Slave Marriages
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996
From: Terence Finnegan
Subject: This date in southern history (March 6)
On this date in 1857 the Supreme Court issued its seven to two decision in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case. Scott's quest for freedom actually began with another case, Scott v. Emerson, that Scott had filed against his owner's widow, Mrs. John Emerson. Emerson was an army physician, who in 1836 was assigned to Fort Snelling, which was in the Wisconsin Territory. Emerson brought Scott along with him even though Missouri state law stipulated that a slave taken into a free territory was thereby emancipated.
While in the Wisconsin Territory Scott met and married Harriet Robinson, who was the property of Major Lawrence Taliafero, a local Indian agent. Scott and Robinson were actually married by Taliafero, who either sold Robinson to Emerson or gave her two Scott. Upon Emerson's death, the Scott's returned to St. Louis and decided to bring suit for their freedom and that of their two daughters against Emerson's widow, Irene. In 1852 the Missouri Supreme Court ruled against the Scotts, which led to the introduction of a new suit against Mrs. Emerson's brother-in-law John Sandford, a resident of New York who claimed that he was the new owner of the Scott family.
Terry Finnegan
William Paterson College
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996
From: Michael Chesson
Subject: Date in History Query
No slave state ever recognized "marriages" between slaves as legally binding, on the owners, the slaves, or anyone else. Don't know what the law was in Illinois but I do know that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ruled in the 1870s that there could be no legal unions between white men and black women, citing the Dred Scott case as precedent. That is part of the ultimate horror of slavery. When we read of slaves being "married" it is a distortion of historical reality and their experience as humans; they might live together for 50 years--but they were never married, in the eyes of the law, any Christian church, or by anyone in [southern] white society.
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996
From: Rosemary Grant
Subject: Re: This date in southern history (March 6)
Terry,
I'm curious about why Scott, his new wife, and family didn't stay in Wiscon. You wrote that either Scott was given to Taliafero or both were given to Emerson. Either way it reads like they were on their own during that time period. Emerson died, and the Scotts decided to return to Missouri. Why on earth would they do this when they knew the law didn't require it. Was it because they knew they were part of Emerson's property that would be passed on as part of an inheritance? Does this imply acceptance to their state of servitude? Perhaps they didn't know the law, but if they were on their own in Wisconsin, why would they want to move into a situation about which they knew nothing? Seems like they'd have been better off to have stayed in the North.
If you don't know perhaps someone else does.
Respectfully,
Rosemary Bradford Grant
Monett High School History/Humanities Instructor UMKC adjunct professor fhr010@mail.connect.more.net Monett, MO 65708 1-417-235-5445 & fax 1-417-235-7884
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996
From: J. Douglas Deal
Subject: Slave marriages - response
<<--citing the Dred Scott case as precedent. That is part of the ultimate horror of slavery. When we read of slaves being "married" it is a distortion of historical reality and their experience as humans; they might live together for 50 years--but they were never married, in the eyes of the law, any Christian church, or by anyone in [southern] white society.
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com-->>
Without in any way denying the "ultimate horror of slavery," I would take issue with the claim made here by Michael Chesson. First, I would contend that, the laws and the views of many Southern whites notwithstanding, a great many slaves did experience, with love and fidelity, a relationship that THEY considered to be marriage. Second, there were many biracial churches, particularly evangelical ones, that persisted in disciplining slaves as well as whites for the sin of adultery. Why would they have done so if they (the whites and the blacks in these congregations) recognized no such thing as slave marriage? Finally, the law again notwithstanding, at least some slaveowners attempted to be good Christians and good masters by respecting the integrity of the family units forged by their slaves.
Doug Deal
History/SUNY-Oswego
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996
From: R.E. Curran
Subject: TDISH - slave marriages response
No southern state may have recognized slave marriages in law, but many Christian churches certainly did. Ministers and priests encouraged such unions, and witnessed them.
R.E. Curran
Georgetown U.
Hist3@GUVAX.GEORGETOWN.EDU
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 1995
From: Terence Finnegan
Subject: Re: slave marriages
I take issue with Michael Chesson's assertion that southern white churches did not recognize the validity of slave marriages. Blassingame, among others, has pointed out that white churches were the primary institutional support for slave families. White southern clergymen of all denominations preached to slaves about the evils of adultery and fornication, concepts that are meaningless outside the context of marriage. Beginning in the mid-18th century many white churches began to insist that slaves be married in Christian ceremonies and required ministers to perform slave weddings. Thousands of slaves were married in such ceremonies and the churches often investigated charges of adultery and fornication among slaves. Many white ministers were vocal in their support for laws that would recognize the inviolability of slave marriages. In 1859 the South Carolina Episcopal Church warned masters about disposing of slaves in such a manner as "to infringe the Divine injunction forbidding the separation of man and wife." Few if any white Christian clergymen would have argued that Christian teachings concerning marriage did not apply equally to slave and free.
Terry Finnegan
William Paterson College
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996
From: Richard Hobbes
Subject: slave marriages
<<--the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ruled in the 1870s that there could be no legal unions between white men and black women, they might live together for 50 years--but they were never married, in the eyes of the law, any Christian church, or by anyone in [southern] white society. ^^^^^^^^^^
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com-->>
Did you really need to say *southern* white society in your last sentence? You stated above that it was illegal in Pennsylvania [northern] white society (white\black), even in 1870! Truth be told, although not *legally* recognized, most slave owners were compassionate towards their *married* slaves. It seems "popular" history dramatizes the forced breakup of slave marriages; i.e. evil slave owner whips the slave man and takes his wife away screaming and crying to the auction block.
Yes, I'm sure this happened but the Christian faith and it's tenets concerning marriage had a strong hold in the Old South. For this reason, more often than not, slave marriages were respected by the owner, if not the government.
Richard Hobbes
mpoteat@ncsl.dcr.state.nc.us
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Good reading on Dred Scott
For everyone interested in the Dred Scott case, not to mention American slavery, American history, racism, our culture, etc., etc.: READ THE BOOK!
Don E. Fehrenbacher, "The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics" (NY: Oxford, 1978), also available in a paperback abridgment, but read the whole thing--600 pages. As the author admits, everyone who has written about this incredible case has made mistakes, including himself. (I stole that line when writing about the Richmond bread riot in 1863). Thucydides could not have accurately summarized this case on a H-list. It is just too complicated and the historiography too convoluted. The book is brilliant and honest; he even admits when he doesn't know something, or hasn't been able to figure out some aspect. Here is a real historian, who took his work (but not himself) seriously. It is beautifully written, really wonderful. I can almost guarantee, once you get into it, you won't be able to put it down.
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996
From: Michael Chesson
Subject: Chesson Follow-up Slave Marriages
Editor's note - Michael did not state to which reply this specifically refers.
Again, I beg to differ. What ministers said, and what they did, and what effect it had in legal terms for the slaves, are really quite different. By 1859 the institution was about to be destroyed, and thanks to all that is holy for that. I'd prefer to concentrate on the two and half centuries the cancer existed, more or less, and not what it had evolved into in the last terrible years of its duration.
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996
From: Michael Chesson
Subject: Chesson Response - slave marriages
For Richard Hobbes: the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled in the 1870s on a presumed marriage between a white man and a slave woman from Virginia, who children were educated in Lancaster and later Philadelphia, during the 1850s. The case involved his estate, and the Commonwealth's claim to a larger cut if there was no marriage, only concubinage. They ruled against the black woman, widow, whatever. She eventually had to pay the state what it said it was owed.
