Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South 9781108423984, 9781108539425, 1108423981

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Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South

Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South demonstrates the significance of internal divisions, comparison, and conflict in shaping gender and status in slave communities of the American South. David Stefan Doddington seeks to move beyond unilateral discussions of slave masculinity, and instead demonstrates how the repressions of slavery were both personal and political. Rather than automatically support one another against an emasculatory white society, Doddington explores how enslaved people negotiated identities in relation to one another, through comparisons between men and different forms of manhood held up for judgment. An examination of the framework in which enslaved people crafted identities demonstrates the fluidity of gender as a social and cultural phenomenon that defied monolithic models of black masculinity, solidarity, and victimization. Focusing on work, authority, honor, sex, leisure, and violence, this book is a full-length treatment of the idea of “masculinity” among slave communities of the Old South.    is Lecturer in North American History at Cardiff University. David has received research awards from the British Association of American Studies, the Eccles Centre at the British Library, and British American Nineteenth Century Historians. He has published work in journals such as Gender & History and the Journal of Global Slavery, and is working on a book entitled Writing the History of Slavery.

Cambridge Studies on the American South Series Editors Mark M. Smith, University of South Carolina, Columbia Peter Coclanis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Editor Emeritus David Moltke-Hansen Interdisciplinary in its scope and intent, this series builds upon and extends Cambridge University Press’s longstanding commitment to studies on the American South. The series offers the best new work on the South’s distinctive institutional, social, economic, and cultural history and also features works in a national, comparative, and transnational perspective. Titles in the Series Enrico Dal Lago, Civil War and Agrarian Unrest: The Confederate South and Southern Italy Daniel J. Vivian, A New Plantation World: Sporting Estates in the South Carolina Low Country, 1900–1940 Eugene D. Genovese, ed. Douglas Ambrose, The Sweetness of Life: Southern Planters at Home Donald J. Mathews, At the Altar of Lynching: Burning Sam Hose in the American South Keri Leigh Merritt, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South Sarah Gardner, Reviewing the South: The Literary Marketplace and the Southern Renaissance, 1920–1941 Katherine Rye Jewell, Dollars for Dixie: Business and the Transformation of Conservatism in the Twentieth Century Thomas Okie, The Georgia Peach: Culture, Agriculture, and Environment in the American South Karlos K. Hill, Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory William A. Link and James J. Broomall, eds., Rethinking American Emancipation: Legacies of Slavery and the Quest for Black Freedom James Van Horn Melton, Religion, Community, and Slavery on the Colonial Southern Frontier Damian Alan Pargas, Slavery and Forced Migration in the Antebellum South Craig Friend and Lorri Glover, eds., Death and the American South Barton A. Myers, Rebels against the Confederacy: North Carolina’s Unionists Louis A. Ferleger and John D. Metz, Cultivating Success in the South: Farm Households in Postbellum Georgia Luke E. Harlow, Religion, Race, and the Making of Confederate Kentucky, 1830–1880 Susanna Michele Lee, Claiming the Union: Citizenship in the Post–Civil War South Ari Helo, Thomas Jefferson’s Ethics and the Politics of Human Progress: The Morality of a Slaveholder Kathleen Hilliard, Masters, Slaves, and Exchange: Power’s Purchase in the Old South Scott P. Marler, The Merchants’ Capital: New Orleans and the Political Economy of the Nineteenth-Century South Ras Michael Brown, African-Atlantic Cultures and the South Carolina Lowcountry Johanna Nicol Shields, Freedom in a Slave Society: Stories from the Antebellum South Brian Steele, Thomas Jefferson and American Nationhood Christopher Michael Curtis, Jefferson’s Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion Jonathan Daniel Wells, Women Writers and Journalists in the Nineteenth-Century South Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry Robert E. Bonner, Mastering America: Southern Slaveholders and the Crisis of American Nationhood

Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South

DAVID STEFAN DODDINGTON Cardiff University

University Printing House, Cambridge 2 8, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York,  10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne,  3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108423984 : 10.1017/9781108539425 © David Stefan Doddington 2018 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2018 Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books, Inc. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.  978-1-108-42398-4 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Acknowledgments

page ix

Introduction: “Are you men?” 1

1

“If I had my life to live over, I would die fighting rather than be a slave again”: Resistance, Manhood, and Survival in Slavery

20

2

“The best amongst them was picked for that job”: Authority, Discipline, and Masculinity

49

3

“I never seen such a worker as my father”: Work, Industry, and Masculinity

89

4

“He am big and ’cause he so he think everybody do what him say”: Manhood, Sex, and Power 127

5

“The best man whipped and the other one took it”: Violence, Leisure, and Masculinity

171

Conclusion: Contesting Slave Masculinity

211 217 239

Bibliography Index

vii

Acknowledgments

In the process of writing this book I have had the good fortune to have worked with wonderful colleagues and friends who have shared the highs and lows of academic research, the uncertainty of job hunts, and the general joys of life. I have also been extremely fortunate to have received generous funding and support from a number of institutions throughout this project. I would like to thank the Crossmans and the University of Warwick, who first awarded me funding as a PhD student, and without whose support I would never have been able to take this path. For various funding and fellowships, I would also like to thank: British American Nineteenth Century Historians, the British Association of American Studies, the Eccles Centre at the British Library, the University of Warwick’s Humanities Research Centre, the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Warwick, the University of York’s Humanities Research Centre, and the Harriet Tubman Institute at York University, Toronto, Toronto. The generous early career allowance provided by Cardiff University enabled me to undertake the archival research necessary for completing the project, and I am extremely grateful for this and for their confidence in me. I would not have been able to write this book without the support of friends and colleagues across the United States and United Kingdom. I feel extremely privileged to have worked with such outstanding and generous scholars. I would like to thank my PhD supervisor, Tim Lockley, for having first inspired me to explore the history of slavery in North America as an undergraduate and for his guidance ever since, including in reading a full draft of the manuscript. My thanks also go to Gad Heuman and Rebecca Fraser for their comments, critiques, and suggestions as my ix

x

Acknowledgments

examiners, as well as for their support since then. I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to Tracey Loughran, Molly Rogers, and Keir Waddington, all of whom have tirelessly offered their expertise and advice and were willing to review the entire manuscript at far too short notice. I do not think I would have been able to survive the PhD without the support of Tim Davies, whom I had the good fortune to live with during those years. Klappar remains in good hands and I can only apologize for the state of the hob. Various people have read, commented on, or advised me on sections of this book at different stages of the process, and I am immensely grateful to them for their assistance here. I would like to thank, in no particular order: David Brown, Lucy Sackville, Rebecca Earle, David Hitchcock, Grace Huxford, Emily West, Daina Ramey Berry, Leslie Harris, Catherine Clinton, Rafaella Sarti, Paul Lovejoy, Vanessa Oliveira, and Lydia Plath. Chris Renwick’s words of encouragement are not printable, but I appreciated them nonetheless and now frequently pass them off to colleagues as my own. I would also like to extend my gratitude and thanks to the series editors, Mark Smith, Peter Coclanis, and David Moltke-Hansen, as well as the anonymous readers. They have demonstrated confidence in and were engaged by this project from the very beginning. Their advice, questions, and suggestions have been invaluable. Deborah Gershenowitz, Kristina Deusch, and Ruth Boyes at Cambridge University Press have been incredibly helpful and receptive from the start, and their work on the editorial and development front has been outstanding. Divyabharathi Elavazhagan and Kristy Barker worked wonders on the copy-editing and I am so thankful for all of the support I received throughout this process. The History Department at Cardiff University has been extremely supportive and proven to be a wonderful place to work. The support, guidance, and alcoholic beverages provided by colleagues there have been instrumental in getting me past the finish line. I would like to thank: Mark Williams, Keir Waddington, Tracey Loughran, Bill Jones, Stephanie Ward, Lloyd Bowen, Garthine Walker, Kevin Passmore, James Ryan, Bronach Kane, Ian Rapley, Jan Machielsen, Toby Thacker, and Lisa Watkins. I would also like to thank the undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Warwick, the University of York, and Cardiff University who inspired me daily with their dedication and desire to study American slavery. It is, of course, a cliché, but clichés exist for a reason: Southern hospitality has lived up to expectations. Thanks must go to Marianna

Acknowledgments

xi

Guerrero, Grace Marie, Chelsea Williams, Katelyn Hickman, and Hillary Williams for making my stay in Austin so memorable. Mark Martin and Annmarie Galeucia offered friendship and advice while in Baton Rouge, as well as introducing me to the delights of Andygator beer. Bradley Proctor showed me the sights of Chapel Hill and has become a good friend since. I am indebted to archival and library staff at a variety of institutions: the Dolph Briscoe Center for American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin; Louisiana State University’s Hill Memorial Library; the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina; the Library of Virginia; the State Department of Archives and Manuscripts and the South Caroliniana Library, South Carolina. I was not only offered advice and assistance in the archives but also numerous rides, meals, housing, and friendship. I am truly grateful for all the help I received. Finally, I would like to thank my family and Catrin. I am immensely grateful to come from such a loving family and the support and bubblebusting they provide has helped keep me going throughout. My grandmothers were both exceptional people who helped support me in numerous ways, and I would not have been able to take the first step into postgraduate research without the support of Nanny Gilham. I am so glad she knew I got to wear that floppy hat. Catrin has seen this project through from start until end and I only hope that she knows how grateful I am to her for the love, guidance, and friendship she offers, as well as for sharing my awful sense of humor and taste in music. Finally, I would like to offer the most heartfelt thanks to my parents. I feel immensely grateful that they are both able to read how much they mean to me and how much I value them. I want them to know how proud I am of them and that I find inspiration in them both. This book is for them. Some of the arguments used in this book have appeared in article form elsewhere. I am extremely grateful to Africa World Press, the University of Georgia Press, and Gender & History for allowing me to republish them here. For further information, see David Doddington, “Domestic Economies and Masculine Hierarchies in Slave Communities of the U.S. South, 1800–1865,” Gender & History, 27.3 (2015), 773–87; David Doddington, “Discipline and Masculinities in Slave Communities of the Antebellum South,” in Paul E. Lovejoy and Vanessa Oliveira (eds.), Slavery, Memory, Citizenship (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2016), 53–81; and David Doddington, “Manhood, Sex, and Power in Antebellum Slave Communities,” in Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie Harris (eds.), Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018).

Introduction “Are you men?”

At the National Negro Convention of 1843, held in Buffalo, New York, Henry Highland Garnet delivered his controversial appeal to the slaves of the United States. In this address, Garnet offered a powerful call to resist the violence and degradation of slavery, as well as emotive and sympathetic descriptions of the trauma of the “Peculiar Institution.” Yet his sympathy did not extend equally to all victims of American slavery. Instead, Garnet specifically demanded action from enslaved men, castigating them for their lack of resistance and openly tying this to ideas about masculine identity. Having noted the violence directed toward enslaved women as particularly shameful, Garnet’s demand for a response was explicitly gendered: “In the name of God, we ask, are you men?”1 Such language was not unique to Garnet. Contemporaries from both pro- and antislavery positions consistently utilized a gendered discourse to decry or defend slavery, as well as to explain, justify, and criticize the acts of enslavers and enslaved alike. However, the belief not only that this was an important question to pose, but also that the enslaved, formerly enslaved, and free black men to whom he appealed should know what actions were required to answer it, shows the centrality of gender to antebellum ideas on identity. In suggesting that some acts were proof of manhood while others were not, Garnet’s question highlights the contested nature of masculinity in the antebellum period.

1

Henry Highland Garnet, “A Former Slave Appeals to the Slaves of the United States,” in Abraham Chapman (ed.), Steal Away: Slaves Tell Their Own Stories (London: Ernest Benn Ltd., 1973), 115–127, 125.

1

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Contesting Slave Masculinity

This question – “Are you men?” – was of the utmost importance to enslaved men: Masculine identity was key to their sense of self. Individuals such as Garnet declared that only certain choices denoted manhood – indeed, that some explicitly denied it – but these exclusionary views could be a site of tension as enslaved men sought to craft a masculine identity in different ways. Much recent historical work has identified multiple models of manhood with which enslaved men identified, drawing upon different ideals and values to create a gendered sense of self.2 What scholars have struggled to address, however, is how these ideals could ask for very different responses to slavery; these different responses, in turn, could lead to tension and division in slave communities. Enslaved people did not agree among themselves that there was one route to manhood, and these disagreements influenced social dynamics and interactions among the enslaved population of the American South. To solidify their own gendered sense of self, enslaved men implicitly and, at times, explicitly rejected tropes and behaviors that other people claimed were central to masculine identity; the justifications for doing so affected personal relationships but also shaped and reflected diverse responses to slavery as an institution. Enslaved people who navigated and survived slavery passed judgments on the actions and choices of men they lived with. In exploring disputes between enslaved people who prioritized different masculine ideals, as well as the collisions triggered by men who strove to assert their vision of manhood at the expense of others, Contesting Slave Masculinity highlights the fluidity of gender within slave communities. It also develops contentious and ongoing debates over community, resistance, and accommodation to slavery. The diverse strategies for survival that enslaved people employed were influenced by and

2

See, for example, Darlene Clark Hine and Earnestine Jenkins (eds.), A Question of Manhood: A Reader in U.S Black Men’s History and Masculinity. Volume 1. “Manhood Rights”: The Construction of Black Male History and Manhood, 1750–1870 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); Sergio Lussana, My Brother Slaves: Friendship, Masculinity, and Resistance in the Antebellum South (Lexington: Kentucky University Press, 2016); Rebecca Fraser, “Negotiating Their Manhood: Masculinity amongst the Enslaved in the Upper South, 1830–1861,” in Sergio Lussana and Lydia Plath (eds.), Black and White Masculinity in the American South, 1800–2000 (Newcastle under Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), 76–95; Kenneth Marshall, Manhood Enslaved: Bondmen in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth Century New Jersey (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2011); Mark Okuhata, Unchained Manhood: The Performance of Black Manhood during the Antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction Eras (PhD dissertation, University of California, 2014).

“Are you men?”

3

connected to gendered expectations and identities. This could lead them on different paths when negotiating a life in bondage. Manhood is not a timeless or natural essence, and enslaved people created identities and navigated a world in which a range of characteristics or actions were connected to perceived and actual differences between men and women. As Joan Scott has argued, cultural and social scripts provide ideas about what it means to be a man or a woman and present standards of behavior by which people are expected to abide in their everyday life.3 Gender standards are not abstract, but rather signs and symbols within a broader cultural framework which govern how men and women are supposed to live their lives. Gender’s centrality to lived experiences means these ideas are not simply imposed upon individuals by an external power, but are made use of by people seeking to position themselves within a given community. As R. W. Connell has explained: “People construct themselves as masculine or feminine. We claim a place in the gender order – or respond to the place we have been given – by the way we conduct ourselves in everyday life.”4 In her study of race and masculinity in the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century, Gail Bederman similarly noted the significance of gender to experiences and identities: “And with that positioning as ‘man’ or ‘woman’ inevitably comes a host of other social meanings, expectations, and identities. Individuals have no choice but to act upon these meanings – to accept or reject them, adopt or adapt them – in order to be able to live their lives in human society.”5 Contesting Slave Masculinity thus reiterates the performative nature of gender, highlighting the significance of stylized demonstrations of gendered attributes and the public nature of these identities. Connell has argued that “being a man or a woman . . . is not a fixed state. It is a becoming, a condition actively under construction,” while Judith Butler has stressed how this construction is presented for wider consumption: “one does not ‘do’ one’s gender alone. One is always ‘doing’ with or for another, even if the other is only imaginary.”6 Different people 3 4 5 6

Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis,” The American Historical Review, 91.5 (December 1986), 1053–1075, 1067. R. W. Connell, Gender (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), 4. Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 7. Connell, Gender, 4; Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York; London: Routledge, 2004), 1. See also Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1999; 1st edition 1990), xv.

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interacted with the cultural symbols, resources, and understandings associated with manhood in the American South in different ways, but the public and performative nature of gender identities meant these interactions were open for debate. Enslaved people connected a range of attributes to ideas on masculine identity, expected certain actions or behaviors of men in their community, or positioned themselves as men through public performances and displays. Tension sometimes developed when enslaved people prioritized different elements of masculinity; men and women dealt differently with the perceived failures of individuals to perform or conform to the masculine values they idealized.7 In pioneering work on the significance of public comparison and “tests” to masculine identity, anthropologist David Gilmore explained how “so many places regard the state of being a ‘real man’ or ‘true man’ as uncertain or precarious, a prize to be won or wrested through struggle.”8 Michael Kimmel, in a more historically rooted discussion, declared that in nineteenth-century America, “the idea of testing and proving one’s manhood became one of the defining experiences in American men’s lives.”9 Historians of white Southern men have consistently explained the significance of communal perceptions of manhood, with ideas about a culture of honor and the importance of public reputation driving studies on the topic since Bertram Wyatt-Brown’s seminal book Southern Honor, published in 1982.10 Scholars disagree on the degree to which ideas on Southern masculinity were fixed or open to interpretation, but Craig Thompson Friend has reiterated the significance of public performance in affirming (or denying) white Southern men’s claims to manhood: “While not all men had subscribed to the ideals of honor and mastery, all shared a sense of the very public nature of their private characters . . . unlike femininity, which occupied the domestic realm,

7

8

9 10

Scott noted some of the tensions here, highlighting that “real men and women do not always or literally fulfil the terms either of society’s prescriptions or of our analytic categories.” Scott, “Gender,” 1068. David Gilmore, Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 1. See also John Tosh, “What Should Historians Do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Britain,” History Workshop, 38.1 (1994), 179–202. Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 2. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007; 1st edition, 1982).

“Are you men?”

5

antebellum masculinity had required regular public performance.”11 John Mayfield likewise noted the importance of homosocial competition for white Southern men seeking to establish and prove a masculine sense of self, highlighting the concern with domination, even humiliation, that drove such encounters: “humiliation, or rather the fear of it, drives manly codes of whatever stamp. Manly behavior in the Old South – whether based on honor, market success, or evangelical self-discipline – was fundamentally assertive and competitive.”12 White male Southerners had a variety of masculine models available to them and competition and comparison between men was an integral component of demonstrations of white masculinity.13 However, historians have paid less attention to contested views on manhood among the enslaved. In part this relates to the historical and historiographical significance accorded to refuting the idea that black men were emasculated by slavery. Claims that black men were innately childlike and incapable of reaching manhood were integral to nineteenth-century proslavery arguments and early Southern histories which served to mythologize the antebellum era and justify the continued subjugation of black people.14 While the more sympathetic literature in the 1950s disagreed with the racial animus which motivated much of the earlier work, it reinforced 11

12 13

14

Craig Thompson Friend, “From Southern Manhood to Southern Masculinities: An Introduction,” in Craig Thompson Friend (ed.), Southern Masculinity: Perspectives on Manhood in the South since Reconstruction (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009), vii–xxvi, x. John Mayfield, Counterfeit Gentlemen: Manhood and Humor in the Old South (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2009), 109. Mayfield, Counterfeit Gentlemen, xv; Amy Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Lorri Glover, Southern Sons: Becoming Men in the New Nation (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2007); Toby L. Ditz, “Afterword: Contending Masculinities in Early America,” in Thomas A. Foster (ed.), New Men: Manliness in Early America (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 256–267; Craig Thompson Friend, “Sex, Self, and the Performance of Patriarchal Manhood in the Old South,” in L. Diane Barnes, Brian Schoen, and Frank Towers (eds.), The Old South’s Modern Worlds: Slavery, Region, and Nation in the Age of Progress (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 246–265; David T. Moon Jr., “Southern Baptists and Southern Men: Evangelical Perceptions of Manhood in Nineteenth-Century Georgia,” Journal of Southern History, 81.3, (2015), 563–606. Winfield H. Collins, The Truth about Lynching and the Negro in the South in which the Author Pleads That the South Be Made Safe for the White Race (New York: Broadway Publishing, 1918), 47, 140; Vernie Alton Moody, Slavery on Louisiana Sugar Plantations (Reprinted from 1924 ed., original copy in University of Virginia Library; New York: AM Press, 1976), 17–19; Ulrich B. Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1929), 187–217.

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claims of emasculation. In stressing the victimization that enslaved people faced, scholars focused on the damage done to enslaved men, who, having been robbed of the supposedly natural patriarchal role, were left emasculated and uncertain of their identity or place within society.15 These interpretations faced significant challenge from scholars in the 1970s. The changing depiction of enslaved men was part of a broader shift in which historians and activists stressed that the enslaved strove against outrageous odds to successfully forge autonomous social, cultural, and physical spheres of existence.16 This “slave community” helped protect enslaved people from the worst excesses of slavery and offered a space for enslaved men to demonstrate masculinity.17 Revisionist historians of the 1970s recognized the negative psychological and physical effects of 15

16

17

Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South (New York: Knopf, 1956), 343. The emasculation thesis found particularly controversial expression in Stanley Elkins’ Slavery – A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life and in Daniel P. Moynihan’s “The Case for National Action.” Elkins’ psychologically influenced discussion on “‘infantile regression’ – regression to a previous condition of childlike dependency,” and comparison of slavery to the concentration camps of World War II, led him to claim that the “plantation offered no really satisfactory father-image other than the master.” To Elkins, the absolute power of the enslaver entailed “absolute dependency for the slave – the dependency not of the developing child but of the perpetual child.” Stanley Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 130; Daniel T. Moynihan, “The Moynihan Report,” in Lee Rainwater & William L. Yancey (eds.), The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1967), 39–125, 61–62. On emasculation in family life, see also E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), 60. The literature here is extremely broad, but significant work includes: John Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972); George P. Rawick, From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1972); Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York; London: Pantheon Books, 1976); Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 (New York; London: Pantheon Books, 1976); Leslie Howard Owens, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Antebellum South (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976); Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: AfroAmerican Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); Charles Joyner, Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984); Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). John Blassingame noted: “Although unlettered, unarmed, and outnumbered, slaves fought in various ways to preserve their manhood.” Despite significant theoretical disagreements, Eugene Genovese also rejected claims of emasculation: “although slave men suffered deeply, there is no evidence that most felt themselves less than men.” Blassingame, Slave Community, 184; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 149, 491.

“Are you men?”

7

slavery but stressed that enslaved men strove to meet contemporary masculine ideals nonetheless, and not just through violent resistance. They provided for families, fought bondage, succeeded in work, and acted as religious and community leaders.18 Despite important challenges to the “slave community” model, the emphasis on collectively resisting emasculation remains influential among historians.19 Darlene Clark Hine and Earnestine Jenkins’ readers on black masculinity, published in 1999 and 2001, neatly encapsulate the direction in which studies of enslaved men had turned by the end of the twentieth century. In the preface to the second volume, Aldon Morris argued that “an important goal of slavery was to prevent the emergence of a sense of Black manhood.” However, the emphasis was firmly on triumph over adversity: “despite the aims of the slaveholders, a strong and noble sense of what it meant to be a Black male developed in the eighteenth century among both slaves and free Blacks.” Notwithstanding the tragedies of bondage, a strong sense of manhood “took deep root and flourished” among African American men.20 Edward Baptist offered a nuanced consideration of multiple models of masculinity available to enslaved men on the cotton frontier, but much work continues to emphasize a resistant and 18 19

20

Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 486. Peter Kolchin, “Re-Evaluating the Antebellum Slave Community,” Journal of American History, 70.3 (December 1983), 579–601; Brenda Stevenson, Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Daniel P. Black, Dismantling Black Manhood: An Historical and Literary Analysis of the Legacy of Slavery (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997); Orlando Patterson, Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in two American Centuries (Washington, DC: Civitas/Counterpoint, 1998). More recent work in this vein includes Dylan Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Jeff Forret, Slave Against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015). Scholars had also criticized the tendency of revisionist historians to focus on enslaved men and the seeming expectation of patriarchal dominance. See, for example, Michelle Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (New York: Dial Press, 1978); Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith (eds.), All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies (Westbury: Feminist Press, 1982); Bell Hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (London: Pluto Press, 1982); Angela Davis, Women, Race & Class (London: The Women’s Press, 1982). Aldon D. Morris, “Foreword,” in Darlene Clark Hine and Earnestine Jenkins (eds.), A Question of Manhood: A Reader in U.S Black Men’s History and Masculinity, Vol. 2, the 19th Century: From Emancipation to Jim Crow (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), xiii; Hine and Jenkins (eds.), A Question of Manhood, Vol. 1.

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unifying nature to masculinity in slave communities.21 Sergio Lussana, for example, has stressed the significance of supportive homosocial subcultures in slave communities for enslaved men seeking to carve out a masculine identity: “It was here, together, that they fought the humiliating, degrading, and emasculating features of their enslavement. In this homosocial world, they became men.”22 Historians who emphasize a collective response to emasculation as the principal means of understanding enslaved manhood have, however, underestimated the importance of internal comparison and exclusion from within slave communities in the formation of gendered identities.23 In framing the construction of masculine identities as evidence of resistance and agency, scholars have also understated the tangled cultural space within which enslaver and enslaved alike engendered their world, both in opposition and in relation to one another. Recent work which argues that “black men carved out an alternative culture of masculinity and even resistance from the limited social, economic, and cultural resources available to them” thus flattens the complex relationships enslaved men had with one another and with those who enslaved them, neglecting the varied, even contradictory ways in which enslaved people conceived of masculine attributes and values.24 In defining enslaved men as a unified group seeking to affirm a collective manhood in the face of

21

22 23

24

Edward Baptist, “The Absent Subject: African American Masculinity and Forced Migration to the Antebellum Plantation Frontier,” in Craig Thompson Friend and Lorri Glover (eds.), Southern Manhood: Perspectives on Masculinity in the Old South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004), 136–173. Lussana, My Brother Slaves, 7. See, also: Fraser, “Negotiating Their Manhood,” 88; Okuhata, Unchained Manhood, 134. Riche Richardson has indicated the problems of black men being depicted “as an undifferentiated and monolithic racial and gender category.” Timothy Buckner has stressed the need to acknowledge that “black men, both free and enslaved, adopted different positions when it came to masculinity.” See: Riche Richardson, Black Masculinity and the US South: From Uncle Tom to Gangsta (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007), 8; Timothy R. Buckner, “A Crucible of Masculinity: William Johnson’s Barbershop and the Making of Free Black Men in the Antebellum South,” in Timothy R. Buckner and Peter Caster (eds.), Fathers, Preachers, Rebels, Men: Black Masculinity in U.S History and Literature, 1820–1945 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2011), 41–60, 54; Maurice Wallace, Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men’s Literature and Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002); Roland Murray, Our Living Manhood: Literature, Black Power, and Masculine Ideology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Sergio Lussana, “‘No Band of Brothers Could Be More Loving’: Enslaved Male Homosociality, Friendship, and Resistance in the Antebellum American South,” Journal of Social History, 46.4 (2013), 872–895, 872.

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emasculation by white society, we risk neglecting the diversity of interactions in the American South and underestimating the divisions that developed in slave communities. Enslaved men defined their masculine identity through a comparative lens, and there were consequences if men were perceived by their peers to have “failed” a test of manhood. Rather than automatically support or assist one another against an emasculatory white society, the comparison to or disavowal of other enslaved men’s behaviors and actions was an important means of determining masculine identity and social standing for black men. Disagreements over the actions required of men could divide slave communities, and these divisions offer insight into the diverse ways enslaved people negotiated with bondage and interpreted their actions in surviving slavery. Exploring the complex relational context in which enslaved people crafted identities, and not purely in resistance to white social and cultural norms, demonstrates the fluidity of gender as a social and cultural construct and the limitations to any monolithic model of black solidarity. Historians have successfully moved beyond caricatures of broken communities, emphasizing instead how enslaved people creatively and collectively fought against the worst effects of their enslavement.25 Scholars have argued that enslaved peoples’ values and identities were crafted within a supportive black community and that enslaved people understood, but ultimately rejected, the worldviews of their enslavers. In such depictions, acts which could be viewed as accommodation to slavery are said to have masked resistant identities and ideals which protected and united enslaved people.26 Yet in portraying enslaved people as free agents united against white power, there is a risk of neglecting the very real structural impact of slavery and the significance of the relationships with

25

26

See footnotes 10 and 13. While acknowledging limitations on agency or resistance, excellent recent work emphasizes the strength of slave communal bonds and collective resistance. See Stephanie Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 2–8; Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 211–217; Edward Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 145–147, 415–419. Much of this literature on slave resistance developed arguments from James C. Scott’s work on “hidden transcripts.” See Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). See, for example: Lussana, My Brother Slaves, 9; Camp, Closer to Freedom, 2.

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their enslavers into which enslaved people were forced. Brute force underpinned all elements of slavery but the hegemonic cultural, social, and political power wielded by enslavers was an integral part of the system and influenced how enslaved people negotiated a life and identity in bondage.27 Gendered scripts were not simply imposed by enslavers, but the cultural world which bound enslaved people with those who enslaved them was shaped by the conditions and unequal power dynamics of enslavement. This does not mean enslaved people uncritically accepted their status as slaves or that enslavers were kind and loving. However, the structural constraints and repressions of enslavement were both personal and political, and the choices enslaved people made were conditioned by, though not reducible to, the environment in which they lived. Agency, as Walter Johnson has argued, is not a synonym for resistance.28 In establishing a gendered identity, enslaved people accepted, rejected, and refashioned the ideals and influence of those who sought mastery over them. Similar tensions developed in conversation with families, friends, and the wider slave community.29 Enslaved people conceived of gender roles and developed identities in contest, resistance, and negotiation with enslavers and with one another. In focusing on enslaved masculinity and interactions within slave communities, I make extensive use of slave testimony. This includes the large body of published narratives from the nineteenth century, postbellum memoirs, and oral histories collected in the twentieth century as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) project. These sources offer 27

28 29

On paternalism and cultural hegemony, see Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 25–49, 147–149, 597. On the chronological development of paternalism as a political ideology and strategy of management, see Lacy Ford, Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), esp. chapters 5–6. On paternalism, resistance, and cultural hegemony, see Kathleen M. Hilliard, Masters, Slaves, and Exchange: Power’s Purchase in the Old South (New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 2–5; Walter Johnson, “A Nettlesome Classic Turns Twenty-Five,” Common-Place, 1.4 (2001), common-place.org/book/a-nettlesome-classic-turns-twentyfive/. On how gender relates to and is reshaped by hegemonic power, see R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995); Karen Harvey and Alex Shepard, “What Have Historians Done with Masculinity? Reflections on Five Centuries of British History, circa 1500–1950,” Journal of British Studies, 44.2 (2005), 274–280, 277. Walter Johnson, “On Agency,” Journal of Social History, 37 (2003), 113–124, 121. Anthony Kaye, “The Problem of Autonomy: Towards a Postliberal History,” in Jeff Forret and Christine Sears (eds.), New Directions in Slavery Studies: Commodification, Community, and Comparison (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016), 150–175, 165.

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insight into how enslaved men and women spoke about themselves and about others in their communities, and a critical engagement with the language used exposes how a diverse range of words, actions, and attributes were connected to masculine identities. I consider the relational nature of much contemporary gendered discourse, highlighting how enslaved people employed comparative and competitive frameworks to explain men’s status, activities, and identities, and also examine the apparent incompatibility of some masculinized behaviors and attributes. Narratives published by or on the behalf of fugitive slaves became central to the abolitionist movement in the nineteenth century, and were an integral component of revisionist historians’ efforts to demolish white Southern depictions of the antebellum South as an idyllic paradise. However, these narratives faced serious critiques, from both contemporaries and later scholars. Most slave narratives were published by or focused on the lives of enslaved male fugitives and they were commonly mediated through white editors or constructed for abolitionist purposes. The dominant historian of slavery in the early twentieth century, Ulrich B. Phillips, famously claimed that they were “issued with so much abolitionist editing that as a class their authenticity is doubtful.”30 Yet while fugitive accounts had a literary and political purpose and must be viewed with due caution, early white scholars’ skepticism toward them often reflected broader antipathy toward black voices. Revisionist historians from the 1970s directly challenged such assertions. John Blassingame noted that detailed appendices were made up “almost entirely of evidence obtained from southern sources: official reports of legislatures, courts, governors, churches, and agricultural societies, books written by southern whites, or newspapers edited by them.” The success of the efforts to authenticate was shown by the fact that “few of them” were actively “challenged by antebellum southerners.” While many editors were involved with abolitionism, others “were either antagonistic to or had little or no connection with professional abolitionists.” Regardless of their political persuasion, these editors were skilled individuals used to contemporary conventions and expectations in publishing memoirs and narratives.31 Despite acknowledging the need to exercise

30 31

Ulrich B. Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston: Little, Brown, & Company, 1929), 219. John Blassingame, “Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves: Approaches and Problems,” Journal of Southern History, 41.4 (1975), 473–492, 477. See also David Thomas Bailey, “A Divided Prism: Two Sources of Black Testimony on Slavery,” Journal of Southern

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caution with all source material, revisionist historians made a compelling case that much of the information provided in slave narratives offered a realistic window into conditions of slave life. Critiques have also been leveled at fugitive narratives because of the subjective nature of these first-person accounts. Buckner and Caster recently described how narratives “were from the beginning a suturing of fact and fiction for specific rhetorical effect,” and, when considering issues of authenticity, we must critically engage with the desire of formerly enslaved authors to justify their actions or to create a positive personal identity through a selective reconstruction of their past.32 The author’s distortions or exaggeration can even provide positive interpretative scope for the historian. Without accepting everything the author says as gospel, personal narratives allow us to consider how enslaved and formerly enslaved people wished to present themselves to others and, perhaps, to themselves.33 Although they highlight the exploits of a minority of slaves who escaped bondage, generally emphasizing the heroism and virtue of the protagonists, fugitive accounts also provide rich detail on diverse areas of slave life, including work patterns, social interactions, and community dynamics. The use of rhetoric, literary constructions, and exaggeration in fugitive narratives tells us about how enslaved people fashioned identities, perceptions of gender norms and transgressions, and the broader dynamics of American slavery. To further this analysis and move beyond the occasionally onedimensional “resistant manhood” presented in many of the narratives of male fugitive authors, I make use of postbellum narratives and the interviews conducted with former slaves as part of the WPA in the 1930s. Of course, these sources are not without their problems. The later narratives, if removed in time from the immediate horrors of bondage, can have a more reflective, even “nostalgic,” tone when discussing slavery.34 The politics of respectability and attempts to alleviate the tensions of

32

33 34

History, 46.3 (1980), 381–404, 395; John Ernest (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the American Slave Narratives (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Buckner and Caster, Fathers, Preachers, Rebels, Men, 6; David Blight, “The Slave Narratives: A Genre and a Source,” www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/literatureand-language-arts/essays/slave-narratives-genre-and-source Lussana, My Brother Slaves, 13. Yuval Taylor (ed.), I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999), xv–xxxviii.

“Are you men?”

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“Jim Crow” could also influence depictions or recollections of slavery.35 While the conditions of postbellum life may have influenced these later narratives, more serious critiques have been leveled at the WPA slave testimonies. Scholars have indicated that the old age of respondents influenced their abilities to recall specific events, while also noting that their having survived into the 1930s meant many were likely to have experienced slavery as children.36 Historians have also stressed the impact of segregation, racial violence, and the Depression on the stories expected and relayed.37 Despite acknowledgement of their limitations, Edward Baptist’s ideas on the “vernacular history of slavery” speak to the contributions of WPA material. Rather than accept them as an uncritical window into slave life, a close examination of these testimonies can illuminate tropes and ideals that enslaved people used to make sense of their lives, as well as provide insight into the relationships that enslaved people forged with one another and with their enslavers.38 They are particularly useful when trying to explore the quotidian details of enslavement; questions that were suggested as a skeleton framework for interviews (albeit one loosely employed in practice, if at all) focused on the day-to-day activities of enslaved people, as opposed to crafting a teleological narrative focused on

35

36 37

38

Donald Gibson, “Chapter One of Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery and the Feminization of the African American Male,” in Marcellus Blount and George P. Cunningham (eds.), Representing Black Men (New York; London: Routledge, 1996), 95–110. On broader discussions on respectability and black male leadership, see Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). Paul Escott, Slavery Remembered: A Record of Twentieth Century Slave-Narratives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 16. On the WPA slave narratives, see, for example: Blassingame, “Using the Testimony of ExSlaves”; Escott, Slavery Remembered; Paul Escott, “The Art and Science of Reading WPA Slave Narratives,” in Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates Jr. (eds.), The Slave’s Narrative (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 40–48; Bailey, “Divided Prism”; Donna Spindel, “Assessing Memory: Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives Reconsidered,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 27.2 (Autumn 1996), 247–261; Stephanie Shaw, “Using the WPA Ex-Slave Narratives to Study the Great Depression,” Journal of Southern History, 69.3 (2003), 623–658; Edward Baptist, “‘Stol’ and Fetched Here’: Enslaved Migration, Ex-Slave Narratives, and Vernacular History,” in Edward Baptist and Stephanie M. H. Camp (eds.), New Studies in the History of American Slavery (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 243–274; Catherine A. Stewart, Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writer’s Project (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016). Baptist, “‘Stol’ and Fetched Here,” 245.

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Contesting Slave Masculinity

escape from bondage.39 While fugitive authors, by their very nature, represent extraordinary rebels, WPA respondents generally offer stories from those who did not escape. These sources provide images, representations, and memories of a diverse range of men in slave communities, offering portraits of masculinity that connect with, complement, and challenge some of those found in abolitionist literature. As in the case with fugitive narratives, the subjectivity and selective memories of the respondents are useful to the historian. The frequent repetition of stories and anecdotes, as well as the collective meanings invested in them, suggests the significance of shared cultural forms and vernacular histories of slavery.40 The fact that many of the enslaved were repeating stories told by or about their families suggests that the oral tradition was not simply a means by which black Americans interpreted and attempted to understand the collective legacy of slavery, but that it also framed their most personal memories and identities. As Baptist has noted: “by the process of making and telling a story about ourselves, we plane our own identities and even our memories to its curve.” While undoubtedly problematic, WPA testimony offers invaluable insight into “who a people thought they were and how they got to be that way.”41 The testimony also allows us to consider how enslaved parents (or parental figures) fashioned and performed gender to their children, as well as how this was remembered by the children and informed their own values. Children learn about gender in a variety of different ways but one of the most important influences is from the family, including fictive kin.42 Exploring how ex-slaves viewed and described their parents or other male role models in the community thus offers one way of examining gender norms among the enslaved. Respondents who described the actions of others in the community did not necessarily know the inner workings of these people’s lives, and we must be careful not to accept their words uncritically. However, the extrapolations and interpretations people made as to men’s motives and choices speak to the shared cultural world in which gendered values are created, performed, rejected, and replicated. The WPA narratives undoubtedly require a critical reading, but the 39

40

41

Charles L. Perdue Jr., Thomas E. Barden, and Robert K. Phillips (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1976), xxxiv–xxxvi, 367–376. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 7, Pt. 2, 742; Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 3, Pt. 3, 64; Ronnie W. Clayton (ed.), Mother Wit: The Ex-Slave Narratives of the Louisiana Writer’s Project (New York: P. Lang, 1990), 20–23. 42 Baptist, “‘Stol’ and Fetched Here,” 245. Connell, Gender, 81.

“Are you men?”

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stories, language, and interpretations found within them help bring slave life, culture, and community to the fore. They allow us to consider “recurring imagery and stereotypes” that were important to enslaved and formerly enslaved people, including how they perceived gender roles and identities.43 Although mediated through an outsider’s lens, plantation diaries, proand antislavery writings, and travel memoirs from white Americans provide additional insights into the world of the enslaved, as well as the wider context in which they lived. Court records offer a window into specific moments of conflict and dispute among the enslaved and are thus particularly useful sources for examining moments of tension in slave communities. While they undoubtedly demonstrate the extremes of violence and “privilege the sensational over the mundane,” the language used by the accused, witnesses, and court officials, as well as the dynamics and outcomes of the trials, offer insight into perceived and real transgressions from social norms.44 In condemning, explaining, or justifying their actions or the actions of others, enslaved people who spoke in front of the courts reveal competing frameworks and values among the enslaved and their attempts to navigate and survive a society shaped by racial oppression. Any study on enslaved people’s conceptions of gender must be placed within the broader context, engaging with understandings of masculinity held by antebellum Southerners of different creeds and classes. The actions of enslaved men, and the identities that enslaved people forged in slavery, cannot be separated from the conditions of their enslavement or from the complex and contested relationships with those who enslaved them.45 Contesting Slave Masculinity explores the lives of enslaved people and the identities enslaved men created across the American South. The possibilities of performing certain attributes associated with masculinity or fulfilling perceived responsibilities of manhood could be constrained by regional specifics or local demographics.46 However, understandings and expectations of men’s roles as fathers, husbands, lovers, workers, and fighters, as well as the broader context in which gendered identities were 43 44 45

46

Sharon Ann Musher, “The Other Slave Narratives: The Works Progress Administration Interviews,” in Ernest (ed.), African American Slave Narratives, 101–119, 112. Forret, Slave Against Slave, 9–15. Blassingame, “Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves,” 492; Nell Irvin Painter, Southern History across the Color Line (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 2. This is best articulated in Baptist, “The Absent Subject.”

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constructed, were not entirely dictated by location. Wider cultural values embedded across the slave South, as well as commonalities of bondage, shaped enslaved people’s constructions of manhood, and these similarities outweighed experiential differences stemming from regional issues such as crop type, demographic patterns, and social structures.47 This study mostly covers the later antebellum period, defined here as 1831–1861, but at times speaks to earlier and later issues. This period saw the development of a strident abolitionist movement, made up of former slaves, free blacks, and their white allies; an aggressive response from proslavery Southerners; and the shifting of slavery to the center of political, social, and cultural debates that ultimately led to the American Civil War. Gendered ideas and ideologies were connected to and helped shape the debates and tensions of the period. While not the subject of this book, tensions over alternative masculine identities and competing values did not end with the Civil War or emancipation. Debates over respectability, political participation, military service, resistance, and accommodation continued to rage in the postbellum years and beyond, suggesting the centrality of gender to lived experiences, and to explaining how people navigate and justify their actions in surviving the environments in which they live.48 The monograph is ordered into five thematic chapters in which I explore powerful contemporary tropes of manhood: resistance, 47

48

Similarly wide-ranging approaches have been undertaken with the study of white men. See for example Anthony E. Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993); Bederman, Manliness and Civilization; Kimmel, Manhood in America; Mayfield, Counterfeit Gentlemen; Glover, Southern Sons. Notwithstanding regional specificities, historians of slavery have also stressed the viability of broad studies on gender: see Camp, Closer to Freedom, 8–9; Lussana, My Brother Slaves, 16. For examples of this, see Fiona Deans Halloran, “‘Shall I Trust These Men?’ Thomas Nast and Postbellum Black Manhood,” in Buckner and Caster (eds.), Fathers, Preachers, Rebels, Men, 102–127; Richardson, Black Masculinity and the U.S. South; Wallace, Constructing the Black Masculine; Hazel V. Carby, Race Men (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); Marlon B. Ross, Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era (New York: New York University Press, 2004); Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class And the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900–1930 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2004). On the specific impact of the Civil War, see Emberton, “Only Murder Makes Men”; Jim Cullen, “‘I’s a Man Now’: Gender and African American Men,” in Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber (eds.), Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 76–96; Heather Andrea Williams, “‘Commenced to Think Like a Man’: Literacy and Manhood in African American Civil War Regiments,” in Friend and Glover (eds.), Southern Manhood, 196–221.

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authority, work, sex, and violence. I challenge existing paradigms by addressing how the performance of different versions of masculine identity became a site of disagreement, tension, and conflict. In navigating different paths to manhood, enslaved men compared themselves to and competed with one another. When enslaved men constructed and demonstrated their sense of masculine identity, they drew upon a variety of images and ideals – learnt from families, friends, enslavers, religion, culture, and more – but they also bore witness to, and judged, other men’s performances. Members of the community did likewise when evaluating the characters of those they lived with and loved. Chapter 1 explores how resistance to slavery was articulated by contemporaries as evidence for enslaved manhood, focusing on the roles virtue and honor played in explaining and justifying the behavior of rebellious men. Claims that violence against their oppressors was the clearest way of seeing “how a slave was made a man” demonstrate the degree to which gendered identities were connected to actions and how direct resistance against slavery was considered evidence of masculine virtues by contemporaries.49 While resistance was clearly articulated by contemporaries as evidence for black manhood, I show how this identity gained force through invidious comparison with other men, as well as the degree to which such claims led to the development of masculine hierarchies among enslaved and formerly enslaved men. In Chapter 2 I complicate the strong historiographical connection between resistance and masculinity by noting how enslaved men who held trustee roles for their enslavers articulated manhood. The justifications and rationalizations that enslaved male trustees offered for their actions suggest how gender connected to structures of power and control in the antebellum South. Enslaved men in positions of authority made use of masculine ideals associated with family provision, dominance, and integrity to articulate their actions in upholding slavery within a masculine framework. They also transmitted these ideals to their families and loved ones. In doing so, these individuals challenged the idea that there existed a unifying understanding of resistant manhood among the enslaved. The third chapter develops these arguments to reveal how enslaved men constructed a gendered sense of self through work and by acting as a provider for dependents in the informal economy. Historians have 49

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845), 65, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/douglass.html

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stressed the significance of enslaved men’s contributions to informal economies and the supportive relationships which enabled success in these endeavors, but conflict, comparison, and exclusion were important elements of the masculinities created through work.50 Enslaved men who provided for themselves and others could make their achievements emblematic of their identity, noting how individualistic qualities of industry, energy, and respectability were connected to success. These qualities, and these identities, were consolidated in relation to others in the community. Chapter 4 tackles a markedly different vision of manhood: sexual dominance and enslaved men’s actions within the exploitative sexual framework of antebellum slavery. Although racialized discussions of “bestial” black men dominated the early discourse on black masculinity, scholars since the 1970s have focused on restoring enslaved men to family pictures as caring and loving figures.51 Historians have also stressed how enslaved men and women recognized sexual coercion as a shared element of their race-based oppression.52 This chapter, however, explores how some enslaved men connected expressions of sexual dominance to ideas on comparative virility, and also considers the problems this caused in slave communities. Some enslaved men were understood, and understood themselves, as being the beneficiaries of a form of male privilege in the sexual realm, using sexual agency to elevate themselves above others in their communities. Chapter 5 turns to how violence offered enslaved men the opportunity to create a version of manhood based on aggression and physicality, emphasizing how this could be a site of tension as men sought to assert themselves at the expense of others. While recent work has explored the 50

51

52

Emily West, “The Debate on the Strength of Slave Families: South Carolina and the Importance of Cross-Plantation Marriages,” Journal of American Studies 33.2 (1999), 221–241, 223; Fraser, “Negotiating Their Manhood,” 81; Lussana, My Brother Slaves, chapter 1. Blassingame, The Slave Community, 100; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 486. More recently, see Emily West, Chains of Love: Slave Couples in Antebellum South Carolina (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 57–60; Rebecca Fraser, Courtship and Love among the Enslaved in North Carolina (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2007), 69–88; Marshall, Manhood Enslaved, 109–115. Daina Ramey Berry, “Swing the Sickle for the Harvest Is Ripe”: Gender and Slavery in Antebellum Georgia (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 79; Thomas A. Foster, “The Sexual Abuse of Black Men under Slavery,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 20.3 (September, 2011), 445–464; Gregory D. Smithers, Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2012), 103.

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solidarity and sociability of fighting rituals, the comparative emasculation produced by public defeat at the hands of another man could require men who built their identity on violence or competition to respond forcefully to insults and aggression.53 Despite acknowledging the homosocial bonding that sometimes developed when enslaved men fought and socialized with one another, we should not underestimate the consequences of conflict. Notwithstanding the shared oppression of bondage, enslaved men responded fiercely to challenges to their manhood from others in the community: These challenges could undermine enslaved men’s gendered sense of self and lead to tension, sadness, and strife. Enslaved men unquestionably fought against emasculation in slavery. However, enslaved manhood was never simply a unifying identity built on resistance or slave solidarity, or something constructed purely in opposition to white social norms. Enslaved men compared themselves to and competed with one another to establish and validate their manhood, interpreting the range of cultural values and attributes associated with masculinity in different ways. Despite shared constraints and commonalities of bondage, oppression did not inevitably lead to harmony or a singular gender identity among the oppressed and there were disagreements in the wider community over the diverse expectations of men. Enslaved men constructed and articulated their masculine identity through comparison to other men, and enslaved and formerly enslaved people passed judgment on the different forms of manhood they witnessed in their communities. These judgments shaped the actions, experiences, and memories of those who survived slavery.

53

Sergio Lussana, “‘To See Who Was Best on the Plantation’: Enslaved Fighting Contests and Masculinity in the Antebellum Plantation South,” Journal of Southern History, 76.4 (November 2010), 901–923; T. J. Desch Obi, Fighting for Honor: The History of African Martial Art Traditions in the Atlantic World (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008).

1 “If I had my life to live over, I would die fighting rather than be a slave again” Resistance, Manhood, and Survival in Slavery

Robert Falls, born into slavery in North Carolina in 1840, was asked by the Tennessee branch of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1937 to give his recollections of slave life. Falls had moved to Tennessee only three years beforehand, having lived in North Carolina as a slave and then as a free man, and he had plenty to say. While some former slaves exercised extreme caution when telling white people of their experiences, Falls excoriated southern whites for their treatment of enslaved people, stating, for example, that they “fed the animals better.” He also mocked his former enslaver’s Christian pretensions, indicating that in death he would justly suffer for his crimes: “And him claiming to be such a Christian! Well, I reckon he’s found out something about slave driving by now. The good Lord has to get his work in some time. And he’ll take care of them low down Pattyroolers [sic] and slave speculators and mean Marsters and Mistresses.” Alongside recollections of the draining work enslaved people did and the tense relationships between enslavers and enslaved, Falls recounted specific hardships his family faced. His mother, for example, suffered the trauma of being “sold away from her baby.” Although she was returned to her former plantation and her family after suffering fits while awaiting transport, she never got over this affliction. Falls’ father was a skilled wagon driver – “the best in all that country abouts” – but, seemingly more importantly to Falls, he was also a man who refused to passively accept ill treatment. Falls stated, with apparent pride: “my father, he was a fighter. He was mean as a bear. He was so bad to fight and so troublesome he was sold four times to my knowing and maybe a heap more times.” After wearing down another slaveholder with his resistance, 20

Resistance, Manhood, and Survival in Slavery

21

Falls’ father was granted the dubious honor of being allowed to choose his own enslaver. This did not indicate passive submission to bondage: “he’d still fight. That man would fight a she-bear and lick her every time.”1 Falls was obviously impressed by his father’s resistance and assertiveness; his unwillingness to submit to abuse was emblematic of his character, his strength, and, arguably, his identity as a man. His father followed elements of Henry Highland Garnet’s gender-specific call to arms: “let your motto be resistance!”2 While his mother suffered relatively passively, at least in Falls’ recollections, his father fought against oppression to carve out a degree of agency, creating an identity and a reputation as a man who would not submit. However, while placing his father on a pedestal because of his resistance, Falls explained that not all enslaved people took the same approach, including himself in this assessment: “All we knowed was work, and hard work. We was learned to say, ‘Yes sir’ and scrape down and bow, and to do just exactly what we was told to do, make no difference if we wanted to or not.” Despite acknowledging the pressures which informed such behavior, Falls’ positive recollections of his father’s assertive nature, as compared to the humiliating “scraping” and “bowing” that marked his and others’ accommodation in his testimony, suggest he believed that some responses to slavery were more laudable than others. Falls’ depiction of his father’s resistance as reflective not only of individual courage, strength, and assertiveness, but also of manliness, shows how some enslaved and formerly enslaved people connected resistance to slavery with ideals of black masculinity. Yet it also reveals something of the hierarchical and comparative nature of these activities and identities: if men should aspire to and applaud resistance, then conversely, accommodation should be rejected. Falls was not alone in thinking so. In an antislavery lecture delivered nearly one hundred years prior to Falls’ WPA interview, the fugitive slave Lewis Clarke argued that slavery drained enslaved men of their will and ability to resist, and, in turn, their manhood: I want to tell you, not so much about the slave’s being whipped, or about his not having enough to eat; though I could tell you enough of that, too, if I had a chance. But what I want to make you understand is, that A SLAVE CAN’T BE A MAN! Slavery makes a brute of man; I don’t mean that he is a brute, neither.

1

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 16, 12.

2

Garnet, “A Former Slave Appeals,” 125.

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But a horse can’t speak; and he dare n’t. He dare n’t tell what’s in him; it would n’t do. The worse he’s treated, the more he must smile; the more he’s kicked, the lower he must crawl.3

These two men, separated by nearly one hundred years, shared the view that a lack of resistance imperiled black manhood. Clarke went on to note how these views extended into the slave quarters: “if a man don’t resent anything that’s put upon him, they call him Poke-Easy. The slaves catch it, too; and them as won’t fight, is called Poke-Easy.”4 Resistance to insult or abuse was held up as proof of manhood, and something to be applauded by the wider community. Although Falls did not follow in his father’s footsteps while enslaved, his comparative assessment of resistant behavior was evident in his statement that, were he ever to face slavery again, he would not choose the path of accommodation. Looking back on his life, Falls explained how: “If I had my life to live over, I would die fighting rather than be a slave again.”5 This perception of resistance as an inherent part of manliness has become integral to historical debates on enslaved masculinities. Indeed, it is virtually impossible to enter any discussion on the topic without first considering resistance to slavery. As Darlene Clark Hine and Earnestine Jenkins wrote in 1999, “at virtually every juncture, black men interpreted the struggle for freedom and resistance to oppression as the central tenet of manhood.”6 Aldon Morris concurred, noting that for black men in the slave community, “active resistance to slavery became a central activity for them and the defining characteristic of their manhood.”7 In this chapter, however, I explore how formulations of resistant manhood developed in relation to the actions of other men in the community. Historians who stress multiple models of manhood rarely interrogate how different masculine identities, and the ideals associated with them, sometimes clashed in practice. Yet, enslaved men who resisted, as well as abolitionists who counseled rebellion, sometimes belittled or minimized the character and choices of other men to bolster their own claims of heroism or to press for more militant action in the face of oppression. The forms of manhood which contemporaries connected to resistance were 3 4 5 6 7

Lewis Clarke, “Leaves from a Slave’s Journal of Life,” Anti-Slavery Standard (October 20, 1842), 78–79, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/clarke/support1.html. Presented as per website text. Clarke, “Leaves from a Slave’s Journal of Life,” 78–79. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 16, 12. Darlene Clark Hine and Earnestine Jenkins, “Black Men’s History: Towards a Gendered Perspective,” in Hine and Jenkins (eds.), A Question of Manhood, 1–58, 57. Morris, “Foreword,” in Hine and Jenkins (eds.), A Question of Manhood, xiii.

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hierarchical in nature, functioning, in part, through comparisons to enslaved men who did not resist; this could involve shaming, even mocking those who did not follow the rebel’s path. Such depictions might require, as in the case of Falls, a degree of introspection into the actions and choices men made while enslaved.8 Nineteenth-century Americans closely identified the most overt forms of resistance to oppression, such as violence, rebellion, or flight, with ideas on manhood. Many white men of the period bolstered their own claims to masculine status by dismissing the idea that black men actively resisted enslavement, therefore dismissing the idea that black men deserved equal status in a republican society. From at least the time of the American Revolution, white men made comparisons between the virtue they claimed to have earned in challenging “tyranny” and a supposed lack of response from enslaved men to their own oppression.9 George Washington, for example, stressed in 1774 that Americans “must assert our rights, or Submit to every Imposition that can be heap’d upon us; till custom and use, will make us as tame, & abject Slaves, as the Blacks we Rule over with such arbitrary Sway.”10 The sense that active resistance from virtuous men was required to prevent degrading and submissive enslavement became an article of faith in postrevolutionary America, allowing white men to create a powerful gendered narrative in which their heroic actions had freed them from tyranny. This narrative provided a degree of justification for racial slavery: the apparent submission to and acceptance of bondage from enslaved men were made emblematic of a lack of manhood.11 Proslavery writers in the later antebellum decades increasingly stressed the paternalistic underpinnings of slavery rather than the “arbitrary sway” which Washington and many revolutionary figures acknowledged as central to the institution.12 However, assumptions remained about the lack of resistance from enslaved men, particularly as this allowed for positive portrayals of conditions in the American South. The legacies of the revolution also continued to loom large. Solon Robinson, writing on 8 9

10 11 12

On this, see also Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told, 282. Francois Furstenberg, “Beyond Freedom and Slavery: Autonomy, Virtue, and Resistance in Early American Political Discourse,” Journal of American History (March 2003), 1296–1324; Baptist, “The Absent Subject,” 138. Letter, George Washington to Brian Fairfax, August 24, 1774, founders.archives.gov/ GEWN-02–10-02–0097 Furstenberg, “Beyond Freedom and Slavery,” 1309. On the transition to paternalism, see Ford, Deliver Us from Evil, esp. chapter 5.

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“Negro Slavery in the South” in 1849, proclaimed that black people were naturally inclined to servility. If any of his readers doubted it, they needed only to have “observe[d] the faithful conduct and the firm adherence of the slaves of Virginia, during the revolutionary war, to their masters, when neither the persuasion or force of British armies could sever their allegiance, or induce them to become free.”13 Many proslavery writers in the antebellum period argued that a relative scarcity of rebellions, sustained outbursts of violence, or mass flight from enslaved people across the American South indicated passive submission, even acceptance of bondage, from a naturally inferior people. William Harper, a prominent southern politician and proslavery apologist, wrote in his “memoir” on slavery: That the African negro is an inferior variety of the human race, is, I think, now generally admitted, and his distinguishing characteristics are such as peculiarly mark him out for the situation which he occupies among us; and those are no less marked in their original country than as we have daily occasion to observe them. The most remarkable is their indifference to personal liberty.14

Proslavery advocates depicted enslaved people as docile and unconcerned with their liberty, reflecting and shaping the powerful racial hierarchies embedded in the United States. Given the social, political, and cultural expectations of female dependency, however, the overwhelming focus of comments on resistance, or a lack thereof, was directed at enslaved men.15 Harper, for example, used the generalized racial epithet of “negro” but made sole use of the masculine pronoun to describe the 13

14 15

Solon Robinson, “Negro Slavery at the South,” Debow’s Review, Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial Progress and Resources, 7.3 (September 1849), 206–225, 214. Such conventions often conveniently “forgot” that enslaved people fought during the American Revolution, both for the British and for the Americans. Likewise, the complexity of white men’s responses to the revolution was ignored in such comparisons. On enslaved peoples’ responses to the revolution, see Sylvia Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Cassandra Pybus, “Jefferson’s Faulty Math: The Question of Slave Defections in the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly, 62 (2005), 243–264; Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804 (New York; London: W. W. Norton & Co., 2016), 91–131. Chancellor Harper, “Memoir on Slavery, Part II,” Debow’s Review, Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial Progress and Resources, 9.6 (December 1850), 625–638, 618. On political rights and gender, see Mark E. Kann, A Republic of Men: The American Founders, Gendered Language, and Patriarchal Politics (New York: New York University Press, 1998); Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 7–18; Corinne T. Field, The Struggle for Equal Adulthood: Gender, Race, Age, and the Fight for

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lack of desire for liberty. Matthew Estes, writing in 1846, claimed that while most men, “when enslaved, will leave no means untried to effect their emancipation . . . the Negro, similarly situated, will not only neglect the use of means to effect his liberation, but will absolutely refuse the boon of freedom when offered to him.”16 Estes’ use of the masculine pronoun highlighted the pervasive antebellum expectation that real men should and would resist tyranny; a lack of resistance, therefore, proved black men were not men at all. White writers like Joseph Ingraham used gendered ideas on male agency and female passivity to mock enslaved men, claiming, for example: A northerner looks upon a band of negroes, as upon so many men. But the planter, or southerner, views them in a very different light; and armed only with a hunting whip or walking-cane, he will fearlessly throw himself among a score of them, armed as they may be, and they will instantly flee with terror.

