slave societies, the prospect of a slave blending into free society is a constant topic of concern - precisely because a slave could, theoretically, as you say, murder their master and then just… slip away. In American slavery, where slaves were largely a phenotypically apparent minority with only marginal opportunities for freedom - at least by the height of slavery in the South in the 1810s onward - there was nowhere to run to after offing a slaver. You couldn’t easily ‘blend in’ with the free population, because the only free population that you could ‘blend in’ with was nearly as oppressed as you were.
The only escapes that could be had needed to be planned and subtle - hence the Underground Railroad which helped fugitives on foot escape across half a fucking continent.
Not very often in the American South.
Sadly, the system of slavery in the Americas was exceptionally brutal, even by the low standards of slavery - but in the USA, it had an additional component ‘protecting’ the slavers - intense racism based on phenotype.
In many slave societies, the prospect of a slave blending into free society is a constant topic of concern - precisely because a slave could, theoretically, as you say, murder their master and then just… slip away. In American slavery, where slaves were largely a phenotypically apparent minority with only marginal opportunities for freedom - at least by the height of slavery in the South in the 1810s onward - there was nowhere to run to after offing a slaver. You couldn’t easily ‘blend in’ with the free population, because the only free population that you could ‘blend in’ with was nearly as oppressed as you were.
The only escapes that could be had needed to be planned and subtle - hence the Underground Railroad which helped fugitives on foot escape across half a fucking continent.