My stance in the immiseration debate is, after all these years, closer I guess to Stampp than Phillips or Genevose, despite the latter's brilliance and sophistication, and the real strengths that he sees in the former's work. I've never disputed the fact that many (I don't know about most) masters allowed slaves to live together as man and wife for long periods, perhaps broken only by the death of one member of the couple. But I'm still waiting for someone, anyone, on this list, giving me a citation--one is all I ask--that I can get my hands on so as to satisfy myself, which will document that a court of law in any colony from Maryland and Delaware south, or from those two states of the Union south, at any time, recognized a slave union as a legally binding contract, not only on the man and woman involved, but on their owner or owners. Alternatively, I'd settle for a case where a Christian minister of a major Protestant denomination (Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian); or even RC in Louisiana or Mobile married a slave couple and was able to force the owner or owners to recognize the legally binding nature of the relationship, or convince a court to so rule.
If you're Hobbes, I must be Calvin, or rather Doubting Thomas--when I can stick my hand inside the wound, and feel my Lord and my Redeemer, then I'll believe in slave marriages, but not until. Pax.
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996
From: Chris Morris
Subject: Slave Marriages - Tadman ref.
Before the list continues the discussion of slave marriages, I thought we might want to know a little more precisely what we are dealing with. So I offer some statistics. According to Michael Tadman, the most reliable numbers I know, "forcible separations probably destroyed about one in three of all first marriages between Upper South slaves." See Tadman, Speculators and Slaves, pp. 170-71. I should add, in response to one recent post, that Tadman's book is hardly a "popular history" out to dramatize the evils of slavery. Of course, one can debate endlessly whether religion prevented masters from breaking up more families than they did, or whether, as Frederick Douglass thought, these good Christians were hypocrits.
Chris Morris
University of Texas at Arlington
morris@uta.edu
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996
From: John Bruce Jones
Subject: Response to Finnegan on Slave Marriages
On Sat, 11 Mar 1995, Terence Finnegan wrote:
<<--I take issue with Michael Chesson's assertion that southern white churches did not recognize the validity of slave marriages. . . .Beginning in the mid-18th century many white churches began to insist that slaves be married in Christian ceremonies and required ministers to perform slave weddings. Thousands of slaves were married in such ceremonies and the churches often investigated charges of adultery and fornication among slaves.-->>
Yes, but how did this policy benefit slaveowners? Surely some interest lay in attempting to regulate the sexual economy this way, much as it did for the white bourgeoisie?
John Jones
Emory University
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996
From: Michael Chesson
Subject: Slave Marriages - 2 repsonses from Michael Chesson
I agree with everything that Doug Deal says in his response to my posting about "slave marriages" which eventually appeared after some delay. Yes, many slaves may well have considered themselves "married," although many also realized that ol' massa or ol' missy if she survived him could separate them, for any reason, or no reason at all; whether it be debts while living; debts of the estate of the deceased; a personal grudge; whatever. Certainly some congregations, particularly evangelical ones, considered black couples "married" as much as whites, and tried to discipline them when they strayed; during and after the war as well, in slavery and freedom.
But my point has to do with reality (the legal type) not human emotions or religious fervor. That ol' time religion ain't gwine to keep you from gitting sold down the river. No slaves were ever legally married, or so regarded, by the courts, by lawyers and judges, or most important, by the owners (white as well as black) of the slaves themselves, to the best of my knowledge, anywhere in the slave south, either in the colonial era, or later. I made that point in a letter to the NY Times about an article on slavery that appeared last spring. The reporter who wrote the original article referred to "slave marriages."
What seems to be rare among my generation, I actually care about language and the meaning of words. I know, it seems positively Orwellian. When we speak of "slave marriages" it gives our students and general readers the impression that such actually existed in the eyes of the law. They did not, nor in the eyes of most of the established Protestant denominations, and the Catholic church in the American South, unlike Latin America. This whole discussion takes on tones of Lewis Carroll. If one calls a dog a cat often enough, does that make the mutt feline?
Would it not convey the horror of slavery more accurately and fully to refer to unions between slaves as just that, sexual junctions that sometimes existed for a half-century or longer, and had all the virtues of a warm, loving, reponsible marriage, usually producing children; but which could be, and often were, destroyed by the owner, some other white, or the slaves themselves, whether acting singly or jointly.
I am well aware that the current trend in slavery studies among feel-good historians is to talk of the slaves as "actors" rather than "victims", who interacted with the ruling race in all kinds of intricate ways and helped mediate their condition, blah, blah, blah. Makes me want to burst out with a chorus of "I'd rather be a hammer than a nail" in a quavering falsetto. Boy, how this takes me back.
Don't care what others say, write, do, or how they teach. When I teach the peculiar institution, if I err, it is with Conrad, on the side of "the horror, the horror."
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com
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Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 11:30:29 -0500
Thanks to Chris Morris for citing Tadman's excellent book. Now we're getting down to nuts and bolts, rather than discussing what shoulda been, mighta been, etc. One in three sounds about right to me, coinciding with general estimates of the chances of a slave being sold one or more times between birth and death. My point has been all along that this could happen to any slave couple in the American south, and often did. Yes, there were "good masters" and couples who lived together there entire lives--but they were not legally married, and did not have the protection of the law in this aspect of their lives. There were some attempts to ameliorate the institution in the antebellum south, and particularly in the Confederacy. But a lot of "marriages" were performed, by masters or Christian clergy, with the words "till death or distance do you part."
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Slave Marriages - questions
Someone on this list talking about slave marriages mentioned church attendance. If it is true that blacks attended church with their masters during antebellum times, what was the church saying about these unions?
One of the most difficult time my students have is in understanding how everyone attended church together during the times of slavery. What I wonder about is how the Bible was taught in the sermons these people heard. If the white masters were encouraged to be good masters and the slaves to obey their masters, how did marriage fit into this picture? Did the preachers say there were two separate gospel messages for the two races? Surely not!
Did the white masters think it Christian to keep the blacks from marriage customs? Surely the same Bible applied to both races.
Respectfully,
Rosemary Bradford Grant
Monett High School, history & humanities instructor
UMKC adjunct,
Monett, MO 65708
tel (417)235-5445
fax (417)235-7884
-------------------------------------------------------------
Chesson is right that "marriage" gave slaves no legal protection if masters chose to sell them or their children. But did not slaves enter unions for the purpose of forming families, as did whites, even though they were aware of the possibility of separation? Didn't these unions afford slaves some of the privelidges associated with "marriages"--in some cases a larger cabin, perhaps even protection for women from sexual predators, black and white? We do students no harm, nor do we do violence to history by describing such relationships as marriage. Students are well aware of the difference between white marriages and slave marriages. I guess my point is that no word but marriage conveys the emotional and familial power that slaves attached to these unions. "Sexual junctions" just doesn't do it for me, and probably wouldn't satisfy my students either.
Russell Motter
University of Hawaii Lab School
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996
From: David L. Carlton
Subject: Slave Marriages and specificity
Michael Chesson declares:
>What seems to be rare among my generation, I actually care about language
>and the meaning of words. I know, it seems positively Orwellian.
