A History of the Wife (33 page)

Marli Weiner, in her book on plantation women in South Carolina from 1830 to 1880, and Eugene D. Genovese in his work on the ante- bellum South, describe the complex relationships between mistresses and house slaves.
48
Black and white women counted on one another not only for the smooth running of the household, but often for per- sonal emotional needs as well. They shared intimate secrets about their sicknesses and miseries, and established a world of female interdepen- dence in the midst of patriarchal hierarchy. Often it was the black Mammy, rather than the mistress, who supervised the indoor chores performed by house slaves—from cooking, cleaning, and sewing to suckling white babies. Nevertheless, most mistresses worked side by side with their slaves in many tasks.

One of the biggest joint operations performed by mistresses and female slaves was to make clothes every spring and fall for the entire population on the plantation. The mistresses cut the cloth and the slaves did the sewing. Once this process was done—a process that could last several months—the women distributed the clothing in the slave quarters, and then everyone celebrated. Sophia Watson described the festivities on an Alabama plantation in a letter to her absent hus- band: “That the Negroes might lose as little time as possible we waited until they came to dinner and then proceeded to distribute the clothes—The men were first served, then the women and lastly the

children[.] [A]ll looked well and were perfectly delighted with their new clothes.”
49

Not all the slaves were “perfectly delighted.” Harriet Jacobs, telling her story in
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
(1861), edited by Lydia Maria Child, remembered the bad feelings she harbored toward the wife of her master, Dr. Flint: “It was her labor that supplied my scanty wardrobe. I have a vivid recollection of the linsey-woolsey dress given me every winter by Mrs. Flint. How I hated it! It was one of the badges of slavery... .”
50

Sometimes, when a husband was absent, sick, or dead, a mistress had to take over all the administrative responsibilities of the plantation. The correspondence of Sophia Watson and her husband, Henry Wat- son, during the nine months he was away settling his father’s estate gives detailed information about plantation management, especially in his answers to her questions. Sophia’s letters reveal the lack of confi- dence she felt giving commands to the slaves, especially in the begin- ning, but after three months she was able to write: “They are certainly doing much better than I expected when you left.”
51

Other mistresses were less squeamish about giving orders, and some even administered physical punishment, rather than leaving that vicious work to their husbands or overseers. One former slave from Texas recalled a distinct gender division in the whippings. “Master whips de men and missus whips de women. Sometimes she whips wid de nettleweed. When she uses dat, de licks ain’t so bad, but de stingin’ and de burnin’ after am sho’ misery.”
52
Another former slave could hardly forget the cruel mistress who had beat her with a cowhide: “Then she go and rest and come back and beat me some more.”
53
While the whip was usually in the hands of the men, women who took pleasure in beating their slaves were no less sadistic then their male counterparts.

One of the major stresses in the lives of plantation wives came from successive childbearing. Without reliable contraception, they often feared having still another pregnancy after six or eight or even ten chil- dren. A member of the Alabama Clay family, who came home to find his wife pregnant with her eleventh child, shared her sense of “grief and regret.” A Southern general, writing to his wife during the war years, referred to pregnancy as “nine months of pain and general ill feeling,” and, a year later, sympathized with her when she found out

she was again pregnant: “Indeed I did sincerely hope that you had escaped this time, but darling it must be the positive and direct will of God that it should be so.” One troubled North Carolina planter’s wife complained to her husband in 1867: “Willis, I have not seen anything of my monthlies yet . . .” To which he replied, less sympathetically than the general: “I was never hopeful that you would not have more children, you come of a breed too prolific to stop at your age and if it’s the Lords will why we must submit to it.” Submitting to God’s will was the customary answer to all of life’s burdens, including that of having too many children, which this wife called “nothing but trouble and sorrow.”
54

Southern women seem to have been the last to show a decline in fer- tility in comparison to their Northeastern and Western counterparts. During the nineteenth century, the birth rate of all American white chil- dren declined by almost 50 percent—statistically speaking, from 7.04 children per married mother in 1800 to 3.56 children in 1900.
55
This must have been due to conscious efforts, such as sexual abstinence, male withdrawal, abortion, and contraceptive devices (see chapter 8). Historians disagree over the extent to which antebellum Southern women practiced any of those methods, some arguing that couples from the planter class did not try to limit fertility, and others that they did. One factor that may have added to the greater fertility of Southern women was their use of slaves to nurse their babies; since many white mothers were not nursing, they could not have profited from the “nat- ural” contraception that breast-feeding affords by delaying the return of menstruation after childbirth. Slave women, on the other hand, began the century with a slightly lower birth rate—an average of six babies per mother, and did not experience a comparable decline in the num- ber of offspring during the next hundred years. This was due to a vari- ety of interconnecting factors, including their earlier age of sexual activity and the expectation on the part of their masters that they would breed new slaves (see below).

However much they were aided by black wet nurses and nannies, Southern ladies were ultimately responsible for the well-being of their sons and daughters. Indeed, over and over again, in private and public discourse, they were reminded of their obligation to raise worthy chil- dren not only for the nation and even for their particular state, but also for “the South”—that romanticized region, reputedly inhabited by

beautiful women, gallant men, and grateful slaves. This pastoral vision of Christian benevolence clashes with much of the testimony written by observers from the North and abroad, and from accounts left behind by the slaves themselves.