Such was the lack of masculine drive among enslaved men, however, that “southern ladies would laugh at the idea of being afraid of a negro.”17 Notwithstanding the consistently mocking tone of proslavery Southerners and, indeed, many northern writers and politicians, the abolitionist movement which developed in the antebellum period made the uncovering and illumination of slave resistance central to its attacks on slavery. It also explicitly asserted how these episodes spoke to the masculinity of enslaved men involved. Despite acknowledging that fewer insurrections took place in the American South compared to the Caribbean or Latin America, abolitionists and former slaves stressed the logistical difficulties, as opposed to emasculated submission, which caused this. Frederick Douglass, for example, emphasized the near impossibility of success in outright rebellion given the contrast between “seventeen millions of armed, disciplined, and intelligent people, against three millions of unarmed and uninformed.”18 Solomon Northup likewise explained how, while enslaved, he counseled against rebellion because “without arms or ammunition, or even with them I saw such a step would result

16 17 18

Citizenship in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014). Matthew Estes, A Defense of Negro Slavery (Montgomery: Press of the University of Alabama Journal, 1846), 76. Joseph Ingraham, The Southwest: By a Yankee, in Two Volumes, Vol. II (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1835), 260–262. Frederick Douglass, “The Revolution of 1848,” The North Star (August 4, 1848), rbscp .lib.rochester.edu/4388

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in certain defeat, disaster and death, and always raised my voice against it.”19 Francis Fedric, whose narrative was published during the Civil War, took explicit aim at white American men who so casually claimed they would not stand for slavery. Fedric noted how “when I have told of my being flogged, I often hear persons in this country say, ‘Oh! but he should not have whipped me in that manner; I would have resisted, I would have done this, that, or the other.’” He then offered a tragic account of two enslaved men whipped into “a mass of blood and raw flesh” and threatened with being burned alive by a mob of one hundred men after they dared fight back against punishment.20 Abolitionists made evidence of enslaved people’s struggles against slavery, despite these overwhelming odds, central to their moral and political platform.21 The fugitive slave narratives which became central to the movement, as well as the accounts of enslaved insurrections, were almost overwhelmingly focused on or written by formerly enslaved men; the actions of these men were held up as direct evidence for black manhood.22 Antislavery activists sometimes made use of gendered ideals and language to explain a lack of resistance from enslaved women.23 Harriet Jacobs claimed that her brother Benjamin, having fled to Baltimore, informed his uncle that his mother would never leave slavery “as long as her other children are slaves.” To Benjamin, this was indicative of

19

20

21

22

23

Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853 (Auburn: Derby & Miller; Buffalo: Derby, Orton, & Mulligan; London: Sampson Low, Son & Company, 1853), 249, docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/northup/northup.html Francis Fedric, Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky; or, Fifty Years of Slavery in the Southern States of America (London: Wertheim, McIntosh, and Hunt, 1863), 30–31, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/fedric/fedric.html Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 381; James Oakes, “The Political Significance of Slave Resistance,” History Workshop Journal, 22.1 (1986), 89–107. Enslaved men made up the bulk of longterm runaways from the colonial era through to the Civil War and around 88 percent of slave narratives were written by men. On the gendered dynamics of resistance and flight, see Michael Johnson, “Runaway Slaves and Slave Communities in South Carolina, 1799 to 1830,” William and Mary Quarterly, 38.3 (1981), 418–441; John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 210–212; Blassingame, “Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves,” 480. On tensions over the masculine gendering of resistance, see James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, “Violence, Protest, and Identity: Black Manhood in Antebellum America,” in Hine and Jenkins (eds.), A Question of Manhood, 382–395, esp. 393–395.

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positive feminine virtues: “What a good mother!”24 Jacobs eventually escaped slavery, but maintained that gendered values placed greater burdens on enslaved women, even facing a challenge from her grandmother when deliberating over her plans: “stand by your own children, and suffer with them till death. Nobody respects a mother who forsakes her children.”25 Enslaved women who publicly resisted had their actions and courage masculinized by contemporaries. Manisha Sinha has noted that some contemporaries viewed Harriet Tubman, the heroic runaway and rebel, as possessing masculine qualities rather than feminine ones: “John Brown anointed her General Harriet Tubman, referring to her in the masculine in recognition of her physical prowess.”26 Antebellum Americans clearly perceived resistance to oppression as a facet of manhood, notwithstanding historical scholarship that has shown the reality of enslaved women’s struggles against oppression.27 However problematic in practice, fugitive slaves such as Josiah Henson equated masculinity with resistance and femininity with passivity, and expected contemporaries to agree. Henson, whose “giant’s constitution” allowed him to fight against slavery, had “energy enough in [his] own breast to contend with privation and danger.” His wife, however, was frightened to flee; her “woman’s instinct” encouraged her to cling “to hearth and home.” Henson eventually convinced her to join him in flight but, somewhat condescendingly, explained of his wife’s uncertainty: “She was a poor, timid, unreasoning slave-woman.”28

24 25 26 27

28

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself (Boston: Published for the author, 1861), 41, docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/jacobs.html Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 139. Sinha, Abolition: The Slave’s Cause, 439. Early historical work had followed this line, suggesting resistance was the act of “exceptional men.” See, for example, Stampp, The Peculiar Institution, 92. Challenges to such depictions can be found in Erlene Stetson, “Studying Slavery – Some Literary and Pedagogical Considerations on the Black Female Slave,” in Bell et al. (eds.), All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, 62–77. More recent work on the complex gendered dimensions to resistance includes: Carole Emberton, “‘Only Murder Makes Men’: Reconsidering the Black Military Experience,” Journal of the Civil War Era, 2.3 (2012), 369–393; Sarah Roth, Gender and Race in Antebellum Popular Culture (New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 7; Horton and Horton, “Violence, Protest, and Identity,” 382–395; Camp, Closer to Freedom; Berry, “Swing the Sickle.” Josiah Henson, “Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life”: An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson (Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom.” From 1789 to 1876 (London: “Christian Age” Office, 1876), 158, 79, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/henson/henson.html.

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These gendered distinctions in resistance became a rallying cry of sorts, with ex-slaves like Henry Highland Garnet emphasizing that enslaved men must protect otherwise helpless female dependents: Look around you, and behold the bosoms of your loving wives heaving with untold agonies! Hear the cries of your poor children! Remember the stripes your fathers bore. Think of the torture and disgrace of your noble mothers. Think of your wretched sisters, loving virtue and purity, as they are driven into concubinage and are exposed to the unbridled lusts of incarnate devils.29

Enslaved male fugitives furthered the heroic nature of their activities by stressing their assistance of women, fulfilling the gendered role of protector alongside that of the rebel. Henry Parker, for example, “resolved that, should I live to become a man, I would take my mother and sisters and find a home where we would be free.” Parker kept his word, his quest for manhood bolstered by his heroic claim to have carried his mother and two sisters on his back across raging rivers during their escape. According to Parker, his manly resolve was needed to ensure the group’s success: “when my mother and sisters would begin to grow discouraged, I would say to them, ‘Travel on, believers! we will get to heaven by and by.’” Parker clearly believed his actions marked out his virtue and manliness, proudly informing the reader: “I thank God that my conscience is clear of offense, for I never shrank from my duty toward my mother and sisters.”30 Henry Bibb was equally clear in highlighting how resistance was inseparable from the masculine role of protector: “I thought if I must die, I would die striving to protect my little family from destruction, die striving to escape from slavery.”31 In applauding the actions of enslaved male rebels and fugitives, abolitionists were thus able to speak to pervasive antebellum assumptions on the gendered nature of resistance and reject the idea that black men were emasculated, dependent, or deserving of enslavement. One antislavery editor prefaced the narrative of William Parker, a heroic rebel “whose own right arm . . . won his rights as a free man,” by noting: “On reading it over carefully, I also discover that it is in itself a stronger argument for the manhood of the negro than any which could be adduced by one not

29 30 31

Garnet, “A Former Slave Appeals,” 123. Henry Parker, Autobiography of Henry Parker (s. l.: s. n., 186?), 1–4, docsouth.unc.edu/ neh/parkerh/parkerh.html Henry Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself (New York: Published by the author, 1849), 127, docsouth.unc.edu/ neh/bibb/bibb.html

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himself a freedman.”32 In showcasing how enslaved men fought against their oppression, even in the face of death, these activists made a claim for black masculinity and ability to integrate into a patriarchal republican society. They also stressed the self-serving lies of proslavery contemporaries who claimed enslaved men passively accepted their fate. As Frederick Douglass explained in his 1850 “Letter to the American Slaves,” “[i]t is not to be disguised that a colored man is as much disposed as a white man to resist, even unto death, those who oppress him.”33 In bringing forth their own narratives of resistance or by stressing examples of enslaved men’s struggles against oppression, abolitionists developed a case for black male equality, embracing the language of virtuous resistance that had helped justify political rights for white American men. In doing so they staked a claim to a distinctly male republican and revolutionary citizenship, making sure “their readers noted the manly qualities of intelligence, ingenuity, and assertiveness that they, as the main characters of their stories, exhibited” and highlighting how the black male narrators “shared many of the most laudable masculine traits with the most praiseworthy white heroes of the American cultural tradition.”34 This connection back to the revolution allowed black male resistors to make a recognizable claim to manhood: “a republican tenet was that a man who submitted to oppression and thereby lost his manhood could regain it by struggling for his rights.”35 In an antislavery publication from the 1830s, the author related how one rebel boldly informed his accusers: In a manly tone of voice: “I have nothing more to offer than what General Washington would have had to offer, had he been taken by the British, and put to trial by them. I have adventured my life in endeavouring to obtain the liberty of my countrymen, and am a willing sacrifice in their cause.”36

In Frederick Douglass’ evocative novella The Heroic Slave, based on the Creole shipboard rebellion in 1841, he similarly made use of the revolutionary legacy and masculine understandings of resistance to applaud the rebels, focusing on the aptly named Madison Washington. 32 33

34 35 36

William Parker, “The Freedman’s Story: In Two Parts,” The Atlantic Monthly, 17 (February 1866), 152–166, 152, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/parker1/parker.html Frederick Douglass, “A Letter to the American Slaves from those who Have Fled American Slavery,” Cazenovia Fugitive Slave Law Convention, August 21–22, 1850, coloredconventions.org/items/show/234 Roth, Gender and Race, 84. Stanley Harrold, Aggressive Abolitionism: Addresses to the Slaves (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 40. R. G. Williams, The Anti-Slavery Record, 1.12 (New York, December 1835), 143.

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Douglass acknowledged the perception of many whites that black men were unwilling to resist by having the brig manager claim “a nigger’s a nigger, on sea or land; and is a coward, find him where you will: a drop of blood from one on ’em will skeer a hundred. A knock on the nose, or a kick on the shin, will tame the wildest ‘darkey’ you can fetch me.”37 However, Washington’s words and deeds proved the falsity of such claims, and showed how contemporaries viewed the relation between resistance and rights: I am no coward. Liberty, I will have, or die in the attempt to gain it . . . We have struck for our freedom, and if a true man’s heart be in you, you will honor us for the deed. We have done that which you applaud your fathers for doing, and if we are murderers, so were they!

Antislavery authors and fugitives thus placed great emphasis on the gendered dynamics of and attributes required for resistance. Washington was further described by Douglass as being “of manly form.”38 William Wells Brown, applauding the same rebellion, likewise declared that Washington struck down his oppressors with “manly blows.”39 The actions of those who chose more individualistic paths of resistance were also attributed to masculine values: antislavery writers explained the yearning for liberty of enslaved men as driven by “the prompting of [their] untutored manhood.”40 Abolitionist James Redpath recalled how, during his travels in the South, he asked an enslaved man in North Carolina if he would be willing to escape and “run the risk of being captured and brought back.” Redpath described the man’s response in explicitly gendered terms: “‘Yes, mass’r,’ said the slave, in a manly tone, ‘I would try; but dey would never bring me back again alive.’”41 Alongside applauding the masculine spirit of runaways, abolitionists frequently asserted that enslaved men who violently fought their oppressors demonstrated specifically masculine attributes. In James Pennington’s account of Jourden Banks’ life as a slave, he explained how Banks’ 37 38 39 40

41

Frederick Douglass, The Heroic Slave (Boston: John P. Jewett and Co., 1853), 174–239, 228–230, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass1853/douglass1853.html Douglass, The Heroic Slave, 177–180. William Wells Brown, The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (Boston: James Redpath Publisher, 1863), 80. Eber M. Pettit, Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad, Comprising Many Thrilling Incidents of the Escape of Fugitives from Slavery, and the Perils of Those Who Aided Them (Fredonia: W. McKinstry and Son, 1879), 126. James Redpath, The Roving Editor: Or, Talks with Slaves in the Southern States (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968; originally published in 1859 by A. B. Burdick), 125.

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spirited resistance against four slavecatchers “gave them evidence that they had a man to deal with.”42 Frederick Douglass, perhaps most famously, noted how his own violent resistance against the “nigger breaker” Mr Covey “rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood.” Douglass prefaced his conflict with Covey with the immortal lines: “you have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.”43 By the later antebellum period, then, the abolitionist movement consistently used examples and evidence of male runaways and resistors to challenge gendered attacks on black men, making explicit connections between resistance and masculinity. In doing so, it argued that black men deserved equal status in a patriarchal republican society. Although there were debates among antislavery contemporaries as to the extent to which overt violence should be applauded, abolitionists put sustained emphasis on “manly” forms of resistance to oppression, particularly using force to protect themselves or their family, as well as striking out for freedom in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.44 While white writers such as Joseph Ingraham claimed that enslaved men who rebelled were driven by “an animal instinct, which impels him, when roused, to the performance of the most savage acts,” fugitives and resistors rejected such characterizations out of hand.45 Josiah Henson, for example, claimed to have made a choice not to kill his enslavers, even after having been tricked out of his freedom, because this went against his strong moral code: “I was about to lose the fruit of all my efforts at self-improvement, the character I had acquired, and the peace of mind that had never deserted me.” Henson believed “it was better to die with a Christian’s hope, and a 42

43 44

45

James W. C. Pennington, A Narrative of Events of the Life of J. H. Banks, an Escaped Slave, from the Cotton State, Alabama, in America (Liverpool: M. Rourke, Printer, South John Street, 1861), 41, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/penning/penning.html Douglass, Narrative of the Life, 65–66. William Anderson, for example, prefaced his escape with the following information: “there are a great many things to encounter in escaping, vis: large and small rivers, lakes, panthers, bears, snakes, alligators, white and black men, blood hounds, guns, and, above all, the dangers of starvation.” William J. Anderson, Life and Narrative of William J. Anderson, Twenty-Four Years a Slave; Sold Eight Times! In Jail Sixty Times!! Whipped Three Hundred Times!!! or The Dark Deeds of American Slavery Revealed (Chicago: Daily Tribune Book and Job Printing Office, 1857), 26, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/ander sonw/andersonw.html Ingraham, The Southwest, 259–60. On debates over the use of violence, see Roth, Gender and Race, esp. chapter 3; Sarah Roth, “‘How a Slave Was Made a Man’: Negotiating Black Violence and Masculinity in Antebellum Slave Narratives,” Slavery and Abolition, 28.2 (2007), 255–275.

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quiet conscience, than to live with the incessant recollection of a crime that would destroy the value of life,” and resolved to escape slavery instead.46 The emphasis on violence committed in self-defense, whether in protection of oneself or dependents or on heroic flights to freedom, allowed fugitive authors and their abolitionist allies to construct a version of respectable black manhood, one well understood by an antebellum audience. The connection between resistance, republican rights, and manhood, remained immensely powerful in this period, from depictions in popular culture to interpretations of geopolitical events. American support for the wave of nationalist uprisings in Europe in the 1840s and 1950s, for example, could be predicated upon the popular memory of the American Revolution and referred to ideas of manly virtue. One Georgia newspaper introduced their coverage of the turmoil in Europe by noting: “it has been the example of the United States which has taught the oppressed of the old world that man is capable of self-government.”47 Alongside making use of the legacies and rhetoric of the American Revolution, free black activists used the hypocritical stance of white Southern men who applauded European radicals striking for freedom to argue their case, too.48 Willis Hodges, for example, wrote a satirical article urging slave insurrection after the Louisiana state government supported the Hungarian uprising in 1848–9, refashioning the gendered language they had employed to argue that enslaved men should respond in a similar form. According to Hodges, enslaved men could learn from Southern support for the Hungarian rebels that “[m]en will respect you in proportion to the physical efforts you put forth in resisting tyranny and slavery.”49 Contemporaries accepted that the “perfect work” of slavery

46

47

48

49

Henson, Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life, 71. Henson also claimed to have prevented a violent rebellion due to his Christian beliefs: “I said, ‘Suppose we should kill one thousand of the white population, we should surely lose our own lives, and make the chains of those in bondage heavier and more securely riveted. No, let us suffer in God’s name, and wait His time for Ethiopia to stretch forth her hands and be free.’ At last I prevailed on them to abandon the project”: 193–194. “The Foreign News,” Columbus Enquirer (GA), May 2, 1848. Consulted in Paul Quigley, Shifting Grounds: Nationalism and the American South, 1848–1865 (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 23–25. On American responses to the revolutions of 1848, see Michael Morrison, “American Reactions to European Revolutions, 1848–1852,” Civil War History, 49 (2003), 111–32; Quigley, Shifting Grounds, 16–50. Willis Hodges, “Slaves of the South, Now Is Your Time,” The Ram’s Horn (New York, 1849), reprinted in The Liberator (August 3, 1849), 122.

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was to ensure that “the Man is dead within the Slave.”50 However, in highlighting the heroic struggles and resistance of enslaved men, abolitionists, fugitive authors, and former slaves proved that “tyranny is not omnipotent”: Though it crush its victims to the earth; and tread them into the dust; and brutify them by every possible invention; it cannot totally extinguish the spirit of manhood within them. Here it glimmers; and there it secretly burns; sooner or later, to burst forth in a flame, that will not be quenched, and cannot be kept under!51

Despite agreement, in the past and now, that enslaved men could earn manhood through resistance, I find myself drawn back to Robert Falls’ recollections, and to the dissonance between his words and his actions while enslaved. Notwithstanding his obvious admiration for his father’s resistant nature and his clear belief that resistance was the more heroic response to oppression, Falls did not “die fighting” slavery. Neither, for that matter, did most enslaved men in the antebellum South. To say this is not to cast judgment on them, nor to suggest they should have died fighting. The overwhelming odds and incredible difficulties all enslaved people faced from a unified and oppressive white society made violent resistance or rebellion nigh-on suicidal. Enslaved men chose not to take such risks for a variety of reasons.52 While early historical work emphasized the emasculatory effects of slavery by focusing on a perceived lack of resistance from most enslaved men, revisionist scholars from the 1960s stressed how everyday acts of survival and community building challenged the institution of slavery and enabled enslaved men (and women) to craft gendered identities.53 Such ideas became central to the literature on the slave community and enslaved manhood, and they retain 50

51

52 53

H. G. Adams, God’s Image in Ebony: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches, Facts, Anecdotes, etc., Demonstrative of the Mental Powers and Intellectual Capacities of the Negro Race (London: Partridge and Oakey, 1854), 9, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/adamsh/ adamsh.html Thomas H. Jones, Experience and Personal Narrative of Uncle Tom Jones; Who 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, 1854), 30–1, docsouth.unc .edu/neh/jonestom/jones.html For examples of the explanations given to explain a lack of resistance, see, for example, Douglass, Narrative of the Life, 106; Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 6, 161. See, for example, Rawick, From Sundown to Sunup, chapters 5–6; Blassingame, The Slave Community, chapters 5 and 8. Most historians since have agreed with, refined, and developed this argument. Recent examples include Hine and Jenkins, “Black Men’s History,” 9–14; Fraser, “Negotiating Their Manhood,” 78; Marshall, Manhood Enslaved, 6; Lussana, My Brother Slaves, 8–9.

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significance today. Alongside illuminating the diverse paths to manhood, much of this work has stressed the limitations and dangers of solely equating masculinity with militancy. Sergio Lussana, for example, noted that “a number of African American writers of the nineteenth century, as well as subsequent scholars, have equated slave rebellion with masculinity . . . in this way, only those who defiantly and violently challenged their enslavement proved their masculinity.” To Lussana, this approach “is unhelpful, for it implies that those men who did not violently rebel somehow lacked masculinity.”54 Yet, despite the significance of such work, some abolitionists and fugitive slaves clearly did feel that men who did not resist were less masculine, challenging their inaction on gendered grounds and arguing that men must make choices if they were to be acknowledged as having earned manhood. Henry Highland Garnet, for example, “appealed” to enslaved men by informing them that “if you must bleed, let it all come at once – rather die like freemen, than live to be the slaves.” According to Garnet: “In the name of the merciful God, and by all that life is worth, let it no longer be a debatable [sic] question, whether it is better to choose Liberty or death.”55 In such a worldview, enslaved men could choose to resist and earn manhood or they could choose to remain enslaved and suffer emasculation. This binary is undoubtedly problematic, but it indicates how masculinity was contested in the American South. Contemporaries felt that manhood was proven through certain actions but, equally, disproved by inaction. We do not have to accept such an assertion ourselves but we do not do justice to the complexity of slave life if we neglect the tension that developed between enslaved and formerly enslaved people in relation to their strategies for survival. Historians have explored the diverse ways enslaved men coped with a life in chains and their attempts to craft a gendered sense of self, but there is a risk of neglecting the problems that could erupt when men prioritized different values or took different paths in constructing gendered identities. Enslaved men crafted masculine identities in diverse ways, but the choices they made and the identities they created were judged by their peers: These assessments were not always sympathetic. David Walker, for example, offered little support for enslaved men who felt unable or unwilling to resist in his appeal of 1829: “the man who would not fight . . . ought to be kept with all of his children or family, in slavery,

54

Lussana, My Brother Slaves, 9.

55

Garnet, “A Former Slave Appeals,” 123–4.

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or in chains, to be butchered by his cruel enemies. ”56 Enslaved men who viewed their chosen path as the “correct” route to manhood were not uniformly sympathetic toward those who failed to follow them. Rather than supporting one another in their diverse paths to manhood, some enslaved men saw their choices and actions as elevating them above others in the community. Enslaved men or antislavery activists who claimed that manhood was earned through resistance often made this indicative of personal virtue or strength of character. They solidified these assessments through comparisons to men who were depicted as being unable or unwilling to take such action. Josiah Henson, for example, made his journey toward resistance emblematic of his masculinity, detailing his heroic flight from bondage and his efforts in helping others gain their freedom on the Underground Railroad. While Henson had the strength and courage to endure, however, he claimed others lacked the same drive; in stressing his heroic efforts to save his brother, for example, Henson marked him as dependent and unable to help himself. Although he accepted the overwhelming power of slavery had broken his brother’s resolve, Henson also felt there was a choice – that it was his unwillingness to accept “liberty or death” – which ultimately prevented his brother from following his path: “I had made several efforts to induce my brother to run away . . . [he was] so demoralised or stultified by slavery, that he would not risk his life in the attempt to gain his freedom.”57 The significance of personal strength of character and the emphasis on resistance as a virtuous choice made by only some men was also seen in the narrative of Israel Campbell, published in 1861. Campbell detailed his attempts to escape slavery and brought up an episode in which he and two other men agreed to support one another against a violent overseer. Having been the first to face such an assault, Campbell resolved to fight and expected the other men’s assistance: He was “relying upon their honor.” Despite their agreement, however, Campbell was forced to stand alone as his friends refused to step in. Campbell’s use of the word “honor” to describe their plans for resistance, and, indeed, to express disdain at his companions’ unwillingness to follow through on this,

56

57

David Walker, Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles; Together With a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America (Boston: Revised and Published by David Walker, 1829), 15, docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/walker.html Henson, Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life, 153–4.

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highlighted the gendered elements of resistance. It also served to make Campbell’s actions more heroic: “I saw that I would have to do my own fighting, and went at it in earnest.”58 In both instances, heroic actions associated with manly resistance were depicted as a choice, but also a choice that some men simply would not make. The sense that resistance elevated some enslaved men over others indicates how enslaved manhood was a comparative and contested identity, one which had to be proven through public tests. According to Campbell, not every man passed the test. Enslaved men who resisted, as well as antislavery activists who counseled rebellion, sometimes belittled or minimized the character and choices of other male slaves to bolster their own claims of heroism or to press for more militant action in the face of oppression. In John Thompson’s slave narrative, for example, he detailed his heroic resistance against a fugitive slave catcher, noting that his defiance left this man “so frightened as to loose his grasp, and run backwards as if his life was in danger.” Thompson also highlighted how the man with whom he escaped lacked the same manly fortitude: I supposed my companion was close by, but when I turned round I saw him about six rods distant, walking off at a rapid speed, and leaving me to do the best I could alone. This cowardice somewhat enraged me, but when I overtook him he so excused himself that I forgave him, knowing that his spirit was willing, but his flesh was weak.59

The more confrontational antislavery literature clearly compared manly resistors with men they believed lacked the requisite courage. James Redpath, for example, proudly described how one male runaway was sold at a low price because his enslavers could not give him “that certificate of soulless manhood which the Southrons style, when they refer to the existence of the passive-obedience spirit in a slave, ‘a good character.’” The belief that resistance was the only appropriate choice for selfrespecting men was reinforced in his claim that “a good name is a very unfortunate thing for a negro to possess . . . I determined, then and there, 58

59

Israel Campbell, An Autobiography. Bond and Free: Or, Yearnings for Freedom, from my Green Brier House. Being the Story of My Life in Freedom. By Israel Campbell. Minister of the Gospel (Philadelphia: Published by the Author, 1861), 60–2, docsouth .unc.edu/neh/campbell/campbell.html John Thompson, The Life of John Thompson, a Fugitive Slave; Containing His History of 25 Years in Bondage, and His Providential Escape. Written by Himself (Worcester: Published by John Thompson, 1856), 99. docsouth.unc.edu/neh/thompson/thompson .html

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in my future intercourse with slaves, to urge them to cultivate as a religious duty all the habits which would speedily brand them as men of bad morals.” Redpath went on to describe his sorrow at witnessing the plight of an enslaved woman and her child at a slave sale, but claimed to feel no sadness for the enslaved men who faced sale as well. In his view, they had the power to shape their own destiny: “they were men, and could escape by death or flight, or insurrection; and it is a man’s duty, I hold – every man’s duty – to be free at every hazard or by any means.”60 Enslaved men who resisted developed a gendered sense of self or had their actions and choices elevated and celebrated as “proof” of black manhood by antislavery activists. However, this sometimes entailed a comparison with and dismissal of the actions or characters of other men. Harriet Jacobs, for example, titled the chapter dealing with her brother’s resistance “The Slave who dared to feel like a man.” The framing of this suggests that those who did not follow such a path lacked the same masculine attributes. Jacobs later made this explicit, noting that, while there were “some who strive to protect wives and daughters from the insults of their masters,” these were a distinct minority. Despite acknowledging “the torturing whip that lashes manhood out of him,” the comparative applause of more heroic and, therefore, manlier figures was made clear in her description of the minority of men “bold enough” to challenge their enslavers, and the emotional appeal: “O, that there were more of them!”61 The implicit shaming of enslaved men who were not perceived as “bold” is found in descriptions of rebellions. Later in Redpath’s book, for example, he goes on to describe a failed insurrection he had heard about while traveling in the Southern states. The sense of proving manhood in resistance is detailed in his descriptions of the affair. After their plans were foiled, Isaac, the leader of the insurrection, accepted full responsibility and made his leadership emblematic of his masculine identity: “I am the man . . . I am the man, and I am not afraid or ashamed to confess it.” Yet Isaac’s bravery, and, furthermore, the masculinity crafted in resistance, was solidified in comparison to less heroic members of the group. As the men were waiting to be hung, Redpath detailed the following conversation took place: “‘be men’, said he [Isaac], when one of the number showed some timidity, ‘and die like men. I’ll give you an example: then, obey my brother.’” The sympathetic use of the term

60

Redpath, The Roving Editor, 10, 251.

61

Jacobs, Incidents in the Life, 68–9.

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“brother” indicated the bonds between the rebels. However, Redpath’s description of one man who failed to remain stoic as “timid,” and the invocation to be as manly as Isaac instead, indicated how those who pressed for outright rebellion sometimes diminished the characters of men who were less confident in their resistance. To Redpath, Isaac’s resistance and leadership acted as direct proof of his masculinity and should inspire others to follow him: “the record below tells of his crime, and he will be remembered on earth as a felon; but the record above will contain his virtues, and in heaven the good will know and love him – for Isaac was a Man.”62 Former slave and activist William Wells Brown’s book, The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements, drew predominantly on examples of enslaved male rebels and resistors. The choice of such figures in a book so explicitly gendered indicates the power of ideas on resistant manhood. In the section on Denmark Vesey’s 1822 conspiracy, Brown emphasized the courage of the conspirators and compared the manly fortitude of those who held firm with their cause to an implicitly emasculated minority who betrayed their fellow men: “with but two or three exceptions, all of the conspirators went to the gallows feeling that they had acted right, and died like men giving their lives for the cause of freedom.”63 In the aftermath of Gabriel’s failed rebellion in Virginia in 1800, it was made clear that gendered ideals were used to inspire support for resistance, but also to critique and shame enslaved men who refused or felt unable or unwilling to follow this path. According to historian James Sidbury: “one recruiter challenged a potential insurrectionary’s virility by asking if he was a man.”64 In her description of the response 62

63

64

Redpath, The Roving Editor, 282–3. The gendered nature of resistance was further exemplified in the claim that Isaac deliberately avoided involving his wife and other women in the community: “He had evidently thought of his failure, and committed no women, and as few married men as he could.” Brown, The Black Man, 146. In his account of the conspiracy, abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson likewise noted how “the best men and those most trusted were deepest in the plot.” Higginson, “The Story of Denmark Vesey,” The Atlantic (June 1861). James Sidbury, Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriel’s Virginia, 1730–1810 (New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 88–90. Gendered tensions can be found in earlier revolts, as in the Pointe Coupee conspiracy of 1795, where unwilling recruits had their manhood called into question, and in the Stono Rebellion of 1739, when transgressions against accepted gender roles “gave male slaves a specific set of grievances against which to struggle.” See: Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 353; Edward Pearson,

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of Southampton’s whites to Nat Turner’s rebellion, Harriet Jacobs employed shaming language to describe the actions of enslaved men who refused to hold firm in maintaining the solidarity of the slave community: “One black man, who had not fortitude to endure scourging, promised to give information about the conspiracy.”65 While enslaved people’s responses to rebellions were immensely complex, some abolitionists and antislavery activists made a perceived or actual lack of support from enslaved men reflective of a lack of courage, strength, or manliness.66 Enslaved men who failed to join rebellions, to engage in flight, or to remain steadfast in their support of resistance found their manhood questioned, not only by white society, but also by their peers. William Parker, for example, attempted to orchestrate flight with one of his friends after both of their mothers were sold away from them. However, to Parker’s chagrin, “so thoroughly had his humanity been crushed by the foul spirit of Slavery, so apathetic had he – though in the vigor of youth – become from long oppression, that he would not agree to my suggestion.” Such a response clearly disappointed Parker: “‘Very well’, said I, ‘trust to that, and you will see what will come of it’ . . . After that I said no more to him, but determined to be free.” Parker did, eventually, win his freedom, with his story serving as “argument for the manhood of the negro.” If Parker’s resistance proved his masculinity, however, this identity was strengthened in comparison to the man who was unwilling to join him in flight.67 The decisions enslaved people made relating to resistance could have consequences in the community. Parker deliberately distanced himself from his former friend because of the different paths they chose. Notwithstanding their sympathy for demoralized and abused individuals, some enslaved men who made resistance central to their perception of manhood emasculated those who were unable or unwilling to join them. Jourden Banks, for example, prefaced his own heroic confrontation with the overseer and enslaver with a story of two men who had been utterly broken by bondage: “I had noticed that two of the old

65 66

67

“A Countryside Full of Flames’: A Reconsideration of the Stono Rebellion and Slave Rebelliousness in the Early Eighteenth-Century South Carolina Lowcountry,” Slavery & Abolition, 17.2 (1996), 22–30. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life, 68–9. On responses to rebellions, see Patrick H. Breen, The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 5–8; Ford, Deliver Us from Evil, 50. Parker, The Freedman’s Story, 152–6.

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hands from the cotton farm were brought to work on the road, evidently to show us how easily they could be managed. These men were so completely cowed, that they did not need to be tied at all when flogged.”68 Banks refused to accept such a path himself and made his resistance emblematic of his masculine identity. Tales of resistance were translated for an antebellum audience into proof of enslaved men’s manhood, but these stories included less heroic figures: broken men and even “black-hearted traitor[s].”69 While slave narratives focusing on black male resistance aimed to prove the potential equality of all black men, former slaves and abolitionists who claimed that enslaved manhood was crafted in resistance sometimes made invidious judgments on the identities and characters of those who refused such risks.70 In such a way, resistance was made into a choice – a choice that men should make. Those who failed to follow the path of the heroic protagonist could be depicted as lacking manly virtue and drive; comparative assessments of resistance suggest the extent to which enslaved men looked at one another to fashion their gendered identity. They did not always do so in a supportive fashion. William O’Neal, for example, wrote in his postbellum narrative of life as a slave that he had longed to escape to demonstrate himself as “a man among men.” Yet if O’Neal felt his willingness to face the perils of flight proved manhood, the actions of Russ, his chosen partner, proved the direct opposite. O’Neal claimed at the age of fifteen to have taken the lead in drawing up plans for escaping from his plantation in Bayou Boeuf, Louisiana, choosing the thirty-two-year-old Russ, a “tall and square-shouldered” man, as his companion. Despite the age gap between the two, O’Neal stressed his leadership in planning the endeavor and made his willingness and desire to escape slavery emblematic of his strength of character: “having indomitable courage himself, he was ready to judge Russ by the same standard.” The night they were supposed to escape, however, Russ failed to join O’Neal. This behavior was repeated several times. After providing numerous “excuses” as to why he was unable to run away each time, O’Neal eventually lost patience with his coconspirator and informed Russ “that he had played the craven, and that he could have no further confidence in such a man.” Russ, at least in O’Neal’s telling of the story, was unwilling to resist because he did not share his “indomitable 68 69

Pennington, A Narrative of Events of the Life of J. H. Banks, 58. 70 Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures, 89. Roth, Gender and Race, 102.

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courage.” His “craven” refusal to risk the dangers of fight or flight reflected his comparative weakness and O’Neal did not hold back in describing his disdain for his former ally: “With this comment we will drop Russ into that oblivion which his cowardice so richly deserves.”71 Enslaved men like Russ had their failure to take the risk of flight held up by their peers as something to be shamed or scorned, made evidence of individual weakness and a lack of manhood compared to those who did resist. If the choices enslaved men made about whether to resist or not were framed as a question of manhood, for some enslaved and formerly enslaved people, this was not a question everyone answered correctly. There is obviously the potential for literary exaggeration in such writing, as well as a need to recognize that these portrayals served a rhetorical or political purpose for those seeking to inspire rebellion. However, the degree to which narratives act as a form of self-fashioning and as a means of speaking to personal and collective identities suggests we should take these reflections seriously, if not literally.72 The belief that resistance proved manhood, and, furthermore, that a lack of resistance spoke to a lack of masculine qualities, was very clearly expressed by leading antislavery contemporaries, in fugitive narratives, and in postbellum accounts of slave life. While binary depictions of black manhood are undoubtedly problematic for historians and scholars, there remains a need to consider the power of this view and the importance of comparison and exclusion in relation to the masculine identities created in slavery. Russ, who was denigrated and shamed, rendered craven and, indeed, considered a lesser man by one who hoped to resist slavery, was, in fact, in the majority in choosing not to risk permanent flight, outright rebellion, or sustained violent resistance. He may have had a family that he did not want to leave. He may have feared the likely failure of such a scheme and the potential danger this could cause to those he loved. He may simply have felt that the almost insurmountable odds of success rendered such a plan pointless. Yet his inaction was immortalized in text as evidence of personal weakness and a lack of manhood, and he was not alone in having been depicted as such. Regardless of whether we accept that, ultimately, some actions in the face of oppression are more worthy of praise than others, there remains a need to explore how positive portrayals of resistant manhood involved negative comparisons with 71 72

William O’Neal, Life and History of William O’Neal, or, The Man Who Sold His Wife (St Louis: A. R. Fleming & Co., 1896), 25–7, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/oneal/oneal.html Lussana, My Brother Slaves, 13.

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those men who did not take the rebel’s path. Multiple masculinities existed in slave communities, but those who chose resistance did not invariably respect men who appeared to choose otherwise. Some enslaved men who made resistance central to their sense of self clearly viewed their actions as having elevated them above others, expected others to agree, and, at times, denigrated those who rejected or refused to follow their path. While Frederick Douglass described how, on his farm, he was united in a resistant “band of brothers,” a band made up of enslaved men who were “manly, generous, and brave,” those who did not resist were excluded from such fraternal orders. Douglass stressed the supportive homosocial network which enabled his resistance, but he also noted that this was not found everywhere and implicitly critiqued the actions of other men in doing so: “There were no mean advantages taken of each other, as is sometimes the case where slaves are situated as we were; no tattling; no giving each other bad names to Mr. Freeland; and no elevating one at the expense of the other.”73 Despite claiming otherwise, Douglass clearly believed the choices he and his band of brothers made elevated them over the latter type of slaves. The implication that some acts were proof of manhood while others were not, and that enslaved men who shared the manly traits required for resistance would band together, was evident in the abolitionist tale of “Wild Tom.” In this fictionalized account, paired with the authentic fugitive narrative of Thomas H. Jones, Tom turned “wild” after his wife was sold away from him. The sense that the loss of his wife led to a new, more radical response to slavery suggests how men might perceive of their roles and responsibilities changing in the face of tragedy: “He had ceased to be the humble and obedient slave, contented with his lot, and zealously devoted to his master’s service. Instead of promoting his master’s interest, it seemed now to be his study and his aim to do as much mischief as possible.” Tom’s decision to resist led him to join a small band of men who also refused to passively accept their fate, men he had previously avoided due to their resistant nature: “There were two or three artful, daring, unquiet spirits on the plantation, from whom till lately, he had kept aloof, but whose acquaintance he now sought, and whose confidence he soon obtained.” As in Douglass’ narrative, the author stressed how resistant men stuck together and stood apart from the mass of slaves who 73

Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom. Part I: – Life as a Slave. Part II: – Life as a Freeman (New York; Auburn: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855), 269, docsouth.unc .edu/neh/douglass55/douglass55.html

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lacked their strength and conviction. They were the exception rather than the norm; clearly viewed by the author as superior men to others in the community, their actions, characters, and choices provided a model of manhood to applaud. In his description of Tom’s “new character,” the author explained that he “gave evidence that he was no ordinary man . . . such was the steady firmness of his mind, and the masculine vigor of his constitution, that he was enabled to do what few men could.” Tom was eventually captured and killed following his campaign of resistance. He died with an unbroken manly spirit: “A pile of wood was lighted, and the victim of slave-holding vengeance was placed in the midst of it, while he looked upon his persecutors with a smile of contemptuous defiance and his spirit was ushered into the presence of an avenging God!”74 Enslaved men who made resistance central to their sense of self and stressed the personal qualities which enabled their success did not look kindly on those who failed to support them. Instead, they made this emblematic of personal weakness and a lack of courage. James Watkins, a fugitive slave author who published his account in 1852, prefaced his escape by noting his manly characteristics – “behold me growing up to be a man! strong, active, energetic, but not owned by myself!” – but also recalled the lack of support he received from his fellow slaves following his first, unsuccessful, attempt at flight. Watkins emphasized how these slaves had been conditioned to accept their status: “My poor degraded fellow-slaves laughed at my sorrows, and exultingly exhibited their freedom in contrast to my disgrace.”75 Resistance to slavery thus provided an arena in which enslaved men judged one another to establish a gendered identity in comparison; those who stayed firm in their resistance viewed themselves as superior to some men or were depicted as such by antislavery activists. Peter Bruner, whose slave narrative was published in 1918, recalled his efforts to escape slavery in Kentucky and continually stressed his manly fortitude in comparison to that of his weak-willed companion, Phil. After having been captured, Phil “began to beg and plead and said he would not have run off if it had not been for me persuading him to go with me.” In comparison, Bruner stoically informed his captor “that I would rather he would kill me than 74 75

Jones, Experience and Personal Narrative of Uncle Tom Jones, 30–1, 54. James Watkins, Narrative of the Life of James Watkins, Formerly a “Chattel” in Maryland, U.S.; Containing an Account of His Escape from Slavery, Together with an Appeal on Behalf of Three Millions of Such “Pieces of Property,” Still Held Under the Standard of the Eagle (Bolton: Kenyon & Abbatt, 1852), 20–5, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/watkins/ watkins.html

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to take me back home and that it did not make a bit of difference with me what he did with me, I would as lief die now as any other time.” Bruner’s comparative strength of character was further emphasized in his description of their forced march home. Phil continued to “beg” and sought to ingratiate himself with his captor by informing him that Bruner was hiding a halfpint of whiskey. Rather than give it up, Bruner casually “took the bottle out of [his] pocket and drank it up and threw the bottle away and told him he could have the bottle if he went after it.” Such was the disdain Bruner felt for his former ally because of his unwillingness to maintain solidarity, and “for telling so many tales on me,” that during their river crossing en route to the jailhouse, Bruner “attempted to drown him and beat him, but [he] did not succeed.”76 Comparisons between manly resistors and weak collaborators thus stressed the personal strength and laudable activities of select enslaved men. In James Williams’ slave narrative, the antislavery author stressed how only the most exceptional men proved themselves through resistance: On almost every plantation at the South you may find one or more individuals whose look and air show that they have preserved their self-respect as men; – that with them the power of the tyrant ends with the coercion of the body – that the soul is free, and the inner man retaining the original uprightness of the image of God.

Despite celebrating the manly nature of these rebellious men, the author made clear that they were a minority; their willingness to resist marked them out as superior to their peers: “You may know them by the stern sobriety of their countenances, and the contempt with which they regard the jests and pastimes of their miserable and degraded companions, who, like Samson, make sport for the keepers of their prison-house.” The sense of scorn for those who did not resist indicates the judgments some enslaved people and antislavery activists made relating to survival in slavery. Having highlighted the general superiority of these self-respecting and courageous men, Williams spoke about an individual named Harry who “always said that he would die rather than submit” to a whipping. His bravery was held up in marked comparison to the characters of his more “degraded” companions: “While most of the slaves took off their hats, with cowering submission, in [the overseer’s] presence, Harry always refused to do so.” The use of words such as “degraded,” 76

Peter Bruner, A Slave’s Adventures toward Freedom: Not Fiction, but the True Story of a Struggle (Oxford; Ohio, 1918), 38–41, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bruner/bruner.html

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“cowering,” and “submission,” to describe enslaved men who refused to assert themselves, particularly when set against “the upright and unbroken manliness” of rebellious men like Harry, indicates how resistant manhood was solidified in comparison to the actions, or inaction, of others in the slave community.77 In Israel Campbell’s account of his flight from Tennessee, he made use of revolutionary rhetoric to stress the righteousness of his cause. Having previously noted his violent resistance against a cruel overseer, and after suffering many injustices while enslaved, Campbell decided he must escape: “I had made up my mind that I was going to try for either liberty or death.” Campbell rejected the thought of casually murdering his oppressor, allowing him to prove he was not a “savage” but instead the very model of a manly rebel. He was, however, willing to use righteous violence in order to gain freedom: “I felt very indignant at the slaveholders to see what risks we had to run to gain what was ours by nature, – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and felt as if I could shoot one of them as unconcerned as I could a deer.”78 After facing numerous obstacles and conflict with cowardly and corrupt overseers and enslavers, Campbell eventually escaped with another man, named Phelix. However, they were not equals in this venture. Campbell described the difficulties they faced and bemoaned Phelix’s lack of courage, deriding his weakness and informing him that “I intended to die before I would be taken; and if we got into a scrape, and should he not fight, if we got clear I would whip him myself.” Campbell was dismissive of Phelix throughout, noting that he told him this in order “to let him know that he had to look out for himself; for he was a great coward, and a white man’s frown would make him give up without a blow.” During their escape across the Tradewater river in Kentucky, Campbell further emphasized his own strength and courage by noting his refusal to accept the dangers Phelix believed to be insurmountable. After being told they could not possibly succeed, Campbell “told him to hold on; that all dangers are not death.” While Campbell 77

78

James Williams, Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave, Who Was for Several Years a Driver on a Cotton Plantation in Alabama (Boston: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1838), 53, docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/williams/williams.html. Although Williams’ narrative was challenged by Southerners as a fake, and Blassingame noted it is most often remembered as a “fraud,” the portrayal of resistance as a heroic choice made by virtuous men vividly illustrates how antebellum antislavery literature portrayed ideas on resistance and manhood. Blassingame, “Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves,” 477. Campbell, An Autobiography: Bond and Free, 172–9.

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had the strength, bravery, and ingenuity to cross the turbulent river, his partner “became so much frightened, that he ceased to help himself,” and was only saved by the heroic actions of Campbell. Campbell’s active and energetic character was solidified in comparison to the passivity of Phelix, who “seemed to have lost all power of helping himself.” Campbell’s manly identity was thus solidified in comparison to his dependent and, in the context of nineteenth-century gendered conventions, feminized companion. Depictions of enslaved male rebels proving themselves superior to other men were not just found in the fugitive slave narratives. As in the case of Falls, WPA respondents who spoke about fathers or male role models in their communities likewise stressed how these men were braver, stronger, or smarter than their peers, elevating them in their memories through their resistance and finding dignity in their responses to slavery. Callie Elder, for example, claimed that on her plantation, her “pappy and granpa was de wurst ones ’bout gittin’ licked,” marking them out as the most rebellious men and stressing how they had the bravery and ingenuity to kill the hounds that chased them.79 J. L. Smith similarly explained to his interviewer that “my father’s brother Lewis was a man who didn’t take nothing much from anybody.” Lewis’ willingness to assert himself against white men reflected his powerful manhood; indeed, “when Lewis’ master wanted to whip him, he would call his mother – the master’s mother – and have her whip him because he figured Uncle Lewis wouldn’t hit a woman.”80 Smith mocked his enslaver’s inability to dominate his uncle, making his acquiescence to punishment indicative of his strength of character and his unwillingness to harm a woman. Bill Thomas, interviewed by the Texas WPA, claimed that his father was so strong that “it taken seven men to whip” him, while L. B. Barner, enslaved in Texas as a child, claimed that his father, unlike other slaves, simply “wouldn’t work” and ran away instead. After a heroic chase, Barner spectacularly claimed his father “killed 18 white men or patrollers.”81 An exaggerated emphasis on the success of male resistance, as well as their elevation over some members of the community because of this, appeared to be important to these WPA respondents and resembled some of the motifs of 79 80 81

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 12, Pt. 1, 309–10. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 10, Pt. 6, 199. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 5, Pt. 3, 86; Rawick, American Slave, Supp. Ser. 1, Vol. 12, 36. On interactions between patrollers and enslaved people, see Hadden, Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 132.

Resistance, Manhood, and Survival in Slavery

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resistant manhood found in slave narratives. James Morgan, enslaved in Arkansas, described his father’s resistance to patrollers: “my daddy wouldn’t stand to be whipped by a paterole . . . he was one of the ones that the pateroles couldn’t catch.” The implication that other men were not so brave or skilled was reinforced in Morgan’s claim that his father took the lead in resisting patrollers while other men cowered behind him: When the pateroles would be trying to break in some place where he was, and the other niggers would be standing ‘round frightened to death and wonderin’ what to do, he would be gettin’ up a shovelful of ashes. When the door would be opened and they would be rushin’ in, he would scatter the ashes in their faces and rush out. If he couldn’t find no ashes, he would always have a handful of pepper with him, and he would throw that in their faces and beat it.82

The depiction of resistance as a choice, and a choice that provided evidence of or elevated a man’s character, was clearly demonstrated in Austin Steward’s fugitive slave narrative. The similarities to Morgan’s story of his father’s resistance suggests how personal memories and vernacular histories blended together to celebrate resistant traditions in the African American community. After describing a party organized by the enslaved people around his plantation, Steward noted that the guests heard a patrol was nearby. This startling news divided the men in attendance: “Many screamed in affright, as if they already felt the lash and heard the crack of the overseer’s whip; others clenched their hands, and assumed an attitude of bold defiance.” The sense that one of these responses was the more laudable of the two was made clear in the gendered language of strength and courage employed. According to Steward, an enslaved man – “a gigantic African, with a massive, compact frame, and an arm of great strength” – took the lead and attempted to organize the other men in resisting their oppressors: “the patrol was nearing the building, when an athletic, powerful slave, who had been but a short time from his ‘fatherland,’ whose spirit the cowardly overseer had labored in vain to quell, said in a calm, clear voice, that we had better stand our ground.” The comparison of those “affright[ed]” men, whose spirits clearly had been “quelled,” with the strength and manly attributes of the rebel leader suggests how antislavery activists feminized men who did not resist. The belief that resistance was a masculine act was reinforced by this man “advis [ing] the females to lose no time in useless wailing, but get their things and repair immediately to a cabin at a short distance, and there remain quiet,

82

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 10, Pt. 5, 142.

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without a light, which they did with all possible haste.” Steward stressed that reluctance to resist reflected individual weakness or cowardice: “The men were terrified at this bold act of their leader; and many with dismay at the thought of resistance, began to skulk behind fences and old buildings, when he opened the door and requested every slave to leave who felt unwilling to fight.” Although many left, the enslaved men who voluntarily stood by him fought bravely against the patrollers and, in the eyes of Steward, proved their manhood. The use of words like “skulk” and “terrified” to describe the men who felt “dismay at the thought of resistance,” particularly when set alongside the deliberate removal of enslaved women from the affray, indicated the degree to which those who did not appear to resist risked emasculation from their peers.83 Resistance was clearly held up as evidence of enslaved manhood, but those who failed to resist or rebel found their identities as men brought into question by their peers. Rebels and fugitive authors who stressed the manhood they earned in resistance made their actions and decisions indicative of masculine virtue and character. In stressing resistance as a virtuous choice, as when Frederick Douglass described how “my long crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact,” male rebels and antislavery activists implicitly or explicitly cast doubt on the actions and identities of other men.84 Contemporaries who counseled “liberty or death” believed some actions elevated men above others. Resistant manhood was bolstered through internal comparison and the denigration of other black men, showcasing the contested nature of slave masculinity, as well as the divisive comparisons that challenged bonds of solidarity in black communities. Enslaved men crafted diverse routes to manhood, but those who believed themselves to have taken the rebel’s path did not agree they held equal weighting. Enslaved masculinity was a contested identity in the American South, and the choices enslaved men made relating to resistance, accommodation, and survival provided one arena in which this contest took place.

83

84

Austin Steward, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman; Embracing a Correspondence of Several Years, While President of Wilberforce Colony, London, Canada West (Rochester: William Alling, 1857), 33–4, docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/steward/ steward.html Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 73.

2 “The best amongst them was picked for that job” Authority, Discipline, and Masculinity

If rejecting slavery through fight or flight acted of proof for enslaved manhood, acting, in the words of one slaveholder, as part of the “internal police of the plantation” could prove otherwise.1 Indeed, enslaved men who held trustee positions in slavery were frequently depicted by contemporaries in a negative light, particularly when compared to the heroic male rebels and resistors studied in Chapter 1. In this chapter, however, I explore how some enslaved men used positions of authority to help craft a gendered identity, and consider how this challenges the common conflation of resistance with masculinity – common both in the past and the present. Historians have argued that aggressively maintaining plantation discipline separated trustees from the wider community, or that forms of acquiescence were generally “an aberrant deviation from the main thrust of African American history.”2 However, enslaved men who held trustee positions articulated their actions and choices as proof of masculine identity. In doing so, they could be forced to grapple with or reject the actions of more rebellious individuals, and did not inevitably accept their worldview.3

1 2

3

W. W. Hazzard, “On the General Management of a Plantation,” The Southern Agriculturalist, and Register of Rural Affairs, 4.7 (July 1831), 350–354, 352. Anthony Kaye, Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 140–144; Christopher Booker, I Will Wear No Chain: A Social History of African American Males (Westport: Prager, 2000), x. Portions of this argument were made in David Doddington, “Discipline and Masculinities in Slave Communities of the Antebellum South,” in Paul E. Lovejoy and Vanessa Oliveira (eds.), Slavery, Memory, Citizenship (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2016), 53–81.

49

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The motives and rationalizations of such behavior offer insights into the complex blend of power and paternalism that helped uphold the “Peculiar Institution.” Scholars such as Walter Johnson have stressed brute “rule” over cultural hegemony and a vast number of historians have argued for black solidarity in the face of claims of white mastery.4 Yet the justifications which enslaved male trustees offered for their actions suggest the significance of negotiations, however unequal, between the enslaved and those who enslaved them, as well as the degree to which gendered ideals were embedded within the broader political struggles of slavery. Masculine ideals associated with authority, responsibility, and power could be used to rationalize nonresistance.5 Although enslaved women held authority in occupations that contemporary Southerners deemed “feminine,” trustee roles with broader disciplinary powers, such as controlling everyday work regimes or acting as the intermediary between enslaved and enslaver, were largely reserved for men.6 The sense in which overall control was expected to rest with men is evident in Bennet H. Barrow’s diary. Barrow, who owned a large cotton plantation in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, believed in compartmentalizing his plantation: “in the different departments on the plantation as much distinction and separation are kept up as possible with a view to create responsibility.” However, Barrow’s male driver was entrusted with “charge of every thing.”7 Contemporaries often connected the allocation of such responsibility to perceived masculine qualities associated with authority, specifically addressing the physical and disciplinary dimensions of the job. James Redpath’s suggestion that white overseers were “frequently hired with special reference to their robust physical condition ” found parallels in the “hiring” process for enslaved men.8

4

5

6 7 8

Johnson, “A Nettlesome Classic”; Camp, Closer to Freedom, 2–8; Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 212–217; Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told, 145–147, 416; David Williams, I Freed Myself: African-American Self-Emancipation in the Civil War Era (New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 21–31. See Chapter 1 for wider literature on resistance and masculinity. Nuanced treatments of collaboration and survival in slavery, but which do not consider the gendered aspects of drivers’ activities, include: Ben Schiller, “Selling Themselves: Slavery, Survival, and the Path of Least Resistance,” 49th Parallel, 23 (Summer 2009), 1–23; William Dusinberre, “Power and Agency in Antebellum Slavery,” American Nineteenth Century History, 12.2 (2011), 139–148, 142–144. Rawick, American Slave, Supp. Ser. 2, Vol. 6, Pt. 5, 2183. Bennet H. Barrow, Diary, 55. Mss. 2978, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, LSU Libraries, Baton Rouge, LA (Hereafter LLMVC). Redpath, The Roving Editor, 263.

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Former slaves explained how comparative physical strength was an important consideration for trustee roles, with Charlie Pye, enslaved in Georgia, recalling that “the largest man on the plantation was chosen to be the ‘Nigger Driver.’”9 Connections between strength, physical prowess, and masculinity were important in structuring these roles. David Goodman Gullins recalled his father as a “good man” and described his position as “foreman of the other niggers.” Gullins claimed his father’s title was “B.N.” Upon being asked by his interviewer what this stood for, “Uncle Dave broke into a spasm of laughter, bending double first . . . then, throwing his head back, he came forth with great emphasis. ‘Why, he was what we called “Big Nigger.”’”10 The connection between physical strength and authority, and the need to maintain control of a coerced and potentially resistant workforce, sometimes involved direct comparison between men. This saw the creation of competitive masculine hierarchies. Virginia Harris, enslaved in Louisiana, claimed that “the drivers was all colored men. The best amongst them was picked for that job.”11 The gang labor that typified the “Cotton Belt” has often been considered particularly conducive to the use of slave managers, but enslaved men held positions of authority across the American South.12 9 10 11 12

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 13, Pt. 3, 187. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 12, Pt. 2, 82–83. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 8, Pt. 3, 939. Critiques on the prevalence of skilled and managerial positions came with the publication of Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974). Fogel and Engerman were criticized for having inflated the number of skilled or managerial slaves in Herbert Gutman and Richard Sutch, “Sambo Makes Good, or Were Slaves Imbued with the Protestant Work Ethic?” in Paul A. David, Herbert G. Gutman, Richard Sutch, Peter Temin, and Gavin Right (eds.), Reckoning with Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 55–94. Influential work indicates that male slaves held positions of authority across the South, even while accepting they made up a small proportion of the enslaved workforce. See William L. Van Deburg, The Slave Drivers: Black Agricultural Labor Supervisors in the Antebellum South (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1979); John Hebron Moore, The Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom in the Old Southwest: Mississippi, 1770–1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 78; Michael Tadman, Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), xxxi–xxxvii; Dusinberre, Them Dark Days, 163, 190–195, 274–76; Stevenson, Life in Black and White, 192; Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake & Lowcountry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 218–225; Richard Follett, The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana’s Cane World, 1820–1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 94; William Wiethoff, “Enslaved

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Contemporaries claimed in leading agricultural journals that “nearly every large plantation further South has a driver, who is a negro advanced to his post from his good character and intelligence,” while men on smaller farms could be expected to exercise a degree of working authority over others, sometimes only in family units.13 In a trial in Georgia in 1864, a witness noted the black defendant “was a foreman on the place,” and added: “it is common to have them.”14 Specific titles and duties changed according to planter caprice, as well as the type and size of holding, but across the American South select enslaved men held limited authority over other enslaved people in their work and, at times, in the wider community.15 Occasionally they were entrusted with the running of entire plantations. Gus Smith, a former slave interviewed for the WPA, described how his father “took care of everything” while his enslaver spent a year in California.16 Although the wider structures of slavery meant these men remained in an ultimately subservient position, they held a degree of autonomy and independence not available to others in bondage. The use of enslaved male trustees sometimes related to tensions between enslavers and white overseers; the racist structures underpinning Southern society did not inevitably mean white solidarity in all things.17 Occasionally this tension spilled over into violence. One Mississippi planter informed his friend that “one of my neighbors, Compton killed his overseer, a few weeks since, shot him dead in his gallery, nothing was done about it.”18 The sense that class divisions complicated white

13

14

15 16 17

18

Africans’ Rivalry with White Overseers in Plantation Culture: An Unconventional Interpretation,” Journal of Black Studies, 36.3 (2006), 429–455. “Overseers at the South,” De Bow’s Review: Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial Progress and Resources, 21.3 (September 1856), 279. On small farm holdings and suggestions of male familial and economic authority, see Marshall, Manhood Enslaved, 132–134. Helen Tunnicliff Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro, Volume III, Cases from the Courts of Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1968; Originally published Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1926–1937), 89. Wiethoff, “Enslaved Africans’ Rivalry with White Overseers,” 435. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 11, Pt. 7, 325. On class in the US South, see Timothy J. Lockley, Lines in the Sand: Race and Class in Lowcountry Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001); Jeff Forret, Race Relations at the Margins: Slaves and Poor Whites in the Antebellum Southern Countryside (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006); Keri Leigh Merritt, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South (New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). John Murdock Letter, December 11, 1841. Mss. 4270, LLMVC.

