They were her property White women as slave owners in the American South

Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

Book - 2019

"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"--

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Subjects
Published
New Haven : Yale University Press [2019]
Language
English
Main Author
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers (author)
Physical Description
xx, 296 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-273) and index.
ISBN
9780300218664
  • Introduction; Mistresses of the Market
  • 1. Mistresses in the Making
  • 2. "I Belong to de Mistis"
  • 3. "Missus Done Her Own Bossing"
  • 4. "She Thought She Could Find a Better Market"
  • 5. "Wet Nurse for Sale or Hire"
  • 6. "That 'Oman Took Delight in Sellin' Slaves"
  • 7. "Her Slaves Have Been Liberated and Lost to Her"
  • 8. "A Most Unprecedented Robbery"
  • Epilogue: Lost Kindred, Lost Cause
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Acknowledgments
  • Index
Review by Choice Review

Taking exception to previous historical accounts that claim slaveholding women were reluctant or "fictive" masters, Jones-Rogers (Univ. of California, Berkeley) demonstrates that the relationship between female owners and enslaved blacks was, at bottom, economic rather than social. Married women tended to bring slaves, rather than land, to their marriages, and the products of their investments--from the wages enslaved people earned when hiring out to the crops they picked--were crucial to southern economic growth. Jones-Rogers reveals ownership and control to be techniques taught to young white girls by fathers who regarded mastery as critical aspects of early training. Even in a region that held up paternalism as an ideal, married women routinely challenged their husbands' legal authority over human property, especially slaves they inherited as young women. An institution as widely supported as slavery, Jones-Rogers suggests, could not long have been sustained had its authority and violence been wielded by wealthy white men alone. Deeply researched and closely argued, this unflinching, elegantly written volume--and the stories it tells, especially regarding the sale and purchase of slaves--overturns much of what historians long believed about what one scholar dubbed "a man's business." Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Douglas R. Egerton, Le Moyne College

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review

Jones-Rogers (history, Univ. of California, Berkeley) expands her award-winning dissertation to correct the historical record on white women's culpability in the perpetuation of the slave system. Using primary resources including newspapers and archives as well as many secondary sources, Jones-Rogers meticulously portrays how these women strived to maintain and control what they saw as their economic stability. Many white women were gifted or purchased slaves in their own right and as separate from their husbands, and there were complex laws available for women to use as a means to protect their investments. Jones-Rogers uses court cases and newspaper advertisements to show that Southern American women were not just victims of the patriarchy but that they were integral in making the slavery system work. The author uses strong evidence to convince readers to revisit what they think they know about white women and black slavery. Other works that can provide further context include Catherine M. Lewis and J. Richard Lewis's Women and Slavery in America and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's Within the Plantation Household. VERDICT Strongly recommended for readers interested in this period of U.S. history, or who wish to expand their understanding to include a more honest view of the Southern slave system.-Maria Bagshaw, Elgin Community Coll. Lib., IL © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.