The debate on the strength of slave families: South Carolina and the importance of cross-plantation marriages

Journal of American Studies

Volumn 33, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 221-241

  West, Emily ^a  

^a NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 29344464524     PISSN: 00218758     EISSN: 14695154     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021875898005970     Document Type: Article

References (93)

1. George P. Rawick, The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, Vol.2, Part 1 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972), 300.
2. See Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South (New York: Knopf, 1956)
3. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Washington D.C.: Office of Policy Planning and Research, U.S. Department of Labor, 1965).
4. See Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976).
5. Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Vintage, 1972, 1974), 473.
6. Richard H. Steckel, The Economics of U.S. Slave and Southern White Fertility (New York: Garland, 1985), 229.
7. Paul D. Escott, Slavery Remembered: A Record of the Twentieth Century Slave Narratives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 50-52, 62.
8. Stephen Crawford, "Quantified Memory: A Study of the WPA and Fisk University slave narrative Collections" (Ph.D.: University of Chicago, 1980), 149-154
9. Crawford, "Quantified Memory," 151.
10. Deborah White, Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 154.
11. George P. Rawick, The American Slave, Vols, 2 and 3, and Supplement Series 1, Vol.II (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press 1977), contain the South Carolina narratives that were used in this article.
12. There are various full-length slave narratives that have substantial South Carolina content, and used within this article are the following autobiographies: Charles Ball, Fifty Years in Chains; or, The Life of an American Slave (1858, and reprinted New York: Dover Publications, 1970)
13. Tom Jones, Experience and Personal Narrative of Uncle Tom Jones, mho was for Forty Years a Slave. Also the Surprising Adventures of Wild Tom, of the Island Retreat, a Fugitive Negro From South Carolina (Boston: H. B. Skinner, 1855)
14. Moses Roper, A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery (London: Harvey and Darton, 1840)
15. Jacob Stroyer, Aly Life in the South (1879 and reprinted Salem Massachusetts: Newcombe and Gauss, 1898)
16. Revd I. E. Lowery, Life on the Old Plantation in Ante-Bellum Days or, A Story Based on Facts (Columbia, South Carolina: The State Company, 1911)
17. Sam Aleckson, Before the War and After the Union: An Autobiography (Boston: Gold Mine Publishing, 1929).
18. Some non-South Carolina narratives, however, have also been used within this article. The majority of full-length narratives have been written by males, so, in order to give voice to otherwise voiceless females, female narratives from the South as a whole were utilized. These narratives consisted of Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861, and reprinted New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)
19. Mattie J. Jackson, The Story of Mattie J. Jackson, (1866) and reprinted in Henry Louis Gates, ed.
20. Six Women's Slave Narratives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)
21. Lucy A. Delany, From the Darkness Cometh the Light or Struggles for Freedom, (c. 1891)
22. Six Women's Slave Narratives
23. Kate Drumgoold, A Slave Girts Story, (1898)
24. in Six Women's Slave Narratives
25. and Annie L. Burton, Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days, (1909) in Six Women's Slave Narratives.
26. See Carole E. Merritt, " Slave Family and Household Arrangements in Piedmont, Georgia" (Ph.D.: Emory University, 1986).
27. The five respondents married before the Civil War were as follows: Albert Means, 19 years old in 1865, and a field worker. His father belonged to a different owner, as did his wife, Jane (see Rawick, Vol. 3, Part 3, 182-84). Alfred Sligh, 23 years old in 1865, and also a field worker. His parents had the same owner, and his wife Sarah, also belonged to this owner (see Rawick, Vol. 3, Part 4, 92-94) s 15 Gordon Bluford, 20 years old in 1865, and a house worker. She resided with 250 other slaves, and married Arthur Bluford, who belonged to the same owner (see Rawick, Vol. 2, Part 1, 62-64). Louisa Davis was 103 years old at the time of her interview. She was a house worker, and her father and mother belonged to the same owner. Her husband belonged to a different owner (see Rawick, Vol. 2, Part 1, 299-503). Nancy Washington was 32 years old in 1865, and worked in the house, then the field. Her owner only owned her mother and siblings. She was married to a man belonging to another owner (see Rawick, Vol. 3, Part 4, 184-87).
28. These were Ryer Emmanuel and Will Dill. See Rawick, Vol.2, Part 2, 23; and Vol. 2, Part 1, 319.
29. The South Carolina WPA results can be compared with those from the small sample of full-length slave narratives. It was found that only two of the narrators (Charles Ball and Tom Jones), commented on their own family structure upon reaching adulthood, both of whom resided within cross-plantation unions. However, when the household structure of the parents of the narrators was established, it was found that, of the 10 narrators who actually mentioned their parents' residential arrangements, 4 had parents who lived together (40 per cent); 3 had parents who lived in cross-plantation marriages (30 per cent); and 3 lived within female-headed households (30 per cent). Despite the fact that a higher percentage of slaves who wrote full-length narratives, then, lived within female-headed households, when compared with the wpa results, the percentage of those who lived within nuclear and cross-plantation families was roughly the same.
30. Rawick, Vol.3, Part 4, 184-187.
31. In this article, the South Carolina Low Country has been defined as the coastal districts of Beaufort, Colleton, Charleston, Georgetown, and Horry. See Michael E. Stauffer, The Formation of Counties in South Carolina (Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1994), 14.