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relationships is implied by the lack of concern with chasing this crime up. Frederick Law Olmsted noted a Virginian gentleman’s disdain for white overseers, deriding them as “the laziest and most worthless dogs in the world.”19 In a letter describing the death of two slaves following the overseer’s excessive punishment, Louisiana enslaver Rachel Weeks made clear a broad distrust of white overseers: “I am afraid the overseer is to blame, so many turns out bad.”20 Some ex-slaves shared this dismissive attitude, with Emma Howard claiming overseers were just “‘po’ white trash” who weren’t “thought much of by anybody.”21 Such views were surely reinforced when enslavers prioritized slave testimony in matters of discipline. One overseer on a Louisiana plantation resigned from his position, claiming his mistress was unwilling “for me to correct the negroes for the future when they deserve it.”22 On Robert Ruffin Barrow’s plantation an overseer was suspended for harsh treatment of an enslaved man, even though the man he wounded had publicly ridiculed and resisted the overseer.23 Occasionally enslavers rejected the complaints of white overseers in favor of enslaved men. In Madison County, Louisiana, 1853, a white overseer brought a complaint to the district court complaining that an enslaved man who “beat him . . . as he truly believes with the intent to kill him” was sent to Mississippi, to “parts unknown by those who were acting of the part of said estate.”24 While this could plausibly relate to a desire to obviate financial loss in case of execution or sale, William Green, enslaved in Texas, recalled a disciplinary dispute where a white overseer had his throat cut by an enslaved man. Green claimed that this man was favored by his enslaver and that, rather than punish him, he gave “him a horse and saddle and tells him to ride. He tells him to ride hard across de border.”25 In her WPA narrative, Nancy Williams recalled an extraordinary confrontation

19

20 21 22 23

24 25

Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States; With Remarks on Their Economy (London: Sampson Low, Son & Co.; New York: Dix & Edwards, 1856), 206, docsouth.unc.edu/nc/olmsted/olmsted.html Rachel Weeks Papers, Weeks Papers, Box 7, Letter, December 26, 1834, David Weeks and Family Papers, Mss. 528, 605, 1655, etc., LLMVC. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 6, 212. Letter to Jane Rapalje from M. Ashbrook, 18 April 1821, Box 13, Ellis-Farar Papers, Mss. 1000, LLMVC. Plantation Diary, July 25–27, 1857, Robert Ruffin Barrow Papers #2407-z, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Hereafter SHC). Guilford Dawkins Petition, Mss. 4515, LLMVC. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 5, Pt. 4, 1597.

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between her father and the overseer on her Virginian plantation. Williams’ father was “a mean man, big strong half Injun, couldn’ never git long.” He was also a man who would not accept egregious punishment: “one day ole overseer tried to make him do sompin an’ my father wouldn’ do it . . . My pappy reached down an’ pull out his knife, was gonna cut dat debil’s th’oat.” Such violent resistance to white authority should theoretically have resulted in punishment. What transpired was more surprising: “when de fight was stop ole marse, he come an’ tell my pappy to jes’ take de plantation an’ gwan run it.” As in many of the cases in the previous chapter, we could categorize this man’s victory over an abusive white overseer as a triumphant act of resistance. However, his actions here did not see him follow the trajectory of the fugitive narrative: Heroic resistance led not to flight, but instead to his ascension to and acceptance of a trustee role. Williams’ father did not gain freedom through resistance, but his demonstration of strength and superiority saw him gain control on the plantation. This seemed to be an acceptable payoff to Williams: “Dat’s when marsa let me father keep de bank. Give him de key to ev’thin’. An’ give him all de money he want.”26 Despite the racism embedded within the system, enslavers were not inevitably blinded to the skills and abilities of enslaved men. Some former slaves recalled their enslavers “wouldn’ hab white bosses, only colored ones,” and even hardened racists made and exploited distinctions among their bonded workforce for economic gain.27 When Barrow, whose frequent use of violence hardly suggests a sympathetic man, returned to his plantation following an extended absence in 1843, he recorded that “every thing seems to have gone on well during my absence my negros [sic] certainly deserve great credit,” making particular reference to the role played by his “uncommon good driver ‘Alfred.’”28 In Stafford County, Virginia, an elderly enslaver known as Captain John named his enslaved man John as “the head man of the plantation in the house & out of doors.” This came with real, if relative, power: “John took authority over all the servants.”29 Slaveholders commonly shared advice regarding the use of black trustees, compared them positively to white overseers, and claimed that 26 27 28 29

Perdue et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 317. John Blassingame, Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews and Autobiographies (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 636. Barrow, Diary, 292, LLMVC. Executive Papers, John Letcher, Misc. Reel 4724, Box 8, Folder 4, Frames 201–206, Library of Virginia (Hereafter LVA).

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by connecting the personal interests of select men to the plantation, control and efficiency would improve. In a letter to prominent North Carolina planter William Pettigrew, James Cathcart Johnston explained how he had three farms “carried on entirely by coloured men without the aid of a white man and I think they are better managed than I ever had them when I employed white overseers.” Johnston stressed that offering these men a degree of autonomy encouraged them to work hard, noting that giving a driver independent authority would “stimulate him to exertion & attention,” and would lead drivers, and those under them, to do “their work without coercion.”30 Pettigrew clearly shared such a view. In a letter to his black driver Moses, written in 1856, Pettigrew was gushing in his praise and stressed how he valued Moses’ independent judgment: “I have placed much reliance in your management, industry & honesty by thus leaving the plantation & all on it your charge, nor have I any fear that you will fall short of the confidence I have placed in you.”31 Enslavers “promoted” select enslaved men into trustee positions and encouraged a degree of agency and autonomy; by connecting the interests and self-image of these men to the success of the plantation or farm, enslavers believed they would see greater order, stability, and, of course, profit.32 Enslaved people did not uncritically accept such a view, but enslaved men critically refashioned and utilized the language of industry, drive, and responsibility that enslavers used when describing authority positions. Even enslaved men who resented aspects of the role sometimes found pride in being chosen above others and wanted to prove themselves deserving of their status by doing well. This could relate to selfjustification for taking on such a role, but also speak to a desire to showcase personal responsibility and respectability. Notwithstanding his later escape, Israel Campbell recalled how he “was determined to do the best [he] could” after being given managerial authority.33 Rather than 30 31 32

33

James Cathcart Johnston to William Pettigrew, January 9, 1849, Subseries 1.7, 1849–1851, folder 131, in the Pettigrew Family Papers #592, SHC. Robert Starobin, Blacks in Bondage: Letters of American Slaves (New York: New Viewpoints, 1974), 13. On the complex systems of coercion, patronage and paternalism in work, see Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 327–398; Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Fatal SelfDeception: Slaveholding Paternalism in the Old South (New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 122–125. Dusinberre also stressed the significance of divide-and-rule policies employed by enslavers: Dusinberre, Them Dark Days, esp. chapters 6 and 13. Campbell, An Autobiography: Bond and Free, 64.

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accept that trustee positions proved docility or dependence, some enslaved men made use of these roles to construct a gendered identity based around authority and autonomy; to maintain this identity, though, they were required to perform the job well. This necessitated grappling with resistance from other slaves. In an antislavery piece published in The Emancipator in 1838, it was noted that the praise of trustees spurred them on: “they get praise when we do a good day’s work, and that makes them drive us harder and cut and lash us, so as to make us do as much another day.”34 By using hierarchies to promote competition and in promising (and delivering) limited rewards for industry and effort, enslavers connected gendered values to the broader structures of power and control in the American South. Enslaved men could, within bounds, adapt this in developing a gendered identity. Enslaved men in trustee positions were understood by much of white society, and by their fellow slaves, to hold authority over others on their plantations. Frances Kemble, for example, claimed that the head driver on the plantation “exercises all functions of undisputed mastery over his fellow slaves,” while a former slave from Virginia recalled that her great-grandfather held the position of overseer “because he could rule the plantation.”35 The language of mastery and rule implies that a sense of self-worth might come from holding power over others and shows how gendered attributes were connected to positions of authority. Writing about South Carolina’s rice plantations, Frederick Law Olmsted insisted that drivers were almost, “de facto, the managers” and that they held serious responsibilities: “A good driver is very valuable and usually holds office for life. His authority is not limited to the direction of labor in the field, but extends to the general deportment of the negroes.”36 John Mills, a planter in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, detailed the extensive duties expected of drivers in a letter to a friend: “to keep the others at work, and to detect them in faults, such as neglect of work, running about in nights, stealing or receiving stolen goods, quarrelling amongst themselves, Insolence to white people.”37 While rarely granted absolute power, enslaved male trustees were clearly figures of authority in their community. In the 34 35

36 37

Anonymous, “Recollections of Slavery by a Runaway Slave,” The Emancipator, September 13, 1838, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/runaway/runaway.html Frances Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984; originally published New York, 1863), 79; Perdue et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 110. Olmsted, Journey in the Seaboard States, 436. John Mills Letter to Gilbert Jackson, 1807, Mss. 1375, LLMVC.

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words of ex-slave Charlie Aarons: “a nigger driver was a driver sure enough.”38 Trustees were not, however, always secure in their position. Some former slaves addressed the limits of their autonomy, explaining how they “never was allowed to think up nothing for the slaves to do.”39 Another highlighted that these men retained an ultimately subservient position in the plantation hierarchy: “Darkies didn’t ever get to go to the big house where the planter lived. De niggah driver reported to the ovahseah, and the ovahseah reported to the boss.”40 Some enslavers claimed that it was best to avoid subverting the trustee’s authority in front of other slaves, as this would “humble a driver and prostrate his authority, that should be absolute,” but not all remained cool in their management.41 Where trustees were subject to capricious punishment, they bore the brunt of the abuse because, ultimately, the buck stopped with them. Enslavers such as Barrow praised the success of drivers in good times but also blamed them for the bad. After noting that he had “never made as Bad cotton,” Barrow recorded how he then “whiped [sic] every hand in the field commencing with the driver.”42 At other times enslaved trustees were threatened with punishment for failing to provide the requisite levels of brutality, as in the case of Solomon Northup, who, when forced to punish Patsey, was warned: “strike harder, or your turn will come next.”43 Moses Grandy explained in his slave narrative that if a driver did “not flog with sufficient severity, he is flogged himself,” and one enslaved runaway from South Carolina recalled his personal experiences of this: “they once tried to make a driver of me . . . I whipped so fast it did not suit Wolf, and he began to whip me.”44 Occasionally the punishment of enslaved male trustees served as a public reminder that no black man should consider himself the equal of a white man. Such was the message in Charles Grandison Parsons’ abolitionist tale of a slave foreman from South Carolina by the name of Dread. Having earned the position of driver through his undeniable talent, and being “placed in a condition less humble than most slaves,” Parsons claimed Dread “had never appeared so menial and timid” as

38 40 41 42 44

39 Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 6, 3. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 7, 216. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 11, Pt. 7, 177. Hazzard, “On the General Management of a Plantation,” 352. 43 Barrow, Diary, 87, LLMVC. Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, 256. Moses Grandy, Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy; Late a Slave in the United States of America (London: C. Gilpin, 5, Bishopsgate-street, 1843), 27–8, docsouth.unc.edu/ fpn/grandy/grandy.html; Anonymous, “Recollections of Slavery,” September 20, 1838.

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other slaves. Such pride was unacceptable to local whites, who demanded that he was removed from this position of power. The demotion did not achieve its aim: He was “altogether too manly and independent for a humble slave.” His enslaver, evidently sharing a belief that this position had elevated Dread’s sense of self to an unacceptable level, decided that he must be further “taken down a notch,” declaring, “you shall be flogged, you impudent, black rascal!” In the ensuing conflict, Dread was killed; this was the price of “the manhood of the giant slave.”45 In invoking masculine virtue to explain both his resistance and his death, Parsons was clearly presenting the version of heroic manhood outlined in Chapter 1. However, he also implied that trustee positions belonged to the “manliest” figures in the community or inspired a degree of self-confidence while in slavery, invoking attributes contemporaries commonly associated with manhood, such as strength, honor, and respectability. Such recollections vividly highlight the precarious nature of trustee roles and remind us that these men were required to balance the limited independence of the role with the subservience generally demanded by enslavers. Yet despite this delicate balancing act, enslaved men had power and responsibility in such positions, recognized by enslaved and enslaver alike, even if begrudgingly. Priscilla Munnikhuysen Bond, a member of a prominent slaveholding family from Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, lamented the influence her enslaved driver had over her husband: “I spoke to H. loud enough for his father to hear and said ‘Howard if you are going to have a black master over you it is more than I’m willing to have.’” The idea of black mastery, complete with Howard’s meek dependence, was an image of a world turned upside down, and her statement was clearly designed to shame her husband with the emasculatory implications of his dependency.46 In acting as the conduit between the larger body of enslaved people and their enslavers, these men were placed in a difficult situation.47 Trustees were charged with ensuring the plantation regime ran smoothly and thus with preventing rebellion or resistance, even though they remained enslaved. Individual planters, such as Barrow, did not always approve of granting these men disciplinary autonomy, but a court case dealing 45 46

47

Charles Grandison Parsons, Inside View of Slavery; or, A Tour among the Planters, with an Introduction by H. B. Stowe (Boston: J.P. Jewett and Co., 1855), 226. Priscilla Munnikhuysen Bond Papers, Typewritten transcription, Diary, May 21, 1858– January 17, 1864, Sunday December 22, 1861, 122., Mss. 2155, B-15 (1) #2155, LLMVC. Kaye, Joining Places, 140–141; Baptist, Half Has Never Been Told, 118–121.

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with the dismissal of an overseer from a Louisiana sugar plantation in 1856 suggests that many Southerners felt comfortable with enslaved managers wielding disciplinary power: The instructions of defendants to plaintiff, as their overseer, were, that he was not to chastise the slaves himself; but, in case they merited chastisement, that the same was to be inflicted by the driver, with the assistance, if necessary, of other slaves, under the direction of the overseer; that all personal collision between the overseer and the slaves was strictly prohibited.48

The fact that the overseer’s decision to ignore this was held up as “a sufficient cause” for their discharge by the court suggests a lack of widespread concern at the idea of enslaved men holding disciplinary power over other slaves. Across the American South, the use of enslaved male trustees to discipline enslaved people who disobeyed or disrupted the plantation order was a recognized part of the “Peculiar Institution.” Discipline was exerted over those who expressed discontent, failed to work, ran away, or threatened violence to whites or other slaves. Discipline was demanded by owners and overseers, but at other times male trustees instigated coercive or violent disciplinary actions themselves. By asserting personal authority and agency in forms of discipline and punishment, enslaved male trustees demonstrated a masculine identity built on comparative power. Pettigrew’s driver Moses, who was granted responsibility with the enslaver not present, wrote to him to describe and justify his punishments of other slaves, noting how he whipped one and “put him in the penatenrinary [sic] of nights an I shall do until master comes home.”49 The letters drivers sent to those who had promoted them were undoubtedly performative to a certain extent. However, the explanations and justifications given by those who disciplined or exerted authority over fellow slaves, whether to enslavers, to the wider community, or even to themselves, demonstrate the existence of competing frameworks and values among the enslaved that complicate automatic equations of resistance with masculinity. The ways in which these men, and others in the community, spoke about trustee roles and actions highlight the diverse attributes associated with slave masculinity, as well as how different routes to survival in slavery reflected and shaped broader disputes and tension among the enslaved.

48 49

Barrow, Diary, 112, LLMVC; Catterall, Judicial Cases, Volume III, 669. Starobin, Blacks in Bondage, 32.

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There has been much historical debate on where enslaved trustees sat in social hierarchies, and such discussions implicitly or explicitly deal with gender. Early white treatments commonly suggested that trustees, as nominal leaders on plantations, were at the top of enslaved social hierarchies alongside domestics and “loyal” family slaves, but stressed their overall subservience.50 Later scholars critiqued the reasoning behind such interpretations as being informed by theories of white supremacy. Consequently, as part of the wider revisionism on the slave community, enslaved trustees came to occupy a more contentious place in enslaved social structures. Many of these studies focused on male fugitive accounts, which often set an oppositional relationship between authority figures – black and white – and the men who publicly resisted bondage. Revisionist historians argued that enslaved people constructed alternative social hierarchies where resistance and black solidarity was prioritized above all else. Referring to fugitive authors and abolitionist accounts, Blassingame declared that the role of driver was “a hated position.”51 Antislavery writers accepted that enslaved men held trustee positions in slavery, but nevertheless sometimes dehumanized or belittled these men for accepting the baubles of the enslaver at the expense of both black solidarity and self-respect. One abolitionist account of a heroic rebel described how this man’s refusal to whip others led to his own beating and loss of privileges. He did not regret this, claiming “it was a pitiful and sorry office, which no one but a scoundrel ever ought to undertake.”52 Solomon Northup described his “promotion” to driver, upon arrival at Bayou Boeuf, Louisiana, with dismay, making clear his view that this role did not confer self-worth. In a remark laced with bitter irony, Northup lamented that this “distinguished honor was conferred upon myself.”53 According to many abolitionists, any man deserving of the name would feel similar shame. This view is exemplified in the account of James

50

51

52 53

Ivan E. McDougle, “The Social Status of the Slave,” Journal of Negro History, 3.3 (1918), 281–302; Moody, Slavery on Louisiana Sugar Plantations, 22; Ulrich B. Phillips, American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1918), 342. John Blassingame, “Status and Social Structure in the Slave Community: Evidence from New Sources,” in Harry P. Owens (ed.), Perspectives and Irony in American Slavery (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1976), 137–151, 140. Jones, Experience and Personal Narrative of Uncle Tom Jones, 31. Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, 172.

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Williams. The author describes with horror Williams’ unwanted elevation to the position of driver on an Alabama plantation: And this was my condition! a driver set over more than one hundred and sixty of my kindred and friends, with orders to apply the whip unsparingly to every one, whether man or woman, who faltered in the task, or was careless in the execution of it, myself subject at any moment to feel the accursed lash upon my own back, if feelings of humanity should perchance overcome the selfishness of misery, and induce me to spare and pity.

Resentment at his unwanted ascension led Williams to tell his fellow slaves that he “would much rather take their places and endure the stripes than inflict them.” The author further emphasizes the level of coercion deemed necessary to prevent drivers from siding with their fellow slaves, with the threat of flogging used to divide Williams from kith and kin.54 In abolitionist literature, male trustees sometimes served as the antagonists to more heroic male rebels, and positions of authority were commonly held up as something to reject en route to asserting manhood. As seen in Chapter 1, these depictions served to demonstrate the resistor’s laudable desire for liberty at all costs, and to connect respectable black masculinity with resistance. This triumphant masculine identity, while often constructed through defeat of white overseers or masters, could be consolidated by direct comparison to more accommodating enslaved men. While enslaved men who resisted whipping or the demands of their enslavers were argued to have “preserved their self-respect as men,” those who were too weak or too wicked to refuse their enslaver’s disciplinary were instead left debased or dehumanized.55 In John Thompson’s account of his life in Maryland, he explicitly detailed the masculine virtue of two rebellious slaves. The first, by the name of Aaron, was “a man of true piety and great physical strength,” while the second, Ben, was “a resolute and brave man” who “did not fear death.” In two separate instances, Thompson recorded how these men heroically fought against punishment, but he also made clear the shameful role played by more subservient men. Thompson recorded, in language contemporaries could not fail but link to ideas on manly virtue, how the power and bravery of these men was such that only the sheer numbers of weaker slaves could control them. With Aaron, “whenever his master attempted to whip him, it was never without the assistance of, at least, five

54 55

Williams, Narrative of James Williams, 43, 48. Williams, Narrative of James Williams, 54.

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or six men.” To Thompson’s shame, these men “were always ready to lend their aid in such emergencies.” When Ben was attacked he heroically fought back and, according to Thompson, “probably would have killed his enemy, had not two of the slaves hastened to his rescue, which they with difficulty accomplished, so firm and determined was Ben’s hold of him.”56 The resistant men were heroic, albeit heroically doomed in their resistance; the men who helped uphold plantation order were nameless, subservient, and dependent, unable to personally command the situation and left in a position unworthy of manhood. Former slaves thus consolidated a heroic form of resistant masculinity in comparison to dependent, even emasculated, men who sided with their enslavers in matters of discipline. William Wells Brown, for example, stressed the courage of an enslaved man named Randall and compared his bravery to weaker men who refused to aid him in his resistance. The overseer, “finding by Randall’s determined look and gestures, that he would resist, called three of the hands from their work, and commanded them to seize Randall and tie him.” Randall convinced these men otherwise by noting his superior strength and willingness to use force against them as well as against his enslaver: “Boys, you all know me; you know that I can handle any three of you, and the man that lays hands on me shall die. This white man can’t whip me himself, and therefore he has called you to help him.” Randall’s resistance was not only directed against his enslaver, but also served as a warning to the men who might otherwise attempt to uphold plantation order. Dread, who had faced a similar threat from enslaved men forced to assist their enslaver, likewise defended himself and “flung them on the ground as fast as they came near him.” Like Dread, however, Randall suffered tremendous violence because of this.57 In an extraordinary, if likely exaggerated, tale from his postbellum narrative, Harry Smith recalled that one rebellious man sold to the Deep South was so much stronger than the men who sought to help their enslaver punish him that he “knocked down over fifty men, and the rest refused to advance.”58 This man’s comparative strength and dominance highlighted the manly character of resistance, but also implied the 56 57

58

Thompson, Life of John Thompson, 26–36. William Wells Brown, Narrative of Williams Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave Written by Himself (London: Charles Gilpin, 1849), 18. docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/brownw/brown.html; Parsons, Inside View of Slavery, 228. Harry Smith, Fifty Years of Slavery in the United States of America (Michigan: West Michigan Printing Co., 1891), 138, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/smithhar/smithhar.html

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weakness of those who refused such a path. In other instances, brutal authority figures were simply detested. James Redpath noted of one black male trustee in a New Orleans slave pen: “so low, can man, created in God’s image, be sunk in brutality!”59 The belief that acquiescence to slavery degraded men to the level of beast suggests how antislavery rhetoric diminished those who did not behave in accordance with the rebel’s code. Occasionally fugitive male authors made more personal comparisons, highlighting their own rejection of the disciplinary demands of enslavers and making this choice emblematic of their masculine virtue. For these men, it was rejection of the role and their resistance to it that allowed them to truly claim manhood. Jourden Banks’ slave narrative, penned by abolitionist James Pennington, contains one such description. Having been asked to take a role as his enslaver’s “assistant,” Banks point blank refused to help and made clear he wanted nothing to do with the position despite the privileges promised to him. Banks informed his enslaver, “I do not wish to be employed in that way; I mean to do my own work well, and that is all I want to be accountable for.” When his enslaver later set out rules that all the men were to help him impose discipline, Banks made his feelings clear to his counterparts in the quarters, emphasizing that any man worthy of the name would refuse such demands: I gave them my opinion that no man ought to give in to it. I told them in plain terms that I not only did not mean to assist in overpowering others, but that I did not expect others to assist in overpowering me. I told the men that I would suffer anything before I would lay hands on any one of them; and I warned them of what they I might it expect [sic] if one of them laid hands on me at the bidding of the overseer.

As his fugitive account suggests, Banks fought back against bondage. His resistance was explicitly gendered. When Banks realized violence was inevitable, he noted: “every attribute of my manhood was nerved up for the conflict.” The other men knew they were expected to assist the enslaver against such resistance but, in a similar fashion to Randall, were overawed by Banks’ power: “the men gathered around me, but they all remembered what I had said the day before, that I would kill any man of them who should assist in overpowering me, and they were very shy.” The description of these men as “shy” invokes a sense of timidity and fear anathema to antebellum notions of manhood, and starkly contrasts with

59

Redpath, The Roving Editor, 298.

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Banks’ manly resistance. Upon heroically triumphing over his enslaver and overseer in beating them senseless, Banks knew he had to flee. Before he left, he offered a blunt message to the others that highlighted the masculine implications of resistance: “Farewell, men. I have done my work. I am going to leave. Look out for yourselves. If you undertake to do anything, do it like men.”60 The emasculation of enslaved men who helped impose plantation discipline was hardly less clear. Some former slaves offered heroic tales of resistance and of their refusal to take such roles. Others gave less virtuous but bluntly honest accounts, noting how fear drove them to discipline others and emphasizing the broader violence underpinning American slavery. Solomon Northup, for example, admitted that his punishment levels ultimately depended on where his enslaver was: “if Epps was present, I dared not show any lenity, not having the Christian fortitude of a certain wellknown Uncle Tom sufficiently enough to brave his wrath.”61 Overall, though, the more strident abolitionist literature offered negative assessments on trustee positions, comparing accommodation to bondage with the heroic choices of more rebellious men. In making acceptance or rejection of the roles a matter of agency and integrity, antislavery activists suggested that some forms of survival in slavery were more respectable than others. Rather than a negotiated position which offered a route to masculine identity, holding authority in the context of slavery was tied to dependency or moral weakness and compared negatively to visions of resistant masculinity. In many abolitionist accounts, therefore, enslaved men worthy of respect and manhood sided with rebellious individuals in action or spirit, and did all they could to alleviate the sufferings of those under them. Many of the men who held trustee roles did, in fact, refer to their attempts to assist their peers. Historians have tended to contextualize their position by referring to drivers’ attempts to use their privileges for the good of the wider community. Such activities enabled these men to perform masculine provider roles while also contributing to communal support networks; those who “used their position to protect the slaves and ease the burden of bondage” were honorable and deserved respect from other slaves.62 William Dusinberre explained that some drivers “demonstrated solidarity with other members of the slave community,” while T. J. Desch Obi argued that shared honorific ideals meant that 60 61

Pennington, A Narrative of Events of the Life of J. H. Banks, 54–63. 62 Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, 172. Starobin, Blacks in Bondage, 11.

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“status in the master’s culture was not always enough to override steadfastness” with other slaves.63 According to Desch Obi, enslaved men in positions of authority often “felt compelled by the honor code not to carry out ordered whipping if the plantation owner was not immediately present.”64 Former trustees did stress their attempts to prevent egregious violence. Although Northup was afraid to not punish his fellow slaves in the presence of Epps, he secretly circumvented the worst of the abuse by having “learned to handle the whip with marvellous dexterity and precision, throwing the lash within a hair’s breadth of the back.”65 Formerly enslaved people interviewed post-emancipation claimed likewise. Major Nelson, interviewed in 1889, emphasized that he “was overseer [to] over as many as fifty persons, and I never pulled back my hand to strike one of them.”66 If enslaved men in positions of authority were sometimes able to gain manhood by rejecting the trappings of the role and retaining the best interests of their enslaved counterparts, violent or overtly accommodating figures were shunned or ostracized.67 William Dusinberre used the likely suicide of a male slave driver to ask whether holding such a role and gaining “his master’s respect” ultimately came “at the expense of losing his own self-respect.”68 However, we should not underestimate the complexity of enslaved interactions and the identities formed in slavery. Resistance, accommodation, and survival were sites of actual and potential tension within slave communities and masculine identities were fashioned in ways that did not correspond with the rebel’s code. Violence always underpinned white dominance. Yet the actions and explanations given by enslaved drivers, and those who worked and lived with them, suggest that negotiations with enslavers, as well as the rationalization or refashioning of divisions imposed within slavery, undermined political or communal solidarity among the enslaved. Enslaved people did not unquestionably internalize the worldview of those who enslaved them, 63

64 66

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William Dusinberre, Strategies for Survival: Recollections of Bondage in Antebellum Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009), 181; Desch Obi, Fighting for Honor, 112. 65 Desch Obi, Fighting for Honor, 112. Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, 172. Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 496. While ex-slaves interviewed by the WPA may have denigrated black drivers to placate racist whites, evidence in this chapter suggests disciplinary authority was not inevitably perceived as a negative by WPA respondents. On the interview dynamics and early debates here, see: William L. Van Deburg, “Slave Drivers and Slave Narratives: A New Look at the ‘Dehumanized Elite,’” The Historian, 39.4 (1977), 717–732; Dusinberre, Strategies for Survival, 89. 68 Kaye, Joining Places, 143. Dusinberre, “Power and Agency,” 142.

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but nor were they entirely able to discount it; physical and psychological rewards in slavery, however limited in practice, offered some enslaved men the chance to craft an identity and to seize a measure of autonomy in an otherwise hostile environment. That this came at the expense of others was deemed worth it by some. The language of industry, responsibility, and authority which enslavers used to explain privileges, as well as an explicit elevation of select men over others, offered some enslaved male trustees a route to self-respect, status, and, indeed, manhood. In attempting to make their authority in slavery emblematic of their identity as men, however, they were forced to grapple with or even repudiate the choices and actions of others. Although abolitionist authors believed that when enslaved men held authority over others “their hearts and consciences are hardened, and they become educated to whipping, and lose all human feeling,” other enslaved people rationalized – even if they did not accept – some elements of the disciplinary regime.69 Some enslaved men refashioned their actions, even if preventing resistance, as evidence of their masculinity. Abolitionists argued that “colored overseers are not over the slaves because they wish it, but are made so against their will,” but some enslaved men sought to gain positions of authority.70 Former slaves maintained that enslaved male trustees “didn’t like dat whippin’ bus’ness,” but there was competition for authority among some men.71 Enslaved men who held such roles expressed pride in their position and claimed that it elevated them in the eyes of others. Rufus Dirt told his WPA interviewer that he had been made driver on his plantation in Alabama and felt that this proved his skill and superiority over the other men. Dirt proclaimed that he didn’t “remember nothin’ in particular that caused me to get dat drivin’ job, ceptin’ hard work,” suggesting that his comparative success against other men was the explanation for his elevated position. Dirt went on to claim: “I was proud of it ’cause I didn’ have to work so hard no mo’. An’ den it sorta’ made de other niggers look up to me, an’ you know us niggers boss. Nothin’ makes us happier dan’ to strut in front of other niggers.”72 Dirt may have exaggerated or attempted to please his white interviewer, particularly considering that he was 69 70 72

Peter Randolph, Sketches of Slave Life: Or, Illustrations of the “Peculiar Institution” (Boston: Published for the author, 1855), 12, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/randol55/randol55.html 71 Randolph, Sketches of Slave Life, 12. Perdue et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 290. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 6, 117.

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“begging for coins” when the interview took place. However, his claim that others envied or looked up to him is an interesting counterpoint to the earlier discussion of overt hostility. The belief that recognition of personal qualities caused his advancement suggests that a competitive element imposed by enslavers was refashioned by some enslaved men into evidence of their place atop a homosocial hierarchy. Public promotion over others allowed these men to craft a self-respecting identity. One former slave noted that male trustees justified their position to others by claiming that benefits were available for those who worked hard enough: “You see what privileges we have, and if you do as well as we do, your master will treat you well.”73 If male trustees felt they had beaten others to the position, they could conceive of themselves outside of a framework of docility or dependency. Rather, they had proven themselves to be industrious and powerful men. While later declaring the significance of resistance to their identity, former slaves Charles Ball and Josiah Henson made clear they felt a degree of pride in gaining authority positions on their plantation and farm, suggesting that their ability over other men led them into these roles, as opposed to meek subservience. Ball and Henson stressed their industry and dominance over others, claiming that promotion to positions of authority was a matter of enterprise, initiative, and drive. The same ideas were stressed by enslavers who sought to gain maximum profit from their workforce, but also spoke to broader antebellum perceptions on working manhood and stratification among men based on industry and effort.74

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Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 407. Scholars have emphasized the overlapping pressures that men, North and South, faced in the competitive economic environment of the nineteenth century and the ways in which contemporaries connected ideas on work and labor to identities, whether personal, sectional, or national. See Mayfield, Counterfeit Gentlemen, xvii–xviii; Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told, 89, 243; Mark M. Smith, Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism (London: Allen Lane, 2014), 105–120; Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 150–172; Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman (eds.), Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); L. Diane Barnes et al., The Old South’s Modern Worlds. On free black men and work, see Julius H. Bailey, “Masculinizing the Pulpit: The Black Preacher in the Nineteenth Century AME Church,” in Buckner and Caster (eds.), Fathers, Preachers, Rebels, Men, 80–101, 82–83; Erica L. Ball, “To Train Them for the Work: Manhood, Morality, and Free Black Conduct Discourse in Antebellum New York,” in Buckner and Caster (eds.), Fathers, Preachers, Rebels, Men, 60–80. On how contests over industry and effort

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When Charles Ball’s enslaver left for his new settlement in Georgia with the men, Ball was trusted to remain behind and to “bring on the goods and the women and children” on his own. Ball was proud of this limited responsibility: “I was resolved that this striking proof of confidence on the part of my master should not be a subject of regret to him.” Ball’s control clearly impressed his enslaver, as he was then given broader powers on the plantation in Georgia, and asked to “oversee the hands, and carry on the work in his absence.” This position included, it seems, disciplinary powers: Ball mused that “the men left under my charge did not consider me a very lenient overseer.” However, Ball essentially minimized the complaints of his fellow slaves in suggesting that this was due to his own propensity for hard work, making his superior work ethic indicative of his dominance over others: “I in truth compelled them to work very hard, as I did myself.”75 His pride in his work was consolidated in comparison. While acknowledging the complaints of his peers, the emphasis on only making them work as hard as he did suggested Ball felt their complaints were unwarranted and, perhaps, that they should work as hard as he did if they wanted to avoid punishment. In stressing personal drive and comparative industry, enslaved trustees such as Ball rationalized their elevation over others and, to an extent, justified their maintenance of plantation order. Although invariably constrained by bondage, enslaved men engendered authority positions or articulated their ascension above others as evidence of self-making, particularly if enslavers stressed that the process of earning or keeping such a role was contingent on superiority to others. Asa Stone, describing conditions of slavery in the southwest, wrote that “the business of the leaders is to go forward, direct the work, and set an example of industry,” with public comparisons used to encourage distinctions in roles and responsibilities.76 Enslavers applied these ideals in practice. James Cathcart Johnston, for example, encouraged competition between enslaved trustees on his farms, “so as to excite a spirit of emulation between the managers.”77 The notion that competition offered enslaved men the opportunity to gain authority over others was plainly

75

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were part of the political negotiations between enslavers and the enslaved see Kathleen Hilliard, Masters, Slaves, and Exchange, 28–29, 57–59. Charles Ball, Fifty Years in Chains; or, The Life of an American Slave (New York: H. Dayton; Indianapolis: Asher & Co, 1859), 265–267. Italics mine, docsouth.unc.edu/ fpn/ball/ball.html R. G. Williams, The Anti-Slavery Record, 1.12 (December 1835), 134. Johnston to Pettigrew, January 9, 1849, SHC.

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articulated by Calvin Moye, who had been enslaved in Georgia and Texas. Moye noted that enslaved men competed with one another for leadership roles, motivated by the psychological benefits of superiority as much as material gain. According to Moye, his enslaver “would picks out one of de slaves to leads de others when he was away,” using a competitive framework to encourage industriousness. Indeed, “he would picks de fastest one, maybe he would picks out one dis time and next time he would picks out another one to lead de field.” Notwithstanding the structural oppression of slavery, Moye indicated that enslaved men sought to prove themselves in a competitive framework so as to receive benefits over one another: “dey all liked to be the leader and when dey was de leader dey would works harder den dey would if dey was following de leader.”78 Josiah Henson’s recollections of slavery showed how competition for authority offered enslaved men a route to manhood via comparative superiority. He earned the role of superintendent on his farm by becoming the “master of every kind of farmwork.” The gendered language of “mastery” is telling, and Henson continually highlighted his dominance over other men as an element of his success: “there were few who could compete with me in work.” His descriptions of his rise to prominence as a figure of authority sum up this emphasis on competition and victory over others: The love of superiority is not confined to kings and emperors; and it is a positive fact, that pride and ambition were as active in my soul as probably they ever were in that of the greatest soldier or statesman. The objects I pursued, I must admit, were not just the same as theirs. Mine were to be first in the field, whether we were hoeing, mowing, or reaping; to surpass those of my own age, or indeed any age . . . to obtain, if possible, the favourable regard of the petty despot who ruled over us.79

Although Henson maintained that he avoided physically disciplining other slaves and even surreptitiously aided those he felt deserving of assistance, he also kept order and ensured stability on the farm. Despite later lamenting his “days of ignorance” and his role in upholding bondage, Henson defended his actions by declaring that he “knew not then the glory of free manhood.” The association of manhood with freedom fits 78 79

Rawick, American Slave: Supp., Ser.2, Vol. 6, Pt. 5, 2832. Josiah Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (Boston: Arthur D. Phelps, 1849), 8, docsouth.unc.edu/ neh/henson49/henson49.html

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the model of resistance described in Chapter 1, and suggests how people might conceive of their roles and identities changing over time. However, Henson rationalized his actions while enslaved within a gendered framework, having clearly crafted a strong identity through his mastery over the environment and others. Henson proudly claimed that his character and reputation had been “earned by strenuous and persevering efforts.” The justifications for taking on a trustee position and the sense of a positive masculine identity associated with authority are evident even in Henson’s later recollections of what he perceived to be his most terrible act, the act which had left his soul “pierced with bitter anguish.” Having been asked by his owner to oversee the safe transfer of his fellow slaves to a plantation in Kentucky to avoid debt repayment, Henson deliberately prevented their escape. With the free soil of Ohio in clear sight, Henson “sternly assumed the captain, and ordered the boat to be pushed off into the stream.” Notwithstanding his regret, Henson blamed the meekness of the other slaves, who “offered no resistance to my command,” and suggested that it was their responsibility to seize freedom, while it was his to fulfill the responsibilities he had been entrusted with. He went on to justify his actions, however regretfully, in a gendered language of honesty and honor: “my pride was aroused in view of the importance of my responsibility . . . I had a sentiment of honour on the subject.” Henson maintained that he had acted out of a sense of duty and that, despite the harm of his actions, he did not regret this manly integrity: What advantages I may have personally lost by thus throwing away an opportunity of obtaining freedom! But the perception of my own strength of character, the feeling of integrity, the sentiment of high honour, I thus gained by obedience to what I believed right, are advantages which I prize.80

Henson later found the glories of “free manhood” through flight. Those he oversaw likely did not. Most enslaved people did not escape bondage, instead adapting as best they could to survive the harsh realities of enslavement. The masculine trappings Henson associated with authority remained in place, and could offer enslaved men who held such positions a route to manhood. Some men who held trustee roles improved their personal and familial circumstances, conferring manhood in line with a provider/protector model. Entire families benefited from these distinctions, often extending 80

Henson, Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life, 41–48.

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downwards from male authority figures. Rebecca Phillips, enslaved on a Mississippi plantation, felt that her family was relatively privileged, with her father as the figurehead: “none of my folks was common field hands. We was all house servants. My mother was the maid. My brother drove the carriage, and my father was a slave driver, so it was nothing but right that I should be brought up for a house servant too.”81 Lafeyette Price explained how his young enslaver wanted him “for a nigger driver” and so taught him “how to read and spell so I could ten’ to business.”82 The sense that these roles allowed for a degree of autonomy and independence, as well as the support of family and friends, suggests how men who took such positions could construct a gendered identity as a provider and protector. These familial distinctions, at times, led to wider divisions in the community. Keziah Brevard, an enslaver in South Carolina, claimed her driver Jim’s family all viewed themselves as superior to others. This was a constant source of upset to her: I only wish them to feel they are no better than other servants – with me they are proped [sic] up by a large family & presume on it by making others succumb to them – these are the ones I hope may be made to feel that power is not always to the strong.

Brevard’s self-pitying memoir contains numerous such asides regarding the power of Jim and his family’s willingness to act impudently toward her. Her comments do, however, suggest how perceived and real distinctions in power and status affected slave communities. Perhaps somewhat melodramatically, Brevard felt these dynamics and hierarchies were so entrenched that “if all were freed in a day – these very families would enslave the small families.”83 Brevard likely exaggerated the degree of division, with her situation as a widow during the tumultuous period of secession probably amplifying her concerns, but ex-slaves also acknowledged how differences in power and authority led to separation and hierarchies. Robert Young recalled that his father “was a big strong nigger” who “hepped Marse Henry cuntrol de udder darkies” on their plantation in Mississippi. Young’s perception of his father was not harmed by this acquiescence to disciplinary violence. Rather, Young emphasized the benefits and status his father earned through such activities: “my pappy was onliest one had 81 82 83

Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, 1694. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 5, Pt. 3, 204. John Hammond Moore (ed.), The Diary of Keziah Goodwyn Hopkins Brevard, July 1860–April 1861 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 81–82.

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a garden of his own an’ Marse Henry ’lowed him piece o’ land to farm fo’ hisself jes like he wadn’t no slabe ’tall.” Young spoke of his father’s role in maintaining plantation discipline as justifiable and as offering a different route to selfhood and survival. His father had potentially justified his actions to his son, with Young claiming that “some sho did need hit ’cause dey was rogues an’ some would’n wuk.” Such claims plausibly reflect an attempt to please the white interviewer, yet the suggestion that his father felt like “no slabe ’tall” implies that he had used his responsibilities and perceived superiority to craft a positive identity in comparison to others in the community. Young accepted elements of this justification, repeating such a claim to his interviewer. This suggests how the personal choices and negotiations that enslaved men made in surviving slavery might be translated to families and loved ones as evidence of agency and industry.84 Trustees were commonly recipients of extra clothing and food, which could be taken as a sign of material success and a means of developing self-respect.85 These distinctions plausibly aided enslaved men in the construction of gendered identities. The importance of clothing for comparative status was seen in the 1836 Southern Agriculturalist, in which “‘An overseer’ claimed that he always made the black driver ‘dress himself better than the other negroes.’”86 Enslaver John Mills claimed that “trust Negroe[s]” recognized the importance of these distinctions and sought out positions of authority for “some selfish motives,” including “to get his freedom in time, or to have some favour shewn him by his master.” Mills bemoaned the character of such men, but acknowledged they found these rewards: “more than the other slaves he does not labour so hard as the others, and gets a dram extraordinary at night and some times a couarse [sic] shirt or overalls more than the other negroes.”87 Enslavers frequently gave their drivers and leading men privileges and tools designed to mark out their separation, superiority, and authority over others. Charles Manigault rewarded men he deemed particularly

84

85 86 87

Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 10, Pt. 5, 2409. On family support networks and personal and communal identities, see Marie Jenkins Schwartz, Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 130. Larry E. Hudson Jr., To Have and to Hold: Slave Work and Family Life in Antebellum South Carolina (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 155. Shane White and Graham White, “Slave Clothing and African-American Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Past & Present, 148 (1995), 149–186, 174. Mills, Letter to Gilbert Jackson, 1807. LLMVC.

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important to the running of the plantation, noting on December 10, 1837, that his driver, Harry, and his miller, Stephen, were the only ones to be given a “great coat.” Harry’s family, furthermore, all held relatively privileged positions on the plantation, and were listed underneath him. The spatial configuration of family authority suggests how enslaved men who held such positions conceived of themselves or were conceived as patriarchal figureheads.88 Recollections of comparatively high status and material distinctions are corroborated in slave testimony. One fugitive slave recalled how enslavers approached enslaved men whom they wanted for managerial positions by telling them that “we will give you enough to eat and drink, & clothe you pretty well, & pay your doctors bills, and see what little trouble you have, & you should make yourself satisfied.”89 This former slave lamented such divisive tactics, but planters extended privileges to certain slaves, and some enslaved men negotiating a life in bondage deemed these privileges worth taking. Numerous ex-slaves recalled such rewards: One WPA respondent described how, on her South Carolina plantation, “my daddy, being de foreman, was de only slave dat was give de honor to wear boots.”90 The connection of honor to clothing shows the material marking of status and gender in slave communities, while the exclusionary language indicates how such roles and distinctions were configured as part of a social hierarchy. Occasionally the benefits or opportunities extended to trustees went further. One WPA respondent from Arkansas explained how their enslaved grandfather had been an overseer and was paid cash for his services. They did not consider this evidence of dependency or docility, but instead a negotiation with an enslaver who recognized his personal abilities. Irrespective of what the enslaver thought of the arrangement, this enslaved man used his position to save for the future: “when freedom come on he had ten thousand dollars.”91 White Southerners commonly depicted black people as immature and incapable of managing themselves, but this man used the money he earned from acting as a trustee to support his children over the course of their lives, thus vividly performing a provider model of manhood.92 Such examples demonstrate how 88

89 91 92

Plantation Records: 1833–1834, 9–17, Manigault Family Papers #484, SHC. See also Plantation Record Book, 1833–1848, Maunsell White Papers #2234, SHC; William Ervine Sparkman Plantation Journal, 18, #681-z, SHC. 90 Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 407. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, 36. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 9, Pt. 3, 139. Hilliard, Masters, Slaves, and Exchange, 24–29.

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enslaved people might refashion the divisive system of rewards used by enslavers to strengthen small-scale loyalties, often familial-based, at the expense of more expansive models of solidarity, as well as how they articulated such actions within a gendered framework. Some abolitionists rhetorically emasculated those who refused rebellion or took positions of trust and authority for their enslavers for personal reasons. Yet while activists like David Walker argued that the man who “would not fight . . . ought to be kept with all of his children and family in slavery,” some men viewed their family roles as more important to survival and self-respect than engaging in rebellion or resistance that seemed futile.93 As one WPA respondent from South Carolina told their interviewer: “our darkies tried hard to be obedient to our master so dat we might obtain (keep) our pleasant home. Obedience makes it better dan sacrifice. I restes my minds dar.”94 In a posthumous act of self-fashioning, children of men who held trustee roles likewise elevated their father’s status and applauded their efforts to protect their families or loved ones. Sometimes this meant emphasizing their attempts to protect others, but it could also mean disparaging those who they viewed as lazy or troublesome. Enslaved men and women did not unquestionably view negotiation with slaveholders as evidence of emasculation or uncritical acceptance of slavery, but instead considered the relative merits of different actions when it came to survival. In doing so, they could be forced to address the actions of others and to emphasize why they chose an alternative path. Indeed, while male runaways such as Francis Fedric felt that they must flee to claim their manhood, they knew that doing so meant abdicating family responsibility. Fedric left despite knowing that his elderly grandmother “would be flogged, old as she was, for my escaping.”95 The terrible pain and the heartrending choices such episodes of flight occasioned for male fugitives is abundantly clear. It does not belittle the heroism of runaways to suggest that not all enslaved people felt flight was an acceptable choice for men with family responsibilities. Some enslaved people believed staying in bondage to support dependents represented strength and endurance; if the actions of runaways led enslavers to impose collective punishments, they might even resent the choices of these individuals rather than support them in their resistance. When a young Sella Martin was captured following his attempt to see his mother, the enslaved man guarding him castigated him 93 95

94 Walker, Walker’s Appeal, 19. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, 97. Fedric, Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky, 103.

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for “getting [his] mother into trouble, and for keeping him from visiting his wife on a neighboring plantation, he having been put to guard me till the morning.”96 Martin’s actions can be interpreted as the first flowering of a manhood vested in resistance, but his guard held a different view of manhood centered on the family, referring to the punishment brought upon the mother, as well as how Martin’s actions had prevented him from fulfilling his duties and desires as a husband. Some enslaved men who defined their masculine identity in relation to family life considered resistant actions as secondary to the fulfillment of their responsibilities as a provider and protector. Masculine status in slave communities could be achieved through monetary or material wealth, providing for a family, or showing evidence of independent working success. Holding trustee positions allowed some enslaved men to fulfill these tropes of manhood without answering the rebel’s call. Although there are numerous instances in which respondents describe brutal managers that “the niggers sho hated,” others considered that men in these positions were deserving of respect.97 Nancy Thomas claimed that on her cotton plantation, enslaved people “looked up” to the driver “lak he was a big man.”98 It is no doubt true that such roles “brought with them the potential for alienating a privileged slave from the wider slave community,” but they also offered some enslaved men a route to self-respect in surviving slavery.99 Much as some individuals claimed pride in their activities, emphasizing the comparative energy and industry that had earned them authority over others, some WPA respondents who were under enslaved managers emphasized a hierarchy to hiring whereby some men were elevated over others. Eva Strayhorn, enslaved in Arkansas, told her interviewer that she “had a nigger overseer” and that he was respected by the other slaves: “This overseer had complete charge of the plantation and the hands for old Master was hardly ever at home.” The man’s name was Solomon, and, according to Strayhorn, “he had the right name for he sure was a smart man.”100 Susan McIntosh, enslaved in Georgia, suggested some form of comparative assessment of skill and autonomy in determining these positions, noting that her enslaver had “picked out a reliable colored man to carry

96 97 98 99 100

Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 720. Rawick, American Slave: Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 8, Pt. 3, 1045. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 9, Pt. 8, 3809. Dusinberre, Strategies for Survival, 205. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 12, 299.

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out his orders” during the war years.101 In favorable descriptions of enslaved trustees, former slaves referred to their enterprise, industry, and responsibility, drawing on tropes and attributes that were emblematic of working manhood. The language used by these respondents presents an image of competition between men. As Virginia Harris noted of drivers: “the best amongst them was picked for that job.”102 The use of violence against other slaves was the most controversial aspect of managerial roles. However, some former slaves spoke of discipline as determined by trustees to maintain order, or to demonstrate their personal dominance. These claims may simply represent the power dynamics of the WPA interviews, but they may also reflect divisions and conflict that could erupt within slave communities over appropriate strategies for survival. No matter how laudable their aims, slave rebels and resistors could divide opinion in slave communities and even cause problems for those who did not follow them. Ex-slaves who invoked notions of honesty or agency when determining the perceived necessity of punishment suggested that dissident acts were judged considering specific circumstances, rather than being unquestionably applauded by all. The sense that discipline was negotiated within a moral economy of sorts is suggested in the recollections of Louis Davis, a former slave from Arkansas. Davis described how her grandfather would give “a little licking” to enslaved people who “would kinder play off from their work,” but claimed that “after that everything would be all right.” Davis’ grandfather’s use of violence extended to his family, as he whipped his daughter for “burning up all the coffee she was parching.” These actions were held up for judgment by the community: “everybody said grandpa whipped justly . . . they didn’t think no more about it, then a child what gets a whipping that he needs.”103 Similar deliberations could take place when considering specific acts of resistance and violence. Some disciplinary actions were considered acceptable by members of the community, particularly if enslaved people had acted in ways which harmed others or transgressed norms and expectations. Of course, enslaved recollections that state “the bad ones had to be punished” perhaps simply relate to respondents hoping to placate or please their white interviewers, or were even additions from the frequently 101 102 103

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 13, Pt. 3, 82. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 8, Pt. 3, 939. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 7, Pt. 2, 579.

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racist interviewers themselves.104 The statement of a former slave from Alabama that they “had to whip some of dem sometimes, but dey wouldn’t work. Dey brung it all on deyselves” would certainly appeal to a proslavery audience.105 However, such depictions also bear resemblance to Charles Ball’s recollections of his experiences as an overseer. Having described his increased responsibility as driver, he stated that he “not unfrequently found it proper to punish them with stripes to compel them to perform their work.”106 Ball suggested that he found taking these actions less offensive over time, and feared this might speak to personal degradation associated with power. However, his earlier connection of discipline to the belief that he set a fair working pace shows how enslaved men in similar positions might rationalize their use of discipline in line with their own actions, and personal values associated with work, responsibility, and authority. Some members of slave communities resented resistance which impinged on their lives or negatively impacted them. One former slave recalled how their initial distress at the punishment of a male rebel shifted once he realized that this man had also “beat up” his Uncle.107 On one occasion, an enslaved foreman accidentally killed an enslaved man while beating him. However, this man had been stealing from other slaves. The trustee’s violent response to a widely despised individual reinforced rather than dampened his standing in the community. According to his daughter, Julia Grimes Jones Oklabury, the slave community came to his defense when his enslaver sought to punish him: “de niggers treated him lak a boss and dey loved him.” The sense of agency in applying discipline was reinforced in Oklabury’s claim that members of the community would “always laugh” at him and say, “Why Pa, ain’t yo’ ashamed dat yo’ killed a man fo’ one biscuit?” He responded, about “a hunnert times”: “No, I ain’t ashamed, he made me kill him. He was in de wrong.” According to Oklabury, “we’d always git a big laugh out ob it, when he told it in his own way.”108 Trustees who claimed authority in applying discipline thus made their actions reflective of personal strength of character and demonstrated their broader decision-making power. Will Adams, enslaved in Texas, noted: “My pa was a leader on the farm, and there wasn’t no overseer or driver. When pa whip a nigger he needn’t go to Massa Dave, but pa say, ‘Go you way, you nigger. Freeman didn’t 104 106 108

105 Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, 92. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 6, 189. 107 Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 301. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 3, Pt. 3, 157. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 8, Pt. 7, 2961.

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whip you for nothin’! Massa Dave always believe pa, ’cause he tells the truth.”109 Justifications offered for disciplinary violence played on masculine tropes of trust and honor; an emphasis on personal leadership and autonomy suggests some enslaved men refashioned their activities in upholding bondage as evidence of their virtue as honest and honorable men. Nancy Williams’ father, who became overseer after beating up the white man who previously held the position, was capable of inflicting harsh violence on others, including his young daughter. The violence is shocking, but Williams’ father defended his actions by reference to honesty and respectability, connecting this to his understanding of religious morality and honor, and to these virtues more generally. Williams’ father claimed he would willingly impart violence to all liars and thieves: “Father said he’d rather die an’ go to hell an’ burn den to live agin in heaven roun Christ robe an’ leave a passel o’ tongue tied niggers here to steal.”110 Descriptions of these men offered links between honesty, identity, and standing in the community, even in the application and use of violence. Asa Stone, who wrote on conditions of slavery in the southwest, claimed that “leaders” were deliberately chosen from “the most active and trustworthy of the gang.”111 One white WPA case worker claimed that a former slave became a “leader on the plantation” because, as he “grew to full manhood,” he was known for being “thrifty, and trustworthy.”112 Connections between honesty, manhood, and honor were firm in the antebellum South. While the rules for overseers from Airlie Plantation, Louisiana, make clear that most enslaved people were considered incapable of honesty, with the author stating that “the only way to keep a negro honest, is not to trust him,” the language employed by enslavers and enslaved alike suggest that men who held trustee positions could make use of these ideals to justify and explain their actions within a gendered framework.113 109 110 111 112 113

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, 1. Perdue et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 317. R. G. Williams, The Anti-Slavery Record, 1.12 (December 1835), 134. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 7, Pt. 2, 710. “The Duties of An Overseer,” Airlie Plantation Records, 1846–1951, 00568–569, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin (hereafter DBC). On how the denial of honesty served to degrade enslaved people, see Kenneth Greenberg, Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, The Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 11.

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There are, no doubt, discrepancies between what white Southerners and enslaved people felt was worthy of respect. However, the language of trust, honor, and authority employed by former slaves when speaking about trustees suggests how enslaved people might negotiate with and refashion the ideals of enslavers to construct personal identities or positive memories of loved ones. John Price, whose father was enslaved in Louisiana, described how his enslaver “buy my papa when he 18 year old boy and dey take him and raise him and put all dey trust in him and he run de place when de old man gone.”114 The idea that men earned such a role by performing their duties honestly may appear to be an uncritical internalization of the enslavers’ worldview, but these ideals could be adapted into evidence of a respectable identity, and one worth maintaining in the face of the wider degradation of bondage. Ball and Henson, whose accounts were discussed earlier in this chapter, made similar assertions: Despite their hatred of aspects of the role, and of slavery in general, neither could bring themselves to break the trust they felt they had earned as honest and honorable men. It was only when Henson’s enslaver proved incapable of keeping his word that he felt flight from bondage was acceptable; the hypocrisy of the slaveholder led Henson to conclude that he was a more honorable man than his enslaver ever would be.115 Enslavers clearly did trust their enslaved trustees. One Georgian enslaver expected drivers to manage quarrels on the plantation, with a degree of agency in determining discipline: “if one negro steals from another, or from me, the driver is required to take of the marauder’s goods and chattels an equal quantity and restore the loss.”116 Notwithstanding the paternalistic framework in which such ideas were fermented, relative independence and authority was refashioned and rationalized by some enslaved men into evidence of their personal strength of character. Some former slaves claimed that being offered or taking these roles proved the honesty and integrity of the men involved. Jim Gillard claimed his father’s authority on a plantation in Alabama came because “Ol’ Marster allus had confidence in him” while Rochelle Allred Ward, whose father was enslaved near Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, felt that he had been made overseer as the mistress “trusted him . . . saw he was a good worker and would do the right thing.” The belief that these men’s capability and honesty marked out their ascension to positions of authority shows how 114 116

115 Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 5, Pt. 3, 197. Henson, Life of Josiah Henson, 40. Hazzard, “General Management of a Plantation,” 351.

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the hierarchical and competitive language of industry and rewards could be used to divide slave communities. Ward’s father even told her that the reason none of the Beck slaves were sold was because of their comparative honesty and good behavior: “We was all good Negroes, that why the Becks keep us. And we ought to be glad, because I see sorrow at the auctions, and crying, when the mother sold off from her child, or when the child is took away from her.”117 James R. Sutton reified the idea of a comparative hierarchy in labor by declaring that his father was put “a’head of the other slaves” because his enslaver “trusted him a lot.”118 These individuals made use of certain gendered tropes and ideas to craft and reinforce positive images of male authority figures, to an extent that cannot be explained simply by either the interview conditions or an understandable desire to accentuate their father’s positive qualities. They insisted that if their fathers imposed discipline or forced others to work, they did so because they were honest; the violence inflicted on their fellow slaves was based on a reasoned account of the circumstances, and not purely capricious abuse directed by their enslaver. Views on survival, accommodation, and self-making were formed in conversations and negotiations with friends and family; the stories that people told one another about their responses to bondage could involve rejecting the notion that all forms of resistance to slavery should be applauded, and instead showing how accommodation to bondage could be connected to masculine roles and responsibilities. Radical abolitionists and black activists frequently condemned black male trustees, portraying them as emasculated, dependent, or despised. Former slaves who emphasized trust, honesty, and honor as informing these men’s actions offered an alternative framework in which their actions could be considered manly. Authority and control over others was a key component of manhood in the American South. While they were constrained by their enslavers as well as by a “moral economy” of sorts, it is undeniable that trustees had public performances of power over others. The sense that holding positions of authority proved select men’s place atop a homosocial hierarchy is evident in both enslaver and enslaved recollections; the unnamed hands on one plantation in Louisiana were simply “Anderson’s gang.”119 Harriett Millett, who had lived on a cotton plantation in Mississippi noted 117 118 119

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 6, 155; Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 12, 361. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 10, Pt. 5, 2081. Airlie Plantation Records, 00487, DBC.

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how their father was a “sort of ruler over de other slaves,” and stressed his authority over others in work, but also the respect he was held in by the wider community: “Pappy would look at de slaves and shout, ‘My hands, git yo’ hoes, and foller me to de field.’”120 Another Mississippi exslave explained how his father was simply left to run things by his enslaver: “Massa’d tell him whut he wanted dis group o’ men to do, an’ whut he wanted dat group tuh do, an mah fathuh saw they don it.”121 Having a father who was “boss over all the slaves” was recalled as evidence of talent and skill by children of such men, perhaps suggesting that parents found pride in their positions and passed these positive images to their children.122 It also suggests that those who lived with and loved these men wanted to elevate them and applaud their choices and actions, and that this was one possible route by which to do so. Former slaves commonly agreed that trustees were expected to control, report, or punish others, and the relationship between trust, authority and manhood was clear in the American South. Describing fellow slaves as “my hands” implies a degree of agency and independence that no enslaved person could theoretically justify, yet Harriett Millett believed her father had wielded such authority, and had wielded it with the acceptance of the wider community. Others likewise emphasized a level of autonomy in elevating trustees. One former slave claimed the enslaved foreman practically ran his plantation in Jasper, Texas: “He ten’ to all his bus’ness, an’ Cunnel McCracy he jus’ come down ’cassionally an’ look ’roun’ an’ see how t’ings was gittin’ ’long.”123 Sina Banks, enslaved in Missouri, similarly noted that his “uncle Caleb ran the farm for old master. He was head overseer and all the men and women took orders from him with never a word.”124 The sense of dominance and having overawed those beneath him comes across in the belief that none would dare challenge this man’s authority. The language of mastery and control was highly gendered in the antebellum South, and some enslaved people used this discourse to explain how and why select men held power in their communities. Enslaved men in positions of authority framed their actions as a performance of manhood, even while maintaining the repressive regime

120 121 122 123 124

Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 7, Pt. 6, 2696. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 11, Pt. 7, 254. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, 300. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 7, Pt. 6, 2478. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 12, 13.

