A Data-driven Investigation of Euphemistic Language: Comparing the usage of “slave” and “servant” in 19th century US newspapers (2025)

Abstract: Warning: This paper contains examples of offensive language targeting marginalized populations. This study investigates the usage of “slave” and “servant” in 19th century US newspapers using computational methods. While both terms were used to refer to enslaved African Americans, they were used in distinct ways. In the Chronicling America corpus, we included possible OCR errors by using FastText embedding and excluded text reprints to consider text reprint culture in the 19th century. Word2vec embedding was used to find semantically close words to “slave” and “servant” and log-odds ratio was calculated to identify over-represented discourse words in the Southern and Northern newspapers. We found that “slave” is associated with socio-economic, legal, and administrative words, however, “servant” is linked to religious words in the Northern newspapers while Southern newspapers associated “servant” with domestic and familial words. We further found that slave discourse words in Southern newspapers are more prevalent in Northern newspapers while servant discourse words from each side are prevalent in their own region. This study contributes to the understanding of how newspapers created different discourses around enslaved African Americans in the 19th century US.

## introduction in the united states before the civil war, free black americans and white abolitionists challenged the moral grounds of slavery using a range of means and media, from newspapers that exposed the horrors that enslaved people were subjected to in the american south, to first-hand accounts of former slaves recounting their suffering and their struggle for freedom, to fictional narratives that sought to levy readers' sympathies toward black americans into advocacy against slavery. pro-slavery advocates used the same media to undermine abolitionists' charges and to defend slavery, arguing not simply for its necessity but for its rectitude, even its sanctity. pro-slavery rhetoric often relied on a domestic, sentimental account of slaves' lives that sidestepped the brutal realities of forced labor by focusing instead on supposed familial bonds between "house slaves" and the white women and children who owned them, the religious devotion advocates claimed slavery inculcated in enslaved african americans, or the reported gratitude of slaves for their condition. such myths underlay everything from newspaper editorials to pro-slavery novels, such as the "anti-tom" genre that arose to counter the popularity of harriet beecher stowe's bestseller, uncle tom's cabin. in works such as uncle robin in his cabin in virginia, and top without one in boston -the central premise of which is outlined in the title -pro-slavery writers sought to contrast an idyllic depiction of southern slavery -what they euphemistically termed "our peculiar institution" -with industrial horrors in the north. this research investigates this euphemistic rhetoric through an investigation of two closely linked but rhetorically contrasting terms in civil war-era us newspapers: slave and servant. both terms were used to refer to enslaved black americans, but they were employed in distinct ways. while the word "slave" engaged with the slave system directly, marking discourse about legal and political debates around slavery, "servant" was more often used euphemistically to identify enslaved people who could be more easily cast into the domestic, sentimental narratives espoused by pro-slavery advocates. the latter term can refer to different forms of servitude, including both enslaved workers in the american south and paid domestic help in northern states, and its use in pro-slavery newspapers to describe enslaved black americans deliberately blurred those lines. our goal is not to make claims about the lived experience of black americans during this period, but to understand the rhetorical constructions that communicated ideas about enslaved black americans to white newspaper readers. in newspaper writing, "slave" is a more generic word that is used to discuss both enslaved black americans, as well as to reference legal and political debates around the institution of slavery itself. "servant" is a more specific term most often used to describe slaves who filled domestic -and less obviously abusive -roles in southern homes. servants were described as better-dressed and well fed, and typically lived in the attic or basement of their master's house @xcite , where they ostensibly enjoyed a better quality of life @xcite . any type of text published through newspapers could shape the discourse in the public sphere for editors and readers as newspapers played a role in constituting imagined communities in the 19th century @xcite . whether newspapers supported abolition or defended slavery, they nonetheless filtered their understanding of black americans through stereotypical filters, while typically excluding black americans themselves from their discourse 1 . in this paper, we present a computational approach to studying the use of these two terms in a corpus of 19th century newspapers and seek to answer two primary research questions: to support open science and transparent data science, we publish the code used in this study at https://github.com/park-jay/ slavery-discourse . ## related works scholars of american history, literature, and culture have argued persuasively that while newspapers were not new in the 19th century, they were newly prevalent. drawing on data from the library of congress's us newspaper directory, us newspapers grew "from a few hundred papers in 1800 to over 12,000 by the end of the century." @xcite beyond the simple scale of this shift, the variety, price, style, and intended audiences for newspapers shifted dramatically during this same period, such that the term "newspaper" suddenly encompassed a much wider range of periodicals than existed at the beginning of the century, including merchant papers, penny papers, illustrated family papers, and much more. this rapidly-growing medium was at the time both highly partisan and strident, as editors debated politicians and each other about political and social issues. the voice of newspapers in the 19th century was strongly affiliated with parties and particular political action groups, as modern ideas of journalistic impartiality did not evolve until the early 20th century @xcite . similarly, @xcite argued newspapers during the antebellum period formed close ties with political parties and factions to gain financial support. newspapers spoke from the perspective of a "network author" that positioned the voice of any individual newspaper within the collective operations of larger political and social discourse @xcite . because newspapers have power to frame and manipulate discourse around political and social issues @xcite , researchers have much to learn about how newspaper discourse operated at scale, or how it operated between different regions or time periods. as @xcite demonstrate, "newspapers played a crucial role in spreading information and shaping public opinion about the abolition of slavery and related social justice issues . . . and now serve as a primary source of information about abolition for scholars today." this points to a primary challenge facing scholars seeking to use historical newspapers to understand discourses about slavery, as "those edited by white people (and white men in particular) have been more fully preserved, and therefore, are more accessible to researchers," including in most digitized corpora. though some data-driven work on historical newspapers has appeared in recent years, the scale of digital collections argues for more research that will supplement the findings and analysis from qualitative scholars @xcite . scholars in digital humanities have used digitized texts to study culture @xcite , applying computational models built on diverse datasets @xcite and to explore historical change over time. especially, newspapers as a source of data attracted computational humanities researchers and they leveraged computational methods @xcite ) such as topic modeling @xcite and word embedding models @xcite to learn about the past. more relevant to our study, gabrial (2004) claimed that there is discourse in newspapers around the idea of "a good negro" by showing cases where newspapers reported that they could stop race riots thanks to "loyal" black americans (e.g., "a servant prompted by attachment to his master revealed the conspiracy", "some faithful blacks had informed the charleston city council" p.310). the work of @xcite illustrates that newspapers framed accounts of black americans to maintain white supremacy. in this study, we seek not to read between the lines of predominantly white-edited newspapers to identify secretly liberatory language, but instead to read directly, using computational methods, the way that white editors on both sides of the political spectrum, from the abolitionist (e.g.,textitanti-slavery bugle (new lisbon, ohio)) to the pro-slavery (e.g., daily dispatch (richmond, virginia)), deployed contrasting stereotypes of black americans for their own rhetorical purposes. we explore how "slaves" and "servants"words which are shorthand for broader discourses -were discussed in newspapers between the introduction of the fugitive slave act of 1850 and the end of the civil war, and then compare that discourse in abolitionist newspapers, largely located in the north, to discourse in pro-slavery southern papers. by approaching racial bias embedded in language use within newspapers, rather than trying to identify justifications for stereotypical rhetoric, we seek to use computing "as a diagnostic, helping us to understand and measure social problems with precision and clarity," as well "as synecdoche" that "makes long-standing social problems newly salient in the public eye" @xcite . ## discussion for southern editors and readers, slaves were property which could be taken away through political action and this concern was well-reflected in the abbeville banner. indeed, the southern economic system cannot be explained without institutionalized slavery @xcite . for them, slave labor undergirded and sustained the southern economy. because the role of slave is deeply connected to economy and society, discourse around slave in 19th century newspapers, at least during the period of our data, is mostly centered around law and government. unfortunately, slave discourse from newspapers does not show how subjugated life of slave actually was. even for anti-slavery stance newspapers does not frame slavery matter with empathy-provoking words to speak more audiences. we also found that the slave discourse words from the south are over-represented in northern newspapers. we hypothesize that this is because the slave discourse words are based on the political, legal, and economic situations of the united states. since the discourse around slave-related words from the northern newspapers discusses slaves in a similar manner, the words from the south are also frequently used in northern newspapers. contrary to iron-hearted accounts for slaves, servant discourse contains words for family, and everyday life of servants. in addition to domestic