Others of Michael's generation care about the meaning of words, enough to be bothered by reductionism and spurious exactitude. Slave marriages lacked legal protection; it does not necessarily follow that there were no slave marriages. Marriage is in part a legal term, but hardly in whole. Slave marriages were horrendously vulnerable, yes; to insist that they didn't exist, because they were unenforceable in a court of law, no. Indeed, if you want to emphasize "the horror, the horror," why not say that slaveowners routinely flouted the teachings of their own faith and refused to honor that which they themselves professed to be sacred in the eyes of God? Unlike some of us, after all, they really claimed to believe that marriage was a divine, not merely a legal, institution, that what some of us dismiss as the products of mere "emotion and religious fervor" were as "real" to them as the law is (exclusively) to, say, Elkins and his successors. The fact that slaveholders ignored marriage ties among their slaves doesn't prove they didn't exist; it proves that their system tolerated (by their own lights) the grossest affronts against God and humanity, affronts for which they deserve to burn in the Hell in which they so deeply believed. It does not mean that men and women joined in the sight of God weren't "really" joined because some nineteenth-century judge, or twentieth-century historian, ruled otherwise.
David L. Carlton
Associate Professor of History
Vanderbilt University
P.O. Box 1523, Sta. B
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37235
(615) 322-3326
carltodl@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Slave Marriages - 4 responses
I would certainly agree with Michael Chesson that in no southern state were slave "marriages" legally recognized. And there were also many self-proclaimed "paternalistic" owners who respected the unions of their slave couples. However, at all times, these unions were only respected at the owners' convenience. And even with the most compassionate of owners, slave unions could, and often were, broken at an owner's death.
I would also agree with the figure generally used of one-third of all slave unions broken through sale (although my research does indicate that it could have been higher). However, I believe that this debate over the actual number of marriages broken is rather pointless and diverting. The real issue seems to be that while these marriages were not recognized by law, their importance to those involved was recognized by most slave owners--which made the ever present possibility, and threat, of sale one of the most important and effective forms of labor control in the southern slave system. Therefore, many owners encouraged slave "marriages" not only to increase the value of their estates (through offspring), but also because this magnified the consequences of a sale, making the threat of sale all the more effective in keeping an enslaved population under control. Anyone interested in a more in-depth discussion of how the black family and the threat of sale was used as a mechanism of control should see Norrece Jones's excellent book, Born a Child of Freedom Yet a Slave.
As to what the enslaved themselves actually thought of these marriages, the best example which I can think of comes from Frances Kemble. She described an enslaved woman in Georgia who had nine children (and two miscarriages) by a man named Tony. However, when asked by Kemble, she made it clear that "he was not her REAL husband." The man she continued to think of as her REAL husband had been sold from the estate many years before for running away.
Steven Deyle
University of California, Davis
sdeyle@ucdavis.edu
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Slaves and owners, whites and blacks, often attended church together, generally sitting in separate areas, with slaves in the back, or in galleries above. From my reading of the literature, slaves often chose not to attend, if given that option; or were clearly unenthusiastic about being forced to attend a service that had little if any meaning to them. I've read many passages about a censored version of the Bible or the New Testament being read to them; about white ministers only in many cases being allowed to preach to them, or serve as pastors in black urban congregations before the war (though black deacons may have wielded, informally and illegally, much of the real power) and in general, a white Christianity that did not very closely resemble black ideas about same.
If we, as mostly white, mostly liberal, middle-aged or thirty-something academics choose to think that most slaves were married; well, that is certainly one of the rights of tenure, but it simply does not conform with reality. Slave "marriages" were more of a "virtual matrimony," sort of like an electronic edition of a book, rather than the real thing between hard covers.
I'm still waiting for one citation, from anyone, a Nashville Agrarian, or anyone else out there in the electronic briarpatch, of a slave marriage upheld as legally binding in a court of law in any of the slave colonies or states from Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky south. Binding on the owner(s) of both slaves; cited in case law; binding on the slaves themselves; and/or a case in which a Christian minister/priest tried to enforce same--and succeeded.
Time to stop posting and cite some hard evidence. Evidence talks; rhetoric walks.
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com
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The current thread on slave marriages and whether they existed certainly has heated up the list, but it has left me seeking light. Chesson's definition of marriage, like _Miracle on 34th Street's_ definition of Santa Claus, requires only the recognition of the institution by government agencies such as courts or legislatures.
But the fact that lawgivers did not give priority to the institution of slave marriages over the property "rights" of the dominant caste does not prove that slave marriages were considered merely "sexual junctions," not to the judges who did not forbid sales of "married" slaves, nor to the slave families whose unions were so often ended by force.
I don't want to come off sounding like George Fitzhugh, but industrial capitalism often rent families asunder, stole offspring, killed or wounded husbands or wives while courts and legislatures systematically disregarded the rights of the victim's families. By Chesson's rigid definition, wouldn't the powerlessness of the married poor, in the face of "the horror, the horror" that was the sweatshop, the coal mine and the railyard similarly nullify their marriages? Should we question the propriety of discussing "immigrant marriages"?
That can of worms is big enough, so I won't even think about the question of whether polygamists' marriages also deserve scare quotes.
On a more constructive note, this discussion should send some of us back to Suzanne Lebsock's _The Free Women of Petersburg_, for examples of the ironies that arose when human beings struggled to love AND survive in a slave society.
Chris Warren
Brandeis University
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Michael Chhesson writes:
<<--But my point has to do with reality (the legal type) not human emotions or religious fervor. That ol' time religion ain't gwine to keep you from gitting sold down the river. No slaves were ever legally married, or so regarded, by the courts, by lawyers and judges, or most important, by the owners (white as well as black) of the slaves themselves, to the best of my knowledge, anywhere in the slave south, either in the colonial era, or later. I made that point in a letter to the NY Times about an article on slavery that appeared last spring. The reporter who wrote the original article referred to "slave marriages."-->>
Isn't the subject more complicated than this? Genovese writes (Roll Jordan Roll p. 453): "Thus, Georgia and Texas illogically and humane would not permit slave wives to testify against their husbands while continuing to insist that their relationship had no standing at law."
Obviously *some* recognition was going on. It was not enough to protect one from being sold down the river -- but it might have been enough to protect one from being convicted.
Bill Cecil-Fronsman zzceci@acc.wuacc.edu Department of History Office: (913) 231-1010 x1317 Washburn University Fax: (913) 231-1084 Topeka, KS 66621
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996
From: Michael Chesson
Subject: Slave Marriages - Micahel Chesson response
Editor's note: To this point the discussion of slave marriages has been useful in exploring how we distinguish between historical evidence such as we find in legal records and contextual evidence that suggest social values and actual practices. We are in danger of degrading into flames and this will not be tolerated.
David Herr, H-South Editor
In reply to David Carlton: the only documented facts introduced into this rather tedious debate (so far) came from Tadman's monograph, Speculators and Slaves. He estimated that one in three slaves, more or less, was sold at some point. Given that averages are deceptive, that conditions no doubt varied greatly throughout the south in various periods, if two "average" slaves "married" one another, and so on, what were the chances of their staying together. Not real good I suspect. But if you want to believe that Ozzie and Harriet were happy as clams in the cotton patch, that ol' massa respected the bonds of matrimony, that it was all nice and legal and santified by a church calling itself Christian, and that even if none of those things applied, it was still a nice suburban marriage--why then, sir, go right ahead. I won't try to stop you.
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996
From: Hank Stamm
Subject: Slave Marriages - 3 responses
Just a thought: marriage is a social/community institution, as well as a legal one. Many churches, as well as the slave community itself considered slave marriages binding. The dominant legal system, of course, did not recognize the legitimacy of such marriages. This does not, however, negate the veracity of calling such unions marriages--the slaves considered themselves in a state of marriages; many churches (and masters) also used the term (despite the fact that the same masters were also willing to break up such marriages).