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of slavery. The actions of Jim, the driver on Keziah Brevard’s rice plantation in South Carolina, suggest the degree to which enslaved trustees envisioned themselves as having wider authority. Jim, who “want[ed] every servant to look to him as a superior,” found out that Brevard had changed the work routine of two men and responded furiously: This is the day that Jim got so insulted because I sent word for Sam to work with John – instead of coming to me & asking me not to let Sam & John be together, he gave John a kick in the stomache [sic], a severe one – the boy came to me crying.

While Brevard’s status as a widower during the fraught political moment of secession is worth bearing in mind, her concerns over the violence inflicted by Jim on others suggest the extent to which drivers expected, even demanded, a degree of agency and autonomy in their dealings with other slaves. According to Brevard: “No other servant in this yard but Jim or one of his family would have risked such an insult to me.”125 Brevard’s account also demonstrates how some enslaved men used violence to form an identity built on dominance, control, and authority; to fail to respond to challenges from those “beneath” you could lead to a loss of status, respect, or fear. Jim “want[ed] every servant on the place to look to him as a superior,” and was willing to use violence to achieve this.126 This could even be true in relation to the punishment of enslaved women. Although abolitionists frequently painted the abuse of women as the most devastating aspect of enslavement, the inability to physically control women was shameful for both white and black men in the period.127 In a cultural context in which masculine power was commonly contrasted with feminine docility, enslaved women who reacted violently and could not be subdued threatened managerial figures, white and black, with public emasculation. White overseers were occasionally fired and derided for such failings, as in the case of an overseer in Louisiana whose employer “diden want no

125 126 127

Moore, Diary of Keziah Goodwyn Hopkins Brevard, 88. Moore, Diary of Keziah Goodwyn Hopkins Brevard, 88. On violence against women and masculinity, see Edward Baptist, “‘My Mind Is to Drown You and Leave You Behind’: ‘Omie Wise,’ Intimate Violence, and Masculinity,” in Christine Daniels and Michael Kennedy (eds.) Over The Threshold: Intimate Violence in Early America (New York; London: Routledge, 1999), 94–110; Kirsten E. Wood, “Gender and Slavery” in Robert L. Paquette and Mark M. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 513–534, 524.

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man working fer ’im dat a woman could whip.”128 One former slave recalled how their overseer had been run “clear out of the field” by the women of the plantation. When they continued to make trouble, the enslaver “put one of the men on the place over the women.” While there is no indication of his behavior after this, it seems reasonable to assume that the enslaved man was aware he should not allow himself to be bested in the same way. One female slave from Mississippi named Luce continually fought the black driver, who responded in kind: “Luce had one tooth missing in front, which she said she lost while fighting the black boss over dere.”129 The black driver’s willingness to fight this rebellious woman likely stemmed from fear of losing control on the plantation, but also the fear that failing to meet a public challenge from a violent woman constituted a loss of manhood. Some male trustees took their dominance further, sexually exploiting enslaved women under their control. This form of violence was emblematic of their power over others in the community. One such man was described as “a monster among the negro race,” who would “cohabit . . . among the women, both married and single.” Eventually this “monster” went too far and was killed by the other slaves, but his deliberate interference with enslaved relationships suggests a sense of separation and expected dominance over others in the community.130 Another WPA respondent recalled how a formerly enslaved man continued to inflict violence following emancipation. This abuse identified him as a driver: “Grandma married old man soon after freedom. He whooped and beat her up till she died. He was a mean old scoundrel. They said he was a nigger driver.”131 Male trustees who built their identity around aggression and authority sometimes expected their superiority to be manifest in all realms.132 In the antebellum South, contemporaries commonly “equated manhood with the state of being free and powerful, power being understood as authority over other men.”133 Despite lacking the power of free white men, enslaved male trustees held authority in their communities. They were expected to control and direct other slaves through force and 128 129 130 131 132 133

Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 12, 2. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser.1, Vol. 8, Pt. 3, 807. Anderson, Life and Narrative of William J. Anderson, 50. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, 142. The connections between sexual dominance and manhood will be explored in more depth in Chapter 4. Hine and Jenkins, “Black Men’s History,” 13.

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authority, and success in doing so demonstrated these men’s dominance and superiority. Failure to control others might be construed as a personal insult, as something that must be prevented to maintain the respect of others. Responding to perceived insult in resisting orders could offer these men power; failure to do so could be an emasculatory experience. If it is correct that “upholding honor required public display” in the South, then it is plausible that black male trustees felt required to respond to public challenges to their authority to maintain their sense of masculinity, and that such responses were understood and articulated within a gendered framework.134 To lose face in front of others, as in the case of a fellow slave refusing to follow your commands, was a sign of weakness and may have influenced disciplinary violence. Moses, the slave driver lauded by his enslaver, as seen earlier, wrote in his letters to Pettigrew that he tried to stop a slave from beating another but that when the man refused to listen violence was the only way to restore his authority: “he did not an gave words an I hit him an it all was between me an him.”135 To fail to answer public and physical challenges from others in the community could rob black male trustees of their power and, perhaps, of their masculine identity. To laud enslaved men who resisted discipline as “men” is to acknowledge a comparative emasculation of those they defeated. Douglass’s victory over Covey, for example, offers an extremely vivid emasculation of a white man.136 Fugitive accounts might sensationalize for narrative effect, but ex-slaves relayed similarly gendered dimensions to resistance in their WPA interviews. William Baltimore claimed to have forced his overseer into a humiliating climbdown on his plantation, making this emblematic of his superior manhood: “I tole the overseer fore he whipped me he’s show himself a better man than I was. When he found he was to have a fight he didn’t say no more about the whipping.”137 A white interviewee for the WPA recalled a similar instance from within 134

135 136 137

Ariela Julie Gross, Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Courtroom (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 47. Scholars increasingly highlight the significance of honor to slave men, and the ways in which this could lead to conflict in slave communities, see: Jeff Forret, “Conflict and the ‘Slave Community’: Violence among Slaves in Upcountry South Carolina,” Journal of Southern History, 74.3 (August 2008), 551–588; Jeff Forret, “‘He Was No Man Attal’? Slave Men, Honor, Violence, and Masculinity in the Antebellum South,” in Buckner and Caster (eds.), Fathers, Preachers, Rebels, Men, 23–40; Forret, Slave Against Slave. Starobin, Blacks in Bondage, 32–33. Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 66. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, 97.

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the slave community, where failure to respond to challenges led to physical and emotional suffering. An enslaved man was bought to Alabama and made driver over eight “young well muscled bucks.” However, they would not “do anything he told them to.” This man was repeatedly humiliated due to his comparative weakness: “he couldn’t make them do anything, because any one of them could whip him in a fight.” These men resisted discipline, but it came at a serious personal cost to the driver: He suffered beatings, attempted to flee, and was eventually sold because of his physical failings.138 Trustees, black and white, could be emasculated by a perceived or real failure to control others and to enact discipline on their own terms. Enslaved people understood the gendered dimensions of resistance to black authority figures as well as white. When a black foreman from Georgia failed to discipline Mary Gladdy’s father – “a very large, powerful man” – he was forced to call others to assist him. However, Gladdy stated that “all six of them couldn’t ‘out-man’ my daddy!” Enslaved men who faced resistance when imposing discipline were aware that their reputation was at stake. They may have felt the need to defeat rebels or resistors, not just for the sake of their enslavers, but to avoid a public emasculation in defeat. The power of this ideology could lead to tragedy, as was the case for Gladdy’s father. The foreman, unwilling to accept the very public loss of face, returned with a shotgun and “inflict[ed] wounds from which he never fully recovered.”139 In another driver’s letter to his enslaver, he described his troubles with a group of slaves, complaining they “did not more than urn the Salt in thir [sic] bread.” While “go-slows” might count as a form of day-to-day resistance to slavery, this driver took the response of the slaves as a slight and sought to restore his authority with threats and physical violence. However, he claimed that he only punished those who deserved it, stating: “I have worked the people but not out of reason. and I have whiped none without a caus.” Such recollections provide further evidence of how male authority figures sought to justify their actions to their enslavers and, perhaps, to themselves. After having explained some of the punishments he gave others, George, the driver, went on to recount a more serious incident in which four enslaved men refused to complete the task he had set them. Concerned that this was the start of a more sustained rebellion,

138 139

Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 10, Pt. 9, 4346–4347. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 12, Pt. 2, 17.

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George sought to restore his authority by singling out Shadrack, “the ruler among them.” George successfully intimidated Shadrack into silence but then faced a new challenge from Robert, who stated “he was not afraid of being whiped by no man.” Robert offered a proud declaration that bears resemblance to the heroic statements of fugitive authors, claiming, with an oath, that he “did not intend to stay here.” After this he attempted to take George’s whip. Unlike in the triumphant accounts from Chapter 1, however, this heroic rebellion was swiftly and violently put down. Having “caught him fast by the collar and holed him,” George successfully intimidated the others into holding Robert down as he whipped him. We see here two competing models of manhood: Robert’s resistance is an exemplar of resistant manhood, but George defended his own actions as fair, arguing in a letter to his enslaver that he had needed to respond to such a challenge or he would have lost his authority and power.140 Enslaved male trustees sometimes faced violent and public resistance to their control; enslaved men who held such positions needed to answer these challenges. George wrote in a later letter of the necessity of responding to resistance to maintain dominance, claiming that he tried to avoid fighting but that “among twenty or thirty hands there will be som [sic] times that a man will [have] to spur them up.”141 Another ex-slave made this link between violence and control clear. When describing his tenure as an overseer in Louisiana, Hunton Love was asked whether he ever whipped those under him. Love justified his actions by calling on masculine tropes of dominance, authority, and mastery, while also noting how resistance could be framed as a public test to a man’s authority: “Yes’m, I did: some of the slaves wouldnt [sic] mind, and I had to whip ’em . . . I had to show ’em I was boss or the plantation would be wrecked.”142 Trustees’ responses to resistance from within the slave community suggest how gendered ideals associated with authority were embedded within broader structures of power and control in the antebellum South. Enslaved male trustees did not unquestionably or inevitably support slavery, and nor did they merely parrot the views of those who enslaved them. However, in seeing their jobs or their actions as emblematic of their identity, a loss of authority or an unanswered insult meant not only the loss of privileges and rewards, but also the loss of a hard-earned sense of self. 140 142

Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 66–67. Clayton, Mother Wit, 162.

141

Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 69.

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Enslaved people could hate or resent black male trustees yet still feel they were manly. Attributes associated with enslaved masculinity were not always laudable expressions of triumph and solidarity and the violence inflicted by enslaved trustees helped them forge identities as men others dare not cross. Some actively pursued such a persona: “Everybody skeered of him, even ole Marsa.”143 In some respects, these figures resemble the “bad men” of folklore, often discussed regarding the nihilistic and rebellious men who refused to accept their position as slaves. One scholar expressed the often stark divide presented between rebels and more accommodating slaves, implying the perceived superiority of resistance to acquiescence to white authority: “when given a choice, many African Americans prefer the ‘bad nigger’ to the Uncle Tom.”144 Enslaved trustees, or figures closely associated with white authority, have commonly been included in the “Tom” group, with Malcolm X, for example, describing “how the slavemaster of that day used Tom, the house Negro, to keep the field Negroes in check.”145 However, the language used by some ex-slaves to describe “mean” enslaved managers bears striking resemblance to that of the “badman” figure. Ex-slaves who stated that they “would rather see the devil” than their former driver applied tropes of violent manhood more commonly associated with the nihilistic rebel.146 The popular folktale in which Stagolee bests the devil in hell finds a match in one former slave’s description of her enslaved overseer: “de overseer was Uncle Big Jake, what’s black like de rest of us, but he so mean I ’spect de devil done make him overseer down below long time ago.”147 Violence and expressions of dominance, whether used to rebel against slavery or to uphold it, whether provoking admiration or fear, connected to forms of masculinity recognized by the wider community. This vision of manhood was built on comparison, competition, and conflict.

143 144 145 146

147

Perdue et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 26. Jerry H. Bryant, “Born in a Mighty Bad Land”: The Violent Man in African American Folklore and Fiction (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2003), 1. Malcolm X, “Message to the Grass Roots” (Detroit, November 10, 1963), xroads .virginia.edu/~public/civilrights/a0147.html Jacob Stroyer, “Third Edition: My Life in the South,” in Susanna Ashton (ed.), “I Belong to South Carolina”: South Carolina Slave Narratives (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010), 127–167, 138. In one version of the Stagolee ballads, Stagolee is killed, goes to hell, and takes control of the devil. See Bryant, “Born in a Mighty Bad Land,” 14; Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, 43.

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Enslaved men who publicly and violently resisted bondage enacted one vision of masculinity. Nevertheless, enslaved men who held trustee positions did not invariably feel emasculated in their actions. Those who remained under them could likewise construct alternative frameworks of masculine values to judge and evaluate their actions. For enslaved men who constructed an identity built on public performances of authority, dominance, and control, resistance to slavery did not always and inevitably fulfill their criteria of manhood. The choices enslaved people made in surviving slavery might involve a rejection of the actions of more rebellious individuals, and some enslaved male trustees articulated a gendered sense of self through their actions. In their attempts to construct a masculine self, enslaved men navigated different routes. While runaways and rebels may have placed themselves on the apex of masculinity, enslaved men who held authority in bondage suggested through their actions that this was a contestable hierarchy.

3 “I never seen such a worker as my father” Work, Industry, and Masculinity

James Day, interviewed in Texas in 1937 as part of the WPA project, offered his story of slave life in the American South. He and his family had been enslaved in numerous locations, including North Carolina, Virginia, and, finally, Tennessee. His enslaver in Tennessee was relatively prosperous: Day noted that he had held around twenty-five slaves on his plantation. While many of these slaves were used as field “hands,” raising wheat, corn, oats, barley, vegetables, and fruit, their enslaver had also utilized some in skilled positions. Day’s father was one such slave. Day recalled his father’s work as a blacksmith here in a positive light. Irrespective of the fact that this was ultimately coerced labor, he insisted: “blacksmithing was a real trade in those days.” Day recounted with obvious pride the skills his father had learned, describing how he “could make axes, mattocks, hoes, plow shares, knives and even jew’s harps.” After completing a full day’s labor for his enslaver, Day’s father would continue working “till twelve o’clock at night sometimes,” earning extra money from this. When Day concluded his discussion on his father’s efforts, he proudly explained: “I never seen such a worker as my father. He just had more energy and strength than anybody I ever saw.”1 Day was impressed by his father’s efforts partly because he had more skill, and worked harder, than others in the community. This comparative assessment opens up a broader discussion as to the potential divisions in slave communities when enslaved men crafted identities through work, and the alternative ways in which enslaved men envisioned masculine

1

Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 4, Pt. 3, 1163.

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responsibilities.2 While historians have stressed the significance of work to masculinity, as well as the supportive relationships which allowed enslaved people to achieve limited economic success, we need to be attuned to how conflict, comparison, and exclusion were important elements of the masculinities created in work.3 Scholars may have considered tensions that marked occupational status and informal economies among the enslaved, as well as the political negotiations with enslavers that underpinned such activities, but the gendered framework within which such conflict was justified has rarely been considered.4 Having explored some of these tensions in relation to trustee positions in slavery, this chapter now turns to how enslaved men who provided for themselves and others through independent economic activities made their achievements emblematic of their identity. It reveals how individualistic and personalized qualities of energy, industry, and responsibility were connected to men’s success in work and considers the consequences when identities built on these qualities were consolidated through comparisons to others in the community. Work could be an arena of “self-making” for enslaved men, but personalized claims of success involved comparison to men who had failed to achieve similar results, as well as with those who rejected the idea that this was an acceptable route to manhood. These comparisons were not always supportive. The judgments enslaved people made in relation to their activities and identities in bondage offer insight into the multiple masculinities present in the American South, as well as the complex relationships that existed in slave communities. If personal strengths could be used to explain success in work, personal faults could be used to explain failings. Enslaved manhood crafted through work was solidified in relation to men deemed less energetic, less industrious, and, ultimately, less “manly.”

2

3

4

Portions of this argument were made in David Doddington, “Domestic Economies and Masculine Hierarchies in Slave Communities of the U.S. South, 1800–1865,” Gender & History, 27.3 (2015), 773–787. West, Chains of Love, 158; West, “The Debate on the Strength of Slave Families,” 223; Fraser, “Negotiating Their Manhood,” 81; Lussana, My Brother Slaves, chapter 1; Lussana, “No Band of Brothers Could Be More Loving,” 872. See, for example: Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 327–398; Lawrence T. McDonnell, “Money Knows No Master: Market Relations and the American Slave Community,” in Winfred B. Moore Jr., Joseph E. Tripp, and Lyon G. Tyler Jr. (eds.), Developing Dixie: Modernization in a Traditional Society (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1988), 31–43; Dusinberre, Them Dark Days, esp. chapters 6, 13; Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk; Penningroth, “‘My People, My People’: The Dynamics of Community in Southern Slavery,” in Baptist and Camp (eds.), New Studies in the History of American Slavery, 166–176; Dusinberre, Strategies for Survival, chapter 13; Hilliard, Masters, Slaves, and Exchange.

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Some enslaved people who spoke about men’s occupational status and skills, as well as their participation in the informal or internal economy, applied this comparative framework. The informal economy has been defined by historians as the “quasi-independent economic activities” conducted by enslaved people following the completion of work for their enslavers or in limited free time at night or during the weekend.5 Typical activities here included planting small patches of cotton or foodstuffs, hunting, fishing, making and selling small goods, trading – whether with the tacit approval of their enslavers or illicitly with conniving whites – or engaging in overwork in skilled labor such as blacksmithing or carpentry.6 Enslaved people who lived and worked in urban environments might hire their own time, with any additional money earned following this used to improve their conditions or those of dependents at a later date. Informal economies developed in parts of the Lowcountry where rice was dominant, including coastal South Carolina, as the standard system of “tasking” meant enslaved people were theoretically allowed to engage in their own work once they had completed set activities for the day.7 Enslaved people 5

6

7

Betty Wood, Women’s Work, Men’s Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 1. Further information on the informal economy can be found in Philip Morgan, “Work and Culture: The Task System and the world of Lowcountry Blacks,” William and Mary Quarterly, 39.4 (1982), 563–599; Loren Schweninger, “The Underside of Slavery: The Internal Economy, SelfHire, and Quasi-Freedom in Virginia, 1780–1865,” Slavery & Abolition, 12.2 (1991), 1–22; Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan (eds.), Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993); Hudson, To Have and To Hold; Larry E. Hudson Jr., Working toward Freedom: Slave Society and Domestic Economy in the American South (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1994). On overwork and self-hire, as well as independent economic practices in urban environments, see Charles B. Dew, “Disciplining Slave Ironworkers in the Antebellum South: Coercion, Conciliation, and Accommodation,” American Historical Review, 79.2 (1974), 393–418; Tim Lockley, “Trading Encounters between Non-Elite Whites and African Americans in Savannah, 1790–1860, Journal of Southern History, 66.1 (2000), 25–48; Jonathon Martin, Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring the American South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), esp. chapter 6. An excellent treatment of the informal economy can be found in Hilliard, Masters, Slaves, and Exchange. Enslaved men and women worked in the informal economy, but “the tasks enslaved men and women performed for themselves and their families differed,” and these distinctions were meaningful for enslaved men and women in their construction of gendered identities. See Wood, “Gender and Slavery,” 516. On the formation of collective gender identities and networks in work, see: Deborah Gray White, “Female Slaves: Sex Roles and Status,” Journal of Family History, 8.3 (1983), 248–261; Lussana, My Brother Slaves, chapter 1. On the specifics of the Lowcountry, see Morgan, “Work and Culture”; Hudson Jr., To Have and To Hold; Michael Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736–1831 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 111.

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who toiled under the gang labor system that typically marked out cotton or sugar regimes were generally only able to conduct independent labor at night or during limited free time at the weekend.8 Despite these restrictions, former slaves from the lower South recalled that their economic activities, hopes, and motives were not so dissimilar to those elsewhere. As Solomon Northup wrote: “it is the custom in Louisiana, as I presume it is in other slave States, to allow the slave to retain whatever compensation he may obtain for services performed on Sundays. In this way, only, are they able to provide themselves with any luxury or convenience whatever.”9 Location undoubtedly influenced enslaved peoples’ opportunities to conduct work for themselves. However, testimony drawn from across the South suggests that enslavers’ decisions to allow a degree of independent economic production were not entirely dictated by crop or region. Recent work stresses the calculated system of rewards and incentives used to structure informal economies across the American South, as well as the political negotiations between enslaved people and their enslavers that shaped such activities.10 Furthermore, while the possibilities of performing the role might be limited by location, enslaved people clearly sought and fought to provide for themselves and their loved ones regardless of where they resided.11 The fact that ex-slaves from across the American South commonly expressed regret at the limitations placed on men’s abilities to support dependents and loved ones indicates how gendered ideals associated with the masculine provider role were not purely determined by geography.12 While recognizing a degree of regional distinction, 8

9 10

11

12

Baptist, “The Absent Subject,” 143; Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 177; Kaye, Joining Places, 104. Contemporary recollections of independent economic production by the enslaved at night or at the weekend in cotton and sugar regions can be found in: Projects of Life, June 29, 1864, Everard Green Baker Diary, Everard Green Papers #41, SHC; Duties of overseer, Alabama, 1857, William H. Sims Diary and Papers #1403, SHC; Plantation Record and Account Book, 1833–1843, Maunsel White Papers #2234, SHC. Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, 194. Damian Alan Pargas, “‘Various Means of Providing for Their Own Tables’: Comparing Slave Family Economies in the Antebellum South,” American Nineteenth Century History, 7.3 (2006), 361–387; Hilliard, Masters, Slaves, and Exchange, 12–13. Jeff Forret, “Early Republic and Antebellum United States,” in Paquette and Smith (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas, 227–251, 232; Roderick A. McDonald, “Independent Economic Production by Slaves on Antebellum Louisiana Sugar Plantations,” Slavery & Abolition, 12.1 (1991), 182–208; Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk, 46–53; Follet, The Sugar Masters, 195. See, for example, Issac Williams, Aunt Sally: or, The Cross the Way of Freedom. A Narrative of the Slave-Life and Purchase of the Mother of Rev. Isaac Williams, of Detroit, Michigan (Cincinnati: Western Tract and Book Society, 1858), 166–167, doc

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therefore, it is possible to take a broad approach in examining informal economic activities across the antebellum South, particularly when exploring the language of self-making and industry that could be used to explain men’s success, or, indeed, perceived failures in such activities. An examination of enslaved men’s beliefs about how work shaped gender identity contributes to the broader historical debates surrounding accommodation, survival, and self-making in slavery outlined in the previous chapters. Historians have considered the informal economy as an arena where rebelliousness was fomented and have depicted homosocial working subcultures as strengthening bonds between enslaved men.13 But gendered ideals related to work could just as much divide slave communities and speak to contests over resistance and accommodation in relation to masculine identities. Although scholars have considered whether enslaved men who prioritized care-giving or work within slavery faced difficulties in claiming manhood based on “ordinary virtues,” success in work could be used to claim a hierarchical form of manhood within bondage.14 Enslaved men who resisted laid claim to a particular type of manhood, but this was not the only way to prove masculine identity. The negotiations with enslavers that typically structured informal economies or working hierarchies could be rationalized within a gendered framework that associated manhood with competitive displays of industry, responsibility, and respectability. In using the language of self-making and industriousness to explain enslaved men’s success, former slaves addressed, considered, and confronted those who had not achieved similar results. While support could be offered within and across slave communities, this was not automatic or inevitable, and some ex-slaves explained economic distinctions as having been similarly based on personal characteristics. To most effectively prove

13

14

south.unc.edu/neh/sally/sally.html; John Brown, Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Now in England (Edited by L. A. Chaemerovzow, Secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. May be had on application to the editor, At No. 27, New Broad Street, and of all booksellers, 1855), 209, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/jbrown/jbrown.html; Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, 47; Charles Ball, Fifty Years a Slave, 151. Douglas Egerton, “Slaves to the Marketplace: Economic Liberty and Black Rebelliousness in the Atlantic World,” Journal of the Early Republic, 26.4 (2006), 617–639; Walter Johnson, “Clerks, All! Or, Slaves with Cash,” Journal of the Early Republic, 26.4 (2006), 641–651; Douglas Egerton, “Slave Resistance,” in Paquette and Smith (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas, 447–461, esp. 453–459. Baptist, “The Absent Subject,” 152. Baptist makes use of Tzvetan Todorov’s argument on “ordinary virtues” in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. See Todorov, Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps, trans. Arthur Denner and Abigail Pollak (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996), 8–10.

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his father’s skills and success, James Day applied a comparative assessment of his work ethic against others in the community. His father’s industriousness had offered him opportunities. To have “never seen such a worker” implies that he had looked to see if others had followed such a path, and found them wanting. The language Day used to explain his father’s success – the language of energy, industry, and responsibility – opens a broader debate over the connections enslaved people made between work and masculine identities, the way such attitudes were consolidated through the formation of comparative homosocial hierarchies, and the implications of this for solidarity and resistance among the enslaved. The emphasis of some slaves and ex-slaves upon comparative personal initiative in work also suggests how the concerns with respectability that marked the politics of racial uplift could be connected to experiences of bondage and embedded in people’s most personal memories.15 Scholars have long noted that the masculine identities that antebellum white men forged in work were constructed in a public and competitive fashion, and that, in the face of dynamic economic changes, men’s success in work was increasingly linked to personal initiative and industry.16 Where scholars once depicted a stark divide between North and South relating to manners, morals, and perceptions of labor, historians increasingly emphasize the overlapping pressures that men in both regions faced in the competitive market environment of the nineteenth century, the ways in which American slavery was a mixture of profit-driven capitalist 15

16

The most controversial proponent of these politics was Booker T. Washington, who famously noted that “the black man got nearly as much out of slavery as the white man did,” and stressed the need to accommodate to white society. See Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery: An Autobiography (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1901), 17, docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/washington/washing.html. The fact that such politics often denied or minimized the structural oppression black people faced had enduring social, economic, and cultural consequences. On this topic, see Gaines, Uplifting the Race; Ball, “To Train Them for the Work.” Kimmel, Manhood in America, 26. On the “market revolution” and the changing identities and cultural images associated with it. See, for example: Charles G. Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Rotundo, American Manhood; Dana D. Nelson, National Manhood: Capitalist Citizenship and the Imagined Fraternity of White Men (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); Gregor L. Kaster, “Labour’s True Man: Organized Workingmen and the Language of Manliness in the U.S.A., 1827–1877,” Gender & History, 13.1 (April 2001), 24–64; Brian P Luskey, “Jumping Counters in White Collars: Manliness, Respectability, and Work in the Antebellum City,” Journal of the Early Republic, 26.2 (Summer 2006), 173–219; Ball, “To Train Them for the Work,” 61; Bailey, “Masculinizing the Pulpit,” 82.

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thought and paternalistic values, and how this shaped identities and status accordingly.17 Notwithstanding the economic distinctiveness of slavery, approval of the narrative of industrious “self-making” was clearly found among Southern planters. Everard Green, an enslaver from Mississippi, described how his duty as a father was “to inculcate piety, integrity, industry, & frugality constantly & unremittingly.”18 In a letter from 1837, John Springs, a prominent enslaver from North Carolina, applauded his son’s efforts to find work and claimed that “industry, energy, and good Moral deportment, with a common portion of intelligence is all that is necessary to ensure a young Man success and respectability in almost any vocation.”19 Triumphant assertions of personal agency’s significance to success were often double-edged, however; if a man’s achievements and status in work were measured by his effort and virtue, those who failed must simply not be honorable or industrious enough.20 A reprint from the Boston Cultivator in the Southern Planter for January 1851 indicated how this narrative worked in both North and South: Are you poor? you will probably forever remain so, if you habitually waste the precious hours of the morning in bed. Who will seek the labor or services of him who sleeps and doses in the morning until seven or eight o’clock? If such a person is poor, he must remain poor. “He that would thrive must rise at five.”21

Work thus offered a competitive and comparative arena to which white men across the United States could look to prove a version of manhood. Many contemporaries, both pro- and antislavery, rejected the idea that slave labor was a site of manly self-making; proslavery propagandists, for example, frequently painted a portrait of plantation life where the enslaved barely worked. In an 1847 article from De Bow’s Review, a “Citizen of Mississippi” wrote that “negroes as a race can neither do as much work

17

18 19 20 21

See, for example, Smith, Mastered by the Clock, esp. 93–127; Follet, The Sugar Masters, 5–7; Mayfield, Counterfeit Gentlemen, xvii–xviii; Johnson, River of Dark Dreams; Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told, Beckert, Empire of Cotton; Beckert and Rockman (eds.), Slavery’s Capitalism; L. Diane Barnes et al., The Old South’s Modern Worlds. On industry and thrift as part of the political negotiations between enslavers and the enslaved, see Hilliard, Masters, Slaves, and Exchange, 28–29, 57–59. Diary, June 5, 1859. Everard Green Papers, SHC. See, also: end of December, 1849. Letter, February 4, 1837, Springs Family Papers #4121, SHC. Bailey, “Masculinizing the Pulpit,” 82. From the Boston Cultivator, “Early Rising,” Southern Planter, 11 (January 1851), consulted in Smith, Mastered by the Clock, 98.

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nor continue at it as long as the whites.”22 Ten years later the famed Virginian “fire-eater” Edmund Ruffin claimed that “the system of slave labor requires more space for population – more of comfort and ease for the laborers . . . and it obtains less labor from the slave than the free laborer.”23 Others stressed the economic dependency of the enslaved on their benevolent “masters,” using this to justify the natural order of slavery and to reinforce claims of dominant white manhood. George Fitzhugh notably claimed that “almost all negroes require masters, whilst only the children, the women, the very weak, poor, and ignorant, & c., among the whites, need some protective and governing relation of this kind.”24 Daniel Hundley, when describing “social relations” in the South, similarly stated that a racialized lack of industry held most enslaved people back. Enslaved people were generally “too indolent to strive to make any money for themselves, but spend their holidays sleeping, fishing, or playing like so many children.” This lack of economic responsibility was used to particularly condemn enslaved men, who were, for the most part, seen to lack the requisite work ethic and self-sacrificing strength of manhood: “there is not an adult male slave in the entire South, provided he possess the necessary energy, who could not lay up more ready money in a twelve month than most day laborers in the North or elsewhere.” That most enslaved men chose not to conduct additional work to provide for themselves or their families, relying on the “sustaining and protecting care of the white race” and the benevolent paternalism of white men, was, in Hundley’s eyes, a failure of industry.25 The explicit focus on enslaved men suggests this was considered a failure of manhood too. Even sympathetic observers felt that enslaved men did not use work to foster a self-respecting sense of self, particularly because they were considered unable to use the fruits of their labor to provide for loved ones. Frances Kemble described slave families as such: “the father, neither having authority, power, responsibility, or charge in his children, is of course, as among brutes, the least attached to his offspring.”26 The author

22 23 24 25 26

A Citizen of Mississippi, “The Negro,” De Bow’s Review: Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial Progress and Resources 3.5 (May 1847), 419–422, 419. Edmund Ruffin, “Consequences of Abolition Agitation,” De Bow’s Review: Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial Progress and Resources, 26 (December 1857), 596–607, 598. George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! Or, Slaves without Masters (Richmond: A. Morris, 1857), 297–298, docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/fitzhughcan/fitzcan.html Daniel Hundley, Social Relations in our Southern States (New York: Henry B. Price, 1860), 357. Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, 95.

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of the September 1835 edition of the Anti-Slavery Record went even further, explaining how God had placed “Man” in various relations, including to love and protect wives, and “to provide for, and educate his offspring.” In deliberately preventing enslaved men from fulfilling these responsibilities, enslavers had “changed all the relations to which God has placed man” and, ultimately, had “wrested the laws of God to their own destruction.”27 Such direct connections between manhood, work, and the provider and protector role – and the suggestion that without economic responsibility, enslaved men were emasculated – indicate the problems many contemporaries had with associating slave labor with self-making and masculinity. Prior to the 1960s, such assertions were taken up by many eminent historians of slavery, albeit with differing motivations. In relation to enslaved men’s contributions to family life and their views on work, however, the result was similar: Enslaved men were considered as having been unwilling or unable to perform a masculine provider role or succeed in work, and this was devastating in relation to black manhood.28 By the 1960s, however, revisionist historians were dismantling this picture. By showing that enslavers frequently divided their coerced workforce by gender, as well as demonstrating the gendered expectations that enslaved men held select skilled or mobile roles such as carpenter, blacksmith, or coach driver, historians challenged the view that enslaved men were “degendered” in the work arena.29 In utilizing slave testimony and rejecting the politicized accusations of emasculation, these historians demonstrated that many enslaved men worked hard, recognizing the ways in which their efforts here enabled them to provide for and protect their families and the wider community. Enslaved men’s labors corresponded with wider nineteenth-century norms that equated masculinity with public demonstrations of skill, mastery over an environment or occupation, a measure of independence, and providing for and protecting dependents.30 Although “specialized, skilled labor crossed gender lines” and enslaved women clearly played a significant role in familial provision, there was a widespread perception among many enslaved (and free black) people that men should be economic figureheads if possible, and this was important 27 28 29 30

R. G. Williams, The Anti-Slavery Record, 1.9 (New York, 1835), 100–101. Phillips, Life and Labor, 188–211; Stampp, The Peculiar Institution, 343; Elkins, Slavery, 117. Major work here includes Blassingame, The Slave Community; Gutman, The Black Family; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll. Blassingame, The Slave Community, 93–100.

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to their gendered sense of self.31 Indeed, such attitudes were an integral part of attitudes toward gender roles in the nineteenth century. Even male contemporaries who applauded the hard work of enslaved women used such efforts to suggest an ideal world would see men at the head of family economies. Abolitionist writings detailed the belief in the normative nature of male dominance, including one moralistic treatment of a newly freed slave returning to his family that was presented in the Anti-Slavery Record. The mother had worked hard and scrimped and saved to help win her husband’s freedom, and her daughter seemed to have an egalitarian understanding of familial provision, noting: “Oh how good . . . Father and mother, and children, all live together now and be happy. It will seem like two mothers when father gets here.” Rather than applaud this assessment, the author used the eleven-year-old boy to force home the masculine nature of work: “‘No, indeed,’ said Harry; ‘when father comes, he and I will do the hard work that is the man’s business, and mother will only have to take care of the house and the children, and she shall never do so much hard work again.’”32 With the relegation of domestic labor from the realm of “work” and the lauding of manly providers, the abolitionist author was making clear a belief that men were the economic figureheads of the “idyllic” family. Enslaved men who emphasized their protection of women from physically demanding labor likewise used work as an avenue to prove manhood. Josiah Henson made use of gendered ideas on labor to attack slavery and elevate himself as an honorable man: “The condition of the male slave is bad enough; but that of the female, often compelled to perform severe labour, sick or well, unpitied and unaided, is one that arouses the spirit of sympathy in every heart not dead to all feeling.” Because of this, Henson claimed: “when I had a row to hoe between the rows of two women, I have often made them sit down and rest while I would hoe all three rows.” Henson further emphasized his selfless 31

32

On the economic activities of enslaved women, see: Jacqueline Jones, “‘My Mother Was Much of a Woman’: Black Women, Work, and the Family under Slavery,” Feminist Studies, 8.2 (1982), 235–269; White, “Female Slaves: Sex Roles and Status”; ElizabethFox Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill, 1988), 178–186; Brenda Stevenson, “Gender Conventions, Ideals and Identity among Antebellum Virginia Slave Women,” in David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine (eds.), More Than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 169–193, 179; Deborah Grey White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York; London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1999), chapter 4; Berry, “Swing the Sickle,” 2. R. G. Williams, The Anti-Slavery Record, 1.8 (New York, 1835).

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strength, and the gendered dimensions of his working activities, by claiming he would illicitly procure food for “the feeble, sickly women, who had to work during the day under a hot sun, without having sufficient food to nourish them and their little babies.” For Henson, at least, this protection for enslaved women was excited by the “throbbing of a chivalrous heart.” Comparisons of masculine agency with the supposed dependency of enslaved women highlights how some enslaved men envisioned work as an environment in which to prove their manhood, even if such claims minimized or discounted the very real labor enslaved women performed for themselves, their families, and their enslavers. The gendered framework which shaped Henson’s actions was exemplified in his belief that boys should be taught manual labor and some mechanical art while “girls should be instructed in those domestic acts which are the proper occupation and ornament of their sex.”33 While the enslaved population were never able (nor necessarily willing) to implement the “separate spheres” ideology espoused by many contemporary white Americans, some enslaved and formerly enslaved people believed that manhood came through work and providing for those considered dependent, putting men at the head of the family economy. Friday Jones, in his postbellum narrative of life as a slave, made this connection clear when describing how he sought to take care of his family: I was raised poor and hard as any slave, but the Lord had elevated me and made me feel that I was more of a man. I had all the craves for a wife and children, and I feel to day [sic] that God gave me that woman to take care of her, for fifty-two or fifty-three years tells mighty well about us.

Jones’ defense of his actions exemplified the belief that providing for dependents was a sign of manhood and that this was, ultimately, the end toward which men worked for. After being rebuked for dressing his wife better than the enslaver did his own, Jones claimed the mantle of provider in justifying his actions: “Master, that is my money; I work for it. If I don’t give it to my wife and children, what am I to do with it?”34 While Jones’ enslaver wanted to restrict such activities out of jealousy, others felt that enslaved men should take responsibility at the head of the family. Here, gendered ideologies led them to prioritize the labor of men 33 34

Henson, Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life, 25, 190, 124. Friday Jones, Days of Bondage: Autobiography of Friday Jones. Being a Brief Narrative of His Trials and Tribulations in Slavery (Washington, DC: Commercial Pub. Co., 1883), 7, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/fjones/jones.html

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in both material and monetary terms. Despite the self-serving proclamations of proslavery propagandists, many enslavers expected and relied on enslaved men to play important roles in domestic economies, often with assumptions about masculinity in mind. For instance, Thomas Clay commented on the necessity of “giving the men the work requiring most labor and exposure,” while Moses Liddell wrote to his enslaver son in Louisiana advising while “women can do plowing very well & full well with the hoe and equal to men at picking . . . they require more indulgences than men do at times.”35 In one court case from Alabama in 1851, the judgement recorded how most enslavers allowed “slaves reasonable time to make provision for the comfort of themselves and their families,” and that they could sell commodities to “honest white persons.” Although under the overall control of the enslaver, these transactions were shaped by gendered assumptions: “It was intended that the negro should have the privilege of making himself and family comfortable and even respectable in his caste, but not to dispense with the owner’s discretion, altogether.”36 Plantation records suggest that enslaved men who lived in family units were typically expected to act as providers of sorts, and historians have shown how there were a greater variety of occupations available to enslaved men which might allow for overwork, self-hire, or opportunities for trading.37 Expectations that men would be the mobile partners in abroad marriages likewise suggest the gendered expectations inherent in the informal economy.38 William Ethelbert Ervin, an enslaver from Mississippi, described in his plantation rules that the husband should “provide fire wood and see that they [family] are wll [sic] provided for,” while Everard Green, also from Mississippi, clearly felt gendered divisions in domestic economies encouraged harmony among the enslaved.39 Green wrote in his diary that “time should be given the

35

36 37

38 39

Thomas Clay, Detail of a Plan for the Moral Improvement of Negroes on Plantations (Bryan County, Georgia, 1833), 15; Letter from Moses Liddell to John Liddell, November 13, 1840, in Moses and St. John Richardson Liddell Family Papers, Mss. 531, LLMVC. Catterall, Judicial Cases Concerning the American Negro, Volume III, 178. Plantation Record Book, 1833–1843, 45, Maunsel White Papers, SHC. See, also: Fairntosh Plantation Slave List, Cameron Family Papers, #133, SHC; McDonald, “Independent Economic Production,” 201–204. Emily West, “Surviving Separation: Cross-Plantation Marriages and the Slave Trade in Antebellum South Carolina,” Journal of Family History, 24 (1999), 212–228, 223. Plantation Rules, January 1, 1847, in the William Ethelbert Ervin Journals #247-z, SHC.

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woman to wash, one evening in every week the year round, and ground and time to be given the men to work, their melon, & potatoe patches.”40 The fugitive author Henry Watson suggested these sorts of situations related to shared views as to the normative character of masculine responsibility. Watson’s enslaver had informed married men that “should your wife or self want anything, you can get it by working on Sunday, for which I will allow you fifty cents a day, out of the store.” Regardless of proslavery assertions as to the dependency of the enslaved population, many enslavers believed in and expected enslaved men to have a degree of responsibility in providing for loved ones and dependents.41 Enslaved men with families or dependents were commonly expected to lead in performing extra labor for limited monetary or material profit while women worked within and maintained the domestic space. Enslaved men who held skilled roles such as carpenter, cooper, or driver did so not just because of their abilities, but because they were viewed as possessing manly qualities. Former slaves recalled similar gendered distinctions across the antebellum South. Ellen Payne, enslaved in Texas, noted that “my daddy allus had a little money in slavery time” because “Dr. Evans give all his men a patch to work,” while Easter Huff, enslaved in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, similarly addressed gendered dimensions of informal labor: “when dey got f’um de fields at night, de ’omans spun, mended, and knit, and de mens wukked in deir gyardens and cotton patches.”42 Although patriarchal norms were constrained by the practical restrictions of slavery and enslaved women could and did provide for their families, gendered ideologies surrounding work clearly affected slave communities in the American South. William Green, in his narrative of life as a slave in Maryland, explained how such distinctions enabled the creation of positive masculine identities. According to Green, the man who was able to improve the material conditions of his family “is a great man amongst them.”43 Former slaves consistently highlighted the extent to which fathers, husbands, and male role models sought to provide for

40 41 42 43

Projects of Life, June 29, 1864, Everard Green Baker Diary, SHC. Henry Watson, Narrative of Henry Watson, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1848), 18, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/watson/watson.html Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 8, Pt. 7, 3041; Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 12, Pt. 2, 248. William Green, Narrative of Events in the Life of William Green, (Formerly a Slave) Written by Himself (Springfield: L. M. Guernsey, Book Job, & Card Printer, 1853), 9. docsouth.unc.edu/neh/greenw/greenw.html

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loved ones, including in situations where nuclear families were impossible.44 Scott Hooper explained in her WPA interview that her father, who had lived abroad while enslaved, would plant cotton to sell in order to bring “us chillen candy and toys and coffee and tea for mammy.”45 Emma Weeks praised her enslaved father because “he was always willin’ to look after his fambly, even when he lived on one place, and mammy and her chillun on another place.”46 The enslaved population, as much as white society, connected the work performed by black men with ideas on manhood and masculine qualities. In forming masculine identities, enslaved men benefited from material and monetary success in work; their efforts served as public proof of their abilities to act as provider and protector.47 Despite the confines of bondage, some enslaved people felt that through work – providing for their families and the wider community as a result of their energy, industry, and skill – enslaved men performed a masculine identity. Despite the strength of the historiographical shift just outlined, historians have understated the degree to which masculine identities forged in work were consolidated through comparison, as well as the degree to which gendered tension developed in working arenas. In highlighting how divisions between enslaved men and women in work contributed to the building of supportive homosocial subcultures, historians have overlooked differing views on gendered responsibilities among men, and the diverse and, at times, conflicting actions expected of men in slave communities. If, as William Green suggested, providing for loved ones proved that you were a “great man,” could a failure to do so suggest otherwise? In stressing the agency of enslaved people and the supportive structures of slave communities in enabling and applauding economic success, historians have understated the divisive negotiations with enslavers that structured work and informal economies, as well as the tensions these interactions caused among enslaved people employing different strategies for survival. Some enslaved men fashioned the labor they performed into evidence of manhood, but others resented any compromises with slavery or with enslavers that might be required by such activities, emphasizing the

44 45 46 47

On family life and “abroad” marriages, see West, “The Debate on the Strength of Slave Families.” Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, 157. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 10, Pt. 9, 4007. Fraser, “Negotiating Their Manhood,” 81.

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superior virtues of resistance instead. Activists who fiercely rejected any form of accommodation to slavery as shameful occasionally included in this “good” behavior participation in additional labor, or being overly concerned with earning food or money at the expense of fighting for freedom. Fierce declarations that “real” men rejected bondage out of hand entailed a concomitant emasculation of those who remained enslaved and, more particularly, those who acquiesced to the system to survive. David Walker famously asked “Are we MEN!!!” when demanding slave rebellion in his appeal of 1829, and he plainly rejected those “swell-bellied fellows . . . whose greatest object is to fill their stomachs”: “Such I do not mean.”48 Gendered disdain for forms of accommodation associated with work highlights that the different values associated with enslaved masculinity inspired debate and dissension. Enslaved men who worked within the system to fill their stomachs, or the stomachs of their loved ones, could be forced to, and were willing to, defend themselves against claims that they were not “men.” Some enslaved people felt that to answer the rebel’s call was to abdicate masculine responsibilities as a provider and protector, and that to remain in chains to support dependents was not a mark of weakness. Instead, they believed that such actions reflected a strength and selflessness that deserved recognition as such. Israel Nesbitt, enslaved in South Carolina, claimed that his great-grandfather had known Denmark Vesey, and, rather than support him, had tried to talk him out of his plan. This was not abject cowardice, but instead a calculated decision: “He and Vesey was property owners and friends. But my great-grandaddy never take no part in de plannin’, ’cause he tried all de time to show Vesey he was takin’ too big a dare and dat de plan was too dangerous and a wrong step wid it.”49 This tale may be apocryphal, but it demonstrates the belief that limited economic success led some black men to deliberately reject acts of rebellion against slavery. Some enslaved men believed it was necessary, even admirable, to reject the personal heroism of rebellion to fulfill responsibilities to dependents. Israel Campbell, for example, eventually fled Kentucky after being betrayed by his enslaver, but he disavowed bloody rebellion in his narrative and initially rejected his friends’ suggestion of flight as dishonorable. Instead, Campbell stressed his desire to use his earnings from the informal economy to purchase his freedom: “I told them no; that I was my master’s trusted hand, and my 48 49

Walker, Walker’s Appeal, 19. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 11, 262.

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mother would not listen to any such proposition. I told them that I hoped to be able to buy my freedom before a great while.”50 It was only after persistent betrayals by his enslaver that Campbell chose flight. Even after gaining his freedom, Campbell stressed his desire to buy his family rather than encourage insurrection. In line with contemporary sensibilities, economic responsibility or providing for dependents became indicative of masculinity through highlighting the virtue, strength, and sacrifice that success required. Fugitives like Henry Bibb stated, with the utmost regret, that it was necessary to “forsake friends and neighbors, wife and child,” rather than “consent to live and die a slave,” but not all enslaved people agreed that this was an acceptable act for men with dependents.51 The abolitionist James Redpath described one such occasion during his travels through the South, detailing a conversation with an enslaved man who refused to escape. Despite clearly desiring freedom, this man disagreed with Redpath’s belief, stated earlier in the book, that the liberty of just one slave “would be cheaply purchased by the universal slaughter of his people and their oppressors.”52 He instead claimed to have made a choice to remain in chains because of his economic responsibility to his family. This man, who hired his own time and earned up to $200 a month doing so, used his money to give his sons an education, but accepted this came at the cost of his own freedom. He considered this sacrifice to be proof of his strength of character, allowing him to fulfill his responsibilities as a provider and protector: “I see, if I hadn’t been married, I would have been free now; bekase [sic] I would have had a thousand dollars by this time to have bought myself with. But it took all I could make to get along with my family.”53 Enslaved men might thus use the work they performed while enslaved to create a masculine identity, but the development of this working manhood involved a consideration of other men’s choices and other masculinities present in the slave community. Economic responsibility could be used to explain why enslaved men had not taken the rebel’s path and to reject the view that failure to resist proved only cowardice. In stressing the important role these men played as providers for their families and for the wider community, enslaved people articulated a version of manhood that called for a different response to slavery as an institution. 50 51 52

Campbell, An Autobiography: Bond and Free, 103. Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, 47. Bibb’s repeated attempts to rescue his family after his escape suggest just how difficult the choice was. 53 Redpath, The Roving Editor, 85. Redpath, The Roving Editor, 35.

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Enslaved men who succeeded in informal economies received praise for their efforts, and their activities strengthened their gendered status and reputation as husbands and fathers, as providers and protectors. Gabriel Gilbert, interviewed as part of the Texas WPA collection, applauded his father’s skills in work, claiming that he “make shoes . . . build house. He do anything.” Gilbert, whose father was known as “de smart man,” also indicated the comparative assessment of men’s abilities by stating: “I’ll never be like him long as I live in dis world.”54 In a similarly laudatory tone, Wright Stapleton, enslaved in Mississippi, described his father’s efforts to provide for his family. Despite having worked a full day for his enslaver, Stapleton’s father “would go out an’ light six or eight torches an’ wuk by drivin’ down long stabs an’ fastenin’ de splints to ‘em an’ dat made light ’nuf to wuk purty hard an’ a good size place.”55 Two sisters enslaved in Opelousas, Louisiana, directly invoked a paternal idyll when applauding their father’s efforts in the informal economy. According to his children, their father would “wuk de groun’ on Sunday an’ sol’ de t’ings to buy us shoe to put on us feet an’ clo’s to put on us back.”56 Yet despite such positive recollections, not all enslaved men succeeded as providers or economic figureheads. This was a site of regret in much abolitionist literature, where authors stressed the restrictions placed upon enslaved men who otherwise hoped to fulfill such roles. Bibb, for example, stated that one of the horrors of slavery was that the enslaved man, “unlike other men,” was “denied the consolation of struggling against external difficulties, such as destroy the life, liberty, and happiness of himself and family.”57 Much of the information on independent economic production from abolitionist literature emphasizes its difficulty and hardships, as well as the limitations imposed by brutal enslavers. In one account, the author highlighted how the restrictive conditions of slavery in Alabama hindered economic success: Most of them were too tired to work, and would throw themselves down anywhere upon the ground, and sleep through the day like so many dogs. Bred to nothing but physical exercise – having only their animal nature cultivated, and constantly over-tasked, what else could be expected?58

54 55 56 57 58

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, 69. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 10, Pt. 5, 2022. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 6, Pt. 5, 2036. Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, 18. Williams, Aunt Sally: or, The Cross the Way of Freedom, 166–167.

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The argument that the conditions of slavery prevented enslaved people from participating in the informal economy is, of course, a compelling one. The message also showcases the common abolitionist desire to highlight the horrors of slavery while challenging the idea of black people being innately lazy. With contemporary ideals stressing the masculine nature of work, these claims were explicitly gendered. William Wells Brown offered one such argument in his 1863 book The Black Man. Brown stated that the black man had already proven himself “better fitted to take care of himself than the slaveholder,” and emphasized that he did not want to be handed anything: “All I demand for the black man is, that the white people shall take their heels off his neck, and let him have a chance to rise by his own efforts.”59 Such depictions were used by abolitionists to strengthen Northern assertions of the virtues of free labor and to highlight that black men – slave or free – had the ability to thrive as providers if given the opportunities white Northern men enjoyed. John Brown, a fugitive slave from Georgia, stressed his desire to “show the world that a ‘nigger’ has quite as much will, and energy, and purpose in him, as any white man, if you only give him fair play.”60 Bibb directly compared his lack of economic success while enslaved to his efforts as a free man, offering a riposte to those who claimed that free blacks were lazy, feckless, and a drain on the public purse.61 After escaping to the North, Bibb recorded his belief that “every man has a right to wages for his labor; a right to his own wife and children.” In a letter to his former enslaver, Bibb stated he was pleased to inform him that he was now able to enjoy “a comfortable living by my own industry,” as well as support his family. This meant he was regarded as a “man.”62 Some antislavery activists claimed that it was impossible for enslaved men to succeed in work or to provide for others due to the oppression they faced. These views were not, however, invariably shared by all. Former slaves who applauded the efforts of fathers, husbands, or guardians, or those who stressed their own success, offered alternative pictures 59 61

62

60 Brown, The Black Man, 47–8. Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, 209. Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, 47. For negative assessments on free blacks, see W. W. Wright, “Free Negroes in the Northern United States,” De Bow’s Review: Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial Progress and Resources, 28.5 (1860), 573–581, 573; A Practical Planter, “Observations on the Management of Negroes; by a PRACTICAL PLANTER,” The Southern Agriculturist and Register of Rural Affairs 5.4 (April 1832), 184. Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, 47.

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of life in slavery. Whether fair or not, economic distinctions were considered by some former slaves to be reflective of different priorities, ideals, or abilities. J. M. Parker, enslaved in South Carolina, felt that, overall, “niggers didn’t have much” while in slavery. His “father was a good mechanic though and he would make anything he wanted.”63 The sense of distinction between the general mass of slaves and his “people” indicated a degree of hierarchy and division relating to success and skills, as well as the significance of small-scale familial loyalties. Mandy Morrow explained that her enslaved grandfather was a carpenter who would “spen’ his extra time, fixin’ up de quatahs” and that “cause ob dat, weuns quatahs am fixed fine.” Morrow made a point of comparing their living conditions: “Co’se, dat am compared wid de udder nigger quatahs ’roun’ dere.”64 Even ex-slaves who stressed the harshness of slavery and the hardships in providing for loved ones addressed comparative economic status in slave communities. Charles Ball, for example, commented: It may well be supposed, that in our society, although we were all slaves, and all nominally in a condition of the most perfect equality, yet there was in fact a very great difference in the manner of living, in the several families. Indeed, I doubt if there is as great a diversity in the modes of life, in the several families of any white village in New York ort [sic] Pennsylvania, containing a population of three hundred persons, as there was in the several households of our quarter.65

These divisions did not develop in a vacuum. Enslaved people made judgments as to the cause of distinctions in material conditions, and these could be related back to gendered ideals and attitudes. Economic differences were sometimes made indicative of personal values and enslaved men’s working activities were held up for comparison. Enslaved men who found success in work were commonly accorded respect by others in the community because of this. However, those who succeeded, or those who had witnessed men’s economic success, did not invariably respect or support those who did not achieve similar results. Historical models stressing solidarity along gendered lines risk neglecting more invidious and individualistic assessments of men’s economic status and occupations in slave communities, as well as how this influenced broader support networks among the enslaved population. Enslaved people who recognized economic distinctions in their communities did not automatically support those less well off, and instead explained 63 64 65

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 10, Pt. 5, 244. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 7, Pt. 6, 2776. Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 202.

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success as the result of effort and industry. These rationalizations included assumptions about people’s abilities and desires to fulfill gender roles and responsibilities. Of course, some enslaved people recognized that success was dependent on relatively fortunate and fluid circumstances, and that shared oppression should inspire a communal ethos. One former slave from Virginia “bought many little comforts for himself and his family” through overwork but also insisted that he helped other men too, as they were “very unhappy people compared to himself as they belonged to hard masters, who stinted their allowance.”66 The recognition that enslavers might arbitrarily restrict the benefits of enslaved people clearly tempered claims of agency in economic efforts, and led some men to support those less fortunate. However, to expect unquestioned political and economic solidarity among the oppressed is to expect human actors to behave in superhuman ways. Some enslaved people sought to assist the less fortunate, yet others believed success came from individual initiative and drive, claiming that had other men worked as hard, they would have reaped a similar reward. Such claims suggest that masculine identities crafted through economic or occupational success were sometimes consolidated through disparaging comparison to others. Gendered ideologies associated with work could divide slave communities. Some former slaves argued that men could achieve a degree of economic success if they had the necessary self-discipline, and, in doing so, claimed that a lack of effort, industry, or responsibility had held other men back. Such claims were part of the rhetoric of responsibility commonly found in free black communities in the North, and advocates of manly industry here sometimes looked back to their activities as slaves to reinforce their personal strength of character. When Josiah Henson wrote in his autobiography of his hope to inspire newly freed slaves with his work ethic, he praised the “indestructible character for energy, enterprise, and self-reliance” that characterized America, stating that “it was precisely the Yankee spirit which I wished to instil into my fellow-slaves, if possible.” Despite declaring this to be a “Yankee” spirit, Henson’s “energy, enterprise, and self-reliance” had played a significant role in his development while enslaved and had, in his mind, elevated him above others in his community.67 Another black activist, John B. Meachum, issued a call to attend the National Colored Convention in Pittsburgh in 66 67

Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 491. Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson, 68–9. On his work ethic while enslaved, see 7–9.

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1847 in which he railed against laziness and a lack of industry, claiming that a lack of effort held black people back. Meachum clearly envisioned households run along patriarchal lines and illustrated this with the moralistic (and gendered) tale of “King Cure-All,” who was industry personified, as compared to “Mr Pull-Down,” whose “laziness pesters him so, that he can hardly live; and I am surprised that he has existed so long.” To further hammer home the masculine significance of work and the immediate need for personal improvement, Meachum assailed his audience: “Don’t sit there any longer. Rise and go to work like men.”68 Some historians suggest that the restrictions to traditional patriarchal roles such as provider were well known within African American communities, and that different standards by which to judge black men developed.69 However, those who had personally succeeded or who had witnessed success did not always seem to agree. Although Meachum directed his appeal to free blacks, his story of earning freedom from slavery was explicitly related to his endeavor and drive: “by working in a saltpetre cave I earned enough to purchase my freedom.” Not content with gaining freedom only for himself, Meachum’s labors enabled him to free his father, wife, and children – and, somewhat impressively, twenty other slaves. His success in doing so was explained by the ostensibly selfeffacing claim: “industry will do a great deal.” Meachum’s pride in his self-made success, and the claim his work ethic had earned him (and others) freedom, indicates how ideals associated with work and masculinity were connected to experiences and identities forged in slavery, as well as in establishing masculine hierarchies.70 Meachum reflected on his experiences as a slave and as a freeman. Those who did not escape slavery also depicted enslaved men’s limited economic success as evidence of initiative and strength of character. When Will Sheets described in his WPA interview that on Saturdays on his plantation, “de ’omans washed, patched, and cleaned up de cabins, and de mens wukked in dey own cotton patches what Marse Jeff give ’em,” he indicated a gendered distinction to independent labor and applauded the endeavors of individual men. In noting that these patches of land were made available to all enslaved men, Sheets implied that this was a level playing field. However, he also offered a barbed comparison of men’s 68 69 70

John B. Meachum, An Address to All the Colored Citizens of the United States (Philadelphia: King and Baird, 1846), 46–50, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/meachum/meachum.html Booker, I Will Wear No Chain, ix. Meachum, An Address to All the Colored Citizens, 3–5.

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efforts in their patches. Failure here resulted from a lack of drive, not the harshness of slavery: “some Niggers wouldn’t have no cotton patch cause dey was too lazy to wuk.” While leisure activities were perhaps more important to some enslaved people in the development of personal dignity and selfhood, others clearly disagreed.71 To Sheet’s annoyance, these “lazy” slaves “was all of ’em right dar Sadday nights when de frolickin’ and dancin’ was gwine on. On Sundays dey laid ’round and slep.”72 Mandy Jones, who had been enslaved in Mississippi, also made economic distinctions emblematic of personal differences. Jones explained that her father earned “ample money” from making cotton baskets at night, but also described how her parents’ frugality and religiosity led to them scorning those who frolicked away their free time.73 The connection between virtue, industry, and economic success indicates the value judgments enslaved people made when assessing other people’s activities and strategies for survival. Such statements suggest a belief among some enslaved people that, if independent economic success came from personal initiative, failure was similarly personalized. Claims that agency and industry might find limited reward strongly resemble the language employed by enslavers to describe the informal economy. As in the discussions on trustees, it is possible that WPA respondents simply sought to please white interviewers in the tense racial environment of the Depression-era South, and that they thus spoke of allowances or “good” behavior to reinforce the plantation idyll of the “Lost Cause.” However, the language of thrift, industry, and independence that enslavers used to describe distinctions in the informal economy could be refashioned by some enslaved people into evidence of a positive personal identity. For some enslaved men, these distinctions enabled them to craft a gendered identity as a masculine provider. The contest for hegemony between enslaver and enslaved was inherently unequal. The repeated claims of slaveholders that they would reward industry, as well as the bestowal of limited privileges or “promotions” in work, could divide slave communities. It is wise to be skeptical of the condescending tone of Southern writers who wrote words such as “[r]ewards should also be made a part of the

71

72 73

David Wiggins, “Leisure Time on the Southern Plantation: The Slaves’ Respite from Constant Toil, 1810–1860,” in Donald Spivey (ed.), Sport in America: New Historical Perspectives (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985), 25–50, 45. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 13, Pt. 3, 241. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Vol. 8, Pt. 3, 1230.