work of the duty of servants, words related to family can be emotional. taking this together, the sentence combined with "respectfully", "obedient", servants "cook"ing for a hot soup is sufficient enough to imagine warm hospitality and thus evoke nostalgic imagination of south @xcite . by demonstrating that discourse around "servant" in southern newspapers euphemized and idealized the depiction of slavery, our findings can supplement the work of @xcite which studied nostalgia for an idyllic antebellum south in 19th century popular culture. even though gone with the wind, published in 1936, is attributed to the claim of re-construction of nostalgic south, we observed the emergence of early prototype of creating nostalgic south by associating "servants" with sentimental and patronizing words. we find that southern newspapers were far more likely to use words that created a sentimental or nostalgic image of the south and the slave system. servant discourse words from the south are not frequently used in the northern newspapers. this uniqueness helps explain how the word "servant" is used euphemistically to describe domestic slaves in the south, downplaying their forced servitude by using more neutral, domestic words. though on the surface, "servant" might seem like a more benign and positive word than "slave", the patterns of word usage in the newspapers suggest how southern newspapers language worked rhetorically to stereotype black americans and sanitize the brutal system of oppression and subjugation. abolitionist newspapers relied on evangelical rhetoric to discuss servants compared to slaves. though biblical justifications were often used to defend slavery (i.e., genesis 9:18-27; ephesians 6:5-7), the abolitionist movement also drew hevily on religious conviction and language in articulating the case for emancipation @xcite . it resonates the historical context that the emphasis on bible has led north to include the feminist and temperance movements by marring the integrity of biblical authority while helped south to revive religious spirit @xcite . in imagined communities, anderson (2006) said "... the very conception of the newspaper implies the refraction of even 'world events' into a specific imagined world of vernacular readers." in other words, newspapers are not only a reflection of the society but also a tool to shape the society. the interplay between the newspapers creating the nostalgic image of the south and the society that consumed the newspapers led to a reinforcement of the sentimental and idealized portrayal of slavery. this cyclical relationship between media and society calls for a more research on how the past was shaped by the media and how it influenced the public perception of slavery. this study adds to the scholarship on digital humanities by providing a computational approach to understanding how 19th century newspapers framed the discourse around "slave" and "servant." by leveraging word embeddings and statistical analysis, we were able to uncover the nuanced differences in how these terms were used in proslavery and anti-slavery newspapers. our findings highlight the role of language in shaping public perception and the importance of critically examining historical texts to understand the socio-political context of the time. stance title lccn frequency geographic location snippet size servant slave pro-slavery newspaper abbeville banner (1850-1860) sn85026945 weekly abbeville, sc @xmath0,488 like other white democrat newspapers of the era, the press and banner steered a conservative course, celebrating the return of the "bourbons," or antebellum-era aristocrats, to political power in 1877 and championing the interests of agrarian elites. daily dispatch (1852-1865) sn84024738 daily (except sundays) richmond, va @xmath1,390 @xmath2,975 though the daily dispatch started as nonpartisan, cowardin, a staunch southern whig, increasingly included conservative and pro-slavery editorials while advocating the development of local industry as a path to independence at a time of growing sectional tension. edgefield advertiser (1850-1862) sn84026897 weekly edgefield, sc @xmath3,125 @xmath4,939 its editors have at times vigorously defended some of the most divisive issues in this nation's history -nullification, secession, segregation, slavery, and states' rights. nashville union and american (1853-1862) sn85038518 daily (except mondays) nashville, davidson, tn @xmath5,385 @xmath6,721 in the merger announcement on may 17, 1853, the nashville american assured readers that "it will be the constant aim of the consolidated journal to preserve the democratic party of tennessee a unit for all the great purposes of its organization." anti-slavery newspaper anti-slavery bugle (1850-1861) sn83035487 weekly new-lisbon, oh @xmath7,251 @xmath8,877 marius r. robin served as editor of the paper for over seven years during the 1850s and was extremely active in the anti-slavery society, once serving as its president. green mountain freeman (1850-1865) sn84023209 weekly montpelier, washington, vt @xmath9,097 @xmath10,046 from november 1842 to 1843, the vermont freeman, published first by antislavery agent and lecturer alanson st. clair and then by joseph e. hood, with editorial assistance from chester c. briggs, was issued from montpelier and norwich. national era (1850-1860) sn84026752 weekly washington, dc @xmath11,987 @xmath12,918 the national era was an important publisher of abolitionist exists, most notably the serialization of uncle tom's cabin in 1851. its editor, john greeleaf whittier, was a quaker abolitionist and poet who staunchly advocated for emancipation throughout his time with the paper.