White Southern Women and Slavery

• The text explores the economic roles of white southern women in the institution of slavery, challenging commonly held views.
• The text examines how they participated in, profited from, and defended slavery beyond simple domestic roles.
• The text also emphasizes the voices and experiences of enslaved people in understanding the complexities of slave ownership.

Introduction: Mistresses of the Market

• James Redpath argued that white southern women opposed emancipation because they were raised in a society that normalized slavery.
• Redpath believed that women were shielded from its harsh realities and unaware of its commercial nature.
• Redpath's view represents a patriarchal assumption, but narrative sources and documents show that women were well aware of the "obnoxious features" of slavery.
• White southern women not only witnessed the brutality of slavery, but also took part in it, profited from it, and defended it.
• Martha Gibbs, a "big, rich Irishwoman", owned a steam sawmill and a significant number of slaves, highlighting the economic power some women held.
  • Litt Young, one of Gibbs's former slaves, characterized her as someone who "warn't scared of no man".
• Gibbs managed her slaves and her overseer, personally ensuring things ran smoothly and was not afraid to be aggressive when needed.
• Despite being married, Gibbs retained control over her financial affairs and slave management, not allowing her husbands to interfere.
• During the Civil War, Gibbs's husband served the Union while she remained devoted to the south.
• After the Civil War, Gibbs was arrested by Union officers but continued to exploit enslaved women at home and in the field.
• Gibbs continued to exploit slaves for labor, highlighting her ongoing involvement in the system.
• Though married slave-owning women have received little historical attention, historians often focus on wealthy single or widowed women.
  • Some historians assume that a wife's legal status prevented her from owning slaves independently.
• There is a lacking of differentiation between married women who owned slaves in their own right and those who simply lived in slave-owning households.
• It's rare that there is consideration into why slave ownership mattered to these women, the enslaved, or society as a whole.

Challenging Prevailing Ideas

• Prevailing perceptions of white women and slave mastery are contrasted as the behaviours toward and relationships with their slaves do not conform to the ideas.
• Slave owners were a minority and not a homogenous group, and much of the knowledge about women in the slaveholding South comes from the elite.
• This can create challenges in studying the majority of women in slaveholding communities.
• Historians focus on the obligatory management and discipline of enslaved people by women, claiming they were "fictive masters" as they did not relish their power.
• Its claimed Acts of violence by enslaved people are seen as different from those of slave-owning men.
• Concerns are rose that married women could manage enslaved people effectively without depending on assistance, white or black, or that they could run plantations.
  • Married women begrudgingly assumed roles as "deputy husbands” or “fictive widows” when their husbands were away, happily relinquishing such duties when men were present.
• Transacting for human beings was considered unsuited to white ladies, challenging this in focusing on women who owned enslaved people in their own right.
• Its proposed relationships to slavery as a relation of property are fundamental and was, above all, economic.
• Pecuniary ties formed one of slave-owning women’s’ primary relations to African American bondage.
• These women's economic roles and nation roles were unrecognized revealing that slavery a key role in American capitalism with slave plantations considered the first big business.
• The text questions if enslaved people belonged to mens wives in cotton fields, it would change the narrative about American slavery and capitalism.
• It is argued by Adam Smith, marriage as a primarily a colonial avenue to woman's stability while Abigail Adams advised her son, John Quincy, to postpone to accumulate enough property.

Mistresses of the Market

• To be a southern woman, slave ownership was important to become financially independent and become a slave owner or increase the chances marry well.
• Men entered marriages with little to no wealth, and the women they ended up with became an avenue to gaining some.
• Law gave husbands control of their wives’ property, and that would allow them access to loans.
• Its mentioned women described themselves as their husbands’ creditors and financiers and were against losing their properties.
• Enslaved people testified to how ideas shaped martial relations in white households.
• The text examines their assets and actions in their marriages, and commercial endeavors possible whilst slavery was rising in the South.
• Jennifer Lynn Gross mentions "mistresses” assumed roles restricted to ‘the dependent positions of daughter, wife, an dm other" depending on male figures for their public ideas.
• Southern women had little to do with people beyond household and husbands exercised control.
• Mistresses as a whole were not adept at slave management.
• It is acknowledged women don't want to or are forced by law and custom to defer matters, then southern mistresses were to be at the mercy of white men.
• It references mistresses to a woman who owned a "woman who governs: which she had in her possession or capital.
• Mistress didn't signify subordination as master's equivalent where if that were true, the South Carolina legislators declared "every master, mistress- of oversees slaves witha ticket" to ensure liberty.
• Term's user to describe women was a "control of subordinates" but the people the women "controlled subordinates wasn't called "masters" but "mistress-ship".
• Robert Falls recounts that enslaved spoke to them even "whem Old Master and Old Mistress would say, do this! We don it - coming to us bringing a bunch of switches. ""
• The text notes the strategies women use to describe Management of Negros using tactics to appear, and describes how effective slave management was for white women.

Agency, Constraints, and Perspectives

• Those in slave ownership could have a viable and active role in women.
• Race and gender created constrains where there was an added step to secure ownership.
• Some people, white women, who were dismayed and deterred by legal challenges or attempted tp explain them.
• The book notes they need to be in those states where the slavery system benefits them.
• Susan O’Donovan mentions the freedoms were many and different, and freedom often takes place during slavery.
• Decisions to invest would not make good rights or equality. Where the state and the communities act differently as well.
• Slave-ownering women have gained connections due the their actions and economic connections.
• When FWP members travelled searching out glimpses of interviews, they encountered female owners.
• Formally enslaved discussed and identfied their female owners and saw things typically remains obscure being violence and traumatic.

Importance of Enslaved Narratives

• Enslaved people were often illiterate garantecing information was missed.
• It is guaranteed formally enslaved people often moved around lots. In the course of their interviews, members were limited to the questions posed.
• Mid 20th century interviews were cautioned and were thought to have possibly misunderstood, and 7 years had intervened between the interviews
• Survivors thought to feel intimidated due to southerners whites being the descendants of slave owners, and some were unlikely to give candid descriptions in bonding .
• Some women "wuz" to be adults when war came and was a mother before it closed.
• Important events could for gotten due to marriages and loss of love, or relocations.
• Despite provocation enslaved shared white relations or interracial violence.
• The formerly slave were always in touch and were present during the interviews.
• Enslaved people were forced with silence to talk about incidents despite their reservations. Stories despite hostility resulted in violent reactions.

Honoring the Enslaved

• The text explores if "nigger" is offensive and will grapple with the harm if it's used. But in the end, it was kept as it would change how people understood the world.
• Revisions would sanitize things and make it difficult to comprehend.
• Nevertheless, stories were shared and felt most comfortable the text states speaking in their ways and words.
• Female investments were mentioned as a silence due to there lack to and an inability to. They mentioned there would be a person subject that would sale someone to create a new dress, or the agony that shook bodies from returning to the house and children going missing and having an owner do it.
• Enslaved gave great information about how much money was spent toward their enslavements and a way to show the profound economical contributions or a display in a way that had the ability to be astonshing precis.