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system, whenever there is displayed particular good conduct; and praise now and then, judiciously used, goes a great way in their management.”74 However, as Solomon Northup wrote, enslaved people were not always “insensible to the praise bestowed” by their enslavers.75 Nor too should we discount the efficacy of rewards because of their relative paucity. Northup’s earnings of seventeen dollars for violin playing led him to triumphantly contemplate his status as “the wealthiest ‘nigger’ on Bayou Boeuf,” and in extreme hardship, measures of wealth and status adapt.76 Some enslaved people who earned material or monetary rewards found a degree of satisfaction or self-worth and shaped their behavior accordingly. With contemporary gender ideals stressing men’s responsibilities as providers and protectors, distinctions and rewards employed by enslavers allowed some enslaved men to fashion a masculine identity. In an article on the general management of a plantation published in 1831, W. W. Hazzard claimed, based on his experiences in Georgia, that the informal economy should be allowed “to encourage industry and increase the comfort and contentment of these people.”77 As a method of control, many enslavers stressed this element to their coerced workforce. Enslavers made use of the informal economy to judge the perceived qualities and characters of their enslaved workforce and to stimulate ever greater profits. Alongside brutal punishments for those deemed lazy or for those who resisted, enslavers offered divisive rewards and incentives to “hard” workers. In deliberately and publicly elevating some enslaved people over others, they were encouraging these individuals to compare themselves favorably to the less industrious. One enslaver, while limiting economic independence for enslaved people on his plantation, offered monetary rewards for good behavior and industry and stressed that hard workers should be “induced to think well of themselves; and the more pride and self-respect you can instil [sic] into them the better they will behave and the more serviceable they will be.”78 Thomas Clay recorded in his plan for managing enslaved people that allowing slaves to sell their own goods to the “master” offered “an excellent opportunity of judging the thrift of each negro.” This awareness could be used to divide slave communities and promote a degree of loyalty from those who had been 74 75 77 78

H. C., “On the Management of Negroes,” The Southern Agriculturalist, and Register of Rural Affairs 7.1 (July 1834), 368. 76 Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, 99. Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, 196. Hazzard, “On the General Management of a Plantation,” 352. Anon, “Management of Slaves,” De Bow’s Review: Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial Progress and Resources, 17.4 (October 1854), 421–426, 424.

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rewarded. Making exclusive use of the masculine pronoun, Clay described how offering enslaved people opportunities in the informal economy connected their interests to the plantation and encouraged good conduct. One of the most effective ways of succeeding in this aim was perceived to be in allowing a degree of autonomy, even if only limited, and stressing to the men involved that their success ultimately related to the effort they expended. While these economic efforts were under the overall direction of the owner, Clay stressed the need to maintain that this was only assistance, “for he will value them more if they are partly the fruit of his own exertion.”79 In utilizing a language of industry and thrift when discussing the informal economy, enslavers were both shaped by and reinforcing the broader gendered discourse on labor and self-making. They were also strategically connecting the interests of the enslaved to the plantation, hoping that their industriousness would extend to their maintenance of plantation order. As Rufus King Jr., the overseer for the Butler estate in South Carolina, wrote in the Southern Agriculturalist in 1828: Every means are used to encourage them, and impress on their minds the advantage of holding property, and the disgrace attached to idleness. Surely, if industrious for themselves, they will be so for their masters, and no Negro, with a well stocked poultry house, a small crop advancing, a canoe partly finished, or a few tubs unsold, all of which he calculates soon to enjoy, will ever run away.80

King believed that his methods worked: “I make on this estate as good crops as most of my neighbours; plant as much to the hand, do as much plantation work, and very often get clear of a crop earlier than many where these encouragements are not held out.”81 Enslavers were, of course, also perfectly willing to denigrate the independent economic activities of their workforce and claim that any such industriousness came about only as a result of the watchful eyes of paternalistic planters. A “Citizen of Mississippi” described “Negroes” as “a thriftless, thoughtless people,” while Solon Robinson claimed that “it is undeniably true, that nothing, but the compulsory power of a master, has ever made him [slave] lead a life of industry, temperance and order; and it is my firm

79 80

81

Clay, Detail of a Plan, 22. Rufus King Jr., “On the Management of the Butler Estate, and the Cultivation of the Sugar Cane, by R. King jr. addressed to William Washington, Esq.,” Southern Agriculturalist (December 1828), 525. King Jr., “On the Management of the Butler Estate,” 525.

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belief, that nothing else has or ever will convert the savage negro into a civilized being.”82 Regardless of their intentions or condescension, enslavers who used the language of industry, and claimed that economic status or opportunities were contingent on effort expended, applied a gendered framework to explain men’s activities and successes. This discourse could be internalized, but also appropriated, to applaud or to justify men’s economic activities to families, the wider community, and to themselves. Some enslaved men made use of this divisive rhetoric and refashioned allowances and forms of accommodation to slavery in the process of crafting a self-respecting sense of self. Enslaved people did not uncritically accept their status as slaves, but the contests and negotiations that marked and shaped the relationships between enslaver and enslaved were viewed differently within the slave community. Activists such as James Redpath condemned men who worked within the system, urging them instead to cultivate “all the habits which would speedily brand them as men of bad morals,” and abolitionists such as Charles Grandison Parsons claimed that only select slaves were “indulged” with independent economic privileges – with the language of indulgence implying paternalistic strategy as opposed to masculine self-making.83 However, the positive emphasis some former slaves placed on men’s autonomy, agency, and industry in work suggests that enslaved people did not unquestionably accept the view that the only admirable activity for enslaved men was outright resistance. Such claims further the argument that there was no single route to survival in slavery, and that enslaved men prioritized different responsibilities and crafted identities built on alternative values. Fiery activists condemned men who negotiated with slavery as dependent or docile; those who sought to provide for themselves and others defended their actions and identities by emphasizing a different set of attributes. In asserting that their success was evidence of hard work and industry, enslaved men claimed a recognizable masculine identity as provider and paternal figurehead. Children or dependents of such men who applauded their efforts did likewise. In this they were enabled by the rhetoric of those who enslaved them; enslavers who justified divisions, hierarchies, and economic allowances for some enslaved men through a discourse of industry and energy offered these men a language with which to elevate themselves and, in doing so, craft a masculine identity. They could also 82 83

Citizen of Mississippi, “The Negro,” 420; Robinson, “Negro Slavery at the South,” 212. Redpath, The Roving Editor, 10; Parsons, Inside View of Slavery, 155.

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make use of this rhetoric to highlight the abuses and hypocrisy of enslavers, and to stress how they had overcome hardships that others simply could not. In line with contemporary sensibilities, the economic success of enslaved men was made indicative of “manly” qualities by showcasing the difficulties overcome and, perhaps more significantly, through emphasizing that some men had risen above others. Through doing so, these individuals, or those who had depended on them, articulated a vision of manhood based on enterprise and responsibility, using a competitive hierarchy to prove themselves. In doing so, some rationalized or refashioned enslavers’ claims that opportunities were available to those willing to seize them. Notwithstanding the cruelty of bondage and enslavers’ tactical abuse of such distinctions, some members of the enslaved population claimed that to succeed in work or in providing for others was a matter of effort and industry, and that to negotiate with enslavers to achieve a degree of economic success was not a mark of dependence or docility. Instead, it was proof of respectability and responsibility. One WPA respondent, having described women holding domestic responsibilities while men hunted or had skilled roles, noted: De niggers was ’lowed to hab a li’l patch of dey own . . . What dey make on dis patch was dey’n, an’ Ole Marster pay ’em money for hit. Nobody didn’t make de niggers wuk dey patches – iffen dey want de grass to look ’em, dat’s all right wid ole Marster.84

Sina Banks, enslaved in Missouri, similarly suggested that economic success was available and related to hard work. The enslaver “let all his slaves know that the harder they worked and the more they raised the more they and their families would have to eat and wear.” Banks recalled gendered distinctions in work, claiming that women had domestic responsibilities – “spinning, weaving, sewing, cooking, mending” – while his father worked in his free time. He was clearly one of the “harder” workers: His efforts enabled him to “buy things for mother to use in our cabin.”85 Sarah L. Johnson, the daughter of an enslaver from Texas, claimed in her WPA interview that “the harder working niggers were allowed to have their own hogs, cows, and chickens,” and stressed that this had a strategic purpose: “Father did this to encourage the slow ones to make

84

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 6, 22.

85

Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Vol. 12, 16.

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better hands of themselves.”86 William Jennison, an enslaver from Alabama, had a proclamation read to his enslaved workers at the beginning of each year, noting that those who were “honest, careful, industrious” would benefit from his more “liberal” work regime, which allowed for overwork. He also emphasized that those who did not work would suffer by comparison: “There will be an account of all lost time kept and those that earn most shall have most. What comes off the lazy shall be added to the industrious.”87 The divisive language of industry and energy used to explain distinctions, and the public nature of such claims, may have offered some enslaved people a sense of satisfaction and self-worth. It may also have fostered division between those who believed themselves to be “industrious” and those who were deemed “lazy.” If material or monetary rewards materialized – and the records demonstrate that many enslavers recognized the efficacy of such strategies alongside the whip – it should not be considered surprising that economic distinctions were accepted by some as based upon hard work and industry. Nor should it be surprising that some of the claims of enslavers were internalized or appropriated by some enslaved people. Joseph Ingraham, in his descriptions of the southwest, claimed that slaveholders allowed “their slaves a small piece of land to cultivate for their own use,” and stressed that hard-working men elevated themselves and their families through their efforts: “those who are industrious, generally make enough to keep themselves and their wives in extra finery and spending money throughout the year.”88 Tying success to industry or virtue could lead to individualistic assessments of the failures of others, and moralistic judgments clearly occurred in slave communities. Henry Bibb, for example, wrote that “the distinction among slaves is as marked, as the classes of society are in any aristocratic community,” stressing that, alongside color, condition, or the relative “importance” of their enslaver, some enslaved people refused “to associate with others whom they deem beneath them in point of character.”89 Of course, slave communities were not always and utterly divided places, but enslaved people who shared certain values and expectations could band together and reinforce their beliefs in the efficacy of industry in conversation with one another or with scapegoats in mind.

86 87 88 89

Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Vol. 10, Pt. 9, 4333. William Jennison, January 1, 1827, in the Robert Jeminson Proclamation to Slaves #2331-z, SHC. Ingraham, The Southwest, 54. Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, 33.

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James Southall explained that on his Tennessee plantation, “iffen dey didn’t work dey didn’t have nothing to eat and wear and de hands what did work wouldn’t divide wid ’em iffen dey didn’t work.”90 Some enslaved men who provided for their families and others, or former slaves who described fathers, husbands, or male role models as having fulfilled such roles, claimed that economic advancement occurred because of their drive, qualities, and skill, making use of a gendered discourse which associated work with masculine values. In doing so, they established comparative hierarchies in which they denigrated less successful men by reference to laziness, dependency, and a lack of industry. Such traits were not merely negative, but were anathema to antebellum concepts of manhood.91 The words of a former slave from Alabama, when describing their father’s efforts in the informal economy, highlight how men’s efforts and achievements were validated in comparison, as well as how the claims of an even playing field were used to justify divisions and hierarchies in slave communities. Laura Thornton recalled that her enslaver allowed enslaved men to participate in the informal economy, noting that “my daddy made his farm jus’ like colored people do now. White man would give him so much ground if he’d a mind to work it.” Thornton’s father “made a crop every year . . . his old master gave him the ground and he made it give him the money.” Her father’s success, though, highlighted a hierarchy to the informal economy based on industry. Thornton claimed that if men had “a mind” to work for themselves, they would achieve a degree of success. Not all men rose to the challenge: “many folks too lazy to git theirselves somethin’ when they have the chance to do it.” To Thornton, these economic failings did not relate to a laudable desire to reject slavery, and nor did they simply reflect the shared hardness of slavery. Her father’s efforts proved otherwise. While some men were simply “too lazy” to succeed, Thornton explained her father’s success by stating: “my daddy wasn’t that kind.”92 A stress on personal ownership and comparative industry could be used to bemoan the actions of thieves. In the narrative of Peter Still’s life as a slave in Alabama, Still’s virtue and work ethic left him in a better position than the other slaves: Vina and her children, thanks to Peter’s industry and self-denial, had always decent clothing, and their cabin boasted many convenient articles of furniture, such as slaves seldom possess. They had also better food than most of their 90 92

91 Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 7, 307. Ball, “To Train Them for the Work,” 67. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 10, Pt. 6, 323–328. Thornton’s father was “jus’ drunk all the time,” but she still clearly applauded his efforts in work.

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companions, for to the scant allowance of bacon and corn meal which was doled out to Vina on Sunday mornings, Peter often found means to add a little coffee and sugar, or pounds of flour.93

Still’s achievements were laudable and indicative of his strength of character. Success, however, came at the price of envy: As the wealth of the young couple increased, they bought a cupboard, and afterwards a chest. This latter article was very necessary, that Vina might lock up her week’s provisions, and any little comforts which Peter brought her; as, if they were exposed, some of the half-clad hungry slaves were sure to steal them.94

The reference to the “half-clad hungry slaves” reflects awareness that economic differences between enslaved people were exacerbated by capricious and cruel enslavers. However, the explicit connection of “industry and self-denial” to Still’s success reveals how contemporaries felt individual, and seemingly attainable, qualities allowed some enslaved men to provide for others. Despite recognizing the inherent brutality of slavery, those who held up the work ethic of some men as an example to follow suggested there were routes to relative success for men based on the effort expended, and that this might serve as a model of uplift for black men in bondage and in freedom. Snippets of black folklore recorded in the postbellum years, which included sayings such as “Don’t trus a man dat nebber got tired in his life,” suggest how gendered conceptions of industry were applauded in communal or familial settings.95 Occasionally a perceived lack of responsibility or drive had personal consequences for enslaved men, suggesting the degree to which economic efforts were held up for comparison. Susan Dabney Smedes, an enslaver from Virginia and Mississippi, wrote in her postbellum memoir of an occasion when an enslaved woman rejected her previous husband. Her reasons for this included his comparative lack of industry. Alcey, having been temporarily separated from her husband, told the enslaver “not to

93

94 95

Kate Pickard, The Kidnapped and the Ransomed: Being the Personal Recollections of Peter Still and His Wife “Vina,” after Forty Years of Slavery (Syracuse: William T. Hamilton; New York and Auburn: Miller, Orton and Mulligan, 1856), 141, 210, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/pickard/pickard.html Pickard, The Kidnapped and the Ransomed, 210. J. Mason Brewer, “Aphorisms from the Quarters,” American Negro Folklore (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), 315–325. Not all folklore applauded hard work, and many tales stressed cunning resistance to exploitation instead. See Rebecca Griffin, “Courtship Contests and the Meaning of Conflict in the Folklore of Slaves,” Journal of Southern History, 71 (November 2005), 769–801.

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bother ’bout sendin’ for him. He lazy an’ puny an’ no ’count.”96 According to Smedes, Alcey had a new, presumably less “no ’count” partner. Contemporaries drew connections between activities in the informal economy and intimate relationships, speaking to broader concerns over perceived male responsibilities and comparisons between men. In one case from King George County, Virginia, in 1830, an enslaved man named Hubard was found guilty of killing a male slave named Tom. While the initial objection related to trading, with Hubard complaining of Tom “having any thing to do with his wife as Tom had sold her a pig,” he apparently feared this spoke to a closer connection. Later, upon passing Tom’s house, he believed he heard “Tom & Grace his wife in conversation . . . a conversation very like persons in sexual intercourse.” This led to Hubard leaping over the fence, “butting [Tom] & then striking him with a hoe helve,” ultimately causing his death.97 The sense that men’s industry and economic prowess might speak to more personal comparisons is certainly implied. In another instance, Andrew, an enslaved man from South Carolina, seemed to feel as though others should not reap the benefits of his industry. Andrew, tried in the Court of Magistrates and Freeholders in the Pendleton and Anderson District of South Carolina for assault and battery, fought against an overseer after being caught stealing from a slave house. When finally captured, Andrew gave the following motive: The reason assigned was that he had things there which he had given to his wife, that she had taken up with another man, & he would not let him wallow on the things he had bought that he had took off some bed clothes spread & that they had been bought with his money.

The enslaved woman involved rejected the claims, arguing that she had made some of the items herself and undercutting his perceived economic dominance. However, Andrew’s self-righteous assertion “that his reasons for . . . taking the things, that his wife had taken up with another man, & that no man would submit to such treatment – that he had bought the things with his own money, that he had got the money by knocking about, by buying & selling things,” suggests how economic success could be personalized, but, also, as something not to be shared with the “undeserving.”98 96 97 98

Susan Dabney Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter (Baltimore: Cushings & Bailey, 1887), 77–8, docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/smedes/smedes.html King George County, Order Book 12, 1827–1833, Reel 32, 411–414, LVA. Pendleton and Anderson District, District, Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Trial Papers, Box C2917, Case 129, 0138–0139, South Carolina State Department of Archives and History (hereafter SCDAH).

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Some enslaved people who claimed that men in their community found limited rewards because of their work ethic perceived a degree of accommodation to slavery as a bargain worth making. These claims could also involve an assertion of independence from their enslavers as well, appropriating and refashioning the gendered discourse associated with work to speak to their personal strength of character. In his narrative of life as a slave, William Green stated that his father was put in the position of foreman because he “was an extra hand to work, and always kept his end up.” As a result, his enslaver “never could find any good or palpable reason why he should not treat him with some sort of decency.” His father’s work ethic eventually led to his enslaver granting him freedom, “the only good deed he ever did in his life.” Green was no apologist for slavery. However, the sense that his father had earned better treatment, as well as his freedom, because of hard work, risked implying that those who were less industrious might be more justly punished.99 Two former slaves who described how their father had worked on Sundays to provide clothes for them maintained that this should not be taken as evidence of enslaver benevolence: “the white folks didn’t give us clothes but they let him all the money he made in his own plot to get them.”100 The sense that this was a just reward for his hard work, as opposed to a gift bestowed by a benevolent “master,” was important to these sisters in retrospect. Others made similar claims when explaining men’s economic success or occupational status. Sampson Willis, enslaved in Texas, felt that “Marster like my father cause he was honest and a hard worker, an Marster let him make what ever he could” on his cotton patch. At the end of the war his industry had left him in a position where he could buy land to give to his children.101 J. W. Fairley, whose interviewer labeled him as “the rich nigger,” relayed a similar story. In the recollections of Fairley’s life, it was noted that he “was born and grew to full manhood as a slave of John Fairley, and being thrifty, and trustworthy was made a leader on the plantation,” later hiring his own time and making a dollar a day. The applause for self-made success, as well as the sense that honesty and thriftiness enabled some to rise above others, was evident in the claim that “when freedom came ‘Old West’ was pretty well fixed, and branched out in business for himself.”102 99 100 101 102

Green, Narrative of Events in the Life of William Green, 7. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, 225. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 10, Pt. 9, 4164. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 7, Pt. 2, 710.

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The belief that hard work, honesty, or responsibility, rather than paternalistic benevolence, explained some men’s relative success suggests that limited accommodation to enslavement could be refashioned into evidence of masculinity, particularly if connected to providing for families or loved ones.103 Charles Green Dortch, interviewed in Arkansas for the WPA project, recalled that his father “seemed to have been more of a pet than a slave.” Despite using the degrading language of ownership, he stressed his father’s abilities and work rate in elevating him above others in the community: “my father was a carpenter, chair maker, and a farmer too . . . he could put a roof on a house beautifully and better than any one I know. Nobody could beat him putting shingles on a house.” This competitive and comparative framework – “beating” or being “better” than the rest – also explained his ascension elsewhere. According to Dortch, his father was “what they called the first man ’round there. He was a regular leader on the plantation . . . next to the master of them, you might say. He was a kind of boss.”104 Another WPA respondent described how his father “had to walk seven miles every Saturday night to see my mother,” but that he had provided for them regardless. He was a talented man who “could do blacksmithing, carpenter work, brick work, and shoe work.” He was neither dependent nor docile, but was instead “somewhat of a genius.” In the interview, Beckwith explained that his father had spoken to him directly about using his skills to perform the provider role, suggesting the importance of this to his father’s selfimage: “I know my father said he worked at night and made shoes for his family.”105 Some enslaved and formerly enslaved people depicted men’s labor as indispensable, reversing the emasculating notion of dependency. In such formulations, deserved recognition of ability, rather than meek accommodation, had allowed these men to support themselves and their loved ones. As one former slave recalled: “my pappy, he was a extra blacksmith and carpenter and ole mars knowed he gwine to haf to hab him to ’sist in

103

104

105

On the connections contemporaries drew between honesty and manhood, see Greenberg, Honor and Slavery; Alex Lichtenstein, “‘That Disposition to Theft, with Which They Have Been Branded’: Moral Economy, Slave Management, and the Law,” Journal of Social History, 21.3 (1988), 413–440. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, 170. Dortch’s grandfather on his father’s side was a white man, which the interviewer believed to explain “the good treatment accorded” to his family. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, 132.

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buildin’ de houses and sich like.”106 The suggestion that the enslaver would have to have his assistance indicates a belief that his personal ability had elevated him despite his status as a slave. Others took this further, making use of the rhetoric of industry and agency to stress their ability to rise from the shackles of slavery and thrive in freedom, as well as to demonstrate the unfairness of slavery. Enslavers who used the language of self-making to justify economic divisions, opportunities, and allowances could not control how this language was used by the enslaved themselves. In the postbellum narrative of William O’Neal’s life as a slave in Mississippi and Louisiana, the author described how O’Neal’s industry and work ethic had “gained him the admiration of all whom he came in contact,” but also that the limited rewards were a shameful indictment of slavery. Despite this, O’Neal’s hard work in the face of adversity reflected his admirable and laudable character; having been hired out to help build a sugar house alongside some northern laborers, by being “industrious and active” O’Neal won “the confidence and respect of these men and became quite a favorite with them.” Having been informed by these men that he should attempt to earn enough money to free himself, O’Neal continued to work hard and, after proving his skills and industry, hired himself out and made enough money to purchase his freedom. While this elevation was conditional on his reputation for honesty, O’Neal’s efforts were not considered evidence of docility and dependency. What made his success more laudable was that it was self-made: “This he had accomplished with no aid from his master; single-handed and alone, with the shackles of a slave upon him, he has risen above his condition and made for himself a name.”107 Enslaved people who believed that independent economic success or ascension on occupational hierarchies required working within the system emphasized how this success spoke to the effort and energy expended, as opposed to any meek acceptance of servility. By making such claims, enslaved people resisted the idea that these men were emasculated, even if rejecting outright rebellion against their oppressors. In doing so they staked a claim to an alternative masculine identity. Indeed, while O’Neal’s early plans for escape had been foiled, he eventually managed to earn enough through overwork to buy his freedom, and that of his wife and brother. He may not have escaped bondage through violent resistance or heroic flight, but he managed to prove his manly qualities in a different

106

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 9, Pt. 3, 20.

107

O’Neal, Life and History, 29, 33–4.

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way. The author stressed that he was “freed by his own efforts and indomitable will and industry,” rather than through the benevolent act of a kind “master.” His industry and endeavor had elevated him and allowed him to overcome “such obstacles as would have daunted the courage of a weaker man.”108 The author recognized the horrors of slavery, yet, as in the earlier assessment of his plans for flight, the emphasis on O’Neal’s personal strength of character as central to his success risked implying that a lack of courage and weakness held other men back. Similar claims were present in the postbellum narrative of Henry Clay Bruce, who had been enslaved in Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia. Bruce applauded enslaved men who refused to submit to abuse, but he refused to condemn those who worked within the system. With an eye to his own experiences, and perhaps influenced by his connection of racial uplift to the divisive postbellum politics of “respectability,” he argued that enslaved men who knew “their own helpless condition . . . did not give up in abject servility, but held up their heads and proceeded to do the next best thing under the circumstances.” Rather than a dichotomy in which total rejection of slavery proved manhood while accommodation equaled emasculation, hard work allowed enslaved men to prove manhood in a different form. Bruce noted that “high-toned and high-spirited slaves, who had as much self respect as their masters” were “industrious, reliable and truthful, and could be depended upon by their masters in all cases.” The sense that, despite bondage, some enslaved men used work to create a masculine identity is evident; so, too, is the sense that masculine identities based on industriousness were consolidated through comparison with others in their community. Bruce both applauded enslaved male rebels and offered an alternative masculinity based on hard work and respectability, which was strengthened through the denigration of a class of men who failed to fulfill the manly responsibilities enjoined by either of these roles. These men had refused to take the rebel’s path to manhood, or to follow an alternative path of respectability and responsibility. In Bruce’s formulation of multiple masculinities, there was a clear sense of hierarchy; there were rebels and strivers, but also skivers. Bruce went on to condemn enslaved men who refused to show responsibility in work for themselves or the slaveholder by noting they were “almost entirely devoid of all the

108

O’Neal, Life and History, 54.

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manly traits of character.”109 Such a divisive position may have been an attempt to stave off racist explanations for the economic problems the black population faced in the postbellum period, with Bruce similarly condemning poor whites for their lack of industry and suggesting a blueprint by which “respectable” black men might inspire others.110 Yet these recollections also suggest the degree to which work acted as a competitive measure for some enslaved men, and that comparative industry might explain differences in condition and treatment. Charles Ball’s fugitive account offers insight into the comparative nature to men’s economic efforts, as well as how enslaved men weighed up alternative forms of manhood in their communities. Ball frequently noted how his “great industry and vigilance” had allowed him to improve his condition, as well as claiming that, despite the meager rations generally given by enslavers, “industrious” and “managing” slaves could “contrive to gather up a great deal to eat.”111 Ball was one such industrious and managing person. He consistently supplemented his rations, as well as those of the families he lived with after having been uprooted from his biological family, by engaging in hunting and overwork. However, his success did not occur in a vacuum: His industry and efforts were frequently set against those of other men in the community. Ball established friendly and supportive relationships in many of the communities in which he lived, but he also emphasized his ability to lead in diverse forms of labor, as in the establishment of a fishery, where Ball “flattered” himself to think he would “become the head man.” When he was made a driver in Georgia he admitted that “the men left under my charge did not consider me a very lenient overseer,” but essentially denigrated their complaints by noting that this simply reflected his own propensity for hard work: “I in truth compelled them to work very hard, as I did myself.”112 109

110

111

Henry Clay Bruce, The New Man: Twenty-Nine Years a Slave. Twenty-Nine Years a Free Man (York: P. Anstadt & Sons, 1895), 39–40, docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/bruce/bruce .html While abolitionists had claimed that emancipation would allow black men to flourish, violence and harsh conditions in the postbellum South hindered such progress. Racist explanations of black failure quickly, if unfairly, took hold among whites, North and South. In highlighting responsibility and respectability, some black activists challenged charges of racial inferiority and argued for a program of uplift with them at the head. See Washington, Up from Slavery, 17. The fact that such politics often denied or minimized the structural oppression black people faced had enduring social, economic, and cultural consequences. On this topic, see Gaines, Uplifting the Race. 112 Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 149, 127. Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 265–67.

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Ball was very clearly willing to help those he felt deserving, but he also offered barbed observations of other men in the community – men whose economic failings highlighted his own sacrifice and skills. In South Carolina, Ball emphasized his contributions to the family economy by claiming that he “generally procured as many rackoons [sic], opossums, and rabbits, as afforded us two or three meals a week.” He also believed that his efforts meant they received more than others: “all the people on the plantation did not live as well as our family did, for many of the men did not understand trapping game, and others were too indolent to go far enough from home to find good places for setting their traps.”113 The sense that men were responsible for familial provision was clear, but so too is a hierarchy in which Ball felt his efforts marked him above other men. While some were apparently less talented than Ball, his highest level of disdain was reserved for those who were “indolent.” Beliefs about the significance of men’s economic contributions are expressed in yet more detail in Ball’s description of how he felt compelled to assist women who suffered from a lack of male support. Having described the general hardships faced by an enslaved woman named Lydia, Ball noted that she was also “one of the women whose husbands procured little or nothing for the sustenance of their families” and that he would give her food instead. Ball’s anger at this abdication of the provider role by the husband – and his personal assumption of the mantle instead – indicates his belief that economic contributions were an expected responsibility of manhood; the cost of this lack of support to Lydia’s health suggests how important this role might be. What inspired most anger in Ball was that this failure of masculine duty was not caused by the horrors of slavery. To Ball, at least, these failings reflected the “lazy indignity” of this man, who had “never been taught to do any kind of labor” and shamefully expected women to work for him instead.114 The sense that this was an inversion of acceptable gender roles indicates tension over perceived masculine rights and responsibilities in slave communities, and also reveals the judgments enslaved people made about one another. Ball’s specific “othering” of this man as an African suggests how exslaves who hoped to inspire support for abolition in the North might indicate their personal identification with wider American beliefs on the significance of personal industry and masculine virtue.

113

Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 195–6.

114

Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 197.

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During this time, Ball lived with another family, sharing his food and contributing to the domestic economy in a friendly environment. While such collaborative efforts could be said to provide “the material substance of a set of affective social relations,” Ball still positioned himself as a superior provider to the ostensible head of the household.115 Despite initially applauding the father’s efforts, Ball suggested that his own additions to the family’s sustenance were more significant: “Before I came to reside in the family . . . they seldom tasted animal food, or even fish.” Although Ball described the husband and father as “a very quiet, worthy man,” he was also “slothful and inactive in his habits,” preferring the relative domesticity of mending baskets and mats in his cabin to the more masculine act of hunting.116 Indeed, “he seldom thought of leaving the cabin again before morning.” While these efforts had offered the family some benefits, “all his acquirements were not sufficient to enable him to provide any kind of meat for his family.” Ball highlighted the significance of his own contributions by direct comparison to the father’s previous work: “After I came among them and had acquired some knowledge of the surrounding country, I made as many baskets and mats as he did, and took time to go twice a week to look at all my traps.”117 The father had provided for his family as best he could, but Ball’s emphasis on the comparative laziness of this man, as well as the gendered contrast of hunting with domestic labor, suggests how masculine identities forged in work could be consolidated in comparison. The emphasis placed by some enslaved and formerly enslaved people on the personal characteristics that allowed for men’s success in economic efforts or in their ascension of occupational hierarchies may have been a politicized challenge to powerful antebellum and postbellum myths about black male laziness. In demonstrating that black men believed in the virtues of hard work, even in the harshest of conditions, activists and writers could more effectively make the case that these men deserved equal status when free. Such statements may also have reflected an understanding of the racial “etiquette” of the Depression-era South, where tacit approval of the “Lost Cause” myths associated with slavery helped black people navigate the racist environment in which they lived. However, these statements also speak to the diverse identities enslaved 115 116 117

Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 212. Nicholas Proctor, Bathed in Blood: Hunting and Mastery in the Old South (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 157. Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 202–03.

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men created in chains and the ways in which ex-slaves justified the actions of male role models through alternative masculine ideals, and offer a challenge to those who sought only to associate masculinity with rebellion or outright resistance. Radical antislavery activists condemned some enslaved men who worked within the system as emasculated collaborators and proslavery propagandists emphasized white benevolence alone as allowing for economic success. However, enslaved people who made use of a language of industry, effort, and energy to describe enslaved men’s activities as providers were able to refashion the ideological dominance of enslavers to make their economic and occupational success emblematic of a positive masculine identity. Enslaved men who earned money or material goods for their families through extra labor articulated their efforts as evidence of industrious, energetic, and responsible manhood. However, in encountering men who had refused or been unable to do the same, they could be forced to explain, compare, and contrast the different actions, identities, and abilities of men in the community. In their insistence that economic opportunities came about through their industry, energy, and responsibility in a competitive hierarchy, some enslaved men staked a claim to manhood. This emphasis on industry and agency, however, meant those who failed to do the same were not automatically portrayed as victims of a repressive regime. Instead, these men could be depicted, with varying degrees of disdain, as lesser men, emasculated not by slavery but instead by a lack of drive, industry, or responsibility.

4 “He am big and ’cause he so he think everybody do what him say” Manhood, Sex, and Power

As demonstrated in the previous chapters, some enslaved men formulated a masculine identity built on resistance, authority, and providing for dependents. However, alternative models of manhood existed, and some enslaved men prioritized different, even conflicting, values associated with masculinity. Some enslaved men accommodated themselves to the sexually exploitative framework of Southern slavery and validated their manhood through expressions of sexual dominance. This included rationalizing sexual access to enslaved women as evidence of their comparative power and virility, as well as attempting to force enslaved women into sexual relations. There is no doubt that the coercive sexual pressures faced by enslaved women came primarily from white men; enslavers and nonenslaving whites used sexual dominance to showcase their masculine power as well as to reinforce white supremacy.1 However, belief in 1

While early, predominantly Southern, histories on the topic were less willing to explore how the threat and realities of sexual exploitation shaped slave life, let alone the extent to which these acts were connected to expressions of white masculinity, scholars from the 1980s onwards revealed how reproductive, bodily, and intimate practices were deeply enmeshed in the power dynamics of bondage. See, for example: Davis, Women, Race & Class; Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow; White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?; Darlene Clark Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance,” Signs, 4.4 (Summer 1989), 912–921; Thelma Jennings, “‘Us Colored Women Had to go through a Plenty’: Sexual Exploitation of African American Slave Women,” Journal of Women’s History, 1.3 (Winter, 1990), 45–74; Catherine Clinton, “‘Southern Dishonour’: Flesh, Blood, Race and Bondage,” in Carol Bleser (ed.), In Joy and Sorrow: Women, Family, and Marriage in the Victorian South, 1830–1990 (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 52–68; Stevenson, Life in Black and White; Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, & Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996);

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an acquisitive and aggressive masculine sexuality crossed racial boundaries and could influence intimate encounters among the enslaved. Sex could be a battleground for enslaved men attempting to shape a masculine identity, and other slaves suffered in these battles.2 Some enslaved men and enslavers alike believed that men should expect dominance when establishing and ordering intimate relationships. Despite knowing a lack of consent in their own lives, some enslaved men were considered by their peers to have used force or collaborated with enslavers to push enslaved women into sexual relations. Rose Williams told her WPA interviewer that the man she was forced to have sex with by her enslaver was “a bully” who expected his dominance to extend across the plantation. While the sexual encounter was ultimately controlled by their enslaver, her pointed description of Rufus as a “bully” suggested a perception of discrepancies in power, as well as revealing the intersections of dominance and desire when considering sexual agency and slavery. Indeed, according to Williams: “He am big and ’cause he so he think everybody do what him say.”3 While acknowledging the level of coercion all enslaved people faced in slavery,

2

3

Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in NineteenthCentury America (New York; Oxford: Oxford University of Press, 1997), 79–115; Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Wilma King, “‘Mad’ Enough to Kill: Enslaved Women, Murder, and Southern Courts,” Journal of Southern History, 92.1 (2007), 37–56; Dorothy Roberts, “The Paradox of Silence and Display: Sexual Violation of Enslaved Women and Contemporary Contradictions in Black Female Sexuality,” in Bernadette J. Brooten (ed.), Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies (New York, 2010), 41–61, 43; Catherine Clinton, “Breaking the Silence: Sexual Hypocrisies from Thomas Jefferson to Strom Thurmond,” in Brooten (ed.), Beyond Slavery, 213–228, 223. This chapter will be focusing on heterosexual relations. This is not to suggest that same-sex relations did not occur in slavery, but the limited evidence makes this topic difficult to explore and somewhat speculative. On same-sex encounters in the period, see: Friend, “Sex, Self, and the Performance of Patriarchal Manhood”; John Saillant, “The Black Body Erotic and the Republican Body Politic, 1790–1820,” in Thomas A. Foster (ed.), Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 303–330; Jeffrey B. Leak, Racial Myths and Masculinity in African American Literature (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005); Darieck Scott, Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination (New York: New York University Press, 2010); Vincent Woodward, The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticsm within U.S. Slave Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2014). Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 5, Pt. 4, 175–178.

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the fact that ex-slaves articulated gendered distinctions relating to sexual exploitation requires us to explore this, too.4 Historical discussions on sex and slavery have been forced to engage with extreme racist depictions of black male sexuality, and these images have been used to excuse terrible abuses and oppression. The lynching that marked the late nineteenth- and twentieth-century South was predominantly, albeit not exclusively, directed at African American men and the justifications for the practice frequently related to the stereotype of black men as irredeemably lustful, most notably in their longing for white women.5 Although the frequency of and visible white support for lynching lessened over the twentieth century, the cultural construction of the hypersexual, even bestial black man has remained strong. Sensationalist nineteenth-century claims of black male hypervirility and sexual prowess would not look out of place in much of contemporary culture, from pop music to pornography, which is frequently predicated on stereotypes of black male physical potency and aggression.6

4

5

6

Portions of this argument were made in David Doddington, “Manhood, Sex, and Power in Antebellum Slave Communities,” in Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie Harris (eds.), Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018). See Trudier Harris, Exorcising Blackness: Historical and Literary Lynching and Burning Rituals (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1984); Robyn Wiegman, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender (Durham; London: Duke University Press, 1995), chapter 3; Martha Hodes, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the 19thCentury South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); W. Fitzhugh Brundage (ed.), Under Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Dora Apel, Imagery of Lynching: Black Men, White Women, and the Mob (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004). The classic account of white stereotypes of black people in slavery is Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1977). See also bell hooks, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (New York; London: Routledge, 2004), xii; Robert Morrell and Lahoucine Ouzgane, “African Masculinities: An Introduction,” in Lahoucine Ouzgane and Robert Morrell (eds.), African Masculinities: Men in Africa from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 1–23, 10; Arthur F. Saint Aubin, “A Grammar of Black Masculinity: A Body of Science,” in Ouzgane and Morrell (ed.), African Masculinities, 24–42. On modern sexual stereotypes, see Thema Bryant-Davis, “Breaking the Silence: The Role of Progressive Black Men in the Fight against Sexual Assault,” in Athena Mutua (ed.), Progressive Black Masculinities (New York; London: Routledge, 2006), 245–261; Gail Dines, “The White Man’s Burden: Gonzo Pornography and the Construction of Black Masculinity,” Yale Journal of Law & Feminism 18.1 (2006), 283–297; Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York; London: Routledge, 2004), 149–181, 206–212.

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Partly because of this legacy, historical and sociological discussions on black men and sex have invariably emphasized the emasculatory connotations of white male abuse, the sexualized violence meted out to black people, and the falsity and self-serving nature of claims that black men were sexually aggressive.7 However, the focus on racial victimization as a unifying factor, while undoubtedly true in many instances, can negate discussions on gendered power dynamics within black communities and neglect the ways in which expressions of black male dominance have affected black women. Descriptions of sexual relationships in which black men acted in aggressive or exploitative ways have at times been subsumed within a broader discourse stressing racial oppression, emphasizing black solidarity in the face of a hostile white society.8 To Thema Bryant-Davis, this overshadowing has entailed a concomitant silencing or shaming of black women who discuss exploitation and violence within their own communities: “the African American community has adopted a protective stance around African American men who are accused of rape . . . it has set up a community system that ignores and even destroys African American survivors of intraracial rape – that is, the rape of African American women by African American men.”9 Scholars have argued elsewhere that it is important to “deconstruct the myth, applied as an antidote to the legendary black rapist, that black men don’t rape.”10 To further this analysis, historians must offer nuanced readings of accounts which laud black male dominance or assertions of virility as proof of a positive or assertive manhood, as well as bring in dissenting opinions on the meanings of such encounters. As this chapter reveals, it is important to explore instances of sexual conflict in black communities, to consider the overlapping structures and intersecting ideologies which allowed some black men to express power over black women, as well as resistance from the women involved.11 Sharon Block 7

8

9 11

For discussions on this, see, for example, Harris, Exorcising Blackness, x; Robert Staples, Black Masculinity: The Black Male’s Role in American Society (San Francisco: The Black Scholars Press, 1985), 2; Patterson, Rituals of Blood, 29–37; Devin W. Carbado, “Black Male Racial Victimhood,” Callaloo, 21.2 (1998), 337–361. This has been noted in Davis, “Breaking the Silence,” 245–261, 246 and Sabine Sielke, Reading Rape: The Rhetoric of Sexual Violence in American Literature and Culture, 1790–1990 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 151–159. 10 Davis, “Breaking the Silence,” 246. Sielke, Reading Rape, 152. Intersecting concerns over race, gender, and class were also manifest in (relatively) supportive treatment of some enslaved men who had sexual encounters, consensual and otherwise, with poor white women. See Dianne Miller Sommerville, Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Tim

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has emphasized the need to interrogate “acts not necessarily identified as rape in early America that nevertheless contained some degree of extorted or forced sexual relations,” and this chapter will examine sexual encounters in which some form of unwillingness to engage in sex was acknowledged or expressed.12 It shows how some enslaved men expected or rationalized sexual access to enslaved women as evidence of comparative masculine power. While ultimately constrained within a racist and oppressive system, some enslaved men believed that they could, and even should, be sexually dominant, using this to construct an identity based on virility and power. Although enslaved relationships have been “characterized as broadly egalitarian and supportive,” violent relationships existed in slave communities and some enslaved men harmed partners and dependents.13 Jeff Forret has most recently addressed the conflict that could be found within slave unions, yet much influential work on the topic emphasizes the external pressures that influenced their actions, or stresses instead a collective resistance to sexual exploitation.14 This risks understating the degree of sexual agency some ex-slaves attributed to select men, as well as flattening enslaved men and women’s complex responses to slavery as an institution. Notwithstanding the structural constraints and the shared oppression of slavery, gendered ideologies crossed racial borders and normalized forms of intimate violence practiced predominantly by men, such as refusing to accept a partner leaving, and enslaved men sometimes found support from white male enslavers in enforcing dominance over enslaved women. In seeing intimate violence or sexual coercion as a means of “fill[ing] the void” left by enslaved men’s emasculation elsewhere, we risk understating the degree to which gendered violence

12 13

14

Lockley, “Crossing the Race Divide: Inter-Racial Sex in Antebellum Savannah,” Slavery & Abolition, 18 (December 1997), 159–173. Block, Rape and Sexual Power, 3. West, Chains of Love, 70. On intimate conflict, see Stevenson, Life in Black and White, 206–258; Christopher Morris, “Within the Slave Cabin: Violence in Mississippi Slave Families,” in Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy (eds.) Over the Threshold: Intimate Violence in Early America (New York; London: Routledge, 1999), 268–287; Forret, Slave Against Slave, chapter 6. Morris, “Within the Slave Cabin,” 273; Bertram Wyatt-Brown, “Mask of Obedience: Male Slave Psychology in the Old South,” American Historical Review, 93.5 (1988), 1228–1252, 1246; Foster, “The Sexual Abuse of Black Men,” 454–458. Some commentators used the idea of emasculation in slavery to explain black male sexual aggression in the twentieth century. See Staples, Black Masculinity, 64.

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toward women could be conceived of as a recognizable demonstration of manhood in black and white communities of the antebellum South.15 Enslaved men who faced reproductive pressures did not always see themselves as victims and examples of sexual violence among the enslaved were not purely reducible to racial discrimination. Some enslaved men articulated sex with enslaved women as a form of “privilege” or as a recognition of their manhood, and black and white men could accept a degree of coercion or force in structuring intimate relationships. One WPA respondent noted that during slavery “there were some white men” who “forced the slave women to do what they wanted to do.” Hawkins, whose family were enslaved in Alabama, also claimed “there were slave men kept that forced slave women to do what they wanted to do. And if the slave women didn’t do it, the masters or the overseers whipped them till they did. The women were beat and made to go to them.”16 Notwithstanding the ultimate power of the white enslavers, the emphasis on male agency, even collaboration, in the context of forced sex for enslaved women complicates the idea that all enslaved men felt victimized or emasculated by the sexual pressures of slavery.17 Enslaved men could negotiate a life and identity within bondage that did not correspond with historical notions of solidarity or mutual support: Masculine identities created in slavery were not inevitably positive for all in the community or based on models of collective survival. Exploring how sex was used by some enslaved men to form a masculine identity built on dominance and power, as well as the tension this caused, illustrates how the enslaved conceived of their struggles in bondage beyond a racial dichotomy. Despite the ostensible unity of enslaved status, layers of patriarchal thinking shaped intimate relations between enslaved men and women. To return to the previous chapter, Charles Ball’s disdain for Lydia’s husband, who “often beat and otherwise maltreated his wife,” shows the problems in assuming all men viewed their responsibilities and rights uniformly. Ball clearly regretted the abuse Lydia faced, but her husband felt hard done by in his position, bemoaning that he had “but one woman to do any thing for him.” Despite acknowledging this man’s violence toward his wife, neither the overseer nor Ball 15 17

16 Forret, Slave Against Slave, 263. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 9, Pt. 3, 218. For a discussion on the intersections of race, gender, and patriarchy in the Caribbean, see: Trevor Burnard, “‘Impatient of Subordination’ and ‘Liable to Sudden Transports of Anger’: White Masculinity and Homosocial Relations with Black Men in Eighteenth Century Jamaica,” in Thomas A. Foster (ed.), New Men: Manliness in Early America (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 134–155.

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felt they had the power “to remove her from the presence and authority of her husband.”18 This man considered his actions as compatible with masculine codes, expecting female subservience in the domestic and, likely, intimate sphere.19 Other men in the community may have resented his actions, but they clearly accepted the patriarchal framework that facilitated male dominance, even violence. These dynamics crossed racial boundaries. In Virginia in 1855, an enslaved man named Frank admitted to having killed his wife, Violet, but hoped to mitigate his sentence by claiming he had “done it in a passion . . . he had not intended to hit her with the eye of the axe, but with the axe helve.”20 Such a claim suggests that some form of force was considered acceptable for enslaved men seeking to control their partners. In one violent encounter in Virginia in 1859, an enslaved man named Scott was found guilty of killing his former wife, Priscilla, following an argument over payment for washing. Scott was found guilty of “feloniously and maliciously striking, beating, kicking, chocking [sic] and stamping” on his former wife. One enslaved witness described how they found him “with his knees on her stomach – raising up and letting his weight come down on her, saying at the same time ‘You damned bitch, I mean to kill you.’” Scott had left his former partner for another woman but still expected to keep his earlier privileges, and this occasioned conflict. Priscilla informed him, “I won’t give you any coat, go along and stay where you have been staying.” This response infuriated Scott, who told his former partner: “I will have my coat this night, and damn you, I mean to kill you.” In describing the case, Forret has noted the provocation Scott received. However, the level of violence seen in Scott’s response to Priscilla – as well as the support he received from local white men, even after she died of her wounds – suggests how intimate violence in the American South could be rationalized within a patriarchal framework that expected and normalized male dominance.21 According to Scott’s defenders: The assault grew out of a sudden and unexpected quarrel – the parties had previously cohabited, and jealousy had sprung up in the breast of the woman – she provoked and aggravated the man by refusing to give him his clothes, and

18 19

20 21

Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 197. While Ball does not specify sexual abuse, they had a child together. The father clearly loved his child, but the reference to “otherwise maltreated” might suggest his expectations of dominance extended to sexual relations. Executive Papers, Joseph Johnson, Box 10, Folder 9, March 19, 1855, LVA. Forret, Slave Against Slave, 276.

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further provoked him by irritating language – under the heat of sudden passion Scott commenced his attack and doubtless only meant to beat.22

Contrary to racialized constructions of black male sexuality, enslaved men were not innately licentious or violent; they were not, as Thomas Jefferson claimed, naturally “more ardent after their female.”23 However, enslaved men adapted differently to life in an institution that legitimized sexual exploitation and demanded reproductive sex. They also responded in diverse ways to a society that commonly articulated male sexual dominance as part of a masculine identity.24 Although historians have explored these issues in relation to white masculinity, studies on enslaved men have understated how sexual and intimate dominance was viewed as an expression of manhood.25 Perhaps with the enduring myth of the bestial black rapist in mind, scholars have instead argued that “black men did not embrace a phallocentric idea of manhood voluntarily or even consciously.”26 Coercion or violence within slave communities has thus been viewed as part of the broader oppression of bondage. Yet to argue that some enslaved men expected sexual access to enslaved women or employed coercive measures in intimate relationships is not to claim that they were hypersexual bucks unable to control their sex drive. Exploring how enslaved men constructed a masculine identity within the sexually exploitative framework of antebellum slavery, as well as the tensions that erupted when enslaved men expected or forced sex with enslaved women, highlights that enslaved men did not share a single sense of what it meant to be a man. It also further reveals the division and discord that could mark slave communities. Attempts to investigate intimacy among the enslaved are complicated by the fact that sexual relations were a particularly fierce battleground for pro- and antislavery forces. Proslavery figures commonly emphasized the upright morality and paternalistic manhood of Southern planters in contrast to their 22 23

24 25

26

Executive Papers, Henry A. Wise, Misc. Reel 4217, Box 20, Folder 6, 317–323, LVA. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954; first published Paris 1784), chapter 15. On controversies relating to Jefferson, sex, and slavery, see Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997). Wood, “Gender and Slavery,” 524. On the diverse justifications contemporaries gave to explain male sexual dominance, see Block, Rape and Sexual Power, chapter 1. Block, Rape and Sexual Power; Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches; Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor; Clare Lyons, Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730–1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Friend, “Sex, Self, and the Performance of Patriarchal Manhood.” Black, Dismantling Black Manhood, 127.

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unrestrained and libidinous slaves, whose actions were shaped by the “predominance of passion” in their cultural, emotional, and racial makeup.27 Writers in popular agricultural journals stressed the “inherent characteristics of laziness, determined ignorance, sensuality, vice, filth, and improvidence” that marked out black people.28 Planters such as Charles Manigault felt that without the “moral control” imposed by enslavers, black people would lapse “rapidly back to their Ancestral State of Savage Life in Africa,” and inevitably fall into “Degenerate & disgusting” ways.29 Proslavery contemporaries therefore commonly stressed their attempts to promote stability among innately licentious people. Matthew Estes claimed that while “sexual crimes are thought to be very common among our blacks,” he was confident that “the extent of the vice among our Slaves, has been greatly overrated.” For Estes, this was a result of the guiding hand of benevolent Southern masters: “Most of our slaves live in the country on the plantations of their masters, where they early marry, and live as happily together as any people in the world.”30 While Estes claimed success, others stressed the need to remain vigilant. A Mississippi planter noted: “As to their habits of amalgamation and intercourse, I know of no means whereby to regulate them, or to restrain them.” This planter “attempted it for many years by preaching virtue and decency, encouraging marriages, and by punishing, with some severity, departures from marital obligations.” Still, “it was all in vain.”31 Proslavery authors who emphasized the civilizing potential of slavery thus stressed the necessity of intervention in the intimate sphere, claiming that enslavers must not be indifferent “to the degree in which the happiness of

27

28 29 30 31

Holland Nimmons McTyeire, “Master and Servant,” in Holland Nimmons McTyeire (ed.), Duties of Masters to Servants: Three Premium Essays (Charleston: Southern Baptist Publication Society, 1851), 29. The labeling of enslaved women as sexually licentious, particularly in comparison to “honorable” white women, helped justify abuse of black women. On white female sexuality, see Nancy F. Cott, “Passionless: An Interpretation of Victorian Sexual Ideology, 1790–1850,” Signs, 4.2 (1978), 219–236; Block, Rape and Sexual Power, 12; Lyons, Sex among the Rabble, 289–295. On the impact of sexualized depictions of enslaved women, see material listed in footnote 1. Wright, “Free Negroes in the Northern United States,” 575. Charles Manigault, “The Close of the War_The Negro,” Box 2, Series 2, Folder 9, in the Manigault Family Papers #484, SHC. Estes, A Defense of Negro Slavery, 115. Anonymous, “Management of Negroes upon Southern Estates,” De Bow’s Review: Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial Progress and Resources, 10.6 (June 1851), 621–627.

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their servants is liable to be affected by licentiousness rioting among them.”32 In much Southern writing there was a sense that enslavers must take care to ensure sexual relations among the enslaved were peaceful. In doing so, they reinforced racist narratives but also asserted their mastery and paternalistic dominance. However darkly ironic this may be, in both private writings and public pronouncements, enslavers claimed to protect otherwise helpless enslaved women from their aggressive male counterparts. One enslaver from Georgia piously explained: “I never permit a husband to abuse, strike or whip his wife.”33 James Green Carson and Bennet H. Barrow recorded in their plantation journals the punishments for men who failed to live up to such ideals.34 Despite claims as to the “civilizing” potential of slavery, and with no little cognitive dissonance, some enslavers argued they regulated sexual relations in the quarters to prevent enslaved men from abusing enslaved women. Where proslavery writers depicted licentious black people kept in check by paternalistic planters, the abolitionist movement focused on the sexual exploitation they viewed as endemic among the enslaver class.35 In the preface to John Andrew Jackson’s slave narrative, the writer noted how, in slavery, “every child and feeble woman is at the brutal mercy of a brutalized man.”36 Within this framework, it was the moral, spiritual, and sexual failings of white male enslavers that harmed enslaved people. Abolitionists were bound by moralistic conventions in their writings – with Moses Roper, for example, hinting at sexual punishments of women yet suggesting this was “too disgusting to appear in this narrative” – but not all authors were so circumspect.37 Darlene Clark Hine has demonstrated that “virtually every known nineteenth-century female slave narrative contains a reference to, at some juncture, the ever present threat and reality of rape”

32 33 34 35 36 37

McTyeire, “Master and Servant,” 29. Hazzard, “On the General Management of a Plantation,” 351. July 13, 1862, Daily Record Book, Airlie Plantation Records, 00500, DBC; Barrow, Diary, 18, LLMVC. Carol Lasser, “Voyeuristic Abolitionism: Sex, Gender, and the Transformation of Antislavery Rhetoric,” Journal of the Early Republic, 28.1 (2008), 83–114. John Jackson, The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1862), iv, docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jackson/jackson.html Moses Roper, A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper, from American Slavery (Berwick-upon-Tweed: Published for the author, 1848), 16, docsouth.unc.edu/ neh/roper/roper.html

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and some authors pushed the boundaries of contemporary sensibilities.38 William Anderson defended his decision to include instances of white men sexually exploiting enslaved women, stating that this was integral to the system: “I know these facts will seem too awful to relate, but I am constrained to write of such revolting deeds, as they are some of the real ‘dark deeds of American Slavery.’”39 In abolitionist discourse, the abuse of enslaved women was framed as a white-on-black crime; instances of sexual immorality among the enslaved were hence presented as shaped by white male enslavers and exploitative sexual relationships were forced upon unwilling enslaved people. One abolitionist argued that “it is impossible in the nature of things, that slaves can be virtuous and moral.”40 Charles Grandison Parsons declared: “all the cruelties and the tortures, – so far as required to enforce submission, – the sundering of families, the degradation, and the wholesale concubinage, are inseparable from the system.”41 Henry Bibb gave one such example in his narrative, noting with disgust the manner in which his enslaver tied Bibb’s plea for marriage so thoroughly with sex: “When I went to ask his permission to marry Malinda, his answer was in the affirmative with but one condition, which I consider too vulgar to be written in this book.”42 The leering reproductive demands of the enslaver, set in stark contrast to Bibb’s virtuous love for Malinda, were clearly designed to highlight the hypocrisy of a system that demanded sexual activity from enslaved people yet condemned them for this. Abolitionist attacks, therefore, commonly emphasized the sexual shamelessness of Southern white men, as in Bibb’s statement that proslavery figures defended “their ‘peculiar institution’” so strongly because “licentious white men could not carry out their wicked purposes among the defenceless colored population as they now do, without being exposed and punished by law, if slavery was abolished.”43 Harriet Jacobs offered 38

39 40

41 42 43

Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women,” 912. See also Margaret Washington, “‘From Motives of Delicacy’: Sexuality and Morality in the Narratives of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs,” Journal of African American History, 92.1 (2007), 57–73. Anderson, Life and Narrative of William J. Anderson, 19. E. Thomas, A Concise View of the Slavery of the People of Colour in the United States; Exhibiting Some of the Most Affecting Cases of Cruel and Barbarous Treatment of the Slaves by Their Most Inhuman and Brutal Masters; not Heretofore Published: and also Showing the Absolute Necessity for the Most Speedy Abolition of Slavery, with an Endeavour to Point out the Best Means of Effecting It (Philadelphia: E. Thomas, 1834), 47. Parsons, Inside View of Slavery, 39. Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, 40. Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, 199.

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another such attack in her description of the horrifying abuse enslaved girls faced through puberty: once a girl reached around “fourteen or fifteen, her owner, or his sons, or the overseer, or perhaps all of them begin to bribe her with presents. If these fail to accomplish their purpose, she is whipped or starved into submission to their will.”44 In Jacobs’ narrative, among many others, white men were protected by racial and gendered privilege and terrorized enslaved women at will: the sexual exploitation enslaved people experienced was thus inextricable from the wider structural abuses of slavery. In contrast to the lascivious white men depicted in such accounts, enslaved men were portrayed as heroic and romantic, compassionate and kind. Maria Diedrich has argued that such depictions related from the desire of antislavery activists to challenge harmful gender stereotypes: “as people who were constantly denounced as brutes . . . [fugitive authors] insisted on their capacity of controlling their carnal desires, of experiencing love in the same richness and complexity as any other responsible human being.”45 Comparing the systematic exploitation of enslaved women by white men with enslaved men’s virtuous self-control thus showcased the hypocrisy of a system that institutionalized rape by “honorable” white men yet judged black men as irredeemably bestial. Claims of white male deviance were reinforced when describing the horrors of forced marriages in slavery. While abolitionists acknowledged that enslaved women were compelled into having sex with enslaved men, the men involved typically had no agency in the process. The dominance of the white enslaver and the overwhelming structures of racial oppression were emphasized instead. Henry Bibb, when recounting his experiences while enslaved in Louisiana, described how he “heard the Deacon tell one of the slave girls, that he had bought her for a wife for his boy Stephen, which office he compelled her fully to perform against her will.”46 In this forced marriage, Stephen was simply a pawn of the Deacon. When black men were described as having a degree of agency in oppressive relationships, they were depicted as dehumanized by slavery and offered up as the inverse of honorable manhood. In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Sambo, a brutal slave driver, is “given” an unwilling enslaved woman and expects submission. Stowe 44 45 46

Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 79. Maria Diedrich, “‘My Love Is Black as Yours Is Fair’: Premarital Love and Sexuality in the Antebellum Slave Narrative,” Phylon, 47 (1986), 238–247, 240. Bibb, Narrative of the Life of Henry Bibb, 112.

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painted Sambo as a leering and sadistic figure but emphasized how such behavior only made sense in the context of his wider degradation: Simon Legree had trained his drivers “in savageness and brutality as systematically as he had his bull-dogs.”47 Other antislavery authors maintained that honorable men refused to comply with the sexual demands of their enslavers, suggesting that true manhood was demonstrated through respect for monogamous and virtuous couplings. One author explained how an enslaved man demanded to be allowed to follow his partner down south, stating that “he could not leave his wife.” While his enslaver claimed he could simply “get another,” the man’s refusal to countenance such a split was conditioned by his understanding of masculine responsibility: “Why, massa, don’t you think I am a man!”48 A masculine identity built on bodily restraint, monogamy, and moral virtue would no doubt have appealed to the religiously motivated members of the abolitionist community, and it would also have spoken to a northern audience used to idealized images of men as the upholders of virtue and protectors of women.49 Henry Highland Garnet made clear that no enslaved man worthy of the name should accept the assault of his loved one and stressed that sexual demands from enslavers were a part of racial domination that enslaved men must violently reject if they were to truly earn manhood. Garnet thundered: You act as though you were made for the special use of these devils. You act as though your daughters were born to pamper the lusts of your masters and overseers. And worse than all, you tamely submit while your lords tear your wives from your embraces and defile them before your eyes. In the name of God, we ask, are you men?50

In much antislavery literature, then, the depravity of white men was compared to the honor of enslaved men who protected women and refused to compel them into sex against their will. Charles Ball showcased how such ideals even extended to white women, helping to catch the attackers of a young white girl irrespective of his knowledge that white 47 48 49

50

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; first published Boston, 1852), 354–63. R. G. Williams, The Anti-Slavery Record, 1.7 (New York, July 1835), 82. On models of masculinity which prioritized restraint and sexual virtue, see: Charles E. Rosenburg, “Sexuality, Class and Role in 19th-Century America,” American Quarterly, 25.2 (May 1973), 131–153; Thomas A. Foster, “John Adams and the Choice of Hercules: Manliness and Sexual Virtue in Eighteenth-Century British America,” in Foster (ed.), New Men, 217–235; Roth, Gender & Race, 77–80. Garnet, “A Former Slave Appeals,” 125.

