Dr. Jones-Rogers ends her book, They Were Her Property, by detailing how white female slaveowners managed the denouement of slavery. She provides some history tidbits regarding the nation’s internal fight over the issue of slavery that I found interesting. For example, Jones-Rogers describes Abraham’s Lincoln’s efforts to quell Southerners’ fears about his intentions, citing that “Lincoln routinely and publicly declared his intention of abiding by [the Constitution’s protection of American citizens’ right to hold people as property]…he also promised Southern slaveholders that any ‘fugitives from service or labor’ would be returned to them” (p. 153). Unconvinced by Lincoln’s promises, ten other states joined the confederacy over the next six months, and many slaves fled toward the Union soldiers, believing that they would be protected in some way or another. In my post explaining the research strategy of chronologizing, I report that my formerly enslaved ancestor John Rem abandoned his owner to build bridges for the Union army in Pitt County, North Carolina. Union troops apparently treated him well, but, according to Jones-Rogers, “some Union soldiers and officers returned enslaved people to their owners….stole from [them], raped and brutalized them, sold them and pocketed the profits, [or] kept [them] for themselves” (p. 153).
Jones-Rogers also explains that, after a series of congressional acts, southerners realized that their chattel property and, therefore, their economic prosperity, were in jeopardy. White female slaveowners were particularly impacted because the absence of male family members and friends compelled them to resort to certain strategies to protect their investments in the institution of slavery. Slaveowning women took advantage of laws and policies enacted by local, state, and federal governments to reclaim or be remunerated for runaway or conscripted slaves and the economic losses they sustained because of untended crops, etc. Some, for example, swore an oath of loyalty to the Union that would enable them to “repossess” any of their slaves show were discovered to be seeking protection in military camps (p. 157). Others petitioned the Confederacy for losses incurred when their slaves became injured or died during their mandatory service (p. 168). Others “refugeed” to other states that were relatively untouched by Union occupation; for example, many probably fled to unoccupied regions of northern Louisiana or Texas, where there were virtually no battles or Union presence (p. 172). Some slaveowners imprisoned and tortured their adult slaves or the children they left behind to keep them from leaving their farms and plantations (p. 173). Finally, some sold slaves (before and during the war) or forced them off the land into destitution.
I’ve always thought that the Civil War should be viewed as a national trauma and the emotional aftermath as a post-traumatic stress response. It’s no surprise that some white slaveowning women suffered from a loss or disruption of identity, a symptom of complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Dr. Jones-Rogers wrote, slaveowners formerly “had existed in a world in which slavery and the ownership of human beings constituted core elements of their identities” (p. 183). As such, it was hard to relinquish the power they had once had. Some handled it well and reluctantly announced to their slaves the news of emancipation; some even continued to support the ones who were willing or desirous to stay on the plantation with food, clothing, and limited pay. However, some women hid their knowledge of slaves’ emancipation for years: “As a boy, [Ben] Lawson worked 160 acres of Brazier’s land alongside her son and the impoverished white laborers she hired. The nearest plantation was at least fifteen or twenty miles away, and Lawson never knew the Civil War was going on. After it ended, Brazier never told him that he was free, so Lawson kept working as he always had” (p. 186). Others apparently became hopeless and despondent: “The deaths of these women were probably caused by illness or the trauma brought about by the war, but as formerly enslaved people remembered it, their mistresses deaths were directly linked to the loss of property – that is, enslaved people – that came with abolition” (p. 184).
Conditions after the Civil War ended were extremely chaotic and often violent, at least in some places. Families were often fragmented, and children deceptively were uncoupled from their parents. According to Jones-Rogers, some former slaveowning women availed themselves of the chaos, isolation, and legal methods to “coerce [freedmen] to work as they had under slavery” or “to coerce children and adolescents into exploitative labor arrangements.” (p. 183, 187). Others were able to bounce back financially after the war by working with their own hands or by securing pardons and amnesty to recover their land and and other non-human property.
Overall, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South was an informative book. Its author, Dr. Stephanie Jones-Rogers elucidated aspects of slavery and of our nation’s history that I had not known previously. She places a special emphasis on the experience of white women and the power they developed and wielded as slaveowners. She asserts that, contrary to their common portrayals in gender studies as “passive bystanders” of the slave trade, southern white women actually were active and effective “co-conspirators” in maintaining it; she believes that understanding this dynamic will lead to a better understanding of white women’s participation in postbellum behavior like segregation and lynching (p. 205). In general, I appreciate how Jones-Rogers weaved together historical information about U.S. laws, economic considerations, and sociocultural practices and norms with the perspectives of participants reflected in documents like ex-slave narratives, slaveowners’ journal entries, and print media. I wonder if and how any of the conclusions Jones-Rogers made about the psychological and economic motivations and outcomes of white female slaveowners could be applied to black female slaveowners like Marie
Simien of St. Landry Parish or the Metoyer women of Natchitoches Parish. In conclusion, reading this book may inform your genealogical research as well as supplement your current body of general knowledge about slavery and antebellum history, as it did for me.
References
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2019).
The Genealogy Griot 