One of the problems we have in this discussion is the fact that the dominant legal system was at odds with many of the communal institutions. Those without legal power, therefore, saw their own community standards and "family values" flouted by the "powers-that-be." It seems to me that to take a very narrow perspective that marriage exists only if it is recognized by the dominant legal system overlooks the very real social power and support that exists in one's immediate community reference group. Slaves thought they were married; the legal system said "no." Surely, this is a true "horror," but marriage is still the legitimate term, with respect to the slave community itself, to apply to the unions the slaves created.
Hank Stamm
University of Alaska Anchorage
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I find the discussion of slave marriage fascinating.
Subscribers to the list might be interested to know that later this year (probably in November) we will be publishing a book entitled_To Have and to Hold: Slave Work and Family Life in Antebellum South Carolina_ by Larry E. Hudson of the University of Rochester. In the work Hudson demonstrates that the work systems developed by slaveowners and slaves facilitated the creation of limited economic and social "space" between the slaves and owners that permitted the slaves some control over their family life. He further demonstrates a clear correlation between the strength of individual and extended slave families and the accumulation of personal property and social status within slave communities.
Subscribers might also be interested in Betty C. Woods _Women's Work, Men's Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia_ issued by the Press in 1995.
Malcolm L. Call
Senior Editor
University of Georgia Press
330 Research Drive
Athens, GA 30602
Phone 706-369-6139
FAX: 706-369-6131
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I couldn't agree more with David Carlton's response to Michael Chesson on this matter. What makes a legally sanctioned marriage more "real" than one not legally sanctioned? Surely, Professor Chesson would acknowledge that, in the parts of the Americas where the Catholic church and law codes DID sanction slave marriage, the sanctions could be (and were) evaded or ignored by owners and marriages either prohibited or undone. In fact, in most of these areas the demography of slavery and the slave trade dictated that only a small percentage of male slaves would ever marry or form families. In the U.S., in contrast, where slave marriage had no legal standing, a much larger percentage of slaves "married" and formed families than in most other slaveholding societies.
Why not apply to slave marriage the rather common distinction between de jure and de facto? It seems to fit the U.S. case pretty well.
Doug Deal
History/SUNY-Oswego
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Slave Marriages - evidence and clarity
Joan Cashin writes:
For what it is worth, I am working on an article on inheritance practices in the Old South, and I have uncovered a will by a planter in Powhatan Co., Va., who seems to recognize the legitimacy of a slave marriage. This man says that the slave Jacob and his "wife" Caroline may choose to go with his son or with his neighbor when the estate is divided. The will was probated in 1833. There is no evidence in the willbooks as to whether the provisions of the will were actually carried out, of course, but it is an interesting document. I hope this doesn't mean I will be mistaken for an Agrarian.
Joan Cashin, Ohio State.
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David Herr writes:
My research on fugitive slaves in the in the early and mid-nineteenth century reveals that a primary reason for running was to return to family. When slaves expressed this desire they made it clear that this included forms of extended family as well as immediate kin. These fugitives understood themselves and their relations in terms that reflect a foundation in marriage. Regardless of the law or slave owners, these slaves respected marriage ties. That they became fugitives underscores the ability of slaveowners to disrupt their family, but I think the more important point in this discussion is that these slaves express a social practice where slave marriage was fairly common and respected.
David Herr
University of Illinois
H-South Editor
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Doug Deal writes:
Michael Chesson's persistence in calling for hard evidence of the legality of slave marriage in the U.S. is truly puzzling because:
a) this is not the matter in dispute; no one participating in this discussion has claimed or would claim that slave marriages DID have legal standing in the U.S.
b) any scrap of evidence found to indicate otherwise would obviously be "the exception that proves the rule." Surely such evidence would not fundamentally transform Chesson's (or anyone's) understanding of slavery in general or slave marriage and family life in particular.
What various participants HAVE offered is abundant evidence (in summary form, without citations) that slave marriages were acknowledged to be real and significant by a wide array of Southerners, including some masters and most of the slaves themselves.
The crux of the matter, it seems, is HOW we ought to characterize slave marriage and family life in the American South. I don't think this boils down to "feel-good history" versus "the horror...." I think it deserves sensitive, balanced treatment--like all the other complex issues we deal with--qualified in the end by recognition of how much we don't know and will never know about the intimate lives of a subordinate class that left relatively little (how precious that little seems!) firsthand testimony for us to use as evidence.
Doug Deal
History/SUNY-Oswego
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Slave Marriages - continuing discussion - 5 responses
Jonathan Pritchett writes:
Even though slave marriages were not sanctioned by law, they are evident from the public record. As Joan Cashin observed in her work on inheritance practices, the names of slaves listed on probate inventories are sometimes grouped in families. Donald Sweig also observed some families among the slave records listed on the coastwise manifests -- see _Prologue_, (Spring, 1980). There are even records of slave marriages among the notarial records of slaves who were sold in New Orleans. The vast majority of these slaves were sold separately (without a spouse or a child). In a few cases, however, a husband and wife were sold together as indicated on the bill of sale. There are even examples of husbands and wifes who belonged to different owners in the exporting states who were sold to the same trader and then sold together in New Orleans. Obviously, such examples of marriages then sold together in New Orleans. Obviously, such examples of marriages surviving the slave trade intact are extremely rare. They did occur, however, and some traders even went out of their way to see that they did.
Jonathan Pritchett
Department of Economics
Tulane University
jprit@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu
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David Bailey writes:
When I went through many of the Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist church records in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama, I found that churches constantly worried about slave marriages, about free black marriages, about masters' roles in dealing with marriage and about various kinds of issues which might best be labelled adultery. This was not an easy set of problems, and in church discipline, it lead to varying and complex responses on the part of the churches. I also found that there is (no surprise) a history to this set of problems, and that watch-care changed after about 1830, with the increased call for clerical and church loyalty to the peculiar institution. Churches seemed ever more reluctant to interfere in marital issues regarding slaves, and become much less engaged in watch-care regarding slaves. I also want to mention that this is an issue on which a great deal of research has already taken place.
Dave Bailey, Michigan State; Editor, H-Ideas
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Michael Chesson writes:
A good point from Bill Cecil-Fronsman citing Genovese's book re slave testimony against each other being prohibited in some states if they were "married." And yes, from a prior posting, Norrece T. Jones's "Born a Child of Freedom Yet a Slave" is excellent; I bought it in hard cover in 1991, and have assigned it in graduate seminars. You don't have to read too many books on slavery, or slave narratives, to see that slave unions were frequently and repeatedly broken; as yet other recent postings testify.
I'm not insisting or arguing that these unions be called 'fornications" or something equally crude. I have never denied their value to the individuals concerned, to the children produced; or to the larger slave community. Nor that slaves individually and collectively were able to manipulate to some degree, some of the time, the system to make it work more in their favor. But I think it distorts language beyond all recognition to call such sexual arrangements, which yes, were quite clearly in the short and long range interest of the owners (and the owners' descendants, and white society generally, to the extent it supported and approved of slavery in the south)"marriages", since they were clearly never sanctioned by law, in the same sense that white marriages were, or even marriages between free blacks. Nor were they sanctioned (in any other than the spiritual sense) by most denominations; if even that.
When slaves split up of their own choice did they get "divorced."? Would advocates of the position that's been argued for some days now then agree with Thomas Jonathan Jackson, that "you can be, what you resolve to be, and leave the rest to God?"
Sorry if I flamed, or came close to ignition, and trust that the rules about same will be evenly enforced for all concerned--just as they are on every campus in this fair country. God bless America.