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men had no such qualms about abusing enslaved women.51 In another recollection of slave life, “Uncle Stephen,” enslaved in Louisiana, described how he had been split from a previous partner and forced to take a new wife by his enslaver. Rather than passively accept this, he chose to maintain his previous relationship and helped the woman and others to see their former partners: “as I could read and write I used to write out passes for myself, so I could go and see my old wife; and I wrote passes for the other men on the place, so they could go and see their wives that lived off the place.” He would even “write out passes and slip them to her husband that lived on a neighboring plantation, so he could come and see her.”52 The emphasis on monogamy and the emotional and protective roles expected of an honorable man is clear. The author described another man who, despite pressure to take a new sexual partner, chose to heroically suffer rather than accept the demands of his enslaver: “he loved his wife and could never love any other woman.” This man continually made illicit trips to his wife, heroically evading the patrollers when possible or stoically taking brutal punishments when caught. The admiration for this man’s refusal to accede to his enslaver’s sexual demands is clear, as is the suggestion that this related to his sense of manhood as being conjoined with fidelity and emotional faithfulness: Sometimes they would catch Richard and drive four stakes in the ground, and they would tie his feet and hands to each one and beat him half to death. I tell you, sometimes he could not work. Marster did not care, for he had told Richard to take some of our women for a wife, but Richard would not do it. Richard loved Betty, and he would die for her.53

With the depictions of enslaved men fighting against the sexual demands of their enslavers, protecting women from lascivious white men, or looking for intimate relationships based on emotional connection, love, and mutual respect, much antislavery material painted a picture in which monogamy and self-restraint was closely connected to the masculine protector role. They also portrayed images of close-knit communities

51 52

53

Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 151–192. Octavia V. Rogers Albert, The House of Bondage, or, Charlotte Brooks and Other Slaves, Original and Life Like, As They Appeared in Their Old Plantation and City Slave Life; Together with Pen-Pictures of the Peculiar Institution, with Sights and Insights into Their New Relations as Freedmen, Freemen, and Citizens (New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1890), 106–108, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/albert/albert.html Albert, The House of Bondage, 25.

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where enslaved men and women recognized the sexual demands of their enslavers as something they must collectively resist to survive. Politicized writings on black male sexuality in slavery present extreme divides, with depictions of enslaved men veering from innately sexually aggressive to near-saintly compassionate companions. Alternative sources addressing intimate matters contain their own problems, but court records offer a window into tension and violence in enslaved relationships and the ways in which expectations of masculine dominance sometimes led to conflict in the quarters. While mediated and framed within the legislative structures of white dominance, they give access to the voice of some enslaved people and highlight perceived and real transgressions from societal norms.54 In the words used to discuss, defend, or prosecute sexual or violent actions, they also provide a window into gendered values and attributes. Alongside court records, the oral histories of the WPA offer insights into sexual dynamics and tension within slave communities. The culture of dissemblance that Darlene Clark Hine argued African American women used to “protect the sanctity of inner aspects of their lives” sometimes precluded detailed discussions with white interviewers on sexual relations. Attempts to protect black people from collective trauma – or simply to avoid repeating stories that caused personal harm – could likewise shape the decisions ex-slaves made about how to discuss sex in slavery, whether with their family or with the limited black interviewers of the WPA.55 One ex-slave simply didn’t want to talk to her children about slavery “case I doan want ’em ter git stirred up ’bout it.”56 Considering how lynching in the postbellum South was legitimized by white southern claims of black male deviancy, it is no surprise that sexual conduct was a tense topic of discussion in black/white interactions. Yet despite the tension, dissemblance, and caveats, many WPA respondents provided information on sexual dynamics and intimate relationships in slavery. Historians have used these testimonies to examine personal identities and communal dynamics among the enslaved, and many have argued

54 55

56

On the limitations and benefits of court records, see Forret, Slave Against Slave, 9–15. Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women,” 915. On family discussions and sex, see: Anthony Parent Jr. and Susan Brown Wallace, “Childhood and Sexual Identity under Slavery,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 3.3 (1993), 363–401, 368; Stevenson, “Gender Conventions, Ideals and Identity,” 171. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 15, Pt. 2, 413. One WPA respondent even claimed his parents’ desire to keep him innocent meant that he was “33 years of age before he knew he was a grown man, or how life was given humans.” Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 17, 268–71.

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they present positive images of enslaved relationships and of enslaved men. According to Fraser, in recollections of intimate unions some WPA respondents painted a picture of black male morality which was “far removed from white images of the sexually menacing and aggressive black male . . . the men in these narratives were defined as both unassuming and modest in the context of a relationship that was intimately connected to sexual desire.”57 Emily West likewise noted that “South Carolina slave testimony provides virtually no cases of slave husbands abusing wives” and that such abuse was, moreover, “so completely against the positive tone of the slave testimony that it seems inconceivable that it could have been a significant part of the inner thoughts of exslaves.”58 West addressed the possibility of sexual exploitation within the quarters but concluded that enslaved men “did not seek to imitate the behavior of white men by systematically abusing enslaved females.”59 Yet, while enslaved men did not have the structural power that white enslavers wielded or share their racial animus, the language employed by some WPA respondents, with testimony drawn from across the American South, as well as information from court records and trials, suggests that belief in masculine dominance sometimes extended into sexual relations. The racial violence that enslaved people experienced in slavery, and their intimate agency, was influenced and marked by gendered distinctions. Some enslaved men perceived intimate relations as competitive encounters in which to prove dominance over others. This could lead to violence, tension, and strife. Although former slaves were often cautious in their language, discussions of forced marriages and reproductive pressures offer significant insights into sexual exploitation within slave communities.60 Assertions that enslavers forcefully interfered with the relationships of their slaves were a significant component of abolitionist attacks on the immorality of the system.61 J. C. Hathaway, for instance, deplored “the buying up of human cattle in the slave-breeding States” of the Upper South and their 57 58 59 60 61

Fraser, Courtship and Love, 80. West, “The Debate on the Strength of Slave Families,” 238. Emily West, “Tensions, Tempers, and Temptations: Marital Discord among Slaves in antebellum South Carolina,” American Nineteenth Century History, 5.2 (2004), 1–18, 7. Escott, Slavery Remembered, 45; Clinton, “Southern Dishonor”; Smithers, Slave Breeding, 101. Steven Deyle, Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), chapter 6.

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sale to the Deep South.62 Theodore Dwight Weld emphasized the significance of white sexual exploitation to the increase in the enslaved population, describing how enslavers sought to improve their “stock,” “on the same principle that farmers endeavour to improve their cattle by crossing the breed.”63 The animalistic imagery employed by antislavery activists took aim at the false claims of planter benevolence and emphasized the forced degradation of enslaved people. Arguments on breeding were frequently connected to concerns over the expansion of slavery into the Deep South and emerging Southwest, with abolitionists framing reproductive pressure as a deliberate policy of ruthlessly profit-driven enslavers. Proslavery contemporaries such as Charles Manigault argued that the increase of the enslaved population “shew that, our slaves, were not in that state of Discomfort, & oppression (as fanaticks proclaim),” but antislavery activists starkly rejected such claims.64 According to abolitionists, there was nothing natural about this increase, which was shaped instead by the cynical sexual exploitation of a brutal enslaving class whose “progeny is equal to so many dollars and cents in their pockets.”65 As Frederick Douglass explained, the laws that passed slavery downward through the status of the mother allowed enslavers to make the “gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable.”66 Debates exist over the mechanisms employed, but enslavers were deeply interested and depressingly invested in their slaves’ reproductive lives, particularly with the closing of the Atlantic slave trade by 1808.67 62

63

64 65 66 67

J. C. Hathaway, preface to William Wells Brown, “Narrative of Williams Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave written by himself,” in Gilbert Osofsky (ed.), Puttin’ On Ole Massa, The Slave Narratives of Henry Bibb, William Wells Brown, and Solomon Northup (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969), 177. Theodore Dwight Weld, American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839), 16, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/weld/weld .html Manigault, “The Close of the War_The Negro,” SHC. Henry Box Brown, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself (Manchester: Lee & Glynn, 1851), 9, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/brownbox/brownbox.html Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 4. Richard Sutch, “The Breeding of Slaves for Sale and the Westward Expansion of Slavery, 1850–1860,” in Stanley L. Engerman and Eugene D. Genovese (eds.), Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 173–211; Edward Baptist, “‘Cuffy,’ ‘Fancy Maids,’ and ‘One-Eyed Men’: Rape, Commodification, and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States,” American Historical Review, 106.5 (2001), 1619–1650; Wilma Dunaway, The African American Family in Slavery and Emancipation (New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 274; Richard Steckel, “Demography and Slavery,” in Paquette and Smith (eds.),

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The demographic conditions of US slavery and the economic desires of enslavers led them to interfere in the most intimate areas of enslaved people’s lives.68 One need only consider court cases over “property” disputes to highlight enslavers’ concerns with sexual potential, as when attempting to regain money following the purchase of “unsound” women. In one dispute between a slave trader and enslaver in Arkansas in 1853, the court heard how the purchased woman was found to be “incapable of bearing children without endangering her life, in consequence of which she was of little or no value.”69 Such instances highlight the extent to which enslaved sexuality was a concern of enslavers, as well as the potential ramifications of “success” and “failure” in this realm for enslaved people. Alongside personal abuse from enslavers, the enslaved population were keenly aware of the reproductive pressures associated with their intimate unions, with one ex-slave from Navarro County, Texas, noting: “ma mother and father was slavery time married darkies dat didn’t mean nuthin’ den day but jest raisin’ mo’ darkies and every slave darky woman had ter do dat whether she wanted to or not.”70 The emphasis on reproductive pressure as particularly harmful for enslaved women – who, of course, faced the burden and dangers of pregnancy and childbirth – suggests how sexual dynamics were viewed through a gendered, as well as a racial, lens. Some former slaves were willing to shatter any romantic illusions white interviewers might hold with regard to plantation life, noting the extent to which enslavers interfered in their intimate affairs. Betty Powers, who had been enslaved on a cotton plantation in Harrison, Texas, was asked about marriage among the slaves and offered her interviewer the following response: “Did we’uns have weddin’s?

68 69

70

Oxford Handbook of Slavery, 643–663. Richard Follett, “‘Lives of Living Death’: The Reproductive Lives of Slave Women in the Cane World of Louisiana,” Slavery & Abolition, 26.2 (2005), 289–304; Dusinberre, Them Dark Days, esp. chapters 4, 8; Pamela D. Bridgewater, “Ain’t I a Slave: Slavery Reproductive Abuse, and Reparations,” UCLA Women’s Law Journal (2005), 90–161; Smithers, Slave Breeding. Two prominent scholars of the internal slave trade, Michael Tadman and Steven Deyle, are skeptical of “stud farms,” but acknowledge the coercive sexual power enslavers wielded. Tadman, Speculators and Slaves, 122–129; Deyle, Carry Me Back, 47. Clinton, “Southern Dishonour,” 54. Catterall, Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro, Volume V, 239–40. On sexual “potential,” see Brenda Stevenson, “What’s Love Got to Do with It? Concubinage and Enslaved Black Women and Girls in the Antebellum South,” Journal of African American History, 98.1 (2013), 99–125, 105. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 4, Pt. 3, 1122.

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White man, you know better’n dat.” Powers likewise emphasized the particular oppression enslaved women faced here, claiming “dey thinks nothin’ on de plantation ’bout de feelin’s of de women and dere ain’t no ’spect for dem.”71 Mary Ingram, having been asked why enslaved women did not simply refuse when the enslaver demanded they had sex with “de breeder,” offered a withering retort to her interviewer: “W’y don’ weuns refus? Shucks, man! Yous don’ know w’at yous says. De rawhide keeps you f’om refusin.”72 The violence associated with these intimate couplings, and the importance enslavers attached to reproduction, suggests the way in which the sexual activities of enslaved people were embedded within the structural exploitation of slavery. Enslaved people strove for intimate agency, but their sexual life was rarely safe from white interference. Former slaves consistently addressed the pressure they faced from enslavers to enter sexual relationships once deemed sexually mature, emphasizing the lack of choice they had in the matter. One ex-slave from Louisiana said of their enslaver: “he would never allow the men to be single after they were eighteen, nor the women after they were fifteen.”73 While some proslavery authors maintained that slavery encouraged “virtuous and fixed attachments, between the sexes,” enslavers split partners or forced enslaved people into new sexual relationships if they deemed it necessary.74 In John Brown’s account of his life as a slave, he noted how a slave woman “was married, in the way that slaves are, but as she had no children, she was compelled to take a second husband.”75 This was rationalized within a racist and paternalistic framework; in the same proslavery collection, the next author declared that “masters feel easy upon this subject [splitting marriages] because the blacks themselves regard it as a matter of so little moment.”76 In reality, these claims wreaked havoc on enslaved people’s lives: Charles Ball was split from his family, at which point his “heart died away with [him].” Ball was callously told to forget his former partner as he “would be able to get another wife in Georgia,” but he never got over the hope of seeing his family again.77 At times, the enslaved were forced into multiple couplings to encourage reproduction. Mary Homer, from Tennessee, noted: 71 72 73 75 77

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 5, Pt. 3, 192. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 5, Pt. 4, 1848. 74 Albert, The House of Bondage, 107. McTyeire, “Masters and Servants,” 30. 76 Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, 17. Sturgis, “Duties of Masters,” 107. Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 29. Ball did, in fact, return to his wife and children with his flight. He reflected on the significance of family ties in explaining his resolve to escape:

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My mammy have 15 chilluns dat am bo’n on de Marster’s place. Deys am not all by de same father. ’Twas sev’ral diffe’nt mens dat am de father ob de chilluns. Sometimes fo’ks ask me, ‘how come ’twas so many diffe’nt mens dat am wid my mammy as de father ob her chilluns?’ Well, in slavery times, ’twarnt mai’iage fo’ de cullud fo’ks lak ’tis now.78

Historians commonly agree that the level of coercion enslaved people faced “made men and women ‘victims of reproductive abuse.’”79 Daina Ramey Berry, for example, has shown how “forced breeding in the slave quarters manifested itself as an indirect form of rape where powerless enslaved males and females became the victims of reproductive abuse to which they did not willingly give their consent.”80 There are clear examples of this dual burden. One male ex-slave recalled his resentment at being forced into multiple sexual relationships while enslaved, noting: “Massa, he bring more women to see me. He wouldn’t let me have jus’ one woman.”81 These unions entailed a lack of autonomy for enslaved men and women. However, the language some ex-slaves used to describe sexual relations suggests that gendered power dynamics and expectations of male dominance influenced such encounters. Having explained to his WPA interviewer that his mother was forced into a sexual relationship at sixteen, Willie McCullough offered one such description. Although under the direction of the enslaver, expectations of male control pervaded the process: “[master] told this negro he could take her to a certain cabin and go to bed. This was done without getting her consent or even asking her about it.”82 This assumption of normative male dominance and desire – that she was his to “take” – as well as the specific reference to her lack of consent but not his, challenges the idea that enslaved men were consciously emasculated by their enslavers when it came to establishing sexual relationships in slave communities.83 The use of the word “could,” as opposed to “should,” potentially indicates a perception of sex as reward. While such ideas undoubtedly spoke to a constructed and

78 79 80 81 82 83

“the hope of again seeing my wife and little ones, had borne me triumphantly through perils.” After his first wife’s death, Ball remarried. He suffered the tragic loss of his second wife and children to “some slave dealer”: 517. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 5, Pt. 4, 1790–1791. Wood, “Gender and Slavery,” 523. Berry, “Swing the Sickle,” 79. See also Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 195. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, 299. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 15, Pt. 2, 78. Foster, “Sexual Abuse of Black Men,” 454–459.

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pernicious model of black male hypervirility, a language of agency or expectations of male dominance offered some enslaved men relative power; this power might be accepted as a positive within the broader oppression of slavery. Enslaved men who accepted the comparative hierarchies of prowess and power that their enslavers used to justify such couplings could use this to craft a masculine identity. This man may have resented or rejected the enslaver’s assumption as to his sexual desires. However, enslaved men often took the lead in requesting partners, with enslavers accepting these requests to facilitate reproductive relations. Van Moore, who was moved from Virginia to Texas by his enslaver, discussed his parents’ marriage and indicated that male prerogative took precedence: “in dem days a slave man see a slave girl what he wants and asks his old massa, kin he see her. Iffen she owned by someone else de massa ask de gal’s massa iffen it all right to put ’em together, and iffen he say so, dey jus’ did.”84 Katie Blackwell Johnson, an ex-slave from Virginia, similarly explained how “if a man saw a girl he liked he would ask his master’s permission to ask the master of the girl for her. If his master consented and her master consented then they came together.” Such requests do not by themselves suggest anything problematic about enslaved men’s desire for female partners. However, Johnson added: “the woman had no choice in the matter.”85 Ultimate control clearly rested with the white enslavers, but the belief that enslaved men had more agency in establishing intimate relationships indicates how sex in slavery was shaped by gendered power dynamics as well as racial ones. Enslaved men did not inevitably treat well the women they requested or were paired with. Johnson went on to explain that “some good masters would punish slaves who mistreated their womenfolk and some didn’t.”86 In some encounters, enslaved men who found themselves rejected by enslaved women would lash out, with a sense of entitlement and a willingness to use violence to gain control over the women they desired. In Bedford County, Virginia, an enslaved man named Plato had been with an enslaved woman named Edy for eighteen months, but found out that “she was to take up with another man.” Plato proceeded to threaten Edy to try and convince her to remain with him, informing her that “if she told him when he come home she would have Sam, if he did not kill her he wished God Almighty might send a thunder clap, and take both soul and body.” This was not the first time that Plato had threatened his partner. 84 85

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 5, Pt. 3, 129. Perdue et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 161.

86

Perdue et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 161.

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It was, however, the last, as Plato went on to kill Edy with two blows from an axe.87 In Bedford County, Virginia, an enslaved man named Jim had “paid his addresses to Esther two years ago,” but she had “refused to marry him.” Rather than accept this rejection, Jim continually exerted pressure on her, and this was acknowledged as such by the wider community. An enslaved man claimed to have “found [Jim] attempting to raise the clothes of the bed where Esther was a bed asleep,” while also noting there had previously been “a little roughing between them.” The fact that this “roughing” had not occasioned much outcry suggests how coerced intimacy was normalized in the American South. Indeed, after having witnessed this encounter, Bill, the enslaved witness, did “not know that prisoner hated or loved Esther.” While Jim was prevented from assaulting Esther in this first instance, she was later found with her throat cut. Her dress had been “pulled over her head and her under clothes were about her knees.”88 Although Jim asserted his innocence, he had wounds indicative of a struggle, and apparent motive. With the weight of evidence and slave testimony against him, Jim was found guilty and executed. In Pittsylvania County, Virginia, in 1844, an enslaved woman named Rinah was murdered by her former partner, Robin, after she refused “to give up to him.” Gendered expectations of male dominance, and female submission, in structuring sexual relationships could lead to violence if these expectations were not met. One witness set the context: “Robin & Rinah lived together as man & wife, tho’ disagreed very much.” The word “disagreed” implies a degree of equivalence, but Rinah had forthrightly expressed her concerns over the problems she faced when her enslaver asked if she would take her husband back. Robin had told Watson, Rinah’s enslaver, that “he didn’t wish to give up her.” However, Rinah “spoke emphatically she did not” want him as “Robin had always abused her very much.” Robin acknowledged this was true and that he had “treated her badly,” but wanted another chance. Tellingly, however, he asked Watson, not Rinah, “if he would not give him a chance . . . to come two or three days to see if he could not reconcile her.” Despite having been told about the abuse and of Rinah’s desire to remain parted, Watson “gave his consent for Robin to remain two or three days.” During this time, Robin exerted pressure on Rinah: several witnesses described how they heard her complain “why he did not let her alone, to which Robin said he wouldn’t let her alone.” Another witness said she 87 88

Executive Papers, Thomas Mann Randolph, August 1822, Box 7, Folder 3, LVA. Executive Papers, David Campbell, July 1838, Box 4, Folder 1, LVA.

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explicitly told him “he had given her more abuse than even her mistress or master, and said she would not live with him.” Her protestations, however, did not put Robin off. Daniel, an enslaved witness, heard Robin tell Rinah: “by God if I don’t enjoy you, no body else shall if you don’t have me the worst will become of you.” Daniel woke later that night to find Rinah bleeding. She died of her wounds. The language of ownership and control, expectations of male “enjoyment” irrespective of consent, and the willingness to use violence to assert power over women suggest how sexual encounters among the enslaved could be shaped by gendered power dynamics. The fact that the enslaver was willing to allow Robin access to Rinah despite knowing of previous abuse suggests how gender and race intersected in the structures of intimate relationships.89 The agency of black women could thus be limited by enslavers and enslaved men: Some enslaved men saw violence or coercion as a means of claiming enslaved women and asserting their relative power. In Pittsylvania County, Virginia, in 1848, a free black woman named Charity was brutally murdered by an enslaved man named Jim Mays. Mays had previously had a sexual relationship with Charity, but, unlike in the previous case, was banned from visiting her by his enslaver. Regardless of this intervention, the conflict was exacerbated by Mays’ jealousy of Charity, who, he claimed, was also kept by “John, Abram, Jim & Will.” According to Washington, an enslaved man called as a witness, Mays told him “he intended to kill Aunt Charity the night of the murder or burn the house up” as a result of his anger at her relations with other men. Mays had several children with Charity, but also had a wife elsewhere; his fury at Charity’s interactions with other men, despite his own marital arrangement, suggests how expectations of sexual agency might be framed within gendered power dynamics. Despite their previous relationship, Charity was concerned about the potential for violence and asked Abram to accompany her home that night: “she anticipated a fuss with prisoner.” Unfortunately, he only arrived in time to witness Mays stab Chastity and to hear her cry out “O! Lord, I am done!” Concerns with sexual dominance and jealousy seemed exemplified in the manner of the fatal wounding: Mays “walked up to her and stuck the dirk into her groin.” This was a ferocious attack. Before Charity died she claimed to know “he stabbed her entirely through, because she felt it strike her back bone.”90 89 90

Executive Papers, James McDowell, Misc. Reel 6348, Box 3, Folders 1–5 (January 1–March 15, 1844), 0470, LVA. Pittsylvania County, Reel 59, Court Records 40, 1848–1850, 215–226, LVA.

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Some enslaved men viewed sex as a space to demonstrate dominance over men and women. In Chesterfield County, Virginia, in 1813, Essex murdered an enslaved man named Archer after he had attempted to sleep with Essex’s wife, Isabel. Essex and Isabel had “quarreled,” and slept apart one night. Archer, who had been present during this quarrel, looked to take advantage of this separation. This was not a consensual arrangement: Archer “came to [Isabel] whilst she was asleep, and when she awoke he had a handkerchief over her mouth and her arms confined, and had nearly done what he wanted to do.” While somewhat coded, the reference to “what he wanted to do” suggests how coercive sexual practices could be framed within a language of desire, and speaks to understandings of masculine sexuality as acquisitive and dominant. Isabel successfully resisted his advances, but Archer did not feel as though he had committed any wrong, even making “a proposal to repeat the offence.” His disdainful response to Isabel when she warned him she would “tell her husband” indicates how sex could act as a means of asserting dominance over women and men in the community. Archer claimed “he did not care” and, after later hearing of Essex’s threats to harm him, provocatively returned to the house. When Essex warned him not to come in, he declared he “would come in if Hell stood at the door.” Isabel “advised Essex to command his passion,” but this insult was too much and a fight took place, leading, ultimately, to Archer’s death.91 Notwithstanding the shared oppression of slavery, some enslaved men forced enslaved women into sexual encounters, expecting a degree of dominance in sexual relationships. In Louisa County, Virginia, in 1810, Violet informed on an enslaved man named Barnett’s plans to murder his overseer, but also indicated that she had suffered abuse at his hands. Violet and Barnett had previously been husband and wife but had separated. This was not to Barnett’s liking, and he returned on the first of April, telling “her that if she did not consent to become his wife again he would destroy her.” Violet claimed to have acceded to his demands because the threats “induced her thru fear to consent.”92 The juxtaposition of “wife” with “destroy,” as well as the clearly problematic use of “consent” in regaining control of Violet through fear, indicates how intimate couplings

91 92

Executive Papers, James Barbour, Misc. Reel, 5513, Box 7, Folder 6, 14 June, 1813, 0250–0254, LVA. Executive Papers, John Tyler, Misc. Reel 6014–6015, Box 5, Folder 5, 13 August, 1810, 509–511, LVA.

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were framed by some men as spaces where they could assert power and dominance rather than love and affection. While it is possible that this testimony was shaped by the broader dynamics of the trial, other examples suggest how enslaved men asserted or expected sexual dominance over enslaved women. In 1861, an enslaved man from Virginia was found guilty of murdering a woman named Kitty after she refused to sleep with him. Resembling the language used by some WPA respondents to describe sexually prolific enslaved men, Nelson was known by his enslaver as “sprightly.” In his confession, Nelson admitted that “he tried to get in the bed with Catharine, that she forbid it” and asked for help in removing him. Nelson had a wife on another plantation, but was “in the habit of sleeping with Kitty some time.” There were clear statements as to her lack of consent, with one witness noting how “she would not let him sleep with her,” and that “Nelson would appear to get mad with her.” Another witness claimed to “have known Kitty to refuse to let Nelson sleep with her before Tuesday night.” Regardless of these rejections, though, Nelson believed he was entitled to a sexual relationship with Kitty, claiming that he had left another partner for her and that this meant she should accept his desires. Edmond, an enslaved man called as a witness, claimed to have heard Nelson say “he had laid with her and would do it again” and that “if she did not consent for him to lay with her – that he would kill her at the risk of his life.” Nelson killed Kitty with an axe. This was not the first time Nelson had used violence to force Kitty into sex, with a clear expectation of his dominance in the relationship. Under examination, Nelson claimed that he had “threatened to kill her as long ago as last December – but that he had only done so to make her do, as he wanted her to do.”93 These examples of intimate violence do not speak purely to the structural oppression of bondage. The language of ownership and expectations of men’s control in these sexual encounters is suffused with patriarchal rhetoric; the use of threats, coercion, and violence to enforce what these men “wanted to do” with these enslaved women suggests the intersections of desire and dominance in fashioning masculine sexuality in the American South. Clearly, not all sexual relationships were based on male control and violence was not inevitable in settling intimate disputes. Historians have explored the role of families and friends in helping loving and egalitarian 93

Executive Papers, John Letcher, Misc. Reel 4760, Box 19, Folder 3, November, 1861, 14–21, LVA.

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relationships to develop and survive in slavery, as well as how supportive unions between men and women constituted a form of resistance to the broader violence of slavery.94 However, the willingness to use force or coercion to establish or maintain relationships appears heavily gendered, and ideas that men’s desires could dictate enslaved relationships are well documented. While enslaved men’s requests for partners sometimes showcased the hopes of enslaved men and women to form loving unions, they were not always viewed positively by the enslaved women involved, could include force, or could even be perceived as acquiescence to the reproductive demands of enslavers at the expense of female agency.95 Some enslaved men expected control in their relationships, and were willing to use violence to establish dominance. One former slave noted that her mother’s given husband was “so mean dat after us lef’ Alabama she didn’ want to marry no more.”96 This woman’s disavowal of marriage entirely, with the implicit rejection of all men, suggests that enslaved and formerly enslaved women considered some black men, as well as white men, as agents of oppression. Some enslaved women who found themselves in relationships with enslaved men recalled opposing sexual demands, occasionally stressing that comfort and intimacy seemed less important than domination and control. One WPA respondent from Georgia recounted how a formerly enslaved man took the opportunity of freedom to kidnap an unwilling woman: Us didn’t larn nothin’ ’bout her for night onto a year, den she writ to Marse Jack to come atter her. He went. It was a fur way off, and I don’t ’member now whar it was. Dat mean man had done most kilt Rose, and had left her wid a baby. No, mam, dey didn’t never cotch ’im.97

Whereas men in the previous chapter clearly connected their masculine identity to the protection of dependents and loved ones, and abolitionists commonly stressed the solidarity of the slave community in the face of enslavers’ sexual demands, some enslaved men chose a different path. Rather than accept forced relations as evidence of the shared brutality of slavery, some enslaved people condemned enslaved men’s actions in the

94 95

96 97

Blassingame, The Slave Community, 84–86; West, Chains of Love, 19–43; Fraser, Courtship and Love, 45–48. Kathleen M. Brown, “‘Strength of the Lion . . . Arms Like Polished Iron’: Embodying Black Masculinity in an Age of Slavery and Propertied Manhood,” in Foster (ed.), New Men, 172–195, 180. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 7, 136. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 12, Pt. 2, 268.

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intimate sphere, noting that black men as well as white men might use sex to show dominance over others or to gain privileges elsewhere. In one episode from Camden, South Carolina, a group of enslaved men fought in the streets after a man named Solomon was accused of having facilitated the sexual exploitation of an enslaved woman, with Paul claiming he was guilty of “carrying a negro girl to some person in Camden.” Solomon sought to defend his reputation, suggesting that these activities were not viewed positively by the wider community. However, that some enslaved men might be perceived as enabling the exploitation of enslaved women indicates how sexual relations in slavery were shaped by gendered as well as racial dynamics.98 Bennet H. Barrow described a similar issue when he claimed to have found “white men sending for some of my women – by one of my boys – ‘one eyed Sam’ – a loade of buck shot will be the dose if I can see them or fine [sic] them.”99 Despite the overall structural oppression they faced together, some enslaved men expected or made demands on enslaved women’s sexuality themselves. They could also frame sexual access to women as a competitive test of manhood, where the consent of the women involved sometimes seemed less important than assertions of dominance over others. In one case from Russell County, Virginia, in 1840, the conflict between Cupe and Richard was shaped by Cupe’s attempts to pressure his former partner, Patsy, into sex, as well as intimate rivalry between men. According to one witness, three or four years prior to the murder Cupe had “claimed this woman of Mr Alexander as his wife, but has not lately.” Another witness explained that “since then [Cupe] has had another wife.” The acquisitive language in “claiming” her as his wife, as well as his moving on to another woman, suggests differential expectations of sexual agency on gendered lines. Regardless of this separation, Cupe still felt he could assert power over Patsy. Cupe asked Patsy to “go with him,” and, “she not consenting to go he abused her . . . [and] talked of knocking her out of the house or into the fire,” as well as calling her “a whore.” Richard took up her defense, telling Cupe “he should not abuse the woman, when she was not interrupting anyone,” and then fought with him. While another witness claimed that they had not heard of any intimacy between Richard and Patsy, there was clearly some sense of tension between the men as a factor in this conflict. Richard’s mother 98 99

Kershaw District, Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Trial Papers, L28225, Case 24, February 25, 1817, SCDAH. Barrow, Diary, 31, LLMVC.

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sought to prevent violence, but this was not the first time Cupe had acted in such a way, and instead seemed to fit a pattern of expected dominance. Richard could take no more: “mamma, he has been imposing on me a long while and I’m not going to take it any longer.” Unfortunately for Richard, Cupe had a knife and fatally wounded his adversary.100 Enslaved men who broke up existing relationships, threatened to do so, or used sex with women as a means of asserting dominance over other men demonstrated their manhood in comparison and conflict with other men as well as in relation to the women involved. One enslaved man murdered in Washington County, Virginia, in 1852 sought out a fight with an enslaved man whom he claimed had stolen his wife. This was not the first time Tom had faced marital problems, having informed another male slave: “I am the most miserable man that ever lived . . . This is second wife I have had, and I never had any confidence in either of them.” According to Tom, the cause of his problems was located in the actions of other men, who undercut his claims to manhood by demonstrating their ability to disrupt his marriage. He was willing to use force to reassert his dominance here: “I have stabbed one damned negro on account of my first wife, and I’ll cut Greens damned heart out of him.” Unfortunately for Tom, however, Green heard of this threat and told others that he “would be prepared for him.” Green stabbed his rival when Tom arrived unannounced at night, looking to make a claim on his previous partner.101 In Orange County, Virginia, an enslaved man named Jim murdered a rival named King, and the conflict was shaped by his anger over this man’s relationship with a woman named Sally. After King informed Jim he “had business enough” in the laundry room with Sally, his wife, Jim angrily replied “you have her,” before striking him with an axe. The day before this act, Jim had informed Sally that he would use force to split her from her partner: “you are married but you shall soon be unmarried for I will kill him on sight.”102 Some enslaved men expected, even demanded, that others in the community recognized their claims to enslaved women, as well as challenged or undermined existing relationships if they felt they were more deserving. In Henrico County, Virginia, Stephen murdered an enslaved man named Aaron whom he viewed as standing in the way of his affections for an enslaved woman. Stephen asked the witness “if she would have him,” but 100 101 102

Russell County, Law Order Book, 11, Reel 17, December 8, 1840, 141–143, LVA. Executive Papers, Joseph Johnson, Box 1, Folder 5, February 23, 1852, LVA. Orange County, Order Book, Minutes, 1820–1825, Reel 35, March 27, 1821, LVA.

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she answered that “she would not,” having already entered a relationship with another man. This rejection led to anger, and a determination to inflict violence on the man he perceived to be his rival: “The prisoner thereupon exclaimed, then I am determined to commit murder this night.” Stephen returned that evening to kill Aaron, the man he believed had taken the object of his desire. Stephen’s use of violence against the man, irrespective of the fact that, ultimately, this woman had rejected him, suggests how intimate relationships were sometimes viewed as arenas for men to assert supremacy over rivals, and that rejection or unrequited desire could lead men into aggressive demonstrations of dominance and competitive displays designed to humiliate or harm others.103 At times, competition for women was provocative, even violent, revealing how courtship sometimes veered into aggressive expressions of comparative power. Anderson Bates, who fell “head over heels in love wid Carrie” soon after emancipation, recalled that seven other men were interested in her, but that he had beaten all of them up. This led the others to carry “deir ’fections to some other place.” According to Bates, “us have some hard words bout my bad manners, but I told her dat I couldn’t ’trol my feelin’s wid them fools a settin’ ’round dere gigglin’ wid her. I go clean crazy.”104 While the tale is offered in a lighthearted tone, the level of violence attached to demonstrations of masculine dominance in courting is worth highlighting. Frank Adamson, enslaved in South Carolina, similarly explained how competition among men was an important element to successful courtship, tying victory here to the formation of a masculine identity. Adamson described how his father “sho’ was a man” as “he run all de other niggers ’way from my mammy and took up wid her widout askin’ de marster.” He went on to answer a question as to whether he went courting himself by highlighting the acquisitive nature of male sexuality: “Every he thing from a he king down to a bunty rooster gits ’cited bout she things . . . It’s de nature of a he, to take after de she.”105 The sense that men were bound to pursue women, and that competition between men shaped sexual relationships, suggests that intimacy might be viewed as an arena for showcasing masculine dominance as well as loving relationships. In Louisa, Virginia, 1849, the killing of an enslaved man named John was shaped by one such intimate contest: the language used to describe the conflict spoke to concerns over 103 104 105

Executive Papers, James Monroe, Misc. Reel 5337, Box 4, Folder 8, 14–15, LVA. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, 44. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, 16.

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reputation and the public humiliation of being unable to control or satisfy women. John had openly boasted of his ability to disrupt the marriage of Tom and Abby, claiming that he “had kept & intended to keep Abby, the prisoner’s wife, and that he, John, was in the habit of carrying a pistol for Tom.” Despite having been warned that he would not be “able to contend with [Tom] in a fight,” John continued his relationship with Abby. Eventually, however, Tom caught him in bed with Abby and beat him to death. Even though Abby had wanted to marry John, and her desires were known to the wider community and, indeed, to Tom, the violence was framed as part of a homosocial conflict in which Tom’s actions were understandable and acceptable. Local whites came to Tom’s defense as “[u]nder circumstances so provoking . . . the said man Tom stands not as a man who has committed murder but only manslaughter of the lowest degree.”106 We can equally see in Elizabeth Ross Hinton’s interview how sexual encounters could be framed as a masculine competition. Hinton recalled how, having proven to be a capable dancer, a man named Jolly was placed in competition with a male slave from a nearby plantation. After having beaten this man on the dancefloor, Jolly showcased his superiority in another way: “makin’ love to de man’s wife in de man’s bed.”107 The sense that this was a deliberate further humiliation of the man he “defeated,” rather than a loving or long-term relationship with the woman involved, indicates how intimacy was used by some men to demonstrate dominance over one another. In another, altogether more violent altercation, historian Christopher Morris noted how “one slave killed another after he had taunted him, saying he was ‘inside of the House with his [Harrison’s] wife and that he might help himself if he could.’”108 The idea that sex with an enslaved woman was something he might “help himself” to, alongside the language of ownership and theft, suggests that some enslaved men used sex to publicly demonstrate their superiority to other men. In justifying their actions and to assert their own virility, some enslaved men claimed that other men were unable to control or satisfy their wives. Such public demonstrations of disrespect and the comparative emasculation they implied often earned a response. In one encounter recorded in the Clarendon Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, in 1865, an enslaved man named Henry killed John, but it was John who had sought 106 107

Executive Papers, John Buchanan Floyd, Box 2, Folder 1, June 13, 1849, LVA. 108 Clayton, Mother Wit, 107. Morris, “Within the Slave Cabin,” 272.

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out conflict as he believed Henry was “troubling his wife.”109 Violence also took place in Nottoway County, Virginia, in 1840, when Ransom murdered Tom, an enslaved man whom he thought had been intimate with his wife. According to Maria, the woman in question, Tom had openly mocked Ransom with this claim. The sense of having to avenge cuckolding to restore masculine pride was evident in Ransom’s fiery declaration: “I want to read salvation to you, God damn you.”110 Ransom then went after Maria, who was only saved by the intervention of her enslaver. In the County of Caroline, Virginia, in 1818, an enslaved man named John killed another male slave, yet found support from local whites as this was framed as a crime of passion, understandable to all men. Sam, “the unfortunate deceased,” was “constantly visiting the said John’s wife and keeping alive the aforementioned angry passion.” While ostensibly in the wrong, Sam was likewise willing to use violence to stake his claim to Martha, the woman in question: “on the night on which the murder was committed it was proven in court that the decd. was heard to say that he would fight the prisoner until one or the other was killed and on that night was seen in search of the prisoner.”111 In a more extreme example, the leader of a band of maroons known as “Forest Joe” abducted an unwilling woman from a plantation in South Carolina for his “wife.” Joe faced resistance, however, and one male slave helped whites lead an attack on Joe’s camp and rescue her. In response, Joe led a raid on the plantation, singled out this man as he worked, and murdered him. As if to prove his preeminence, Joe later returned to the plantation and took the woman away once more.112 While the murder of the male slave may have been a response to his perceived treachery in helping planters to attack the maroon camp, the connection of this action to Joe’s seizure of his “wife” suggests that sexual access to women was used to establish rank among some enslaved men and assert dominance over others. Some enslaved men who claimed to have seized or been granted access to enslaved women depicted this as proof of their status, using it to mock other men and assert their superiority in the community. In one violent 109 110 111 112

Clarendon District, Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Trial Papers, 1863–1865, L14145, Case 4, March 4, 1865, SCDAH. Executive Papers, Thomas Walker Gilmer, Box 1, Folder 8, June 1840, LVA. James Patton Preston, Executive Papers, Box 5, Folder 9, August 13, 1818, LVA. For the extended information on “Forest Joe,” see Tim Lockley and David Doddington, “Maroon and Slave Communities in South Carolina Before 1865,” South Carolina Historical Magazine, 113.2 (April 2012), 125–145.

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encounter in Virginia in 1858, an enslaved man named Levi laid claim to multiple women and used this to elevate himself over another man. A group of enslaved people were socializing together at “a sort of party,” and Levi was in one of the rooms with a woman named Lucy. Mortimer then “took hold” of a woman named Margaret, but Levi intervened and informed him “she was his wife.” After being told this, Mortimer moved on to Jane. However, “Levi said [Jane] was his wife also.” Levi’s domineering attitude became a site of contention, with Mortimer asking his friend, “which do you love best?” Levi took charge and claimed “both.” This upset Mortimer, who, despite already having a wife elsewhere, “returned with a long knife – excited and said – Levi thought he was a fool.” Unfortunately for Mortimer, Levi’s dominance extended to their fight and he stabbed his former friend to death.113 It is important to consider the degree to which claims of sexual agency or access to enslaved women were shaped by the broader structural oppression of slavery. However, applying models of shared victimization to these actions risks condensing more complex identities forged in slavery and the intersections of race and gender in shaping or limiting people’s agency, as well as minimizing the tension that sometimes marked slave communities. Harre Quarls, enslaved in Texas, claimed that after the war he would not be allowed to continue with multiple relationships, which hardly suggests a uniform sense of anger at the reproductive pressures of slavery: “Boss, say, I had three wives. When I’s sot free dey wouldn’t let me live with but one. Captain, that ain’t right, ’cause I wants all three.”114 Whereas men in the previous chapter considered their identity as being tied up in protecting and providing for families, other men considered freedom from sexual restraint as proof of their identity. Some enslaved men who were involved in relationships that correspond to historical definitions of breeding articulated their activities as proof of supremacy over other men in the community, at times making more of this homosocial dominance than of the responses of the women involved. Rather than evidence of emasculation or dependency, such sexual access to enslaved women was refashioned into proof of manhood and, furthermore, made into a statement of superiority over others in the community. Jeptha Choice, enslaved in Texas, claimed to have been “in demand for breedin,” and seemed to be proud of this, explaining that 113 114

Executive Papers, Henry A. Wise, Misc. Reel 4206, Box 11, Folder 4, January 28, 1858, 413–421, LVA. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 5, Pt. 3, 223.

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such were his abilities that “they took care not to strain me and I was as handsome as a speckled pup.”115 Whereas the men in the previous chapter emphasized recognition of their working abilities as proof of their manhood, Choice took pride in the fact that his perceived sexual prowess would allow him to escape hard labor. West Turner described a figure named “Joe,” known as “‘de breedinges’ nigger in Virginia.” Joe’s comparative sexual prowess shaped his status and activities while enslaved: he “didn’t have no work to do, ‘jus’ stay ’round de quarters sunnin’ hisself ‘till a call come fo’ him.”116 Rias Body, enslaved in Georgia, told his interviewer that “stud bucks” – including eight of his brothers – “were allowed to roam anywhere they pleased at night, without passes and with no questions asked,” and that these men would compete with one another in order to “beget the largest number of children in a year.” The sense that sex provided a comparative display of masculine virility was reinforced in Body’s claim that they “musta’ been de daddies o’ at least a hunnert head o’ chillun scattered all over Harris County.” While depicted as unpopular in the slave community, this tension was painted as the jealousy of lesser men who aspired to these roles: “of course, they were the envy of all the average sized and under-sized men who did not enjoy any such considerations.”117 The focus on homosocial comparison, as well as on competitive displays of sexual prowess rather than taking on the role of provider and protector, reveals how sexual activity might offer a different route to masculinity. Although it is clearly possible that some of these tales were boasts or exaggerations, it implies a belief that sexually prolific men, even those outside of or alienated from community and kin, were not considered powerless or emasculated victims. Instead, these men embodied a particular type of manhood based on virility and dominance. Rather than consider such a role as evidence of dehumanization and degradation, some enslaved men, or those around them, claimed that comparative sexual virility proved their place atop a competitive masculine hierarchy. The comments relating to other men suggest that a version of masculine identity built around sexual prowess was consolidated in comparison to other men and other masculinities. The notion that some men “deserved” sexual privileges, the lighthearted tone of some of the stories above, and the lack of discussion of

115 116 117

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, 217–218. Perdue et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 291. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, 69.

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the responses of the women involved complicate any consideration of sexual exploitation in slave communities as a purely racialized form of oppression. Instead, these sexual relationships were heavily bound up in perceptions of gender. Zeno John, enslaved as a child in Louisiana, explained how “when de marsters see a good big nigger sometime dey buy him for a breeder.” Based on his personal recollections, John did not consider this role to be emblematic of oppression. His father purportedly held and fulfilled such responsibilities: “befo’ he die he say he had sebenty chillen, gran’chillen, and great-gran-chillen.” While the conditions of the interview may have prevented him from expressing anger at the reproductive pressures that presumably facilitated this dynamic, John made his father’s sexual prowess the constitutive element of his masculine identity. Rather than evidence of his father’s powerlessness, sexual prowess offered direct proof of his father’s manhood. According to John: “my daddy was much of a man, yessir.”118 The way men’s sexual activities were described in a comparative sense, with some men depicted as more “deserving” of sex than others, highlights how the formation of a masculine identity involved comparison within the slave community and could be embedded within the broader structural forces of slavery. The emphasis on virility and the seeming rejection of codes of solidarity in favor of more individualistic expressions of dominance indicates conflicting understandings of appropriate masculine behavior among the enslaved. Although activists such as David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet stressed that enslaved men – if they were really men – would resist the sexual pressures of slavery as another invidious demand of the enslaver class, some viewed sexual access to enslaved women as a means of proving their manhood.119 Acknowledging that some enslaved men felt that they had earned a positive personal identity from sexual prowess offers insight into how gender identities connected to broader concerns over agency, control, and power in slavery. Enslaved men who were described as having held “breeding” roles could be depicted as having earned sexual privileges because of their superiority to other men, and some used these distinctions to assert dominance over others. Rather than evidence of their emasculation or victimization, this could be viewed as a form of manhood. The lighthearted tone used by some prior respondents when describing male sexual 118 119

Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 6, Pt. 5, 1950. Woodward, The Delectable Negro, 110.

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agency should be set against the harrowing descriptions offered by enslaved women when faced with men they viewed as “breeders.” Mollie Dawson, enslaved in Navarro County, Texas, described how certain men were held up as a threat and as a form of punishment to ensure women acquiesced to the sexual demands placed on them: Dey would let you pick out a man or a man pick him out a woman and you was married and if de woman wouldn’t has de man dat picks you, dey would takes you ter a big stout high husky nigger somewhere and leaves you a few days jest lak dey do stock now’days and you bettah begins raisin’ chilluns too.120

There was no suggestion of a similarly threatening figure for enslaved men who failed to conform. This might simply reflect Dawson’s personal experiences and conversations with enslaved and formerly enslaved women, but it could also indicate how sexual power and agency was shaped by gendered power dynamics. Previous accounts which suggest “studs” were considered as models of powerful masculine attributes or as men to be envied suggest the complexity of this topic. If these men did not see themselves as oppressed by these practices, or if the wider community did not view them as victims, should we? The comparative language with which these men were discussed, with sexual prowess used as a marker by which enslaved men ranked themselves against others in the community, suggests how the development of masculine identities could pivot on comparison and competition. Manda Cooper, born in North Carolina, described how her mother had been forced to have sex with multiple partners to conceive. Cooper indicated that these men gained these roles because of their comparative physicality: “They would pick out the biggest nigger and tell her they wanted a kid by him. She had to stay with him until she did get one.”121 The emphasis on her having to stay with him, as opposed to the other way around, is suggestive of a perceived power imbalance for the women involved. Respondents who discussed sexual relationships established by enslavers at times emphasized the comparative physical qualities of the men involved, noting that ranking against other men in the slave community determined sexual “privileges,” and that enslavers offered some men access to enslaved women to ensure they worked within the system. Some enslaved men with sexual agency were depicted as superior to others by 120 121

Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 4, Pt. 3, 1122. Clayton, Mother Wit, 44.

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reference to power or virility, with a simultaneous demotion of men not deemed manly enough. William Matthews, enslaved in Franklin Parish, Louisiana, explained that “if a unhealthy nigger take up wit’ a healthy, stout woman, de white folks sep’rate ’em. Dey matched ’em up like dey wan’ ’em.” However: “If a man was big, stout, man, good breed, dey give him four, five women. Dat’s de God’s truth.”122 Ultimate power rested with enslavers, but the language of “giving” implies a belief that some men were more deserving of sexual access to enslaved women, with a comparative emasculation of lesser men. Sexual activity and virility could, therefore, be a measuring stick for enslaved masculinity which relied on a comparative assessment of physical abilities. Andrew Boone described how his father was ranked above other men in such a way, and not only had several wives “given to him,” but was also promised exclusive rights to them: “no udder man wus allowed to have anything to do wid ’em.”123 Some enslaved men with sexual agency or whose activities were framed as breeding were depicted as virile and powerful men by others, even as men worthy of envy. Such statements drew much of their power from comparison: These men demonstrated dominance over men as well as women. While sexual exploitation was an oppressive element of racial enslavement, ultimately predicated on white power, some enslaved men accepted or refashioned the reproductive demands made upon them, making use of a competitive and comparative understanding of male power to construct a masculine identity. Willie Williams, who had been enslaved in Louisiana, recorded how his enslaver had interfered in the sex lives of his slaves, and had put ten “wenches” with “de big nigger.” This was all under the direction of the enslaver, but Williams suggested this man held power because of his size and strength, and that his dominance extended into other areas of slave life. In a similar fashion to some of the trustees described in Chapter 2, Williams claimed: “Dat nigger do no work but watch dem womens and he am de husban’ for dem all.”124 Former slave Bill Simms stated that men were compared to one another before they were allowed sexual access to women, with comparative strength and size used to denote their manhood: “if a man was a big strong man, neighboring plantation owners would ask him to come over and see his gals, hoping that he might want to marry one of the[m], but if

122 123 124

Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 7, Pt. 6, 2616. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 14, Pt. 1, 136. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 5, Pt. 4, 189.

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a Negro was a small man he was not cared for as a husband.”125 The sense that access to women depended on comparative physical strength and evidence or expressions of dominance, as opposed to a consideration of enslaved women’s desires, led some men to view themselves as superior to others. With these intimate activities depicted as the acquisitive act of dominant and virile men, some memories and images of enslaved men in breeding roles suggest less victimization, more a claim to a different form of masculine identity. Such claims plausibly minimize the trauma these men faced, but they also suggest how ideas of an acquisitive and competitive masculine sexuality crossed racial boundaries. Some ex-slaves suggested that enslaved men requested sexual access to women by making use of normative understandings of male dominance, as well as by stressing their accommodation to other areas of life while enslaved. Marshal Butler, enslaved in Georgia, suggested how gender intersected with race in establishing hierarchies in slave communities, as well as the extent to which these dynamics dictated intimate encounters. Although Butler expressed admiration for his parents’ dedication to one another, he also mocked men who sought to impress women with economic success while courting. Many enslaved men saw material provision as a way of proving manhood, yet Butler was dismissive of this, noting “sometimes some fool nigger would bring a gal a present – like ‘pulled – candy’ and sich like,” but that he “had no time for sich foolishness.” Rather than demonstrate their potential contributions as a provider or protector, Butler suggested an alternative way: You would pop the question to boss man to see if he was willing for you to marry de gal. There was no minister or boss man to marry you – no limitations at all. Boss man would jes say: ‘Don’t forget to bring me a little one or two for next year.’126

Butler was not indifferent to female consent, having earlier described the loving relationship of his parents. However, the suggestion that offering evidence of economic potential as a romantic gesture was a “foolish” way of getting women’s attention suggests that values and actions which contemporaries associated with masculinity were accorded different status by members of the slave community. Enslaved men held different views on activities that could offer them sexual access to enslaved women. 125 126

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 16, 12. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 12, Pt. 1, 165.

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Acquiescence to or acceptance of the reproductive demands of slavery might mean rejecting the mantle of provider or protector, but it could also offer an alternative route to manhood based on physical prowess, dominance, and virility. Without applauding the exploitative structures, Moses Jeffries, a slave from Arkansas who was moved to Texas during the war, claimed that men dominated the matchmaking process among the enslaved. Jeffries stated: If I went on a plantation and saw a girl I wanted to marry, I would ask my master to buy her for me. It wouldn’t matter if she were somebody else’s wife; she would become mine. The master would pay for her and bring her home and say, “John, theres your wife.” That is all the marriage there would be.127

Jeffries’ belief that this was a common structure for intimate relationships within slavery, with the rhetoric of male dominance and a willingness to prioritize sexual access for select men, suggests a perception that some enslaved men had used the sexually exploitative structures of slavery to gain access to women, even at the expense of others in the community. The recollections of Jerry Eubanks, an enslaved carriage driver from Mississippi, of his youthful sexual endeavors further underscore the sense that some enslaved men negotiated a masculine identity within the reproductive exploitation of slavery. Eubanks told his interviewer: “I didn’t marry, you know – dere was a boss over dere and a boss over here. If one had a woman I wanted, my boss would send a note and tell him – den I’d visit dat plantation on sich and sich a nights.”128 The emphasis on “want” suggests a level of agency, as opposed to unrelenting pressure; the fact these multiple relationships were articulated in opposition to marriage indicates that this masculine identity presented an alternative model to the moralistic image prioritized by many antislavery activists. The sentiment that sexual prowess, and the recognition of this by others, proved that one was “much of a man” set up a converse in which failure to sufficiently prove virility or being rejected in favor of another could entail a loss of self. Solomon Northup, for example, detailed how a male slave was rejected by his previous partner due to a “seductive youth” who “had insinuated himself into Phebe’s affections.”129 The idea that a more virile man might steal a partner could reflect tensions over age,

127 128 129

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, 39. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 7, Pt. 2, 688. Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, 140.

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status, and identity. Considering the importance enslavers attached to reproductive sex, a perceived or actual loss of virility for men led to public humiliation with real consequences. One former slave recalled how their father, a free man with Creek ancestry, had been happily married to her mother for years but, due to a perceived physical decline based on his age, they were cruelly split. Lulu Wilson claimed that her master “say my paw am too old and wore out for breedin,” and thus “sot the nigger hounds on my paw and run him away from the place.” The idea that this man had lost an integral component of masculine power was surely reinforced by the fact that her mother was then forced to take up with a “young buck” with whom “she birthed nineteen chillen.”130 In some of the preceding accounts, there is a lack of detail of the women’s response to the physical pressures placed upon them; many of the recollections instead emphasize sexual activity as a form of masculine competition. There is no inherent need for all such encounters to be nonconsensual. However, the fact that former slaves described women being separated from previous partners – apparently at the request of more powerful men – while others believed men who had proven themselves elsewhere might request, or be offered, sexual access to women by enslavers suggests that some men considered sexual dominance as a way of asserting their place atop a masculine hierarchy. Clearly, not all enslaved men accepted such views, but others rationalized sexual activities and identities in slavery accordingly. The depiction of sex as a “reward” – of women being given to or controlled by select men – is infused with patriarchal rhetoric, challenging the idea that these men felt their manhood was negated by the sexual pressures slavery placed upon them. The testimony of John Cole, enslaved in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, indicated how sexual access to women could be rationalized within the exploitative structures of slavery: If a hand were noted for raising up strong black bucks, bucks that would never “let the monkey get them” while in the high-noon hoeing, he would be sent out as a species of circuit-rider to the other plantations – to plantations where there was over-plus of “worthless young nigger gals.” There he would be “married off” again – time and again.

Although both men and women were dehumanized by the practice, Cole’s language suggests the dynamics of these relationships were subject to gendered assumptions. Enslaved men seen as sexually prolific were 130

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 5, Pt. 4, 190.

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considered virile and strong, but the women were “worthless” without the intervention of the men. Historian Gregory Smithers has made use of Cole’s testimony to highlight the “master’s disregard for courtship and nurturing family networks among the enslaved,” but this disregard also came from within the quarters.131 According to Cole, “if the woman wasn’t willing, a good, hard-working hand could always get the master to make the girl marry him – whether of [sic] no, willy-nilly.”132 Some enslaved men framed sexual access to enslaved women as a form of masculine competition or as recognition of their status above others. Enslaved women occasionally stressed their resistance to this and their anger, even hatred, toward the men involved. Others resented what they took to be a form of accommodation from enslaved men in ensuring women acquiesced to sexual demands placed upon them. Mary Gaffney, who was enslaved in Mississippi and taken to Texas as part of her enslaver’s plan to “get rich,” offers one such story. Gaffney described the intense level of sexual coercion applied to both her and her mother upon arrival. Despite knowing this was against her wishes, “he put another negro man with my mother, then he put one with me.” Gaffney clearly indicated that the enslaver was in control overall. However, she did not view this arrangement purely as evidence of a shared racial victimization, telling her interviewer that she “hated the man I married.” Having been forced into this relationship, Gaffney attempted to retain some sort of bodily agency, but there was a degree of conflict within the quarters that went beyond the enslaver’s intervention, as she informed her interviewer that “I would not let that negro touch me.” Gaffney was cruelly whipped into submission by her enslaver, but she placed at least some of the blame for this on the enslaved man: “he told Maser and Maser gave me a real good whipping, so that night I let that negro have his way.” While absolutely condemning her enslaver, the initial hatred of her partner and, perhaps more importantly, the framing of this sexual encounter as “his way” suggest she believed his desires had helped in the enforcement of sexual activity against her wishes.133 This man may have faced threats from his enslaver or, perhaps, was more aware of the pressures attached to sex in slavery. However, Gaffney’s

131 133

132 Smithers, Slave Breeding, 115. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 12, Pt. 1, 228. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 5, Pt. 4, 1453. Mary stayed with this man after emancipation, but the use of “hatred” suggests early tension. We should be cautious in discounting marital tension, even if relationships were maintained postemancipation. See also White, Ar’n’t I a Woman, 150.

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initial impression, that he made use of the wider exploitation of slavery to get “his” way, indicates how sex could become a site of gendered tension within slave communities. At other times, enslaved women detailed how they fought both white and black men to prevent sexual activity. The language used to describe these encounters suggests that some enslaved men expected sex in marriage, despite knowing the levels of coercion enslavers used to establish the union. Silvia King, who was sold to a Texan planter from New Orleans, attempted to protect herself by informing her enslaver that she had a “man and three chillen back in de old country,” but was forced to take a new husband regardless. She attempted to refuse and expressed her disdain for the enslaved man in question: “I don’t bother with dat nigger’s name much, he jes’ Bob to me.” The inference in King’s testimony was that Bob tried to force her into sex, irrespective of knowing her lack of consent: She “fit him good and plenty” before the overseer ultimately forced her to submit.134 It is, of course, vital to remain aware of the pressures enslaved men faced in bondage, reminding ourselves that they could face punishment if they failed to do their enslaver’s bidding and that this may have shaped their response to enslaved women and to sex in slavery. However, it is equally important to acknowledge when enslaved men and women disputed such ideas. Some ex-slaves felt these behaviors instead spoke to broader expectations of dominance over others, and also considered some enslaved men to have used sexual access to enslaved women to demonstrate power. Anna Barker, for example, recalled that her mother ran away because of repeated attempts by enslaved male drivers “to mess ’round wid her.”135 Frances Kemble likewise described how the sexual abuse inflicted by male slave drivers was indicative of the authority they held over others. After having offered her opinion of the immorality of sex outside of marriage, Kemble was offered a stark insight into the level of coercion enslaved women faced from enslaved men with relative power over them: “Oh yess, missis, we know – we know all about dat well enough; but we do anything to get our poor flesh some rest from de whip; when he made me follow him into de bush, what use me tell him no? he have strength to make me.”136

134 135 136

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, 291. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, 92. Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, 270.