32. Stephen Crawford, "The Slave Family: A View from the Slave Narratives," in Claudia Goldin and Hugh Rockoff, eds., Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History: Essays to Honor Robert W. Fogel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 346.
33. Crawford, "The Slave Family," 347.
34. The Slave Family Ibid., 345-346
35. See Emily West, "Love and Affection, Exploitation and Resistance; The Lives of Male and Female Slaves in Antebellum South Carolina" (Ph.D.: University of Liverpool 1997), 143-44.
36. In future research, I hope to undertake a more detailed investigation into the relationship between occupation, skill level, and the residential patterns of antebellum South Carolina slaves.
37. On the protection of the marriages of favoured "key" slaves from sale, see Michael Tadman, Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders and Slaves in the Old South (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, second edn, 1996), xix-xxxvii.
38. Escott, Slavery Remembered, 50-51.
39. Crawford, "Quantified Memory," 149.
40. Quantified Memory Ibid., 155.
41. Ann Patton Malone, Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 6.
42. Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana,Ibid., 7-8.
43. Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana, Ibid., 14-16.
44. Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana, Ibid., 254.
45. Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana, Ibid., 227.
46. Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana Ibid., 202, n. 3.
47. Merritt, "Slave Family," 85.
48. Slave Family, Ibid., 128.
49. Slave Family, Ibid., 112, 131.
50. Slave Family, Ibid., 219-221
51. Slave Family, Ibid., 221.
52. "Negro Rules for Government," Cornhill Plantation Book, 1827-1873, [Plantation of John B. Miller, McDonald-Furman Papers, William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
53. "Rules for Government of Plantation," Cornhill Plantation Book, McDonald-Furman Papers, William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
54. List of Plantation Rules, February 1815, Conway-Black-Davis Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library, The University of South Carolina, Columbia.
55. List of Plantation Rules, Andrew Flinn Plantation Book, 1840, South Caroliniana Library, The University of South Carolina, Columbia.
56. List of Plantation Rules, Andrew Flinn Plantation Book, South Caroliniana Library, The University of South Carolina, Columbia.
57. Lowery, Life on the Old Plantation, 42.
58. Letter to Mr. J. F. Cooper [overseer at Gowrie] from Charles Izard Manigault, 10 January 1848, Charles Izard Manigault Letterbook, 1846-1848, South Caroliniana Library, The University of South Carolina, Columbia, Manigault however, did have around one hundred slaves living in his Gowrie Plantation on Argyle Island in the Savannah River. This would have meant that his slaves would have had a wider choice of potential spouses upon their place of residence than many other slaves. Hence the consequences of Manigault's decision would not have had as many repercussions as elsewhere. For a more detailed description of Manigault's plantation see the introduction to James M. Clifton, ed., Life and Labor on Argyle Island: Letters and Documents of a Savannah River Rice Plantation (Savannah, Georgia: Beehive Press 1978).
59. Letter to Caleb Coker from Maria [sister], 16 September 1844, Lide-Coker Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library, The University of South Carolina, Columbia.
60. Quoted in Orville Vernon Burton, In Afy Father's House are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1985), 163, n. 50.
61. Quoted in Burton, In My Father's House, 169, n. 69.
62. Rawick, The American Slave, Vol.2, Part 2, 84.
63. Rawick, Vol.3, Part 3, 100-101
64. The American Slave, Ibid., 191.
65. The American Slave, Ibid., 271.
66. Stroyer, My Life in the South, 39.
67. Rawick, Vol.2, Part 1, 294.
68. Rawick, Vol.2, Part 2, 9.
69. Rawick, Vol.2, Part 1, 39.
70. The proposition that it was generally only male slaves who travelled to visit wives and girlfriends is supported by Orville Vernon Burton. See Burton, In My father's House, 163.
71. White, Ar'n't I a Woman?, 76.
72. Rawick, Vol.3, Part 4, 238.
73. Ar'n't I a Woman? ,bid., 170-171
74. Ar'n't I a Woman?,Ibid., 319.
75. Rawick, Vol.2, Part 2, 174.
76. Rawick, Vol.2, Part 2, 304.
77. Aleckson, Before the War, 56.
78. John Edwin Fripp Plantation Journal, 2 Sept. 1858, Southern Historical Collection, The Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
79. Ada Bacot, Diary, 11 Feb. 1861, South Caroliniana Library, The University of South Carolina, Columbia.
80. Rawick, Vol.2, Part i, 252.
81. bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and feminism (London: Pluto Press 1982)
82. 35. hooks prefers to use the lower case for her name in order to make others question how names are perceived
83. Rawick, Vol.2, Part 1, 224-225
84. Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and feminism, Ibid., 326.
85. Rawick, Vol.2, Part 2, 36.
86. Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and feminism, Ibid., 129-130
87. See Tom Jones, Experience and Personal Narrative.
88. On the concept of social space between the lives of slaves and slave owners, see Larry E. Hudson Jr., "'All That Cash': Work and Status in the Slave Quarters", in Larry E. Hudson Jr., ed., Working Toward Freedom: Slave Society and Domestic Economy in the American South (New York: University of Rochester Press, 1994).
89. See Emily West "Love and Affection, Exploitation and Resistance," Ch. 6.
90. See Thomas Russell, "Sale Day in Antebellum South Carolina: Slavery, Law, Economy and Court-Supervised Sales" (Ph.D.: Stanford University, 1995)
91. Also "South Carolina's Largest Slave Auctioneering Firm," Chicago Kent Law Review, 68:3 (1993)
92. and "Articles Sell Best Singly: The Disruption of Slave Families at Court Sales" Utah Law Review, 4 (1996).
93. Peter Kolchin, American Slavery (Penguin: London 1995), 157-238