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com
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Laura Crogan writes:
I have to agree with Professor Carlton's response regarding slave marriages. Just because the law doesn't sanction or protect something, does not mean it doesn't exist. Furthermore, it is interesting that this whole discussion has been from the angle of the way white society viewed slave marriages. What about how the way slaves themselves viewed them? {Editor's note: For such perspectives refer to March 13 post: Slave Marriages - evidence and clarity} Did they recognize marriages within their own community as valid and binding? The records are filled with descriptions of slave weddings and wedding rituals, certainly showing that even though slaves realized they had no protection or recognition under the white law, there was still a (greater?) spiritual and community tie to be created through their own marriage customs and rites.
In further reaction to the discussion of African Americans as "victims" versus "actors", I think it is a disservice to the people who lived in the past as well as to our students to depict African Americans (free or slave) as *always* victims or *always* actors. Like anyone (although certainly slaves had more difficulties to overcome and therefore needed to be more creative and determined to persevere), slaves sometimes experienced things beyond their control, sometimes could only react to what others did to them, and sometimes could positively act on their own behalf. To describe only the horrors, or alternately, only, say, slave resistance and rebellion, presents a shallow and stereotypical view of an institution that was incredibly complex.
Laura Croghan
William and Mary
kamoie@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
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Gregory McDonald writes:
Lest I become to deeply involved in a discussion that is far out of my depth, I must ask two questions which burn inside me:
1) Was there ever a time when Louisiana gave legal sanction to slave marriages? In the back of my mind I have the idea that that state did at one point allow slave testimony against whites in court and various other, relatively "liberal" rights for slaves. I would assume that whatever laws were in place would have been made less generous in the 1830s as all states in the south reacted to Nat Turner and the rise of the abolitionist movement in the north. As I am on spring break and lack access to professors and the library, I cannot pursue this idea myself and welcome responses.
2) As to the letter of the law in general: Scott v. Sanford and other decisions and laws on all levels came very close to legally denying the humanity of slaves. Does that mean that, technically, they were not human?
Gregory L. McDonald
Univ. of Southern Mississippi
mcdonal3@whale.st.usm.edu
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996
From: Michael Chesson
Subject: Michael Chesson responds - slave marriages
Michael Chesson writes:
I would certainly agree with David Herr that slaves ran away to return to family, but still balk at calling the motivation in cases of one adult seeking another with whom they had enjoyed connubial relations "marriage ties." Much of the argument I've heard on this subject reminds me of the rhetoric for modern gay or lesbian unions. If the couple identifies its relationship as a "marriage" does that make it so? Not in current law (Hawaii may soon decide otherwise) or the theology of most established denominations (Jewish, Catholic, Protestant--can't say about the others). Yes, you can find churches that will sanctify such unions and call them marriages (an Episcopal bishop is currently on trial for heresy on a related charge, ordaining as a minister an active gay with a partner), but I submit they are no more recognized by the general population and the laws of most communities and states, as well as the national government; than were "slave marriages" in the South. (I'll leave it to specialists in southern white religion to enumerate for me the various denominations, churches, and congregations, that recognized slave "marriages.")
We have gotten to the point in this country where more and more of us seem to be studying, quite literally, less and less--the fragments of historical trends and patterns--not just the exceptions to the rule, but the exceptions to the exceptions. We profess to be interested in the masses, but really are concerned only with behavioral elites. WGBH here in Boston, which produces so much wonderful programming for PBS, has a corporate policy that extends health care benefits to same sex couples who have declared themselves to be partners. Men and women who happen to be living together, in precisely the same legal status, are denied the same benefits. Many on this list would apparently approve of such arrangements, if only in the interest of redressing generations of rampant homophobia and sexism. I do not.
Joan Cashin has, as usual, found a fascinating tidbit. I will try to follow it up when I can. I would indeed be interested in the final results. I know of many white men, slave owners who fathered slave offspring, who freed their children in their wills, which were then not executed, but whose provisions were in fact violated by white heirs and/or executors.
Doug Deal is a fine debater, so it is gratifying to see his statement that "the matter [of the legality of slave marriage] is not in dispute" and that "no one participating in this discussion has claimed or would claim that slave marriages DID have legal standing in the U.S." How would you then define or describe them? Some states, like Pennsylvania, had a common law wife tradition in their stream of precedents. If you lived with someone long enough, you were in effect in the eyes of the law and society, married to them. But I would argue that slave unions did not even have this status, in the eyes of white society. I think the status in the slave community varied greatly, as one can find a variety of examples and exceptions in slave testimony and slave narratives.
Deal's entirely right that one such case would not "transform... [our] understanding of slavery in general or slave marriage and family life in particular." Nevertheless, I'd still be sincerely interested in seeing any such cases that anyone can find; I'm certainly willing to be convinced, to change my mind and my views, but I need some evidence. Calling me a Yankee know-it-all is amusing but doesn't contribute much (and would make my ancestors furious).
I also agree with Deal that the reverse situation existed in Latin America, from one of his previous postings, but that the laws of the Catholic church and the sacrament of matrimony were often evaded there, and that most black males never even had the chance to marry. That's well known. I don't follow his logic that because the de facto/de jure equation was essentially reversed in Latin America, that it will help our understanding of American slavery to call de facto sexual unions up here "marriages" as if they truly were sanctified by the weight of law, religious institutions, and community sanctions (black and white). Much of the slave testimony I've read, particularly from women, would seem to indicate that they lived with someone, or were forced to by the master, but did not (sometimes never) regard themselves as "married."
An earlier posting pointed out not only the enormous reproductive possibilities and potential advantages for owners of long-term partnerships, but also their use as mechanisms of labor control. One who takes a spouse and children takes hostages to fortune; if one is a slave, well--enough said.
I also think that an enormous amount of testimony, of various kinds, has been left behind, and that we're still sorting through it. No, it's not as much evidence as we have about some subjects; but far more than we have about others; e.g. same sex unions between white males, white women, and biracial same sex unions in the Old South. But books continue to appear each year on slavery, many of them very fine indeed.
And I was glad to see Chris Warren of Brandeis raise the troubling question (a la George Fitzhugh as he points out) of the treatment of "wage slave" families under capitalism, both here, in Great Britain, and elsewhere. They were treated horribly, no doubt about it. But they weren't slaves, and they were married. Not every slum is a "ghetto", a terribly abused and misused word; not every case of genocide is a "holocaust."
Have I run afoul of some clique that controls this list? If so, vote me off it. Declare victory on the issue of slave marriages. Doug Deal, David Carlton, David Herr et al can then proclaim unchallenged by the likes of me.
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996
From: Victoria Bynum
Subject: More on Slave Marriages
The debate over slave marriages, as one respondent commented, tends to bog down over the issue of legal vs. social definitions of domestic arrangements. I have one example of the legal treatment of a slave marriage that may muddy the waters more. In my book _Unruly Women_ (p. 63), I reported a case wherein a slave woman, Polly, was reported as the wife of Dill Delany, a deceased free black man. In the estate papers of Delany, it was reported that Polly was not allowed to claim any dower rights because she was a slave, despite the fact that she was referred to as "wife." However, the state nevertheless directed the estate's executor to hire Polly and her three children from their owner in order to pay off the debts of Delany's estate. This case seems to demonstrate not only the self-serving nature of planter recognition of slave marriages, but an entanglement of law and custom. In a perverse sense, it _is_ a legal recognition of a slave marriage! --Vikki Bynum
Victoria Bynum
Southwest Texas State University
vb03@swt.edu
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996
From: Beth Golding
Subject: Tributary ideas reg. Slave Marriages
Editor's note: This post reflects a shift away from southern history, although it is not a complete departure - H-Southers are reminded to keep within the broad confines of southern history.