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The belief that sexual activities spoke to broader tensions over gendered power dynamics in slavery is evident in the testimony of Rose Williams, an enslaved teenager sold to a Texan planter with the expectation that she “will make de good breeder.” Williams’ story is well known to scholars of slavery, but her testimony illuminates contests over intimate agency within the slave quarters, as well as how expectations of dominance extended into sexual encounters. After having been on the plantation for around a year, and having turned sixteen, Williams’ enslaver moved her into a cabin with a man from the plantation named Rufus. Noting her relative youth, Williams told her interviewer that she did not understand the true purpose of this. Having been told to “live with Rufus in dat cabin over yonder” and “Go fix it for livin,” Williams told her interviewer: “I’s jus’ igno’mus chile. I’s thought dat him mean for me to tend de cabin for Rufus and some other niggers.” For Williams, however, this was “am start de pestigation for me.” After an awkward dinner on the first night, Williams made her excuses and went to bed. She was startled to find Rufus attempting to join her: “After I’s in, dat nigger come and crawl in de bunk with me ’fore I knows it. I says, ‘What you means, you fool nigger?’ He say for me to hush de mouth. ‘Dis am my bunk, too.’” Rather than accept this, Williams kicked Rufus off the bunk and out of the cabin. Although Foster has argued that Rufus did not attempt to use physical force, this understates the level of conflict Williams’ refusal occasioned.137 Having kicked Rufus off the bunk, Williams explicitly described his anger at her, as well as the extreme lengths she went to defend herself: “Dat nigger jump up and he mad. He look like de wild boar. He starts for de bunk and I jumps quick for de poker.” The language employed by Williams deserves notice. She did not hit Rufus until she felt directly threatened by him: It was “when he comes at me” that Williams “lets him have it over de head.” Despite having met fierce resistance, Rufus did not explain his actions, instead stating to the sixteen-year-old: “Jus wait. You thinks it am smart, but you’s am foolish in de head. Dey’s gwine larn you somethin.” Rufus might have been responding to direct threats from his enslaver and bringing up the possibility of shared punishment if they did not establish a sexual relationship. Williams, however, did not view this as sympathetic recognition of their mutual exploitation, implying instead a concern that she would ultimately be forced to submit to him.

137

Foster, “Sexual Abuse of Black Men,” 457. See also White, Ar’n’t I a Woman, 102–3.

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Despite holding firm another night, her enslaver made clear her lack of choice in the matter: “Woman, I’s pay big money for you and I’s done dat for de cause I wants yous to raise me chillens. I’s put yous to live with Rufus for dat purpose.” The “choice,” as Williams told her interviewer, was depressingly limited: “Dere it am. What am I’s to do? So I ’cides to do as de massa wish and so I yields.” Williams was eventually forced into a sexual relationship with Rufus after her enslaver threatened her with whipping, as well as exploiting her fear that her family would be sold away. The racial power dynamics of the relationship are clear in the fact that when Williams eventually yielded, it was because she “’cides to do as de massa wish.” Yet when describing her initial refusal to have sex, Williams claimed this was “what Rufus wants.” The sense that tension and violence extended beyond the opening confrontation is suggested in Williams’ unwillingness to countenance another relationship with a man: I never marries, ’cause one ’sperience am ’nough for dis nigger. After what I does for de massa, I’s never wants no truck with any man. De Lawd forgive dis cullud woman, but he have to ’scuse me and look for some others for to ’plenish de earth.

Rufus, of course, has no say in this story; he may have endured threats and terrible suffering that we will never know. However, despite having been told by her mistress that this relationship was “de massa’s wishes,” and after more than seventy years of reflection, Williams did not feel his behavior was symptomatic of the shared hardships of slavery. Instead, she described him as a “bully” who expected his dominance to extend across the plantation: “He am big and ’cause he so he think everybody do what him say.” The sense that Rufus was used to getting his own way through physical dominance and the use of this to foreshadow her memories of sexual coercion suggest that Williams felt Rufus’ actions in the intimate sphere accurately reflected his identity elsewhere. To Williams, this behavior was not emblematic of a broken man seeking to prove a subversive masculinity because he was denied it elsewhere; this was not a man who knew the shared hardships of bondage and had no choice in his actions. The fact that she was unwilling to have “truck with any man” after emancipation implies the degree to which some enslaved people considered their oppression along gendered lines as well as racial ones.138 Many recent studies have explored enslaved masculinity through the lens of courtship, love, and sex; the myth that all male slaves were hypersexual “bucks” has been thoroughly refuted, and the idea that 138

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 5, Pt. 4, 175–178.

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masculinity rested in forming virtuous and loving relationships has increasingly found favor among historians. However, in highlighting the positive aspects of masculinity and intimacy among the enslaved, few recent works have addressed competing ideas of male sexuality. Some enslaved men absolutely saw their identity as men through the lens of providing and protecting others, acting gallantly and virtuously when courting women, and resisting the sexual demands of their enslavers together. Others, however, articulated an identity through expressions of sexual dominance. Enslaved men used multiple ideals and values to construct a gendered sense of self, and some enslaved men felt that sexual agency and power reflected their place atop a masculine hierarchy, even if this led to tension and strife in the community. Expressions of sexual dominance, even within the exploitative structures of slavery, were articulated by some enslaved men as proof of a masculine identity built on comparison and contest.

5 “The best man whipped and the other one took it” Violence, Leisure, and Masculinity

Carter J. Jackson, interviewed in 1937 as part of the WPA Program in Texas, recalled his experiences of slave life in the Deep South. He had been born in Alabama but was forcibly moved to Texas during the Civil War to work on a cotton plantation. While relatively young when slavery ended, Jackson was blunt in assessing the overall brutality of the “Peculiar Institution”: “if youse want to know ’bout slavery time, it was hell.” Despite the tense racial etiquette of the Depression-era South, Jackson did not flinch from describing the horrors of human bondage to his interviewer. He also provided more general information on slave life, including enslaved people’s attempts to find enjoyment despite their sufferings in slavery. Jackson suggested that communal gatherings provided one such opportunity, claiming “sometimes we had parties at the co’n shucking,” and that these helped bring enslaved people together as a community. Social gatherings and leisure activities provided enslaved people respite from the harshness of their everyday existence, a chance to forge or renew friendships and romances, or simply allowed them to enjoy the company of one another away from their oppressive working environment. In the public performance of certain activities and demonstration of select attributes and skills, they were also places where enslaved people developed identities as men and women. Having looked so far at masculine identities formed in resistance, work, and sex, this chapter turns to how enslaved men constructed a gendered identity through their interactions with one another in their free time and in leisure spaces. There were a variety of ways to perform manhood in the antebellum South, including by showcasing economic responsibilities, through resistance, or by asserting sexual dominance. 171

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In their social encounters, enslaved men had another arena in which to perform. Leisure activities and competitions were frequently organized by gender, with certain activities perceived to act as demonstrations of manhood or femininity, delineating (supposedly) gender-specific skills and allowing for the formation of, and participation in, distinct masculine and feminine subcultures. Irving E. Lowery, for example, wrote in his postbellum narrative of life in South Carolina that physical competition was regulated by gender. After corn-shuckings, “the boys spend some time in wrestling, foot racing and jumping before going home. And in all these games they matched one’s agility, strength, and manhood against that of his fellow.”1 Having noted the significance of social events, Carter Jackson went on to describe specific leisure activities which enabled enslaved men to showcase manliness, with emphasis given to competition and sanctioned combat: “the best man whipped and the other one took it.”2 Jackson indicated that these contests ended peaceably and with mutual respect among men. However, the significance of violence, expectations of respect from one’s peers, and physical confrontations to formulations of enslaved masculinity meant that leisure spaces sometimes became sites of harm and abuse. Although every man wanted to be known among the “best men of the community,” in the words of Lowery, this was not possible. To fail or struggle in physical activities was not consequence-free: “If one fails to lift his part, he is said to have been ‘pulled down,’ and therefore becomes the butt of ridicule for the balance of the day. When the women folks learn of his misfortune, they forever scorn him as a weakling.”3 Public failure in physical competition or violent confrontations could act as a demonstration of weakness and be held up by the wider community as evidence of a lack of manhood. Organized fights and competitions provided one arena for enslaved men to demonstrate manhood in leisure time, but the significance of comparison, conflict, and expressions of dominance in the formation of enslaved manhood meant violence sometimes developed spontaneously and escalated dramatically. Leisure time offered a space for identities to be won, but also to be lost.

1

2 3

Reverend Irving E. Lowery, Life on the Plantation in Ante-bellum Days, or, OR a Story Based on Facts (Columbia: The State Co., Printers, 1911), 90–91, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/ lowery/lowery.html Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 5, Pt. 4, 1886. Lowery, Life on the Old Plantation, 91.

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Attempts to gather and meet on their own terms proved the resilience of enslaved people and their ability to carve out a degree of agency and cultural autonomy despite enslavement.4 As one former slave from South Carolina explained to their WPA interviewer, “colored people do more than white people allow.”5 Through socializing together and collectively rejecting their commodification, the solidarity of the wider body of enslaved people was molded and individuals were able to create positive personal identities. Gatherings that allowed for interactions across plantation borders helped create and strengthen the wider affective bonds among enslaved people. William Henry Singleton, recalling slavery in North Carolina, claimed that “it was a common thing for the slaves to have parties where the slaves from adjoining plantations came together and danced and sang and played.”6 One ex-slave from Georgia described how “evvybody come from miles around to dem frolics.”7 Allen Sims, enslaved in Alabama, indicated the psychological benefits of these social interactions to his WPA interviewer: “de corn-shuckings was de biggest 4

5 6 7

Early twentieth century work shaped by “Lost Cause” mythology had commonly portrayed the antebellum South as a plantation idyll – a place where childlike enslaved people spent more time in play than at work. See, for example, Ivan E. McDougle, “The Social Status of the Slave,” Journal of Negro History, 3.3 (1918), 281–302; Phillips, Life and Labour in the Old South, 188–218. This was effectively supplanted by research from the 1950s which emphasized the brutality of slavery. See Stampp, The Peculiar Institution; Elkins, Slavery. As part of the broader revisionist shift from the 1960s, historians stressed the cultural and social activities which helped mitigate enslaved people from the worst elements of enslavement and highlighted the solidarity and support of a larger “slave community.” These historians focused much of their attention on leisure activities and social events organized during the limited free time that enslaved people were granted or which they carved out for themselves. Examples of this scholarship include Blassingame, The Slave Community; Rawick, From Sundown to Sunup; Owens, This Species of Property. Numerous historians influenced by this revisionist school have since examined the activities enslaved people pursued in their free time, noting that they seized whatever chances they had to socialize together and that this contributed to the overall sense of community. See, for example, Wiggins, “Leisure Time on the Southern Plantation”; James Walvin, “Slaves, Free Time and the Question of Leisure,” Slavery and Abolition, 16.1 (1996), 1–13; Stephanie M. H. Camp, “Pleasures of Resistance: Enslaved Women and Body Politics in the Plantation South, 1830–1861,” Journal of Southern History, 68.3 (August 2002), 533–572; Camp, Closer to Freedom, chapter 3; Desch Obi, Fighting for Honor; Lussana, “To See Who Was Best on the Plantation”; West, Chains of Love, 19–43; Rebecca Griffin, “‘Goin’ Back Over There to See That Girl’: Competing Social Spaces in the Lives of the Enslaved in Antebellum North Carolina,” Slavery and Abolition, 25.1 (2004), 94–113. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 3, Pt. 4, 84. William Henry Singleton, Recollections of My Slavery Days (Peekskill, NY: Highland Democrat, 1922), 6, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/singleton/singleton.html Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 13, Pt. 3, 334.

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time dey had, ’cause de neighbors came and dey laughed and hollered nearly all night.”8 Some antislavery activists expressed frustration with those “who dissipated their energy in wild sports and drinking bouts during holidays” at the expense of heroically pursuing freedom, but many enslaved people enjoyed socializing with one another, whether at night, during the weekend, or on specific holidays such as Christmas or Easter.9 Slavery was a brutal system of labor exploitation and instrument of white racial supremacy, and enslavers’ desires for profit predominantly set the pace of slave life. But for those who had forged a life in slavery, even a small window of autonomy was prized. As Sallie Paul, a former slave interviewed for the WPA, explained: “Colored people didn’ have no privileges den only as dey Massa would let dem loose on a Saturday evenin en on a Sunday. But, child, dey was just as proud of dat as people is proud of a month dese days.”10 Another ex-slave was more explicit, telling his interviewer: You see a man’s measure of a thing depends on what he can get. Where it is work, work all the time, a few hours rest may mean as much as two or three days if you know how to use it. It is just like a drowning man grabbing a straw. A little time to set around and talk on Sunday seemed like a picnic to us.11

Under the watchful eyes of the wider community, social gatherings were environments where enslaved men and women performed as gendered beings, demonstrating skills and attributes that contemporaries associated with masculinity or femininity. They could have these identities accepted and validated by their peers. Lowery, for example, explained how logrolling, while ostensibly another form of work, also gave enslaved men a chance to publicly prove their manly qualities. Lowery claimed: “a log rolling always meant a good dinner of the best, and lots of fun, as well as a testing of manhood. This testing of manhood was something that everybody was interested in.” As the use of the word “test” would suggest, demonstrations of manhood had a competitive edge. Physical or mental competition offered enslaved men and women the chance to gain material benefits, showcase valued abilities, and gain the approval, respect, or affection of their fellow slaves.12 It also gave them a chance to develop and affirm a gendered identity in front of others.

8 10 11

9 Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 6, 343. Osofsky, Puttin’ On Ole Massa, 10–11. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 3, Pt. 3, 246. 12 Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 11, 179. Camp, “Pleasures of Resistance,” 557.

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To return to Lowery, the physical strength required for success clearly mattered to the male participants, who “took great pride in the development of their muscles” and “took delight in rolling up their shirt sleeves, and displaying the largeness of their arms.” Beyond the sense of selfesteem and personal validation, the comparative demonstration of manhood was of keen interest to the watching crowd of women, all of whom “wanted their husbands and sweethearts to be considered the best men of the community.”13 Gendered distinctions in social activities and competition allowed enslaved men to prove their abilities against one another and to impress the wider slave community: This was a chance to prove they were the “best men,” helping them to stand out from their peers and to establish a gendered identity through comparison. The competitive side to enslaved socializing was recalled as an exciting component of these events. Sims, having earlier noted the importance of cross-plantation meetings, described how “de grown niggers had good times Sadday nights, wid dances, suppers and wras’lin.”14 David Goodman Gullins, who had been enslaved in Georgia, similarly stressed the competitive pursuits of leisure time: “we had plenty of amusements in those days, such as corn shuckings, dances, running, jumping and boxing contest. Saturday was the big frolicking time, and every body made the most of it.”15 Competition and leisure activities associated with masculinity often valorized strength, power, and expressions of physical dominance. Enslaved women asserted themselves against rivals but activities associated with enslaved femininity appear less directly confrontational.16 Ed McCree, enslaved in Oconee County, Georgia, stressed the importance of gendered distinctions in social activities, telling his WPA interviewer that “come winter, de mens had big cornshuckin’s and dere was quiltin’s for de ’omans.” McCree was adamant that this distinction mattered. After being asked for more details about quilting, he told his interviewer that, as a man, this was hardly something he would know about: “bout dem quiltin’s! Now Lady, what would a old Nigger man know ’bout somepin’ dat didn’t nothin’ but ’omans have nothin’ to do wid?”17 Enslaved men and women did socialize together and there was overlap and continuity in 13 15 16 17

14 Lowery, Life on the Plantation, 90. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 6, 343. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 12, Pt. 2, 85. On enslaved women and violence, see Camp, “Pleasures of Resistance,” 558; Forret, Slave Against Slave, chapter 8. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 13, Pt. 3, 63. Daina Ramey Berry has shown these divisions were not always so rigid. However, McCree’s insistence on the gendered

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some forms of entertainment and competition. However, by adulthood physical competition was typically structured along gendered lines and certain leisure activities, such as drinking, gambling, boxing, wrestling, and fighting, were viewed, if not exclusively then predominantly, as male pursuits.18 Midge Burnett, who was interviewed in Georgia for the WPA, described how some social activities were considered almost entirely as homosocial spaces: On moonlight nights yo’ could hear a heap of voices an’ when yo’ peep ober de dike dar am a gang of niggers a-shootin’ craps an’ bettin’ eber’thing dey has stoled frum de plantation. Sometimes a pretty yaller gal er a fat black gal would be dar, but mostly hit would be jist men.19

In their social spaces, gendered scripts were taught, displayed, and followed under the watchful eyes of the wider community, who judged and validated identities and activities as part of a masculine or feminine performance. Leisure activities undertaken by enslaved men frequently involved demonstrations of physical force and enslaved people anticipated or allowed for a degree of violence for men looking to publicly prove or test themselves against rivals. Frank Williams, interviewed for the WPA in Mississippi, noted how violence and male socializing were interconnected, telling his interviewer that “de mos’ fun dat we had in dem days was stealin’ whiskey, drinkin’ it and fightin.”20 Whether in organized combat or in more spontaneous confrontations, a willingness to use, and an aptitude for, violence was clearly associated with masculinity by the enslaved population. One enslaved folk-tale had Brer Rabbit publicly declare his willingness to fight Brer Lion, by reminding his fellow animals: “I’m a man. A m-a-n, a m-a-n I tell you. And being as I’m a man, I’m not scared of nothing nor nobody, and that means Brer Lion and all the rest.”21 In one WPA interview, a former slave from Louisiana recalled a fight between a bear and bloodhounds in which the bravery and

18

19 20 21

distinction suggests something of its importance to him. See Berry, “Swing the Sickle,” 1–2. Physical competition across gender lines seemed more common in childhood. See Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, 28; Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 5, Pt. 4, 1733. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 14, Pt. 1, 157. Rawick, American Slave, Supp. Ser. 1, Vol. 10, Pt. 5, 2315. Roger D. Abrahams (ed.), African Americans Folktales: Stories from Black Traditions in the New World (New York: Random House, 1985), 18. While Brer Rabbit was in fact lying, the tale indicates the performative nature of gendered expressions of bravery and courage.

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physical force of the animal was gendered: “He gave the bloodhounds a fight: He fighted them like a man, yes!”22 Enslaved people commonly viewed physical competition and combat as a means of demonstrating masculine virtues such as strength, endurance, and bravery. It was also a means of proving dominance over another. Gendered ideas connecting violence with masculinity and honor were common to West African societies, and enslaved men and women came to America with these ideas in mind. There was also a degree of overlap and cross-fertilization with white Southern gender conventions.23 Public and performative violence was integral to the creation of masculine identities for white male Southerners, and, whether intended or not, leisure spaces frequently turned into crucibles of conflict. Charles Ball explained that “fighting” was one of the “many species of amusement and excess to which the southern people are addicted.” The gendered nature to this violence, as well as the performative form it took, was made clear in Ball’s earlier statement: It is here proper for me to observe, that there are many phrases of language in common use in Carolina and Georgia, which are applied in a way that would not be understood by persons from one of the Northern States. For instance, when several persons are quarrelling, brawling, making a great noise, or even fighting, they say, “the gentlemen are frolicking!”24

The importance given to public reputation and the recognition of one’s claims to honor meant that spaces where white men socialized provided an arena for the settling of disagreements and rivalries, as well as for more formal competition and combat.25 Josiah Henson made this clear when describing how Southern male planters would “assemble on Saturday or 22 23

24 25

Clayton, Mother Wit, 28. Black, Dismantling Black Manhood, 23; Desch Obi, Fighting for Honor. On honor in African societies, see John Illife, Honour in African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 40–41. Gross, Double Character, 49. The literature on violence, gender, and honor is voluminous. Some of the most important work on the topic includes: Dickson D. Bruce Jr., Violence and Culture in the Antebellum South (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979); Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor; Edward L. Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19th-Century American South (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); Elliot J. Gorn, “‘Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch’: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry,” American Historical Review, 90.1 (1985), 18–43; Bertram WyattBrown, The Shaping of Southern Culture: Honor, Grace, and War, 1760s–1880s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

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Sunday, which were their holidays, and gamble, run horses, or fight game-cocks, discuss politics, and drink whiskey, and brandy and water, all day long.” Henson emphasized how violence was an expected outcome of these events: “quarrels and brawls of the most violent description were frequent consequences of these meetings.” Henson clearly shared the belief that violence served as a means of demonstrating manhood. He was happy to help his enslaver in the brawls as he was “young, remarkably athletic and self-relying,” with the emphasis on his physicality and independence speaking to perceived manly qualities. Through fighting past the crowds, protecting his enslaver and showing his strength and power, he demonstrated his “superiority to others . . . acquiring their respect in some degree, at the same time.”26 To be willing and able to fight other men to prove ability or to protect one’s reputation from insult or challenge was a known route to manhood in the antebellum South. Social spaces provided an arena where men could use physical confrontations to assert or answer questions relating to one’s manhood. As Henson indicated, this was recognized as such by enslaved men too. The overlap between white and black masculine ideals and the importance of violence in seeking to prove or protect manly reputation and status was exemplified in Lewis Clarke’s statement: “if a man don’t resent anything that’s put upon him, they call him Poke-Easy. The slaves catch it, too; and them as won’t fight, is called Poke-Easy.”27 Although enslaved men, like Henson, faced harm if they asserted themselves against white men, combat and physical confrontations within the slave community provided a space for the formation of enslaved manhood.28 Some former slaves even noted that physical competition between enslaved men was encouraged by enslavers.29 While this could be considered evidence of enslavers seeking to further exploit the bodies to which they laid claim, these fights were framed in more affirming language for both spectators and participants. In publicly demonstrating 26 27 28

29

Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson, 14. Clarke, “Leaves from a Slave’s Journal of Life,” 78–9. Henson was seriously wounded following his perceived transgression here. Black men who asserted themselves against white men risked life and limb, as demonstrated when Levi, an enslaved man in Abeville, South Carolina, fought another male slave at a corn husking in 1855 before turning his attention to the white man who sought to stop the conflict. Levi received one hundred lashes, and it was the assault on a white man which most concerned the court. See Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Pendleton and Anderson District, Box 2918, Case 287, 0952–0958, SCDAH. Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, 23; Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 13, Pt. 3, 202; Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, 173.

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courage, skill, and physical ability in combat, enslaved men earned the respect of their peers, developed self-esteem, and demonstrated their masculine identity.30 Sergio Lussana has explored the importance of fighting activities in the construction of masculine identities and stressed the affirming and supportive homosocial environment which enabled enslaved men to construct a gendered sense of self. Public demonstrations of physical prowess allowed enslaved men to showcase a particular type of manhood, one predicated on strength, endurance, bravery, and force. Combat, competition, and physical confrontations during leisure time provided a “test” through which enslaved men proved manhood. However, more positive treatments of enslaved male sociability and depictions of enslaved masculinity as a supportive and unifying identity underestimate how seriously enslaved men took confrontation, competition, and combat precisely because this related to manhood. Some enslaved men who built their identities on physical prowess and success in competition took drastic steps to avoid the embarrassment, even emasculation, entailed by a public loss. These men looked for ways to restore their reputation, even if this came at the cost of others in the slave community. Much as historiographical models of resistance at times overstate the political unity of enslaved people, historical discussions on leisure activities have overstated the solidarity found in social spaces. The challenges to these models of slave unity have been most convincingly argued by Jeff Forret.31 Despite the depth of research conducted by Forret on the topic of slave violence, an emphasis on the fluid and contested masculine hierarchies, the significance of grudges and slights, and the resentment and sadness enslaved men felt at their perceived or real loss of manhood in the eyes of others adds further layers to our understanding of the complex relations between enslaved people and within slave communities. Such an approach also serves to bridge the gap between studies of slave violence and community dynamics, such as Forret’s, and the most 30

31

Kenneth Stampp noted that “young men prided themselves upon their athletic skills and physical prowess and often matched strength in violent encounters,” but revisionist historians depicted slave communities as more harmonious places in which the fighting that marked much of Southern public life and its masculine culture was rare. See Stampp, The Peculiar Institution, 335; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 636; Wiggins, “Leisure Time on the Southern Plantation,” 37. Recent work on the topic is more measured, indicating how leisure activities which involved confrontations or violence did not indicate chaos or pathological disorder, but instead proved enslaved men’s desire for status and masculine identity. See Desch Obi, Fighting for Honor; Lussana, “To See Who Was Best on the Plantation.” Forret, Slave Against Slave, chapter 4.

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recent work on slave masculinity, such as Lussana’s, which emphasizes solidarity and support among enslaved men. The importance of comparison, conflict, and expressions of dominance in the formation of enslaved manhood meant that leisure and combat offered a space for identities to be won, but also to be lost. The sense of contested hierarchies and shifting masculine status in competition and conflict is abundantly clear in the language ex-slaves used to describe violent encounters they witnessed or engaged in during free time. Physical success in wrestling, for example, proved that you were “the best of the young boys on the plantation.”32 Yet, if victory meant being the best, a loss meant being shown as, if not the worst, then certainly worse than another man. One former slave recalled how, in their free time, large groups of enslaved men would fight one another, competing until “a hero of the contest [was] proclaimed.” On occasion, two men were adjudged heroes. This, however, was not an acceptable outcome. There could be only one: “it was necessary to run a contest between the two combatants before a final hero could be proclaimed. Then the two antagonists would stage a battle royal and would continue in the conflict till one was proclaimed victorious.” This former slave recalled such events in a positive tone, noting that these scenes were sites of “excessive inebriation and hilarity.” However, they also indicated the hierarchical nature of competition and implied that the need for a victor caused some tension: “these physical exhibitions were the scenes of much controversial conflict.”33 Enslaved men cared deeply about how they were perceived by their peers – the results of physical competition and the implications of violent confrontations in their social spaces mattered. In a world full of humiliating abuse, and with daily reminders of their low status emanating from white society, being dominated or shown up as a lesser man from within the slave community wounded some enslaved men deeply. Judge Nash of North Carolina felt this to be the case, claiming that enslaved people “sometimes kill each other in heat of blood, being sensible to the dishonor in their own caste of crouching in submission to one of themselves.”34 While we might be skeptical about allowing elite white men to speak for enslaved people, enslaved men such as George, on trial for assault and battery and affray in the Fairfield Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, South Carolina, clearly resented the idea of being imposed 32 34

33 Perdue et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 85. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 16, 115. Cited from Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 630.

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upon by their peers. George informed his rival that “he was not to be mastered by a negro.”35 White society might not acknowledge enslaved men’s claims to honor, but this intensified the concern with reputation and status within slave communities. Scholars of honor and the American South had not always included enslaved people in their discussions, but historians increasingly challenge this omission by focusing on interactions within the slave quarters and recognizing the different layers to honor in societies marked by social stratification. Making use of Bertram Wyatt-Brown’s work and Frank Henderson Stewart’s crosscultural study of honor, Jeff Forret has argued that “slaves understood honor’s horizontal component in which respect was distributed among equals.”36 In their desire to publicly prove they were “men” and deserving of respect in their communities, enslaved men sometimes insulted, harassed, and hurt one another. The best man might whip, but the “other” could not always take it. Violence played an important role in establishing masculine identities, and attempts to prove manhood in social spaces could involve abuse, intimidation, and the denigration of another’s character.37 The perceived need to dominate to demonstrate manhood sometimes meant harsh words were uttered and intense violence used. Nero, an enslaved man charged with fighting and rioting by the Court of Magistrates and Freeholders in Pendleton and Anderson District, South Carolina, clearly saw violence as a means of proving his masculine identity. Seeking to prove he was “Man a nuff” to the group of enslaved men gathered, Nero stabbed another man, leaving him with serious injuries.38 Nero may have felt he had proven his masculine identity, but this ultimately came at the expense of another. While Lussana has argued that injuries incurred during combat should be incorporated into studies on agency, that “determining the fate of each other’s body, away from the view and control of the master, amounted to a form of resistance for enslaved

35 36

37 38

Fairfield District, Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Trial Papers, 1839–1865, L20165, Case 25, SCDAH. Forret, “He was no man attal,” 24. See also Brown, “Mask of Obedience,” 1250; Illife, Honour, 121; Frank Henderson Stewart, Honor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). See, for examples of this scholarship, Kolchin, “Re-Evaluating the Antebellum Slave Community”; Brown, “Mask of Obedience”; Forret, Slave Against Slave. Pendleton and Anderson District, Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Trial Papers, Box 2916, Case 189, 0086–0093.

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men,” this risks romanticizing what were, at times, harsh and abusive encounters.39 It also speaks to the problems of utilizing agency as a synonym for collective resistance. Personal assertions of strength sometimes came at the cost of another. The man Nero stabbed claimed to have no idea as to why he had been chosen for such violence. Some ex-slaves stressed that fights were well regulated and “kept orderly,” but enslaved men who fought one another did not always do so with respect for rules and confrontations in leisure spaces sometimes escalated.40 Brawls that erupted among men seeking to prove their superiority or assert themselves over one another could be brutal and ruthless, with the desire to demonstrate manhood balanced with the desire to avoid emasculation. John, an enslaved man from Kanawha County, Virginia, was disputing with a group of enslaved men over money and let it be known that he would get even “at the risk of [his] life before Saturday night.” He told one witness that “there was some two or three men on Master Johns plantation, he allowed to make feel the weight of that knife.”41 John eventually did get even, catching up with his rival on Saturday night after dark and stabbing him to death. Public insults enslaved men offered one another were cutting, deliberately designed to hurt and cast doubt on another man’s reputation and, indeed, their claim to manhood. One enslaved man hauled in front of the Court of Magistrates and Freeholders in Pendleton and Anderson District for assaulting a male slave had instigated this fight, abusing and demolishing his clearly overmatched foe in front of other slaves. This was not a supportive homosocial subculture where friends and peers sought to lift one another up, but instead a humiliation and a beat-down: “Defendant Elijah came to Dick and [said] he would whip him. Rubed his stick in his face and nocked his hat of his head and threw him Down on the ground gouged him scrached him [sic].”42 Dick was forced to gain assistance from others to prevent the abuse from continuing and his enslaver eventually sought and received punishment for Elijah. It seems hardly likely that Dick would believe Elijah respected him as a man and as an equal. Elijah may have proved himself a superior man by “whipping” his rival. He did so by publicly harming and humiliating another male slave.

39 40 41 42

Lussana, My Brother Slaves, 65. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 5, Pt. 4, 1886. Executive Papers, William Smith, Box 9, Folder 1, September 11, 1848, LVA. Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Pendleton and Anderson District, Box 2917, Case 167, 0612, SCDAH.

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The desire to demonstrate superiority over another man could involve denigrating and abusing their character, rejecting their claims to respect and manly status through words or deeds. During one social gathering in Monroe County, Virginia, in 1811, it was recounted how a quarrel had escalated, and that Will, the murdered man, specifically mocked his rival’s claims to manhood. Moses told Will “if you strike me I will rip you” and “then held a large pen knife in his hand,” but Will condescendingly replied: “you are a small man I won’t strike or trouble you,” and went on, “holding up his hand if I was to throw this at you, I would not value your knife.” The words that preceded male conflict might cast doubt on men’s comparative status and strength, with physical prowess proving you were more of a man than your rival. The sense that men consolidated their own sense of manhood through comparison to others was reinforced in Will’s mocking of Moses’ physical presence as a “small man.” However, Moses carried an equalizer for that precise reason: “he (Moses), stated to this Deponent, that the said knife, he carried for the purpose of stabing [sic] any Negro larger than himself, who should interrupt him, or words to that effect.”43 Moses was true to his word and Will died within hours of receiving the wound. Enslaved men cared deeply about their reputation, status, and how others perceived them, and this shaped the tone and tenor of some physical confrontations, as well as the outcome.44 During one fight in Louisiana in 1860, “the death of plaintiff’s slave was the result of a combat, which he had provoked, continued with billets of wood, and finally with knives.” The fact that the court felt the need to state, following this ruling, that “the use of deadly weapons in combat by slaves should be discountenanced” offers an indication of the level of violence that enslaved men were willing to use against one another.45 One enslaved man named Lewis suffered a serious knife wound during an affray in South Carolina on a Saturday night, caused in part by his unwillingness to accept a slight on his character. Ben “Bantered [Lewis] down the road to fight,” and mocked Lewis’ request to stop insulting him: “Ben said he would cuss him or any other man Lewis shoved Ben 3 times Ben shoved Lewis.” The reference to “any other man” suggests how such public statements and the willingness to use words or force to assert 43 44 45

Executive Papers, James Monroe, Misc. Reel 6018, January 29, 1811, 0095–0097, LVA. See, for example, Pickens District, Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Trial Papers, L39030, Case 11, SCDAH. Catterall, Judicial Cases, Volume III, 677.

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oneself served to establish rank and reputation among men. Ben wanted others to know he feared no man: The significance of these words were such that the conflict escalated, and Lewis was “stabd with a knife.”46 In another combative episode, two enslaved men from Chesterfield County, Virginia, 1842, agreed to fight one another to resolve “an old grudge.” They clearly anticipated a high degree of violence. Fleming, one of the men involved, informed his rival that he would “put him in Hell in three minutes.” Although their first fight was broken up by the enslaved foreman, neither believed the conflict to be resolved, and they rearranged combat for the evening. In this later struggle, Fleming stabbed his rival to death with a fork.47 During another orchestrated fight, this time in Hanover County, Virginia, an enslaved man likewise ended up stabbed to death. The conflict was shaped by long-standing resentments but also related to the trading of insults in a public forum and, specifically, the loaded threat to “whip” another man. Before the killing blow was struck, the “deceased observed to Prisoner he supposed he intended to whip him then, the prisoner answered he did.” These competitive and combative words clearly exacerbated the conflict, with one witness noting that after this “both appear[ed] willing to fight.” After blows were exchanged, however, and “very soon after the fight began,” the deceased “said he was stabbed” and fell. Both men were willing and able to fight one another, each hoping to prove they could “whip” the other. However, the deceased was not expecting the fight to involve weapons. According to one witness, Armistead “hollowed out the prisoner has a knife and ran back a little,” but the fatal blow had already been struck.48 While fights designed to resolve grudges or alleviate tension might enable the “best man” to whip another and resolve any lingering questions of status, the level of violence enslaved men were willing to use against one another during combat meant the other man did not always take it. The sense that men should be willing to stand up for themselves, that it was a masculine prerogative to be respected by one’s peers and, if this was not granted, that violence was a means of earning this respect, could drive intense conflict in enslaved people’s social spaces. In South Carolina in 1847, a group of enslaved men gathered on a Saturday night to gamble, 46 47 48

Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Pendleton and Anderson District, Box 2917, Case 195, 0097–98, SCDAH. Executive papers, John M. Gregory, Box 2, Folder 7, November 14, 1842, LVA. Executive Papers, James Pleasants, Box 7, Folder 12, August 24, 1825, LVA.

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drink, and play cards. Such activities allowed enslaved men to socialize and develop friendships in a supportive homosocial subculture. However, these were also spaces where enslaved men might fall out, particularly if the participants believed that their claims to honor, reputation, and manhood were not being treated with respect by their peers.49 Over the course of this evening, tension rose between the participants and Jim was asked to leave. Jim, however, “swore he would not,” making a bold claim that his position atop a competitive masculine hierarchy meant he would not accept such a rebuke: “he was the best man on the place & he would not leave till he wanted.” The sense of superiority – that, as the “best man,” he should dictate to others – indicates how demonstrations of manhood involved displays of dominance, as well as the connections enslaved men made between comparative physical force and masculinity. Unless the others could demonstrate otherwise by forcing him to leave, Jim would remain, and he would remain the “best man.” Perhaps having an ax being thrown at him should have convinced Jim it was time to go – that others did not agree with his self-perception – but it did not. Jim stayed and fought, seeking to prove he really was “the best man.”50 Jim’s sense of superiority did not protect him from the blow of the ax and he died from his injuries. Leisure activities and socializing undoubtedly offered enslaved men a chance to develop friendships and bond with peers, but they were also spaces where rivalries developed. Public challenges, boastful statements, or deliberate insults frequently precipitated confrontations between men. Insulting words almost invariably struck at one’s reputation or character and required a response if the person was to keep their honor. Few men wanted to be known as “Poke-easy.”51 In one episode from South Carolina, an enslaved man named Toney sought to use public violence to silence a rival who had claimed he was fencing stolen leather, “following and hunting up” a man named Sy during the weekend, “making many threats against said boy Sy And bantering [him] to fight in a very Riotous and unlawful manner.” While Sy didn’t want to fight, 49

50 51

Primus Magee, interviewed by the WPA in Mississippi, recalled how gambling and “crap shootin” was a popular form of entertainment for enslaved men, but also that violence could erupt here. Magee claimed: “Some times hit would go off alreight an’ again dier would be a disagreement wid a few fights.” Rawick, American Slave, Supp. Ser. 1, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, 1432. Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Spartanburg District, Box 2921, Case 197, 0670–0678, SCDAH. Clarke, “Leaves from a Slave’s Journal of Life,” 78–79.

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Toney’s rage at having his name connected to theft was such that he demanded combat, targeting Sy and Dick, another man by whom he felt disrespected. Both Dick and Toney had claimed to be able to best the other in violent combat, using this claim to deride the other and establish their superiority: “Aaron heard Toney say he would whip Dick or any other negro that accused him of stealing leath[er]. Dick at the time Toney whiped him he said he would whip Sy or any other negro that talked about him that he had as many wepons/weapons as any one.”52 Once again, threats or claims that one man was able to “whip” the other were not taken lightly. The perceived emasculation inherent in the threat could instead precipitate extreme violence. Violence, public confrontations, threats, and insults were used by some enslaved men to make a statement about their relative manhood compared to peers and to right perceived wrongs. Leisure time offered a very public arena for doing so. During one corn shucking on a plantation in South Carolina, competition turned violent, and threats and gendered boasts precipitated the deadly conflict: “There was a fuss at Mr Wells at his shucking saw some have sticks some talked loud.” Those who “talked loud” did so to assert their gendered superiority: “Aron Motes had a stick heard him say he was the best man there.” Aron made direct connections between manhood and his ability to fight, with another witness claiming that “Aron boasted of his manhood” and that he would use violence to ensure one of his friends was not “impose[ed] on” by another man. Aron’s perception of his manhood rested on comparison and conflict with others in the community, and there were consequences to these public tests between men seeking to prove themselves. In the ensuing scuffle, Bill, an enslaved man who attempted to prevent the violence from escalating, was accidentally killed.53 In seeking to prove themselves or restore their names and reputations, enslaved men used harsh words and insults to force conflict. These words or actions were not always easily walked back. One free black man who witnessed the death of an enslaved man named John, in Blandford, Virginia, claimed to have heard insults and curses, and that he knew violence would inevitably follow these words. According to Allen Johnson: “he was standing in his house door . . . about 5 o clock in the evening 52 53

Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Pendleton and Anderson District, Box 2775, Case 400, 0312, SCDAH. Laurens District, Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Trial Papers, L30181, Case 67, SCDAH.

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and heard some one curse – said to himself ‘some one is going to fight.’”54 One case heard at the Court of Magistrates and Freeholders in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 1850, indicated how claims over whether one man could “whip” another were not taken as lighthearted jests but instead precipitated a deadly encounter. Jason demanded that his rival didn’t “banter” him, and, after angrily noting that he had “heard that Prisoner had said that he would whip him,” sought to disprove this. If being able to whip another man was proof of superior manhood, this claim worked at emasculating the other man. Enslaved men did not take these slights lightly. Larken, the other man involved, did not back down from his claim: “Prisoner said God damn you if you go with me to the end of the lane I can whip you.” This rivalry had been developing for some time, with complaints over women and unpaid debts combining and ultimately leading to violence. However, the sense that combat provided the means to resolve this conflict and to publicly assert dominance over another man, as well as that a loss would be humiliating for either combatant, comes across in the publicly stated desire to prove just who would be able to “whip” whom. They fought with sticks and knives and Jason died from his injuries.55 The importance enslaved men accorded to public reputation and perceived status among peers meant conflicts sometimes escalated, even after seemingly trivial slights and jests. During one corn husking in Greenbrier, Virginia, two enslaved men were “running the rig on each other” and exchanging insults. It may have started in a lighthearted fashion, with the two men “familiarly jesting and joking with each other,” but it did not remain so for long. A combination of drink, the public space, and escalating insults exacerbated the conflict, with one man knifing and killing another. The telling blow was landed after the deceased informed his rival that he “was so lazy that the Bugs knatts and flies followed him.” Having noted the significance some enslaved men accorded to their industry and work ethic, it seems that this public insult and challenge to the man’s character was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The deceased, a man named Sam, had claimed: “after we are done supper we will be all Great Men.”56 Only one man was left standing.

54 55 56

Executive Papers, William Smith, Box 7, Folder 4, February 18, 1848, LVA. Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Spartanburg District, Box 2920, Case 117, 1200–1220, SCDAH. Executive Papers, James Pleasants, December 1824, Box 6, Folder 1, LVA.

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The insults and abuse uttered by enslaved men in social spaces often revolved around or sought to highlight a comparative mental, moral, or physical weakness of their rival, attacking their identity and self-esteem and striking at their gendered sense of self. Enslaved men did not unquestionably accept other men’s claims to manhood and they used words and deeds to publicly indicate their lack of respect for these claims. Lula Jackson explained how enslaved men seeking to prove themselves in wrestling matches would go up to their rival and simply state, “You ain’t no good.”57 While this hardly seems the most cutting of claims, men whose identity was bound up in their ability to fight or compete responded fiercely. Some insults and challenges which led to combat in social spaces attacked men’s family members, publicly casting doubt on their ability to protect or support their loved ones. Jack, an enslaved man cited in the Pendleton and Anderson Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, fought with another man who had not only claimed he was “the best man on the Turff” but also attacked his female companion, having “call’d Dianna a Bitch.”58 Such claims were not well received: Jack ended up biting off his rival’s ear, perhaps putting paid to his claim of having been the “best man.” Public suggestions that men were unable to satisfy or control enslaved women, striking directly at ideas on male virility and power, could also cause conflict. During one party held by enslaved people in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, in 1819, Primus sought to protect his wife Dilsey’s reputation, even after a relatively trivial insult: “the wife of the prisoner got angry at hearing it said by some of the company that she danced as if she had lead to her feet, at which Primus said he would stand at his wifes back.” While this initial insult was bad enough, tension grew as another man looked to comfort Dilsey. A fight broke out between Primus and Abram, the man Primus believed was interfering with his relationship: Primus stabbed his rival with a knife, exclaiming “God Damn you you will not get between me & my wife any more.” The sense that grudges between men lingered and that conflicts were exacerbated by a perceived or real fear of public humiliation was reinforced in the claim of one witness “that [they] heard Primus tell Abram at a corn shucking last fall when quarrelling that he would kill him if it was four years hence.” The words uttered, actions undertaken, and wider social and gendered 57 58

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, 12. Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Pendleton and Anderson District, Box 2916, Case 20, 203, SCDAH.

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meanings connected to public combat – including the meaning of victory and defeat – could lead to serious violence between enslaved men in their leisure spaces.59 In a similar case, heard in the Pendleton and Anderson Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Tom, an enslaved man, had “made repeated & provoking threats against George,” and boasted to others of “having separated said George & his wife.” Another witness claimed “he heard prisoner say that he prisoner was the occasion of the wife of slave George driving him off & that said George & wife have been separate since that time.” The repeated insults – the insinuation that George was unable to satisfy and keep his wife from another man – acted as a means of emasculating and humiliating a rival; these claims worked to display Tom’s dominance over George to the wider community. If this insult was not enough, Tom claimed he would replicate his intimate victory over George in a fight, letting it be known that “if he [George] did not mind he prisoner would come over & wear him out with a waggon whip.” These words were cutting, humiliating, and emasculating. They were a direct attack on George’s ability to support or satisfy a woman, as well as mocking his ability to defend himself against another man. These words were meant to hurt and provoke a fight and they were effective in doing so: Tom “succeeded in getting into an affray with said George.” Indeed, George had heard enough and sought to make Tom prove his abilities: “prisoner asked Tom if he had that waggon whip for him . . . prisoner asked again if Tom had a cow hide for him.” Having been forced to put his money where his mouth was, Tom seemed nervous, asking George to move away from him. George was not placated and, to the evident surprise of the witnesses, pulled out a seemingly real pistol, “cock [ed] it as if to shoot & several times presented as if to shoot Tom,” before “turning the but [sic]” and striking his rival “on the head cutting his head near 1 ½ inches which bled quite freely.”60 As the previous case would attest, publicly undercutting another man’s claims to manhood had serious consequences. Personal comparison and a desire to dominate, if not humiliate, drove the comments some enslaved men made to one another as well as the actions they undertook in their social spaces. Such conflict highlights the comparative, divisive, and hierarchical elements of

59 60

Pittsylvania County, Reel 54, Court Records 21, 1819–1820, 28–33, LVA. Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Pendleton and Anderson District, Box 2918, Case 278, 0849–0861, SCDAH. Italics mine.

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masculine identity in slave communities. One man’s victory meant another’s loss, and this had real consequences. Fighting contests and confrontations provided “important arenas in which enslaved men asserted and displayed distinctly gendered identities, which were judged, recognized and validated by their peers.”61 However, they were also arenas where men could be publicly exposed as lesser than rivals. The perceived or actual connotations of this mattered. To gain manhood through combat or competition meant proving you were “better” than another; the victor gained the spoils, but the loser suffered a very public loss of status. Not all men accepted defeat or perceived loss of status graciously. Such was the lesson provided in one slave folk-tale from North Carolina, where the message was that fear of mockery from one’s peers would lead to tension, if not outright violence. Brer Wasp, having defeated Brer Mosquito in a planting contest, celebrated his victory with glee. However, Wasp laughed so hard, and for so long, that his body shrunk down and left him embarrassed and ashamed. His perceived loss of status led first to anguish and then to outwardly directed anger: “[When] he thought about how now the others were going to have their turn to laugh at that little waist he had now, he got so that he couldn’t get that shameful thing out of his mind.” While this moralistic tale might advise people to avoid excessive gloating, the fear of mockery from his peers also explained why wasps are so aggressive: “Everywhere he goes he thinks somebody is ready to laugh at him. If anyone so much as looks at him, he gets so mad that he is ready to fight.”62 The desire to avoid diminished status meant enslaved men could respond fiercely to perceived and real challenges and insults. Fights, insults, and other forms of competition during social occasions were sometimes ferocious; a loss, or even a perceived loss, of status was not easily accepted and grudges and rivalries lingered. Jacob Green, enslaved in Kentucky, described in his fugitive narrative how he attended a “negro shindy or dance,” hoping to impress his peers and “have my pick among the best looking” women. However, he accidentally ripped his trousers beforehand and was forced to rectify this for fear of embarrassment. Green thereupon entered the dance and worked at impressing his fellow slaves. Unfortunately, though, his dancing was overly energetic and Green found his trousers ripping once more, this time in front of the

61 62

Lussana, “To See Who Was Best on the Plantation,” 918. Abrahams, African American Folktales, 120.

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entire community. Rather than finding support from his peers, he was left humiliated and hurt: The roar of laughter that came from both men and gals almost deafened me, and I would at this moment have sunk through the floor, so I endeavoured to creep out as slily as I could; but even this I was not permitted to do until I had undergone a hauling around the room by my unfortunate shirt tail: and this part of the programme was performed by the gals, set on by the boys – every nigger who could not stand up and laugh, because laughing made them weak, fell down on the floor and rolled round and round.

Green eventually escaped, but he did not intend to take this humiliation without striking back: “The first thing I thought of now was revenge. Take your comfort, niggers now, said I to myself, for sorrow shall be yours in the morning.” Green cut loose all of the horses, knowing that the enslaved people gathered had come from many miles to attend this dance. He took pleasure in the sense that they would suffer as a result: “Well, thought I, your masters will have to reckon with you to-morrow; you have had glad hearts tonight at my expense, but you will have sore backs to-morrow at your own.”63 While Green was unwilling, or perhaps unable, to use force himself to right this humiliation, anger at a loss of face and the desire to protect one’s reputation from mockery and shame sometimes saw conflict spiral. In North Carolina, 1856, two enslaved men fought “in a star-light night.” One man quickly triumphed and then left. An enslaved man who had witnessed the fight had something to say about it. “Words passed” between the spectator and the loser, which rapidly escalated: “prisoner got up – the deceased then rose up and reached his hand inside the door and got a stick. As he was turning around the prisoner stabbed him with a bowie knife.” The loser of the first fight found the second equally hard going, struggling and being repeatedly knocked down before fleeing. He had, however, managed to fatally stab his rival.64 In Rockbridge County, Virginia, 1817, enslaved men gathered together one Saturday evening to cut wood. During this gathering two of the men fell out, and violence escalated. Ned and Julius quarrelled that evening, with one witness describing how they heard Julius complain: “Ned you called me an 63

64

Jacob D. Green, Narrative of the Life of J. D. Green, A Runaway Slave, from Kentucky, Containing an Account of His Three Escapes, in 1839, 1846, and 1848 (Huddersfield: Henry Fielding, Pack Horse Yard, 1864), 11–13, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/greenjd/greenjd .html Catterall, Judicial Cases, Volume II, 253.

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ungodly man,” but the conflict related to a much longer rivalry. The violence used to settle this was ferocious: “the wound was a cut on the right side of the neck with an axe and deceased’s neck seemed to be half off.” Julius acknowledged that “it was not for anything that passed that evening but for an old grudge of better than two years.” Julius and Ned had fought one another at a corn husking some two years ago, but Julius had not let his earlier loss go: “The prisoner on being questioned said that the deceased & him had quarrelled two years ago last fall at a husking at Mr Lloyds & a scuffle ensued in which the deceased butted him which vexed him.” While they had been seen together “on friendly terms” since, memories of combat and a loss of face lingered; the settling of scores might be a long time coming.65 If it was bad to lose face in combat, it could be worse to not even be allowed access to the social space. Attempts to restrict access to leisure activities or social events were taken as an insult, and enslaved men were willing to use violence to challenge such an affront to their character. In Alabama, 1851, “at a ball for colored persons given in Mobile,” an enslaved man named Felix was indicted for the murder of “Spanish Frank, a free negro.” Felix had arrived at the ball without an invitation and he eventually attracted the attention of the organizer, with whom he exchanged words: “when the deceased reminded the prisoner that he was there without an invitation . . . they came violently together.” The initial fight was stopped by another free black man, but Felix was unable to accept the slight. He explicitly threatened revenge, telling the peace maker, “I have no complaint against you Thomas, but as to Frank, I will kill him to-night.” Moments later Frank was dying, having been stabbed by Felix following this public insult.66 During a slave party hosted by a free black woman in Fauquier County, Virginia, 1857, some drunk white men attempted to enter, despite having received no invitation. The hostess, Maria, had asked an enslaved man named Edmond to regulate attendance and he clearly took this job seriously. After she informed him that she did not want these men to enter, Edmond proclaimed: “I will not let them knock the door down & if you will go away I will stop them, let them be white or black. I am a man as well as they.” The specific use of the word “man” to describe his 65 66

Executive Papers, James Patton Preston, Box 1, Folder 6, February 15, 1817, LVA. Catterall, Judicial Cases, Volume III, 177. See also T. Stephen Whitman, “‘I Have Got the Gun and Will Do as I Please with Her’: African Americans and Violence in Maryland, 1782–1830,” in Daniels and Kennedy (eds.), Over the Threshold, 254–267.

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willingness to fight indicates how violence could be used to assert one’s place atop a masculine hierarchy. Unfortunately for Edmond, however, his actions in restricting access to the party included casting aspersions on an enslaved man. Dick, the man in question, rejected the claim he had been knocking on the door or throwing stones, and likewise asserted his willingness to defend his reputation with force: “by God I have as much right to take it up as any body else.”67 In the conflict that followed, Edmond was killed. Following one altercation at a corn shucking in Buckingham County, Virginia, 1840, an enslaved man known as Big Joe acted in a similar fashion to Edmond, throwing two enslaved men out of the house for fighting. He also threw out the man who was “trying to make peace” between the two, a man known as Little Joe. Little Joe returned to pick up his hat and was thrown out once more, but explicitly threatened his rival for his officious actions here: “if he put his hands on him again he [Little Joe] would stab him.” While Little Joe left, defeated, his threat was taken seriously by Big Joe. Seeking to prove he could not be insulted in such a way, Big Joe followed his rival and beat him to death with a bedstead post.68 At times, competition for status or lingering anger at public slights held such importance that enslaved men attacked opponents after fights were over; grudges and disagreements that were not settled in the process of fighting instead spilt over into yet more violence. In one instance, a fight that had been going on throughout the day was settled in emphatic, albeit dishonorable, fashion: A negro man belonging to Jennings was killed by another negro man belonging to Kavanaugh. They had been more than once fighting on the same day, within a short space of time; and that Kavanaugh’s negro came up behind that of Jennings, and gave the mortal blow, a short time after the last encounter: that in a few days thereafter Jennings’ negro died of the wound inflicted by that blow.69

Grudges formed in combat were sometimes long held and attempts to manage or control violence were more problematic in practice than in theory. During one enslaved party in Kanawha County, Virginia, 1834, a dispute erupted between two enslaved men named Harry and Sam. Sam, however, found himself an ally: “Dennis the deceased took up the quarrel for Sam.” This was not pure altruism, and rather reflected the long-term 67 68 69

Executive papers, Henry A. Wise, Misc. Reel 4202, Box 8, Folder 4, 677, 690–698, LVA. Nelson County, County Court Minute Book, Vol. 8, 1835–1840, Reel 27, November 28, 1840, 438–440, LVA. Catterall, Judicial Cases, Volume V, 151.

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rivalries and anger at previous encounters that could exacerbate conflict between enslaved men: “[Dennis] Spoke of an old grudge which he had against the prisoner, and declared that he would knock him down.” Dennis then attacked his rival from behind before the fight was stopped by others present. Several witnesses agreed that Harry had “hallo[ed] enough,” likely hoping to stop the beating. Despite this seeming recognition of defeat, Dennis was not finished with his opponent and used subterfuge to continue his assault: the decsd. requested he might speak to the prisoner, and McDowell, putting down his club, permitted them to meet. No sooner was the opportunity presented to the deceased, instead of evincing any disposition or wish to parly with the prisoner, sprung upon him, beat him to the floor, and constituted his blows until he was taken off.

Although there was clearly an expectation that this fight would be resolved peaceably, Dennis had no intention of letting the chance to defeat his rival slip from his grasp. Unfortunately for him, however, Harry managed to get hold of his knife between the beatings and “made a cut or thrust at Dennis (deponent thinks with all the vengeance he had).” The ferocity of the strike was not understated: Dennis was left with “his guts hanging out.” His friend “asked Dennis to let him put the intestines in their place. Dennis refused, but requested that a Doctor might be sent for.” Despite his hope for medical attention, there was very little to be done to save Dennis, whose “intestines were cut entirely off.”70 Violent confrontations or insults between enslaved men in social spaces had consequences and reflected broader tensions over comparative status and identity in the community. During one weekend gathering, two enslaved men from Brunswick County, Virginia, quarreled with one another and exchanged insults, having “called each other Rogue several times and made use of other provoking language.” These insults were taken seriously. Cary informed Stephen, his rival, “if you call me a rogue again I will knock you in the mouth.” While the initial fight was quickly stopped, with one witness claiming things “appeared to be cool” once parted, neither was willing to concede defeat and they “continued to challenge one another.” Eventually the fight restarted. This time the consequences were more severe, with Cary fatally wounded. Before his death, Cary provided an affidavit. His testimony suggests how the desire 70

Executive Papers, John Floyd, Box 12, Folder 4, February 3, 1834, LVA; Oyers and Terminers at Kanawha County, January 28, 1834, LVA.

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for a victorious resolution saw fights continue, sometimes irrespective of the costs. It is plausible that Cary lied to emphasize his own good behavior, as he claimed to have tried to return home, but that his rival would not let him. However, an enslaved man named Adam corroborated his testimony, having seen Cary running toward the house while Stephen “ran after him.” Soon after the fight, Adam saw Stephen and asked “where Cary was.” He also stated his views on the outcome of the confrontation: “I reckon he has whipped you.” Although Stephen was attempting to cover his tracks, and claimed that Cary had later returned home, he also could not help but inform this man he was mistaken in his assessment of who had won the fight: “no he has not – and nothing more passed between them at that time.”71 Enslaved men set great stock by their masculine identity. Insults, physical challenges, or public defeats which worked to undercut this were not always easily shrugged off. Slights and abuse uttered in the heat of the moment – whether as tame as “You ain’t no good,” or as vicious as you “d_____d white-eyed son of a b_____h” – were hard to take if they were essentially proven to be correct.72 Historians who focus on the triumph and solidarity created in conflict and competition risk underplaying the physical and psychological costs of defeat. In stressing the supportive homosocial subculture that regulated combat and social activities they also underestimate how some enslaved men strengthened their identity through invidious comparisons to their peers. Competitions and confrontations during leisure activities were sometimes spaces where enslaved men publicly and humiliatingly lost to a rival, whether that meant losing money, reputation, life or limb. This dearly mattered to those involved. Attempts to regulate fights existed, but these restrictions were hard to maintain in practice.73 Anderson Furr, an ex-slave from Hall County, Georgia, suggested that during free time “niggers would git too rowdylak, drinkin’ liquor and fightin’ and that ’atter us drunk a lot of liquor it warn’t long ’fore dere was a Nigger fight goin’ on.”74 Social gatherings might start on friendly terms but descend into violence as confrontations and conflict escalated, and the distinctions between organized competition and more violent confrontations were sometimes fluid. One former

71 72 73 74

Executive Papers, James Pleasants, Box 5, Folder 12, November 23–24, 1824, LVA. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, 12; Catterall, Judicial Cases, Volume III, 46. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 5, Pt. 4, 1886. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 12, Pt. 1, 348–350.

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slave from Mississippi noted the excitement of fights during leisure time, but also the dangers: We had square dances too, dey would git exciting when dey would git’ to fightin’, dey would tie up and fight like mad dogs. Dey had to keep de fights a secrete, fo’ de owners ob de slaves sho’ didn’t like no fighting ’round you all see, hit wuz like dis, dey would get crippled up and would’t be worth nothing to wuk.75

In one illicit gathering in Mississippi an organized fight took place: The result was not a shared sense of masculinity, but instead murder. An enslaved man called as a witness for the defense implied that the fight had escalated irrespective of the submission of the loser: “he, the witness, was going towards the wagon to get something to eat, heard some noise in the direction of the wagon,” and was told by another enslaved person that “they were quarrelling and fighting down there.” One of the men involved wanted to quit, as the witness heard “some one say, ‘boys, my head is cut; I’ll give up.’” According to some WPA respondents, such admission of defeat or recognition that the conflict had got too violent should have been honored. In the words of one former slave, at this point they should presumably have “git up an’ shake hands.”76 In this instance the conflict did not end with a handshake, recognition of their mutual manhood, or reinforcement of a supportive masculine subculture. Instead, the man was killed by “choking with a rope,” his “pocket rifled after death.”77 Most enslaved fights did not end in mutilation, theft, or death. However, the journals and rulebooks of enslavers, as well as court records from across the South, suggest a concern over the level of violence enslaved men inflicted on one another as well as reveal the harsh words enslaved men used to judge one another. In an assault case in Pointe Coupee, Louisiana, 1826, one enslaved man used “sticks and his fists” to beat another man, breaking his arm, splitting his skull, and bruising and wounding him “most severely.”78 One witness for a trial at the Court of Magistrates and Freeholders in Pendleton and Anderson district claimed that two enslaved men, Simon and Sam, had fought one another “with sticks and knives to the terror of the whites at the said residence.”79 75 76 77 78 79

Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, 1657. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 10, Pt. 5, 2301. Catterall, Judicial Cases, Volume III, 329. Race and Slavery Petition Project, Pointe Coupee, 1826, PAR Number 20882620. Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Pendleton and Anderson District, Box 2775, Case 398, 289, SCDAH.

