They Were Her Property: White Women As Slave Owners in the American South

Description

A bold and searing investigation into the role of white women in the American slave economy. Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave-owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South's slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often their primary source of wealth. Not only did white women often refuse to cede ownership of their slaves to their husbands, they employed management techniques that were as effective and brutal as those used by slave-owning men. White women actively participated in the slave market, profited from it, and used it for economic and social empowerment. By examining the economically entangled lives of enslaved people and slave-owning women, Jones-Rogers presents a narrative that forces us to rethink the economics and social conventions of slaveholding America. Cover......Page 1 Half Title......Page 2 Title......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Dedication......Page 6 Contents......Page 8 Introduction: Mistresses of the Market......Page 10 ONE: Mistresses in the Making......Page 24 TWO: “I Belong to de Mistis”......Page 48 THREE: “Missus Done Her Own Bossing”......Page 80 FOUR: “She Thought She Could Find a Better Market”......Page 104 FIVE: “Wet Nurse for Sale or Hire”......Page 124 SIX: “That ’Oman Took Delight in Sellin’ Slaves”......Page 146 SEVEN: “Her Slaves Have Been Liberated and Lost to Her”......Page 174 EIGHT: “A Most Unprecedented Robbery”......Page 204 Epilogue: Lost Kindred, Lost Cause......Page 223 Notes......Page 230 Bibliography......Page 276 Acknowledgments......Page 298 Index......Page 302