>Michael Chesson writes:
<<--If the couple identifies its relationship as a "marriage" does that make it so? Not in current law (Hawaii may soon decide otherwise) or the theology of most established denominations (Jewish, Catholic, Protestant--can't say about the others).-->>
Actually, significant segments of some of these "established denominations" (e.g. of Reform Judaism, United Church of Christ) are increasingly performing holy unions for same sex couples. While it is certainly not a widespread practice yet, it is no longer a case of one or two isolated churches out of nowhere performing these unions. The couples, their families, their churches, all consider these real marriages. The fact that there is no legal recognition of these marriages and that many (probably most) people refuse to acknowledge them as such does not in itself negate the reality of the marriage in these people's lives. In the same way, slave marriages would certainly have been a reality in the lives of those involved, whether or not legally sanctioned or recognized by slaveholding society (except when it served their purposes, as several people have noted). As someone already mentioned, just because from "our" viewpoint ("in the eyes of white society") there is no "real" marriage does not mean it is not real from the viewpoint of the people who are actually living the situation.
<<--WGBH here in Boston, which produces so much wonderful programming for PBS, has a corporate policy that extends health care benefits to same sex couples who have declared themselves to be partners. Men and women who happen to be living together, in precisely the same legal status, are denied the same benefits. Many on this list would apparently approve of such arrangements, if only in the interest of redressing generations of rampant homophobia and sexism. I do not.-->>
I'm not sure if this relates to the topic at hand or is more of a personal gripe. One's personal disapproval of, or refusal to recognize, a same sex union, or a mixed race union, or a slave union, does not negate its existence. (The difference in the case specified, of course, is that men and women who live together have the option of getting legally married and thus automatically qualifying for those health care benefits, while same sex couples do not have that option. In addition, in most cases where such a policy exists, the same sex couple has to *document* that they have been together for a certain amount of time -- usually six months -- and are financially interdepent and committed to a permanent relationship. This is not required of legally married couples. So whose "marriage" is more "real," the same sex couple who have been together So whose "marriage" is more "real," the same sex couple who have been together for twenty years and own a house together, or Michael and Lisa Marie? Madonna and Sean? Liz and ???)
Beth Golding
egolding@smtpgate.dlis.state.fl.us
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996
From: Diana O'Neal
Subject: Question about context - slave marriages
Diana O'Neal writes:
I am about to step where angels fear to tread. I have enjoyed following the discussion on slave marriages and all the questions it has raised in my mind. It seems to me, graduate student that I am, that the problem with the discussion of slave marriages is one of definition. From the definitions proposed by both Dr. Chesson and Dr. Carlton, each presents an equally valid analysis.
It appears from my vantage that we have brought the problems of the 20th and the sexual revolution back with us in our investigation of the past. Ask any 100 people what marriage is and you will probably end up with a 100 different answers. Were they were as confused about the definition of marriage as we are today? Can we come up with, through the primary sources, what the majority of people believed about marriage in the South? Would one find different definitions among different times or that the definition was so widely accepted as either legal, ecclesiastical or emotional attachments that no one challenged the definition as we do today?
I guess what I am getting at is that we need to make sure that we don't say what we define marriage as but how they defined marriage, and try to apply their definition in our analysis of their motives. Then, after we can say with confidence how they viewed their world we can continue to make our value judgements based on our different views, if we care to. Personally, I hate to see what they will be saying about us 150 years in the future, but I hope they allow us to speak in our own voices before they judge us with theirs.
If someone has investigated how these people felt about marriage, I would like to read their investigation.
Diana O'Neal
Graduate Student, The Citadel
OnealD@Citadel.edu
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996
From: Gary Hewitt
Subject: Slave Marriages - Questions to address
Gary Hewitt writes:
The case of Polly and Dill Delany seems to me to go to the heart of what "domestic arrangments" are all about, beyond either the narrowly "legalistic" understanding of marriage as a union sanctioned by law or a "social" understanding of marriage as a state of union felt by a variety of different communities.
Marriages create households and therefore create household social, economic, and even political relationships. Certainly, for instance, the household served (and still does, sometimes) as a central institution in the organization and deployment of productive and reproductive labor within free society. Was it the same way within slave society? How were slaves' (admittedly limited) economic decisions made? What kinds of power relationships governed them? There's more than love & affection, or even religious sanction, in a marriage.
The question then becomes, given the coercive and/or hegemonic power wielded by masters, was there a need or desire on the part of the master to negotiate through households to tap the productive and reproductive energies of households? Or did he or she simply not care about the existence of these slave-slave relationships? Could a master motivate his slaves to work by threat of separation? By threat of beating a slaves' spouse? What kinds of relative responsibility might masters have put on slaves for the actions of members of their families? These questions are an attempt to address the everyday social relationships that might translate into an understanding of slave marriage as at least forming families, at least forming _households_ in some limited similarity to free households.
My sense is that the answer will be ambiguous: that masters usually did not want a "head of household" to come between them and their slaves: that the "family" that masters thought of was "my family, black and white" in some kind of patriarchal ideal. But at the same time, my sense is that at many times masters had to acknowledge the possibility of another "head of household." The extent to which this might or might not create a "marriage" depends on who is in these households, and their relationships both amongst one another, and with the master and the master's own family, I imagine.
Gary L. Hewitt
Dept. of History, Grinnell College
o:(515)269-3091
h:(515)236-8089
fax:(515)269-4985
hewittg@ac.grin.edu
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996
From: Gary Hewitt
Subject: A bit more on slave marriages - 2 responses
Gary Hewitt writes:
Another public-record mention of slave marriages which just popped out of my research.
Background: the Yamasee War in South Carolina, 1715-16, during which South Carolina bargained with Virginia to get some help; the Virginians sent some servants to S.C. and demanded that slave women be sent in return to work in the place of the missing men. The Carolinians protested, finding that it would be
"impracticable to send Negro women ... by reason of the Discontent
such usage would have given their husbands to have their Wives
taken from them wch. might have occasioned a Revolt also of
the Slaves"
(Source: Joseph Boone and Richard Beresford to the Board of Trade, 5 December 1716, _Records in the British Public Record Office Relating to South Carolina_ (Columbia, S.C., 1947-) 6: 262-63)
All the more dangerous, because those male slaves who might be discontented were also, or at least many of them, _armed_ in order to fight the Creek/Yamasee alliance. Though one also imagines that the Carolinian protest was a bit self-serving, as they themselves would be a bit discontented to lose the labor of those female slaves.
Gary L. Hewitt
Dept. of History
Grinnell College
o:(515)269-3091
h:(515)236-8089
fax:(515)269-4985
hewittg@ac.grin.edu
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Viki Bynum writes:
<<--Personally, I hate to see what they will be saying about us 150 years in the future, but I hope they allow us to speak in our own voices before they judge us with theirs. If someone has investigated how these people felt about marriage, I would like to read their investigation.-->>
In response to your question, I would like to recommend the James Boon Papers, held at the N.C. state archives in Raleigh. The letters to Boon from his slave wife Sarah demonstrate poignantly the "realness" of their marriage from her point of view. Yet just as real was the ease with which Boon ended their marriage, which had no legal validity, and married--legally--a free black woman. His marriage to Sarah was recognized by the Sarah's owners, who provided a homestead for the two on the plantation.
The whole issue of free blacks and slaves trying to build domestic households within the circle of slavery raises another set of questions about slave marriages, the law, and social behavior. One can feel Sarah's pain as her husband retreats from the marriage, but who can blame James Boon for not wanting to be tethered to a plantation, to live amid slavery? Similarly, in the narrative of ex-slave Emma Stone, Stone recalled that her mother was free, but in order to maintain a marriage with her slave husband, she and the children lived just like slaves on the plantation of the husband's owner.