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While violence was an ubiquitous element of slavery, enslavers were clearly worried about violence being committed by enslaved people. Alongside numerous other complaints, one enslaver from Louisiana noted that “fighting and quarreling must be invariably punished.” An enslaver from Georgia lamented the prevalence of conflict in the quarters, as well as expressing his fears that violence served to establish internal hierarchies. Among slaves, he declared, “there is injustice and aggression among them; they are left to settle their controversies upon the rude principles of might and right.”80 Despite the paternalistic language, enslavers more likely feared economic losses if enslaved people were injured during free time, as well as a perceived loss of control over their coerced workforce. As one former slave noted when describing fights among enslaved men, “if dey hurt a slave he wuz scared to go home fer the owner would get riled up if one ob his slaves got hurt or crippled up.”81 Another WPA respondent suggested that enslavers were right to fear the potential consequences of fighting among the enslaved. Paul Smith, when discussing “dem frolics us had dem days,” explained that “wid so much dancin’, eatin’, and liquor drinkin’ gwine on for dat long, lots of fightin’ took place.” This violence was neither well regulated nor consequence-free: “It was awful. Dey cut on one another wid razors and knives jus’ lak dey was cuttin’ on wood.”82 Although some WPA respondents recalled that when slaves fought it was “always a fair fight, ’cause weuns not ’lows tudder kind,” other accounts dispute the fairness and equanimity of enslaved male combat.83 One man named Walt, on trial in Rockbridge County Virginia, 1816, had informed his wife that he would “rather fight” a rival named Mike than “to talk with him.” Furthermore, “if he ever did fight with him he would almost kill him for he would not know when to stop beating him.”84 Mike’s body was later found in the woods with cuts across his face and neck, suggesting that Walt was correct in his self-evaluation. In the trial of an enslaved man named Titus, it was heard that a long-time grudge and anger at having been previously imposed on led to deadly violence. One witness “heard Frank say if Titus did not let him alone he would beat him 80 81 82 83 84

James O. Breedon (ed.), Advice among Masters: The Ideal in Slave Management in the Old South (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980), 57–59. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 9, Pt. 4, 1743. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 13, Pt. 3, 334. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 8, Pt. 7, 3052. Executive Papers, Wilson Cary Nicholas, Misc. Reel 239, May 30, 1817, 0412–0417, LVA.

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to death and he would not do it with his hand.” Another witness said that Frank “meant to fight him until one or the other was killed.” Unfortunately for Frank, however, Titus had a knife and managed to strike the telling blow during their fight.85 One court record from Mississippi details how a group of enslaved men murdered another man after tricking him into thinking they would have a fair fight. Taylor, one of the slaves involved, “bantered Ely to wrestle with him,” and attempted to shame his rival into action by claiming to have “scared” him. The use of words like “banter” and “scared” suggests how combat was framed as a competition for manly status, as well as reinforcing the importance of responding to public tests for men seeking to prove their manhood. The idea of “wrestling” seems relatively harmless, but it was in fact a trap: “[Taylor] threw Ely on his face and cried out. ‘Come on boys, I’ve got him.’ Ned then run up with an axe, struck Ely with the sharp edge, reversed the axe, and broke his skull, cast the body out in the water.”86 A perceived need to respond to public challenges to avoid mockery could be used to goad enslaved men into combat. These fights were not always fair. The record books and journals of enslavers, as well as the stringent rules and regulations in place to try and prevent conflict on plantations and farms across the South, suggest that when enslaved men fought one another, these fights might turn violent. Rules and informal regulations existed in both organized competition and in marshalling more spontaneous confrontations and conflict. However, the importance accorded to victory and defeat sometimes led to intense harm in social spaces. Enslaved men certainly acknowledged this possibility. William Grimes, when enslaved in Georgia, claimed to have “bit off” a rival’s nose during one fight on his plantation, while a notorious runaway from South Carolina was described as having “a scar on one of his cheeks, (believed to be the right) occasioned by the bite of a negro in a fight.”87 Men who connected physical dominance to their status might feel little allegiance to a wider slave community. Polly Shine enslaved in Shreveport, Louisiana, claimed that her plantation had “some real mean slaves.” According to Shine, if her enslaver did not punish them “they were all time into some 85 86 87

Fairfield District, Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, Trial Papers, 1839–1865, L20165, Case 82, SCDAH. Catterall, Judicial Cases, Volume III, 348. William Grimes, Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave, Written by Himself (New York: W. Grimes, 1825), 28, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/grimes25/grimes25.html; Lockley, Maroon Communities, 98.

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kind of trouble, if it were not anything but doing something to the rest of the slaves after they would go to their quarters when the days work was done.”88 While it is plausible that Shine exaggerated to please her white interviewer, some enslaved men did look to dominate those with whom they lived and socialized.89 Violence was a strategy to assert power and enslaved men who expected superiority over others did not take perceived challenges or slights lightly. In one twilight “quarrel and fight,” a male slave ended up dead, and such violence was not out of character for the killer. Anderson, the slave in question, was known to be “of a dangerous and murderous disposition . . . when suffered to go at large, was in the habit of beating and wounding other slaves.”90 Excessive brutality may have contravened the community codes of conduct and solidarity that sometimes marshalled the fighting of the enslaved, but men such as Anderson might use violence to publicly prove dominance and to assert themselves as men whom others should not cross. When we study fighting and physical competition among enslaved men in their free time, we must take seriously the words and deeds which led to conflict, consider the negative impacts of this for personal relationships, and acknowledge the wider consequences for enslaved people and for the slave community. Enslaved manhood was not just formed in opposition to white men and it was not something constructed in a wholly supportive and united community. Competitive encounters in leisure time allowed for the creation of masculine hierarchies and success was measured and celebrated in comparison to those who failed. The extended tale of Jolly, an enslaved man from Louisiana, showcases the competitive relationships some enslaved men had with one another, and even the pleasure these men took in defeating others. It also provides further insight into how violence provided a means of cementing superiority over other men. Jolly was frequently put into dancing contests by his owner; he was so talented that his enslaver “wouldn’t let Jolly work hard either ’cause he was de best dat master Landro had. He won plenty of money dancin’ for master.” On one occasion, this “master took Jolly to a plantation to dance against a slave of one of his friends” whom he easily beat. This competitive display led to another, more emasculatory action: “’Fore you know it, he had done been in de man’s house makin’ love to de man’s wife in de man’s bed.” Unsurprisingly, his competitor did not take this too 88 89 90

Rawick, American Slave, Supp. Ser. 2, Vol. 9, Pt. 8, 3514. See also Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 5, Pt. 4, 176. Catterall, Judicial Cases, Volume V, 178.

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kindly and a fight ensued. Jolly was not just a good dancer, though, and he backed up his dancing and sexual success by knocking “de man out cold.” With no back-up, the man’s friends “promptly jumped on Jolly and beat him up.” The way the dispute was resolved suggests the importance of violence in establishing and enforcing hierarchies among men, as well as how combat might be a means of humiliating rivals and reminding them of just who the “best man” was: “Master heard about it and brought Jolly back and made him fight all de slaves one-by-one. Jolly beat dem all up, and Master Landro helped him while his friend just sat dere.”91 Enslaved socializing and leisure activities were sometimes remembered as competitive spaces; sites of shame and loss as much as victory and honor. Jolly appeared to take pleasure in defeating a rival, using violence and sex to demonstrate his superiority; his supremacy entailed the humiliation and abuse of the other man.92 There were multiple ways to be a man in the antebellum South, but to fail to assert yourself physically in the face of insult, abuse, or competition was problematic for enslaved men seeking to prove a masculine identity. A loss, or even a perceived loss, of physical ability could necessitate rethinking identities and one’s position in a masculine hierarchy. Rather than simply accept this, some enslaved men looked for revenge. The desire to prove oneself the “best man” sometimes led to excessive violence and friction in slave communities. In Prince Edward County, Virginia, in 1813, the fallout from a prior dispute at a corn shucking led to the death of an enslaved man. Isham had told others at a meeting that he “had a stick about as large as his thumb” and that “he would give Bob that stick to his hearts content.” While crossing the river the next day with a group of men, Bob looked to separate himself from his rival, but Isham followed him and “said to Bob are you satisfied.” Seemingly uncertain of what this entailed, but hinting at a previous disagreement, Bob replied “about what, shucking time?” This only aggravated Isham, who was clearly not over this prior fallout. Indeed, Isham informed his rival that “if you are I am not,” before attacking him. The fight moved from fists to blades to sticks and, after Bob jumped out of the boat, Isham dealt him a fatal strike to the back of

91 92

Clayton, Mother Wit, 107. “Makin’ love” might suggest consent, but the lack of direct attention to the woman’s perspective suggests how masculine competition could be viewed as the more important component to these encounters.

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his head.93 Without necessarily looking to murder one another, attempts to prove physical ability, publicly answer challenges, or “satisfy” perceived wrongs sometimes meant violence escalated and led to immense harm. Confrontations between enslaved men seeking to prove themselves could be exacerbated by interplantation or regional rivalries, through the practice of slave hiring, or because of instability in slave communities disrupted by the internal slave trade. Leisure activities which brought enslaved people together across plantations and farms were sites where wider friendships developed, but they were also places where reputations were put on the line against relative strangers. William Smith, enslaved in Louisiana, felt that gatherings saw this sort of tension as men sought to assert themselves: “at dem dances dere was always one man dat wanted to start trubble.”94 Enslaved men may have felt greater pressure to physically defend themselves against men they did not know to avoid a loss of status, and they could use violence against rivals to strengthen their position or reputation at home. They may also have been unable to establish themselves on their home plantation due to existing hierarchies, and so used violence against outsiders to prove their manhood instead. Bennet H. Barrow had to “run off” two slaves from another plantation for making a “disturbance” during Christmas celebrations.95 One court case from Louisiana in 1820 suggests how newcomers might find trouble, with a visiting slaveholder from Kentucky allowing several slaves to attend a frolic held by a local planter. A fight erupted between the visitors and the locals, during which one of the Kentucky slaves was killed.96 In his postbellum memoir, Harry Smith recalled an intensely competitive event where violence served as a means of gaining respect from men in the community. Smith described a corn shucking in which two opposing groups of slaves, the “Plum Creek Tigers” and the “Salt River Tigers,” competed in “dancing, boxing, and wrestling.” As a young member of the Salt River Tigers, among relative strangers, Smith was eager to prove himself a capable fighter and looked at one of his rivals, “thinking how he could whip him.” To do so he publicly insulted and provoked conflict with this boy: “in order to get up a fuss he stepped up to him and called him a name and wanted to know why he spit in his face.” 93 94 95

Prince Edward County, County Court Orders, No. 17, Reel 27, June 1813, 541–543, LVA. Rawick, American Slave, Supp. Ser. 2, Vol. 9, Pt. 8, 3693. 96 Barrow, Diary, 38, LLMVC. Catterall, Judicial Cases, Volume III, 462.

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The sense that fighting provided an opportunity for younger men to prove themselves in a homosocial space was clear as, rather than seeking to restore calm, the older men “urged the boys on to see the fun” and, eventually, fought among themselves. Smith’s desire to prove himself led to a mass brawl in which “bunting and biting” occurred in “dead earnest” and where “the darkies tore the fences all down around the cabin hammered each other with the pickets.”97 The young boys had clearly picked up on the importance men attached to fighting; the reaction of the older men would hardly have shown them otherwise. Proving manhood to friends and gaining status among peers sometimes meant fighting perceived outsiders and demonstrating dominance over them. The WPA testimony of John Finnely speaks to the importance of regional distinctions and how enslaved men who were proud of their fighting ability used violence to assert superiority over rivals. It also indicates how male combat was a form of entertainment for the wider community. Finnely’s enslaver had owned a particularly skilled fighter named Tom, a man who “liked” to fight. Tom had earned a reputation as a man not to be crossed and regularly competed in organized fights; “none lasts long with him” because of his skill, speed, and ferocity. Eventually, however, Tom faced a public challenge when another slaveholder put his faith in a new, unknown man: “aftah a w’ile, dere am a new nigger come to de neighbahood an’ den dere was a vicious fight.” The sense that a new man offered a fresh challenge brought a large crowd: “Dat fight am held at night by de pine torch light. A ring am made by de folks standin’ ’round in de circle.” The fight had rules, but it was far from friendly: “Deys ’lowed to do anything with dey hands and head and teeth. Nothin’ barred ’cept de knife and de club.” It was clear that the crowd was heavily invested in the outcome of the contest; the level of ferocity suggests something of its importance to the combatants. Tom was renowned for his fighting ability, but this newcomer was a real threat: Dem two niggers gits in the ring and Tom he starts quick, and dat new he starts jus’ as quick. dat ’sprise Tom and when dey comes togedder it like two bulls – kersmash – it sounds like dat. Den it am hit and kick and bite and butt anywhere and any place for to best de udder. De one on de bottom bites knees or anything him can do. Dat’s de way it go for half de hour.

With the conflict raging fiercely, it seemed as if Tom was going to lose: “dat new nigger gits Tom in de stomach with he knee and a lick side de 97

Smith, Fifty Years of Slavery, 62.

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jaw at de same time and down go Tom and de udder nigger jumps on him with both feets, den straddle him and hits with right, left, right, left, right, side Tom’s head.” The shock that this new man had upset the existing hierarchy was palpable: “everybody am saysin’, ‘Tom have met he match, him am done.’” Eventually, however, “dat new nigger ’laxes for to git he wind,” and Tom responded fiercely: “quick like de flash, flips him off and jump to he feet and befo’ dat new nigger could git to he feet, Tom kicks him in de stomach, ’gain and ’gain. Dat nigger’s body start to quiver and he massa say, ‘Dat ’nough.’” Although he eventually won, it was “de clostest Tom ever come to gittin’ whupped what I’s know of.” Tom maintained his status and place atop a homosocial hierarchy through his mastery of a rival; he had proven himself the better man by being able to “best de udder.” The level of violence and public attention which enslaved male combat had and held is made clear in this testimony. The repeated references to Tom’s opponent as “dat new nigger” indicates how enslaved men who built an identity on physicality might be tested by the instability and mobility of slave life in the antebellum years.98 Enslaved men who had been sold or hired out similarly noted a degree of tension in new communities and recalled physical confrontations between strangers seeking to prove dominance over one another. William Grimes recalled a vicious fight that seemed to relate to this: “Mr. Sturges, was a very kind master, but exceedingly severe when angry. He had a new negro, by the name of Cato, with whom I got a fighting, and bit off his nose.”99 Wiley Childress, interviewed by the WPA in Tennessee, recalled the story of Fed, an enslaved man who was known as “de strongest man neah dat part ob de kuntry,” as well as a man who “wouldin’ ’low nobody ter whup ’in.” Fed eventually ran away yet, rather than receive punishment, was put into a prize fight by a white man who knew of his reputation: “one time Fedd run ’way en de white men whar he stopped know’d he wuz a good fighter en made a $250.00 bet dat nobody could lick ’im.” While it is difficult to know how Fed felt about the situation, his refusal to allow himself to be whipped and his status as the strongest man seemed to be worth defending: “A nigger fum de iron wuks fought Fedd en Fedd won. De iron wuks nigger wuz kilt right dere.”100 Some enslaved men used public violence to assert themselves in a new locality or against strangers, establishing their

98 100

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, 38. Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 16, 9.

99

Grimes, Life of William Grimes, 28.

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reputation as a man others should not cross and their place atop a masculine hierarchy. This might mean supplanting another. Existing friendships and social networks were sometimes strengthened in violent defenses against outsiders or perceived transgressions. In Hanover County, Virginia, enslaved men who did not know each other – indeed, who were known to be “entire strangers” – gathered at an enslaved woman’s house on a Saturday night. These men quickly fell out, quarreling “about their knowledge of the situation of different places about town” and disputing about the women there. The sense that enslaved men used social spaces to assert superiority over others comes across, as does the importance accorded to reputation and status: The conflict escalated when one man called another a liar. The tension was exacerbated by their differing locations and occupations, with the killer, Bartlett, mocking his rivals as “damned factory sons of bitches.” After the initial fight broke out, however, Bartlett found himself outnumbered. Indeed, the factory men stuck together. Bartlett managed to escape and got support from his wife’s enslaver, informing him that “there were a parcel of factory hands there with knives and sticks, who wanted to kill him.” Despite the initially adverse odds, Bartlett triumphed over his adversaries with the assistance of this white man. The desire to prove personal superiority and the lingering consequences of combat could be seen here, as Bartlett was not content with only seeing some of his rivals punished. Instead, he chased after one of the men who had escaped and exacted revenge himself: “[Bartlett] did follow the deceased to the road and beat him – that his death resulted from the joint influence of the wounds & the beating in the road.” While there is no indication this fight was planned, Bartlett was willing and able to use force to assert himself against men he perceived as rivals, having told an enslaved man that evening that “he had his instruments in his pockets to fix any man.”101 The ramifications of conflict in social spaces meant grudges sometimes lingered and enslaved men might seek revenge to right perceived wrongs. Enslaved people from one plantation or farm could unite to defend friends or loved ones, reinforcing their own sense of community at the expense of outsiders. In Madison County, Virginia, 1828, a group of enslaved men killed another man, and the conflict was shaped by the consequences of prior combat. Before dying of his wounds, James Huston informed his enslaver that “he had a fight with Isaac, a slave of

101

Executive Papers, Whydham Robertson, Box 3, Folder 7, March 10, 1837, LVA.

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Mrs Smith’s on Sunday previous.” It seems that this upset the enslaved community at Mrs Smith’s. According to Huston and his daughter, Lucy, four enslaved men – Jere, Sawney, Tom, and Hilliard, all enslaved by Mrs Smith – “came to her father’s house early in the night about day light down with large sticks as large as her wrist, she thinks all were hickory.” Huston knew immediately that this was no social visit: “the deceased asked if they had come to kill him, they all said yes.” These men might have been attempting to retaliate against an apparent slight or perceived abuse against one of their own. The level of violence offered indicates the significance of this for enslaved men: the “deceased said as soon as they got into the house they knocked him down with a stick and carried him to the woods and there tied him to a tree and beat him for three hours.” Huston was found “very wet and weak,” and the doctor who examined him believed “the exposure & beating was the cause of his death.” Despite the brutality of the beating, the men involved had not expected to kill him. Whether intended or not, these men were willing to use extreme violence to right a perceived wrong and satisfy an old grudge.102 A lack of close emotional bonds or rivalry between strangers sometimes exacerbated physical conflict between men. After being sold to a plantation in Georgia, William Grimes felt that he was viewed by the others as “a stranger” and “was convinced that not one negro on the plantation was friendly to me.” Having found himself in a new community, uncertain of his position and standing among the others, Grimes became furious when his new driver attempted to force him to work while ill. Grimes used violence to let this man – and the wider community – know that he was not to be messed with, specifically targeting men who held power or prestige. Grimes quickly used force to establish his dominance, specifying how he “let [driver] have it in old Virginia stile, (which generally consists in gouging, biting and butting)” and “then compelled him to give up the stick to me, which I kept in my hand, walking to and fro.” Following this resistance, the stricken driver called for the other men to seize Grimes. The twenty slaves who gathered around did not immediately follow the driver’s orders, instead seeking information. Grimes was approached by one whom he perceived to be “the stoutest of them, on whom [the driver] placed the greatest reliance.” This man came up to Grimes “to inquire what was the matter, and why I had treated the driver so.” Despite the benign approach of this man, Grimes took this moment

102

Madison County, Order Book 7, Reel 25, March 27, 1858, LVA.

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to assert himself: “I asked how I had treated him. He replied, how did you. I then seized him by the shoulders, and said to him, I will show you. So I served him in the same way I had the driver, and almost as severe.” While the response to the driver could constitute a form of resistance, Grimes deliberately escalated the conflict, picking a fight with another known strong man to publicly establish himself as the “best” man, or, at the very least, as a man others should not cross. In this he was successful: “The other negroes seeing me use this stout fellow so harshly, were afraid to touch me. I kept walking with the stick I had taken from my enemy, to and fro as before. They did not attempt after that to touch me.”103 While admittedly a work space, the public use of violence to assert superiority over other men – “his enemy” – speaks to the competitive environment in which some enslaved men sought to establish their place above other men and the importance of physical dominance to achieving this. Grimes’ conflict also speaks to concerns some enslaved men faced over time, with the pointed description of the driver as “old,” and his inability to defend himself against a younger, stronger man, leading to a very public loss of face. Physical competition and violent confrontations were sometimes sites of intergenerational strife, and older men could face challenges from younger men seeking to prove and assert themselves. Even if they were not directly challenged, enslaved men who found themselves unable to compete or defend themselves against abuse or insult might be forced to change how they thought about their identity and actions, as well as how they compared to other men. Although much of the literature examining age and social dynamics among the enslaved stresses that older people were respected by the community, this underestimates the tension or sadness that developed if enslaved people found their position or status changing due to real or perceived decline associated with ageing.104 In one violent episode from Richmond, Virginia, 1848, a “feeble old man” named Moses was beaten to death by a younger man named King

103 104

Grimes, Life of William Grimes, 36–38. See, for example: Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 522–523; Gutman, The Black Family, 198; Leslie Pollard, “Aging and Slavery: A Gerontological Perspective,” Journal of Negro History, 66.3 (1981), 228–234; Stacey Close, Elderly Slaves of the Plantation South (New York; London: Routledge, 1997). More recent discussions on age, health, and identity include White, Arn’t I a Woman, 114; Marie Jenkins Schwartz, Birthing a Slave, 86; Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk, 85–89; Jeff Forret, “‘Deaf & Dumb, Blind, Insane, or Idiotic’: The Census, Slaves, and Disability in the Late Antebellum South,” Journal of Southern History, 82.3 (August 2016), 503–548.

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following a dispute between the two. After their initial argument and trading of insults, King waited for Moses outside the house, before knocking him down and violently beating him. During this assault, he pointedly asserted his superiority over his rival, asking Moses “how comes my names King” and demanding money from him. Moses pleaded with his assailant to stop, proclaiming “King I aint fit to die. I don’t want to go to Hell King, don’t kill such an old creature as I,” and offered him “every cent of money I have got.” His cries went unheard. King’s use of violence and intimidation to assert himself continued even after Moses’ death: “after he killed him he turned his head toward the turnpike and his feet towards the woods and told witness and Solomon if they said anything about it he would kill them too.”105 In his letter explaining the responsibilities of drivers, enslaver William Pettigrew described how as men aged they would inevitably lose “vigour,” which in turn would likely lead them “to lose the respect of those beneath them.” Without this, a man “soon permits some stronger spirit than his own to assume the mastery over him.”106 Concerns over a loss of vigor or strength sometimes shaped the interactions among enslaved men in their socializing with one another. Physical challenges which men felt unable to answer, or simply the fear that declining abilities in social activities represented the thin end of the wedge, could affect older men’s sense of masculinity. While historians have suggested that “elders played special roles in the bonded community” and that they were to be respected by all, some younger men were less than supportive.107 In one encounter between a young male slave named Bill and an older man named Caesar, the “just grown” male slave insulted and provoked his elder, daring him “to make a riffle towards him, and he would cut his heart out of him.” While the older man showed no desire to fight, Bill continued his assault, slapping him and finally stabbing him to death.108 Youth did not always triumph in violent encounters, however. During one gathering on a boat in Rockbridge County, Virginia, an enslaved man named Jim Gooch killed the man who insulted him. The conflict was shaped by a dispute over payment following a card game, but it was exacerbated by age-related insults. Gooch was quarreling with one man before Sam, who was known to be “overbearing,” stepped in, telling his rival: “go sit down and behave yourself.” When Gooch retorted, Sam derisorily told him “I don’t like to see an old man like you going about 105 106 108

Executive Papers, William Smith, Box 7, Folder 4, March 18, 1848, LVA. 107 Starobin, Blacks in Bondage, 35. Desch Obi, Fighting for Honor, 106–107. Catterall, Judicial Cases, Volume III, 44.

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and meddling with things of no account.” Gooch was unwilling to take the insult and, tellingly, connected his ability to defend himself to his comparative sense of manhood. Gooch had earlier informed his rival that “he was a better man than he was,” and he would use violence to prove this. Having stabbed his rival to death, Gooch was clearly a man of his word.109 Enslaved men hoped to defend themselves against insult or abuse, but some older men struggled in the face of challenges from younger men. In Blandford, Virginia, an older man named John was murdered by an enslaved man named Billy; generational distinctions and clear discrepancies in physical strength did not protect John. One witness recalled it was “in the habit of the negroes to collect and drink in Blandford on Sundays.” This social space became a site of violence. After his initial request to borrow money for a drink was denied, John, the elder man, left, but not before insulting Billy, telling him “It was not worth while to tell a damned lie about money; if you have none I can’t keep it.” Despite the age difference and the fact that John was already drunk, this insult worked Billy “up into a passion.” Billy followed John, saying “what is my money to you,” “overtook [him] and knocked him down.” An enslaved man named Knight tried to pull Billy off John, noting “[i]t was a damned shame to strike such an old man.” However, the damage was done and John later died of his wounds.110 Men who saw violence as a means of establishing themselves sometimes supplanted older men, and this had consequences. Jeff Forret has noted how on one plantation in South Carolina, an older slave was beaten up by a younger man and wounded him so much that he asked “his mistress for permission to find a new master . . . Emily Liles Harris, the slaveholder in question, explained of her aged bondman, ‘York has given him a whipping and he wishes to leave the place.’”111 If enslaved men faced challenges in fulfilling masculine roles as they aged, these struggles could be reinforced in comparison or conflict with younger men in the community. The importance accorded to manhood based on comparative physical strength is reinforced by the fact that some enslaved men viewed by their peers as “old” would demand to fight even when outmatched, unable or unwilling to take the suggestion they were past their prime. Some enslaved men would not accept the proverb that “de proudness un a man don’t count w’en his head’s cold.”112 Lula Jackson’s testimony of 109 110 111 112

Rockbridge County Minute Book, Reel 43, November 1853, 189–202, LVA. Executive Papers, William Smith, Box 7, Folder 4, February 18, 1848, LVA. Forret, “He Was No Man Attal,” 35. Brewer, American Negro Folklore, 315–325.

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her experiences of slavery in Alabama highlighted in tragic detail how some enslaved men refused to take such advice. Jackson recalled how her “mama’s first husband,” a man named Myers, “was killed in a rasslin’ (wrestling) match” with another slave. The conflict seemed exacerbated by concerns over age and status. Jackson highlighted the comparison and insult that marked out physical competition and male combat, noting how “it used to be that one man would walk up to another and say, ‘You ain’t no good.’ And the other one would say, ‘All right, le’s see.’ And they would rassle.” The sense of having to prove reputation and abilities to other men, rather than simply have this claim respected, speaks to the contested and comparative nature of masculine identity in slave communities. Beyond this, Jackson also brought up age-related concerns, noting that Myers was “pretty old.” This detail was of some importance to the conflict. According to Jackson, “a young man come up to him one Sunday morning when they were gettin’ commodities” and a conversation was struck up. Although the details are not made clear, it is plausible that there was the customary trade of insults which Jackson suggested sparked most matches. The frequent reference made to age in Jackson’s testimony, with Myers’ “old age” and the youth of the other man shaping the contours of the story, suggests that this distinction between the combatants was a factor in exacerbating the conflict. Myers spent some time attempting to make the young man “rassle with him,” but the younger man refused, stating that “Myers was too old.” This rebuttal, whether based on respect for elders, a deliberate insult, or simply the truth, only seemed to spur Myers on further. Whether intended or not, the suggestion that he was past his prime and therefore unworthy of fighting seemed to be considered an insult and one that he desired to disprove. If masculine identity could be demonstrated through physical competition among peers, to be refused access to this homosocial activity as an equal might be considered as a lack of recognition of manhood. Myers eventually badgered the young man into combat but quickly lost and was thrown to the ground. This first taste of defeat was not enough: “Myers wasn’t satisfied with that. He wanted to rassle again.” Whether content with his first victory or aware of the dangers of the conflict escalating, “the young man didn’t want to rassle again.” Without knowing exactly what was said, “Myers made him” fight once more. On this occasion the consequences were more severe: “the second time, the young man threw him so hard that he broke his collar-bone . . . He lived about a week after that.” Despite the frequent use of “old” to describe Myers and the

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emphasis on the relative youth of his opponent, he was clearly not decrepit. Indeed, Myers had a wife, and she was “in a family way at the time.” Myers’s insistence on fighting, however, meant that he died “before the baby was born.”113 While Myers may simply have enjoyed wrestling, evidence that enslaved men who could not fight lost partners to more physically imposing men, had their work roles threatened, or simply felt harassed, humiliated, or hurt by stronger men makes it plausible that Myers desired to fight in order to prove his manhood; that he feared a loss was the beginning of his decline as a man in the eyes of others. Some enslaved men proved a version of manhood through physical competition, combat, and public violence. The activities undertaken in their leisure time and the relationships formed during their socializing offered enslaved people the chance to create positive identities outside of those given to them by their enslavers, allowing enslaved men to demonstrate gendered attributes such as strength, courage, and dominance. This was of no little importance. However, while enslaved men and women formed positive relationships with one another and created a strong gendered identity in their social spaces, they were also places where reputations were lost, and this mattered too. Enslaved men who crafted a sense of masculine identity through combat or competition relied on demonstrating their superiority to another man; for one man to win, another had to lose. Irrespective of the shared masculine culture of combat and competition, the winner was almost invariably judged as more of a man than the loser. Some enslaved men refused or were unable to accept the consequences of this. The words, deeds, and actions of enslaved men who fought one another indicate that they recognized the importance of victory and defeat in social spaces and that they would strive to prevent the latter, even if this came at the cost of others. This book has demonstrated that enslaved men cared deeply about their manhood – the question “Are you men?” was one that all enslaved men wished to answer in the affirmative. However, in violent confrontations and physical competitions, not all enslaved men were winners.

113

Rawick, American Slave, Vol. 9, Pt. 3, 12.

Conclusion Contesting Slave Masculinity

When Henry Highland Garnet attempted to inspire enslaved insurrection by demanding: “In the name of God, we ask, are you men?” he articulated a vision of what enslaved men needed to do in order to lay claim to manhood, as well as intimating that inaction proved otherwise.1 Lewis Clarke made use of similar tropes when declaring that “A SLAVE CAN’T BE A MAN,” equating a lack of resistance with emasculation.2 However, when Virginia Harris told her WPA interviewer that drivers were “all colored men” and claimed that only “the best amongst them was picked for that job,” she articulated a different comparative standard by which to judge enslaved men in bondage. While Harris indicated the best men held managerial authority and worked within the system, Carter Jackson emphasized instead how manhood was proven in leisure spaces and in combat: “the best man whipped and the other one took it.”3 James Day applauded his father’s efforts as a worker and as a provider for his family, declaring “he just had more energy and strength than anybody I ever saw,” but Zeno John made an altogether different type of energy emblematic of manhood. Although his father had sired “seventy chillen, gran’chillen, and great-gran-chillen,” with his mother leaving him immediately after emancipation, it was not his actions as a provider which proved his manhood, but instead his sexual prowess: “my daddy was much of a man, yessir.”4

1 2 3 4

Garnet, “A Former Slave Appeals,” 125. Clarke, “Leaves from a Slave’s Journal of Life,” 79–80. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 1, Vol. 8, Pt. 3, 939. Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 5, Pt. 4, 1886; Rawick, American Slave, Supp., Ser. 2, Vol. 6, Pt. 5, 1950.

211

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Proving and asserting masculine identity was important to enslaved and formerly enslaved men. It was also important for those who lived with and loved these men. The desire to elevate and applaud male friends, brothers, husbands, fathers, and grandfathers – and to recognize them as men – eloquently showcases the power of personal and communal ties among the enslaved and how these connections helped people to survive horrendous oppression. Enslaved men thought and cared deeply about their gendered identities and self-images, and acted accordingly; others in the community bore witness to and judged these identities in the process of creating their own. Central to Contesting Slave Masculinity, however, is how enslaved people held different values associated with masculinity up for comparison. People construct identities in relation to and in opposition with others, and the cultural and social symbols associated with masculinity in the American South were approached in different ways by different people. Highlighting how enslaved men compared themselves to and competed with one another to establish and validate their gendered identity challenges us to look beyond monolithic models of black masculinity and historiographical themes of solidarity and mutual respect. Such an approach stands in contrast to scholars who have emphasized the supportive nature of slave masculinity to the exclusion of the acknowledgment of tension. For them, enslaved men collectively resisted the emasculatory elements of enslavement and the wider community willingly fought to ensure enslaved men could perform masculine roles despite their oppression. Yet, while there were multiple routes to manhood in slave communities, these routes at times required different responses to slavery and asked men to make different choices or prioritize different values. These choices did not occur in a vacuum: The actions of enslaved men and the attributes prioritized by different people were held up for comparison and judgment by their peers. These judgments were not invariably supportive. The ways in which enslaved and formerly enslaved people remembered the men in their communities were influenced by and framed within a gendered discourse, but that could mean to denigrate as well as to elevate. Enslaved men did not believe that there was one route to manhood and enslaved people did not invariably agree that all the choices made by enslaved men constituted equal proof of masculine virtues. These disputes and divisions spoke to broader tensions relating to resistance, solidarity, and survival in slavery and reveal how competing and overlapping masculinities were embedded within the broader power dynamics of enslavement. Some enslaved men who prioritized resistance elevated themselves above those who remained in bondage, making this emblematic of their

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manhood. Yet enslaved men who took positions of authority to provide for their families could claim that their actions were, in fact, representative of more masculine values and ideals. In creating, performing, and justifying their gendered identities, enslaved men compared themselves to, competed with, and sometimes denigrated other men’s actions, choices, and identities. Those who lived with and loved them did likewise. While engaging with a variety of tropes and actions that contemporaries associated with masculinity, enslaved people made choices, both implicit and explicit, as to what type of man they wanted to be or what type of man they hoped to see. To validate this identity, however, some rejected or diminished other men’s actions, choices, and masculine identity. Enslaved men performed their masculinity in different ways in different places, but they could not fulfil every role, in every space, for every person. The identities constructed by enslaved men and the choices they made thus spoke to and informed their interactions with enslaved people and enslavers, but also with slavery as an institution. This offers us a window into broader debates over resistance, agency, and accommodation in the face of oppression. Concerns over gender clearly speak to wider historiographical questions relating to slavery. While the model of a unified slave community espoused in the revisionist literature of the 1960s and 1970s has faced significant challenge, ideas of solidarity and support remain deeply entrenched in histories of the period. Yet despite the broader racial oppression of bondage, enslaved men did not share a single gender and assertions of masculinity did not inevitably bind communities together. Historians who define enslaved men as a unified group seeking to support one another against an emasculatory white society have commonly stressed a desire to prove the agency of enslaved people and to elevate the quest for manhood into evidence of resistance to slavery. However, in doing so they risk neglecting the diversity of interactions among enslaved people, as well as obscuring the more complex readings of agency. Agency is personal as well as collective and the choices enslaved people made in bondage could as much divide as unite slave communities. As Lynn Thomas has noted, historical actors are “stirred to act by the entanglement of social and political structures with personal motivations and desires,” and the structural forces of slavery profoundly impacted upon enslaved people’s lives.5 Enslaved people developed and articulated ideas about masculinity through comparisons between men and between 5

Lynn Thomas, “Historicising Agency,” Gender & History, 28.2 (August 2016), 324–339; Walter Johnson, “On Agency.”

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different forms of manhood they witnessed in the American South. These conversations were part of the broader political struggles of slavery. Violence underpinned all elements of slavery but the hegemonic cultural, social, and political power wielded by enslavers was real and influenced how enslaved people negotiated a life and identity in bondage.6 Gendered scripts were never simply imposed by enslavers, but the terrain on which enslaved people crafted identities was powerfully shaped by the wider power dynamics of enslavement. The tragedies and repressions of slavery were both personal and political: The choices enslaved people made were conditioned by, though not reducible to, the world in which they lived. Agency is not a synonym for resistance, and enslaved people accepted, rejected, and refashioned the ideals and influence of those who sought mastery over them while establishing a gendered sense of self. In constructing identities, enslaved people were forced into relationships with those who shared their oppression, but also with those who enslaved them. Enslaved people thus conceived of gender roles and personal values in daily contest, resistance, and negotiation with enslavers and with one another. The negotiation and violence that marked the enslaver–enslaved relationship had consequences when it came to formulating identities and strategies for survival. The decisions enslaved men made relating to forms of resistance, accommodation, and endurance in slavery were intimately shaped by their understandings of masculine virtues and male responsibilities. Contesting Slave Masculinity demonstrates the significance of internal divisions, comparisons, and contests in ordering gender and status in slave communities of the American South. Rather than automatically support or assist one another against an emasculatory white society, comparison to or disavowal of other men’s behaviors and actions was an important means of determining masculine identity and social standing among the enslaved. Disagreements over the actions required to become a man sometimes divided slave communities, leading to tension, sadness, and strife. These divisions show us the diverse ways in which enslaved people negotiated with bondage and interpreted their actions in surviving slavery. An examination of the relational framework in which enslaved people created identities, not purely in opposition to white social and cultural norms, demonstrates the fluidity of gender as a social and cultural phenomenon, the limitations to any monolithic model of black solidarity, and the connections between diverse strategies of survival and gender.

6

Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 597; Hilliard, Masters, Slaves, and Exchange, 2–5.

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The opportunities to demonstrate masculinity were not determined purely by slavery, but the scope of performativity for enslaved men was certainly marked by it. Enslaved men made different and difficult choices as to how to endure oppression while maintaining a sense of masculinity: These identities were intimately bound up within broader tensions over accommodation, resistance, and survival in slavery. Despite the cruelties of enslavement, enslaved and formerly enslaved people clearly felt that enslaved men could lay claim to and prove manhood. However, they did not inevitably agree on the values or choices that were required to do so. In developing a gendered sense of self, enslaved men consciously and unconsciously performed and prioritized attributes and actions that they deemed to fit with a masculine identity; former slaves did likewise when celebrating, denigrating, or elevating certain men in the community. There were multiple masculine hierarchies in slave communities, on which the positioning was contestable and always subject to interpretation. Enslaved men who survived slavery navigated different paths in constructing their gendered sense of self. They, and the wider community, witnessed and passed judgment on other men along the way.

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Index

Aarons, Charlie, 57 abolitionist challenge to racial stereotypes, 106 use of resistance, 22, 25–26, 28–33, 40, 42, 63 use of slave narratives, 11 view on breeding, 143 view on leisure, 174 view on punishment of women, 82 view on sex, 136–140 view on trustees, 56–57, 60–61, 64, 66, 74, 80 view on work, 98, 104–106 accommodation and resistance, 2, 9, 21–22, 64–65, 80, 93, 103, 122, 213–214 Adams, Will, 77 Adamson, Frank, 155 Africa culture of honor, 177 negative views of, 135 negative views of Africans, 124 positive views of Africans, 47 age old, 13, 40, 74, 164, 206, 209 agency and discipline, 59, 76–77, 79 and resistance, 21, 25, 64 and violence, 181 and work, 95, 99, 108, 110, 112, 113, 121 historiography on, 8–10, 102, 182, 213

Alabama, 61, 66, 77, 79, 85, 100, 105, 115–116, 132, 152, 171, 173, 192, 209 amalgamation, 135 American Revolution, 23 and virtue, 23, 32 rhetoric of, 29, 35, 45 Anderson, William, 137 Anti-Slavery Record, 97, 98 Arkansas, 47, 73, 75–76, 120, 144, 164 assault of enslaved man, 118, 180–182, 194, 196, 207 of enslaved woman, 133, 139, 148 Atlantic slave trade, 143 authority and masculinity, 17, 49–50, 55, 59, 65–70, 79–81, 83, 86, 88 ax. See axe axe, 133, 148, 151, 154, 192, 198 Ball, Charles, 67, 77, 79, 107, 123, 132, 139, 145, 177 Baltimore, William, 84 Banks, Jourden, 30, 39, 63 Banks, Sina, 81, 114 Baptist, Edward, 7, 13–14 Barker, Anna, 167 Barner, L. B., 46 Barrow, Bennet H., 50, 54, 57–58, 136, 201 Barrow, Robert Ruffin, 53 Bates, Anderson, 155 bear, 176 Bederman, Gail, 3

239

240

Index

Berry, Daina Ramey, 146 Bibb, Henry, 28, 104–106, 115, 137–138 biting, 188, 198, 202–203, 205 blacksmith, 89, 91, 97, 120 Blassingame, John, 11, 60 Block, Sharon, 130 Body, Rias, 159 Bond, Priscilla Munnikhuysen, 58 Boone, Andrew, 162 boxing, 175–176, 201 breeding and masculinity, 158, 160, 162–163 as rape, 146 Brer Lion, 176 Brer Mosquito, 190 Brer Rabbit, 176 Brer Wasp, 190 Brevard, Keziah, 71, 82 Brown, John, 27, 106, 145 Brown, William Wells, 30, 38, 62, 106 Bruce, Henry Clay, 122 Bruner, Peter, 43 Bryant-Davis, Thema, 130 Buckner, Timothy, 12 burned alive, 26, 43 Burnett, Midge, 176 Butler, Judith, 3 Butler, Marshal, 163 California, 52 Campbell, Israel, 35, 45, 55, 103 Caribbean, 25 carpenter, 91, 97, 101, 107, 120 carriage driver, 71, 164 Carson, James Green, 136 Caster, Peter, 12 Childress, Wiley, 203 Choice, Jeptha, 158 Christmas, 174, 201 Civil War, 16, 26, 171 Clarke, Lewis, 21, 178 class tension, 52 Clay, Thomas, 100, 111 coach driver, 97 Cole, John, 165 combat and agency, 181 and masculinity, 172, 176–180, 186–187, 190, 195, 198, 200, 204, 209–211 as entertainment, 202–203 rules of, 197

use of weapons, 183 competition and masculinity, 172, 174–175, 177, 180, 190, 195, 199, 209 cross-plantation, 201 organized by gender, 172 Connell, R. W., 3 cooper, 101 Cooper, Manda, 161 Coppin, Levi, 65 corn husking, 187, 192 corn shucking, 171–172, 175, 186, 188, 193, 200–201 Cotton Belt, 51 cotton farm, 40 cotton plantation, 50, 75, 80, 144, 171 Court of Magistrates and Freeholders, South Carolina, 118, 156, 180–182, 187–189, 196 coward, 41, 45, 47 craven, 41, See coward Creole rebellion, 29 culture of dissemblance, 141 dancing, 175 as competition, 156, 188, 190, 197, 199, 201 Davis, Louis, 76 Dawson, Mollie, 161 Day, James, 89, 94 De Bow’s Review, 95 Deep South, 62, 143, 171 Depression, 13, 110, 125, 171 Desch Obi, T. J., 64 Diedrich, Maria, 138 dirk, 149 Dirt, Rufus, 66 dogs use on slaves, 46, 165 domestic slaves, 60, 71 Dortch, Charles Green, 120 Douglass, Frederick, 25, 29, 31, 42, 48, 84, 143 drinking alcohol, 44, 174, 176, 178, 180, 185, 187, 197, 208 driver, 51, 54, 56–61, 64–66, 71–72, 75, 77, 79, 82–85, 87, 101, 138, 167, 205–207, 211, See trustee Dusinberre, William, 64–65

Index Easter, 174 education of slaves, 71, 104, 140 Elder, Callie, 46 emasculation and sex, 146, 158–160, 199 historiography on, 5–8, 19, 212–214 of white men, 58, 84 Ervin, William Ethelbert, 100 Estes, Matthew, 25, 135 Eubanks, Jerry, 164 execution following resistance, 37–38, 43 of slave, 148 Fairley, J. W., 119 Falls, Robert, 20, 33 Fedric, Francis, 26, 74 field slaves, 89 fights as entertainment, 172, 178, 195, 202–203 regulations of, 182, 194–197, 202 Finnely, John, 202 Fitzhugh, George, 96 flogging. See whip folklore, 87, 117, 190 foreman, 52, 73, 77, 81, 85, 119, 184, See trustee Forret, Jeff, 131, 133, 179, 181, 208 Foster, Thomas, 168 Fraser, Rebecca, 142 Friend, Craig Thompson, 4 frolics, 173, 175, 197, 201 fugitive narratives and resistance, 26, 40–42 and trustees, 60 conventions, 12, 54, 136 historiography on, 10, 12 Furr, Anderson, 195 Gabriel’s rebellion, 38 Gaffney, Mary, 166 gambling, 176, 178, 184, 207 gang labor, 51, 92 Garnet, Henry Highland, 1, 21, 27, 34, 139, 160, 211 Georgia, 32, 51–52, 68–69, 75, 79, 101, 106, 111, 123, 136, 145, 152, 159, 163, 165, 173, 175–177, 195, 198, 205 Gilbert, Gabriel, 105 Gilliard, Jim, 79

241

Gilmore, David, 4 Gladdy, Mary, 85 gouging, 205 Grandy, Moses, 57 Green, Everard, 95, 100 Green, Jacob, 190 Green, William, 101–102, 119 Grimes, William, 198, 203 grudge leading to violence, 184, 188, 190, 192–193, 197, 200, 204 Gullins, David Goodman, 51, 175 Harper, William, 24 Harris, Emily Liles, 208 Harris, Virginia, 51, 76, 211 Hathaway, J. C., 142 Hawkins, C. H., 132 Hazzard, W. W., 111 headbutting, 192, 202, 205 Henson, Josiah, 27, 31, 35, 69–70, 79, 98, 108, 177 Hine, Darlene Clark, 7, 22, 136, 141 Hinton, Elizabeth Ross, 156 Hodges, Willis, 32 honesty and masculinity, 70, 78–80, 120 and work, 55, 115, 119, 121–122 honor and clothing, 73 and masculinity, 58, 70, 78, 80, 84, 95, 98, 139, 181, 185 and resistance, 17, 30, 35 and violence, 177, 181, 185 Hooper, Scott, 102 Howard, Emma, 53 Huff, Easter, 101 humiliation and masculinity, 5, 156, 165, 182, 188, 191, 200 Hundley, Daniel, 96 Hungary, 32 hunting, 91, 124–125 industry and intimacy, 117 and masculinity, 55, 66–67, 72, 76, 90, 93–94, 102, 106, 108–110, 113, 116, 121–124, 187 as comparison, 67–69, 80, 115 of poor whites, 123

242

Index

informal economy, 18, 91, 93, 100, 103, 105–106, 110–112, 116, 118 Ingraham, Joseph, 25, 31, 115 Ingram, Mary, 145 insults leading to violence, 182–186, 188–190, 193–195, 201, 204, 207, 209 response to, 84, 150, 178, 192 to enslaved women, 37, 188 insurrection, 25–26, 32, 37, 104, 211 Jackson, Carter, 171 Jackson, John Andrew, 136 Jackson, Lula, 208 Jacobs, Harriet, 26, 37, 39, 137 Jeffries, Moses, 164 Jenkins, Earnestine, 7, 22 Jennison, William, 115 Jim Crow, 13 John, Zeno, 160 Johnson, Katie Blackwell, 147 Johnson, Sarah L., 114 Johnson, Walter, 10, 50 Johnston, James Cathcart, 55, 68 Jones, Friday, 99 Jones, Mandy, 110 Jones, Thomas H, 42 Kemble, Frances, 56, 96, 167 Kentucky, 43, 45, 70, 103, 122, 190, 201 Kimmel, Michael, 4 King Jr., Rufus, 112 King, Silvia, 167 knife, 54, 154, 158, 182–184, 187, 191, 194, 196–198, 204 Latin America, 25 laziness and work, 109–111, 115–116, 118, 124–125, 187 of overseers, 53 leadership in organizing flight, 40 in rebellion, 37 in resistance, 47 in work, 60, 69, 78, 119–120 of maroons, 157 Legree, Simon, 139 leisure, 110 and agency, 174 and enslaved women, 175 and homosocial spaces, 176, 179, 185 restrictions on, 192–193

Liddell, Moses, 100 log-rolling, 174 Lost Cause, 110, 125 Louisiana, 32, 40, 50–51, 53, 56, 58, 60, 63, 78, 80, 82, 86, 92, 100, 105, 121, 138, 140, 145, 160–162, 167, 176, 183, 196, 198–199, 201, 233 Love, Hunton, 86 Lowcountry, 91 Lowery, Irving, 172 Lussana, Sergio, 8, 34, 179, 181 lynching, 129, 141 Manigault, Charles, 72, 135, 143 maroons, 157 marriage abroad, 100, 102, 120 challenges to, 156 encouraged by slaveholder, 135, 145 forced, 138, 142, 146 male prerogative, 147 rejection of, 152, 164 reproductive pressure in, 137, 144, 164 Martin, Sella, 74 Maryland, 61, 101 Matthews, William, 162 Mayfield, John, 5 McCree, Ed, 175 McCullough, Willie, 146 McIntosh, Susan, 75 Meachum, John B., 108 memory, 14, 19, 46–47, 79, 163, 169, 192 Millett, Harriett, 80–81 Mills, John, 56 Mississippi, 52–53, 71, 80, 83, 95, 95, 100, 105, 110, 112, 117, 121, 135, 164, 166, 176, 196, 198 Missouri, 81, 114, 122 money disputes over, 182, 208 of slaves, 54, 73, 89, 99, 101, 104, 110–111, 114, 115–116, 118–119, 121, 199 monogamy and masculinity, 139–140 rejection of, 158 Moore, Van, 147 moral economy, 76 Morgan, James, 47 Morris, Aldon, 7, 22 Morris, Christopher, 156 Morrow, Mandy, 107 Moye, Calvin, 69

Index murder as manslaughter, 156 of enslaved man, 118, 153–154, 157, 183, 198, 208 of enslaved woman, 148, 151 of free black man, 192 of free black woman, 149 National Colored Convention, 108 National Negro Convention, 1 Native American, 54, 165 Nesbitt, Israel, 103 North Carolina, 20, 30, 55, 89, 95, 173, 180, 190–191, 218, 220, 222, 226, 228–230, 232–234, 236–238 Northup, Solomon, 25, 57, 60, 64–65, 92, 111, 164 O’Neal, William, 40, 121 Ohio, 70 Oklabury, Julia Grimes Jones, 77 Oklahoma, 79 Olmsted, Frederick Law, 53, 56 overseer black men as, 56, 65–66, 68, 73, 75, 77–79, 81, 86–87, 123 comparison to black men, 54 dismissal of, 59, 82 hiring of, 50 killed by slave, 53 plot to murder, 150 resigning position, 53 resistance to, 35, 39, 45, 53–54, 62, 64, 84, 118 rules for, 78 sexual abuse by, 138 suspended, 53 use of rewards, 72, 112 use of violence, 167 white violence against, 52 overwork, 91, 100, 108, 115, 121, 123 Parker, Henry, 28 Parker, J. M., 107 Parker, William, 28, 39 Parsons, Charles Grandison, 57, 113, 137 party, 47, 158, 188, 192 paternalism, 23, 50, 79, 92, 95–96, 111 patrollers, 20, 47–48, 140 Paul, Sallie, 174 Payne, Ellen, 101 Peculiar Institution, 1, 50, 59 Pennington, James, 30, 63

243

Pettigrew, William, 55, 59, 84, 207 Phillips, Rebecca, 71 Phillips, Ulrich B., 11 pistol, 156, 189 Pittsburgh, 108 pornography, 129 Powers, Betty, 144 Price, John, 79 Price, Lafeyette, 71 provider/protector, 28 and masculinity, 7, 17, 28, 64, 70–71, 73–75, 90, 92, 99, 101–104, 109, 111, 113, 116, 120, 124, 139, 211 rejection of, 159, 163 punishment and rewards, 111 death from, 53 following resistance, 26, 62, 75 for assaulting slave, 182 for domestic abuse, 136 for refusing new partner, 140, 161 Pye, Charlie, 51 Quarls, Harre, 158 quilting, 175 racial views on free blacks, 106 on resistance, 24 on sex, 18, 129, 134–135, 145, 147 on theft, 78 on work, 73, 95, 112, 125, 135 rape, 130, 134, 136, 138 rebellions and emasculation, 37–39, 74, 103 lack of, 24 response to, 39 restrictions on, 25, 33 Redpath, James, 30, 36–37, 50, 63, 104, 113 religion and discipline, 78 and masculinity, 7 and resistance, 28, 31, 43, 211 and sex, 139 and work, 97, 110 of slaveholders, 20 reproduction pressure on, 132, 142–145, 161, 168 resistance active, 22 against trustee, 85 and collective punishment, 74

244

Index

resistance (cont.) and emasculation, 23, 25, 28, 30, 33–34, 39, 41, 48, 64, 82, 84, 103, 126 and enslaved women, 26, 37, 48 and homosocial networks, 42 and masculinity, 1, 7, 17, 21, 23, 26–31, 33, 35, 37–39, 41–44, 46–48, 58, 61, 63, 75, 85–86 and political rights, 30, 32 as a choice, 34–36, 39, 41–42, 44, 47–48, 76 as form of comparison, 22, 36, 43–44, 46, 48, 56, 61–62, 64, 103, 212 day-to-day, 85 historiography on, 22, 179 restrictions on, 33 to sexual abuse, 130, 141, 160, 166–168 violent, 7, 30, 45, 54, 86, 139 respectability and masculinity, 58, 122 and work, 18, 55, 93, 114 politics of, 12, 122 responsibility and work, 66, 90, 93, 101, 104, 108, 114, 120, 122 Revolutions, European, 32 rewards as dividing slave communities, 56, 66, 72, 74, 80, 92, 108, 110–111, 115, 119 rice plantation, 56, 82 Robinson, Solon, 23, 112 Roper, Moses, 136 Ruffin, Edmund, 96 runaways, 12, 27–28, 30–32, 35–36, 39–40, 43, 45, 57, 74, 79, 88, 198 sale as threat, 169 of enslaved people, 20, 36, 39, 42, 62, 80, 143, 167–168, 203, 205 of trustee, 85 Scott, Joan, 3 self-hire, 100 self-made man, 90, 93, 95, 109, 112, 119, 121 sex and agency, 131–132, 138, 145, 147, 149, 152–153, 158, 161, 164, 166, 168 and masculinity, 18, 83, 127, 131–132, 134, 146–147, 149, 152, 154, 157, 159, 162, 164–165, 169, 189, 200

as accommodation, 163, 166 as competition, 142, 155–156, 159, 161, 165 as reward, 161, 163, 165 forced with breeder, 145 sexual exploitation, 18, 83, 127, 134, 136, 138, 142–143, 153, 160, 162, 167, 170 Sheets, Will, 109 Shine, Polly, 198 shotgun, 85 Sidbury, James, 38 Simms, Bill, 162 Sims, Allen, 173 Singleton, William Henry, 173 Sinha, Manisha, 27 slave community historiography on, 6, 33, 60, 213 Smedes, Susan Dabney, 117 Smith, Gus, 52 Smith, Harry, 201 Smith, J. L., 46 Smith, William, 201 Smithers, Gregory, 166 South Carolina, 56–57, 71, 73–74, 82, 91, 103, 107, 112, 118, 124, 142, 153, 155, 157, 172–173, 177, 181, 183–185, 187, 198, 208, 231 Southall, James, 116 Southern Agriculturalist, 112 Springs, John, 95 stab, 149, 154, 158, 181–184, 192, 207–208 Stagolee, 87 Stapleton, Wright, 105 Steward, Austin, 47 Stewart, Frank Henderson, 181 Still, Peter, 116 Stone, Asa, 68, 78 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 138 Strayhorn, Eva, 75 strength and age, 207–208 and competition, 172, 175 and masculinity, 47, 51, 62, 162, 175, 177–179, 208 and work, 89, 104 sugar plantation, 59, 121 suicide, 65 Sutton, James R., 80

Index task labor, 91 Tennessee, 20, 45, 89, 116, 145, 203, 220, 232 test of masculinity, 4, 9, 86, 174, 176, 179, 186, 198 Texas, 53, 69, 77, 81, 89, 101, 114, 119, 144, 147, 158, 161, 164, 166–168, 171 theft from enslaved people, 77, 79, 118, 186 to protect women, 99 Thomas, Bill, 46 Thomas, Lynn, 213 Thomas, Nancy, 75 Thompson, John, 36, 61 Thornton, Laura, 116 thrift, 78, 110, 112, 119 Tradewater river, 45 traitors, 40 trust and masculinity, 78–81 and work, 78–80, 103, 119 trustees agency, 55, 72, 81–82 and authority, 51, 54, 56, 82, 85 and class tension, 52 and honor, 65, 79 and mastery, 56, 58, 69–70, 81, 86 and sexual exploitation, 83, 138, 167 competition for role, 66, 68, 72, 76 killed slave, 77 material privileges of, 72–73, 75 protection of fellow slaves, 64–65 punishment of, 57 response to resistance, 58, 66 use of discipline, 49, 59, 62, 64, 71, 76–78, 80, 84–85 Tubman, Harriet, 27 Turner, Nat, 39, 159 Uncle Tom, 64, 87 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 138 Underground Railroad, 35 Upper South, 142 vernacular history, 13–14, 47 Vesey, Denmark, 38, 103 violence and masculinity, 17–18, 87, 156, 176–179, 181, 184–186, 193, 195, 199–203, 206, 208, 210

245

concern from slaveholders, 196–197 in courtship, 155 sexual, 130, 132, 145, 148, 150 to enslaved women, 1, 132, 147–148, 150, 153 Virginia, 24, 38, 54, 56, 89, 108, 117, 122, 133, 147–150, 153–155, 157–159, 182–184, 186–188, 192–194, 197, 200, 204–208 virility and emasculation, 156, 164 and masculinity, 130–131, 188 and resistance, 38 and sex, 18, 159–160, 162, 164 virtue and resistance, 12, 17, 28–29, 38, 61 and work, 95, 104, 106, 110, 115–116, 124–125 feminine, 27–28 ordinary, 93 sexual, 135, 139 Walker, David, 34, 74, 103, 160 Ward, Rochelle Allred, 79 Washington, George, 23, 29 Washington, Madison, 29 Watkins, James, 43 Weeks, Emma, 102 Weeks, Rachel, 53 Weld, Theodore Dwight, 143 West, Emily, 142 whipping and masculinity, 172, 181, 208 and sexual abuse, 132, 138, 166–167, 169 as punishment, 37, 46, 57–58, 65, 76 as threat, 45, 182, 184, 186–187, 189 by women, 83 resistance to, 44, 47, 60–62, 84, 86, 203 white masculinity and honor, 4, 177 and mastery, 5, 96 and resistance, 23 and sex, 127, 132, 134, 137–140 and work, 94–96 historiography on, 4 Williams, Frank, 176 Williams, James, 44, 60 Williams, Nancy, 53, 78 Williams, Rose, 128, 168 Williams, Willie, 162 Willis, Sampson, 119

246

Index

Wilson, Lulu, 165 work and emasculation, 96, 103, 120 and energy, 18, 89–90, 94–96, 102, 106, 113, 121, 126, 211 and enslaved women, 50, 97, 99, 101, 109, 114 and industry, 18, 55, 90, 93, 95, 108, 110, 112, 113, 115, 117, 121–123, 126 and masculinity, 7, 17, 67, 90, 93–94, 97, 99–101, 104, 106, 108–109, 113–114, 116, 121–122, 126 and mastery, 97 as form of comparison, 51, 68, 80, 90, 94, 102, 105, 107, 111, 115, 122–123, 125

in free black communities, 108–109 skilled, 20, 89, 97, 100, 107 Works Progress Administration (WPA), 10, 12–14, 20, 46, 52–53, 66, 73–76, 78, 83–84, 89, 102, 105, 109–110, 114, 120, 128, 132, 141–142, 146, 151–152, 171, 173, 175–176, 196–197, 202–203, 211 wrestling, 172, 175–176, 180, 188, 198, 201, 209 Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, 4, 181 X., Malcolm, 87 Young, Robert, 71