To recognize slaves as having social agency does not inevitably lead to romanticizing the effects of slavery, as cases like the above demonstrate. If anything, it brings the participants to life and forces one to feel the effects of the institution even more. But it also reminds us that people struggle to carve out lives in whatever circumstances they find that people struggle to carve out lives in whatever circumstances they find themselves, and in the process, they also create society. Vikki Bynum
Victoria Bynum
Southwest Texas State University
vb03@swt.edu
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Evidence regarding slave marriages
Terry Finnegan writes:
In response to Michael Chesson's call for court citations that recognized slave marriages as legally binding, in 1724 Louisiana promulgated the so-called Code Noir, and although it stipulated that priests could not marry slaves without a master's permission, it also stated that once a slave couple was married the master could not sell the spouses (or their children) separately. This remained the law, at least technically, in Louisiana until 1803. I couldn't find a copy of the Code Noir in the William Paterson library, but perhaps someone else on the list could provide the verbatim text.
As for court citations, in the case of Girod v. Lewis (1819) the Louisiana supreme court said the following about the ability of slaves to contract marriage:
It is clear, that slaves have no legal capacity to assent to any contract. With the consent of their master, they may marry, and their moral power to agree to such a contract or connection of that of marriage cannot be doubted; but whilst in a state of slavery it cannot produce any civil effect, because slaves are deprived of all civil rights. Emancipation gives to the slave his civil rights, and a contract of marriage, legal and valid by the consent of the master, and moral assent of the slave, from the moment of freedom, although dormant during the slavery, produces all the effects which result from such contract among free persons.
It seems that in this case the court was claiming that a slave marriage was morally binding while the parties were slaves and both morally and legally binding (without contracting another marriage) if the parties should gain their freedom.
Slaves in Tennessee apparently had a bit more freedom to make contracts than slaves in other parts of the South, and the Tennessee supreme court repeatedly recognized the right of slaves to make contracts for their freedom (at least according to Helen Tunnicliff Catterall). In 1871 the Tennessee supreme court ruled that this right had even extended to marriage during the slavery era. In the case of Andrews v. Page the court admitted that "it was generally held, in the slaveholding States, that the marriage of slaves was utterly..void" but the court argued that the state of Tennessee had never "distinctly and explicitly recognized" this doctrine. The court went on to claim that prior to emancipation "there were circumstances under which the courts of this State recognized the relation of husband and wife..as existing among slaves..and we hold, that a marriage between slaves, with the assent of their owners, whether contracted in common law form, or celebrated under the statute, [the marriage act of 1778] always was a valid marriage in this State."
Admittedly this case came after emancipation, and I have no idea what the composition of the Tennessee supreme court was at this time. The court does claim, however, that there was ample precedent in Tennessee for recognizing the legality of slave marriages.
I'll leave it to the legal scholars on the list to determine if this reasoning had any basis in reality or not.
Terry Finnegan
William Paterson College
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1996
From: Michael Chesson
Subject: Slave Marriages - follow up, 2 resp.
Michael Chesson writes:
Victoria Bynum's example of a slave marriage, taken from her fine book, "Unruly Women," which I've assigned in my old south course, is closer toward the kind of evidence I've been seeking. As she says, it is somewhat perverse, in that it was self-serving, to the benefit of the white community. What I'd really like to see is an example of a slave marriage that was legally recognized when it was not to the benefit of a white owner, creditor, or white society generally; or a case where a Protestant minister, Catholic priest, or southern rabbi persuaded a judge/jury/court/white institution to recognize both the sanctity and legality of such a union.
David Bailey, in another posting, commented on the major Protestant denominations and the decline in their concern for and protection of slave marriages after 1830, as the pressure to support the peculiar institution increased and religious leaders became less outspoken on the issue. There is a fine essay in Wakelyn and Miller's collection, "Catholics in the Old South," about the slave-owning Jesuits and their plantations in colonial and early national to antebellum Maryland, "Splendid Poverty," by R. Emmett Curran. At one point a footnote indicates that slave marriages were recognized as such and protected; later on the reader finds that the Jesuits eventually decided to sell all their slaves. Most went to the Deep South, and dozens of slave families were destroyed, not only men and women, but parents and children. Those individuals may well have considered themselves "married," and may have believed that their children would be viewed as legitimate--after all, they had been baptized in the Catholic church, many of them, and participated in other sacraments. But when push came to shove, they were sold and their families destroyed, with little more concern shown by whites, Catholic or otherwise, clergy or laypersons, than if they had been cattle, sheep, or horses.
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com
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Michael Chesson also writes:
Thanks to Terry Finnegan for detailed evidence re slave marriages. I find it interesting that the slaves under the 1724 Louisiana law could not be married by a priest without the permission of an owner or owners. Another posting on this subject has raised the question of context. I've just returned from a week of research in New Orleans and now have the first inklings of the context of that great city. I wonder how many times this law was violated, and/or how effectively and consistently it was enforced? In other words, are there many cases of priests performing marriages without the permission of the master? Are there many, if any, cases of owners selling spouses or children separately prior to 1803?
As to the Tennesse supreme court ruling of 1871, that is a fascinating citation, and one that I will follow up. Many, many thanks.
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Slave Marriages - a book
For commentary by a legal historian on these laws and cases and on the range of marriage practices that did and did not have legal sanction in the 19th century, consult Michael Grossberg's GOVERNING THE HEARTH (1985).
Doug Deal
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1996
From: Gary Hewitt
Subject: Slave Marriages
Gary Hewitt writes:
Michael Chesson writes:
<<--What I'd really like to see is an example of a slave marriage that was legally recognized when it was not to the benefit of a white owner, creditor, or white society generally; or a case where a Protestant minister, Catholic priest, or southern rabbi persuaded a judge/jury/court/white institution to recognize both the sanctity and legality of such a union.-->>
Prof. Chesson seems to want to have it both ways here: on the one hand, he didn't give much credit earlier to soft notions of "love" or "affection" or "marital practice" -- these did not count as good, hard, legalistic "marriages." He wanted more than the participants to "feel" married, he wanted them to BE married in the eyes of the state.
On the other hand, now that the state gets involved -- a state in which by definition slaves have absolutely no participation -- he refuses to give much credit to the "marriages" that might meet his "hard" definition, because they were "to the benefit of a white owner, creditor, or white society" and not founded (this time) on the sincere -- even "soft" -- belief in marriage on the part of either (white) courts or clergy.
So are we looking for soft, even "disinterested" belief in slave marriage on the part of white society, or hard legalistic evidences of slave marriage as an institution with an existence in white society?
Gary L. Hewitt
Dept. of History, Grinnell College
hewittg@ac.grin.edu
o:(515)269-3091
h:(515)236-8089
fax:(515)269-4985
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996
From: David Chesson
Subject: Slave Marriages
Michael Chesson writes:
This discussion about slave "marriages" (which should more accurately be called "unions" or some other term) has become rather amusing, though no doubt tiresome to some. (Has anyone else noted that Winthrop Jordan, Eugene Genovese, et al do not post on these lists?)
In the course of a week of research in New Orleans recently I also did a bit of book buying. One title I picked up was Ann Patton Malone's "Sweet Chariot: Slave Family & Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana"(UNC Press, 1992). She wrote in part about slave "marriages", p. 224: "Slave marriage presented in microcosm much of the ambiguity of the slave's status in southern society. On one hand, owners allowes, sanctioned, and sometimes encouraged slaves to marry (they were similarly ambiguous about slaves as parents). On the other hand, no southern state, including Louisiana, recognized the legality of slave marriages or the legitimacy of offspring. In some parts of the state, owners allowed ministers or priests to perform slave marriage ceremonies (and baptisms), and by the 1850s most owners had probably given in to their slaves' preference for a "Scripture wedding" rather than a simple broom-jumping ritual. Even so, the only legitimacy marriages had was derived from their recognition by the owner and the slave community." In other words, when the owner chose to recognize them, for whatever reason, they had some standing; if not, they did not, as far as protection for the couple and their offspring. No doubt they may have had value in the slave community, and in the eyes of their God, but most modern academics are distinctly uncomfortable with organized religion of any kind, and their bleatings about the standing of slave marriages in the eyes of the Deity strike me as somewhat surprising to say the least.
I've received a few citations on the subject, an 1871 Tennessee case from a state court probably dominated by radical Republicans, and very little else of value on this subject, mostly from folks like myself who've published nothing on slavery, and certainly nothing on slave marriages specifically. I'll say it again, as I have from the outset: these unions were for the convenience and profit of the owners and the peculiar institution. To the extent they existed, and for whatever duration, individual slave couples, their children, and the slave community generally certainly profited. But they weren't legally recognized and they weren't "marriages" in law or in the eyes of most whites, religious or secular, slave owners or non-slave owners.
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996
From: John Bell
Subject: Slave Marriages - semantics
John Bell writes:
Gary L. Hewitt has written: <<--So are we looking for soft, even "disinterested" belief in slave marriage on the part of white society, or hard legalistic evidences of slave marriage as an institution with an existence in white society?-->>
It strikes me that Prof. Chesson's challenge has been pretty consistent: He has asked for a case in which the marital rights of enslaved people overrode the convenience of slave-owning people. In other words, that the elite recognized marriages that involved slaves as legal institutions even when they had to grit their teeth to do it.
If I recall properly, his request was prompted by the belief that we shouldn't write of a "slave marriage" if it didn't bring the rights of a "marriage." Perhaps this problem can be addressed with semantic distinctions: the enslaved may not have had legal benefit of "marriage," but couples often entered "matrimony" for love, companionship, or families while the elite occasionally held them to legal obligations of "wedlock."
John Bell
Editor, General Books Division
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
johnb@aw.com
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Slave Marriage Discussion wrap-up
Richard Straw writes:
I have followed this thread with great interest and have saved much of it to use in my Old South class. It seems like it has just about run its course with this last posting of Chesson's. I just wanted to add that I too find it interesting that no one who has really written much about slavery, especially the "big" names, has responded to this list. I know that Charles Dew, for example (newest writing on slavery, _Bond of Iron_) doesn't even use a computer to write so I'm sure he is walking around blissfully ignorant of all this ranting. He writes in longhand, even his books.
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 1996
From: Michael Chesson
Subject: Slave Marriages -wrap up
Michael Chesson writes:
My thanks to John Bell, of Addison-Wesley, for his reasoned response. The terms he used cover a range of possibilities. I would just add, what about the rights of the children who were born to slaves? How many times were they protected, their rights upheld? And Richard Straw grasped my point immediately. The reason that Professor Dew isn't posting on this list (or any other) aside from his preference for longhand over the computer, is that he's too busy writing his next big book to be bothered. Much like the audience for the Seventh of March speech, I doubt that any of our opinions have been changed by this debate, which has lasted longer than some slave marriages.
For the next topic, subject to the approval of the keeper of the list, I propose the Underground Railroad, which appeared briefly some months ago. It's a well known fact that tens of thousands escaped on it every year, following the north star to freedom, helped by the eighty percent of the white northern population who actively supported the fugitives, working as conductors, etc. on the Liberty Line. Why by 1860 there were only 4 million or so slaves still in bondage. Glory, glory hallejujah!
Michael Chesson, U/Mass-Boston
omohundro@aol.com
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996
From: Joan C. Browning
Subject: Slave Marriage Wrap-up - revisited
Joan Browning writes:
For those researching slave "marriages," the following may be of interest:
this comes from Glenn t. Eskew, "Black Elitism and the Failure of Paternalism in Postbellum Georgia: The case of Bishop Lucius Henry Holsey." In GEORGIA IN BLACK AND WHITE: EXPLORATIONS IN THE RACE RELATIONS OF A SOUTHERN SDTATE, 1865-1950. John C. Inscoe, ed., The University of Georgia Press, 1994.
p. 109, in Hancock County, Georgia:
"Lucius Henrry Holsey, born neat Columbus, Georgia in 1842, was the son of his white master, James Holsey, who never married but who "mingled, to some extent, with those females of the African race that were his slaves -- his personal property." These included Lucius' mother Louisa, a beautiful woman "of pure African descent."
In 1848 Holsey's father died and Holsey became the property of his white cousin, T. L. Wynn, in Hancock County, Ga. On Wynn's dethbed, he offered Holsey a choice of his next owner. Holsey selected Richard Malcom Johnston. Johnston moved to Athens and back to Hancock County, where Holsey met Harriett A. Turner, a young house slave formerly owned by Bishop George Foster Pierce of the MEC,S [Methodist Episcopal Church, South], who had given the young woman to his daughter as a wedding present. In 1862, Holsey married the fifteen-year-old Harriett, and a wedding ceremony was held for the two favored slaves in the "spacious hall of the Bishop's residence," Sunshine. Pierce [Bishop of the MEC,S] personally conducted the service. Holsey recalled, "The Bishop's wife an daughters had provided for the occasion a splendid repast of good things to eat. The table, richly spread, with turkey, ham, cake, and many other good things, extended nearly the whole length of the spacious dining hall. 'The house girls' and ''the house boys' and the most prominent persons of color were invited to the wedding of the colored 'swells.' The ladies composing the Bishop's family, dressed my bride in the gayest and most artistic style, with red flowers and scarlet sashes predominating in the brilliant trail."
End of quote. This quote is footnoted, and the footnote reads in part: "Lucius Henry Holsey, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, SERMONS, ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS, 2nd ed. Atlanta: The Franklin Printing and Publishing co., 1899. ESSAYS, 2nd ed. Atlanta: The Franklin Printing and Publishing co., 1899 Johnston's property adjoined Pierce's plantation, and as a result, "there were several intermarriages between his Negroes and mine. I once attended one between one of mine, Lucius (now one of your colored bishops) and Harriet, a fine woman belonging then to the Bishop. He performed the ceremony in his mansion, after which the bridal party with Negro[es] and the whites spent the evening together until a late hour. He seems to have partaken of some of the joyousness of our humble dependents." See R. M. Johnston to A. G. Haygood, February 12, 1885, folder 1, box 1, Atticus Greene Haygood Papers, Special Collections Department, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory Univrsity, Atlanta.
The end.
Joan C. Browning
Ronceverte WV
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996
From: David Herr
Subject: Slave Marriage and African ethnography
The issue has been explored concerning whether or not slaves were allowewed, encouraged, etc. to *marry* - but it should be remembered that African ethnography does not record varieties of *marriage* that characteristically have much in common with the institution being referred to in this discussion. If African slaves in America were prevented from marrying, then it is argued that they were deprived of a fundamental human right, etc. However, if they were allowed or encouraged to marry, one might take the position that it constituted the arbitrary superimposition of an alien (to their native societies) moral, legal, religious, etc. system upon them - missionary values being imposed through slavery. So it goes.
David Canfil
Oxford
Humanities & Social
Sciences Online