Slave women did every kind of work on plantations. Field slaves plowed, hoed, picked cotton, and even split rails. House servants cooked, sewed, washed and ironed, nursed babies, cared for children, and attended to the personal needs of their mistresses and masters. They also made soap and dye, wove baskets, and ran errands. There was little time or energy left over for their own husbands and children, but somehow they were expected to manage their personal domestic matters whenever they could. Some were given free time on Saturday for cleaning house and washing clothes. Others were less fortunate, as one former slave recounted: “my mammy had to wash clothes on Sat- urday nights for us to wear on Sundays.”
56

Slave women could be wives of a sort. Though they could not legally marry, since they were officially the property of their masters, they often lived with de facto husbands, given to them by their owners or chosen by themselves. Practices varied according to the master, but there is no doubt that many owners treated their slaves as a kind of live- stock, whose offspring warranted careful breeding. One ex-slave from Alabama told an interviewer: “papa and mamy wasn’t married like folks now, ’cause dem times de white folks jes’ put slave men and women together like hosses or cattle.”
57
Sarah Ford, a former slave from Texas, remembered her mother saying that “dey jus’ puts a man and breedin’ woman together like mules. Iffen the woman don’t like the man it don’t make no difference, she better go or dey gives her a hidin.”
58
Betty Pow- ers, also from Texas, put it this way: “De massa say, ‘Jim and Nancy, you go live together,’ and when dat order give, it better be done. Dey thinks nothin’ on de plantation ’bout de feelin’s of de women.”
59

Rose Williams remembered how she had been forced to mate with a slave named Rufus.

. . . de massa come to me and say “You gwine live with Rufus in dat cabin over yonder. Go fix it for livin.” I’s ’bout sixteen years old and has no larnin’, and I’s just igno’mus chile. I’s thought dat him mean for me to tend de cabin for Rufus and some other niggers. . . .

Now I don’t like dat Rufus, ’cause he a bully. He am big and ’cause he so, he think everybody do what him say. We’uns had supper, den I goes here and dere talkin’; till I’s redy for sleep and den I gits in de bunk. 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 says for me to hush de mouth. “Dis am my bunk, too,” he say.

“You’s teched in de head. Git out,” I told him, and I puts de feet ’gainst him and give him a shove and out he go on de floor ’fore he know what I’s doin. Dat nigger jump up and he mad. He look like de wild bear. He starts for de bunk and I jumps quick for de poker. It am ’bout three foot long and when he comes at me I lets him have it over de head. Did dat nigger stop in he tracks? I’s say he did. . . .

. . . . De nex’ day I goes to de missy and tells her what Rufus wants and missy say dat am de massa’s wishes. She say, ‘Yous am de portly gal and Rufus am de portly man. De massa wants you-uns fer to bring forth portly chillen.”

. . . . De nex’ day de massa call me and tell me, “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. Now, if you doesn’t want whippin’ at de stake, you’s do what I wants.”

I thinks ’bout massa buyin’ me offen de bloc and savin’ me from bein’ sep’rated from my folks and ’bout bein’ whipped at de stake. Dere it am. What am I’s to do? So I ’cides to do as de massa wish and so I yields.
60

In the Old South, a master had the right to make and break slave marriages. He decided whether slaves could marry according to their choice or according to his choice or not at all. But a mistress, too, had some say about her house slaves and might intervene in their romantic affairs. She might chide a girl for fancying the wrong man, as one for- mer male slave revealed in a mimicry of his mistress: “ ‘Who was that young man? How come you with him? Don’t you ever let me see you with that ape again. If you cannot pick a mate better than that I’ll do the picking for you.’ ”
61

Other mistresses were less heavy-handed. One ninety-year-old for- mer slave remembered: “White fo’ks ax us, ‘What do yo’al say when ya court? We tell ’em we jest’ laff an talk. Dey ax’ us ef de boys ever ax us to kiss ’em an’ marry dem. We sey, ‘No Ma’am.’ Dey say ‘Yo’al don’t

know how to court,’ den dey tell us how to court.”
62

“Courting” had meaning only for those slaves whose masters and mistresses treated them like human beings rather than livestock. Mandy Hadnot, an ex-slave from Texas, had the exceptional good for- tune of belonging to a childless couple who raised her somewhat like their own child. She remembered: “When I’s 16 year ole I want to hab courtin’. Mistus ’low me to hab de boy come right to de big house to see me. He come two mile every Sunday and us go to Lugene Baptist Church. Den she have Sunday dinner for both us.” Later, when Mandy decided to marry, her mistress helped her fill a hope chest with sheets and a set of Sunday dishes.
63

Although slave marriages were not legally recognized, weddings were nonetheless common and often conducted by the master of the house. A Mississippi planter described in his diary the ceremony he had employed for the marriage of seven slave couples. He asked each person if he or she agreed publicly to take the other party and to pledge to discharge the duties of husband or wife. Then he announced, “We have now gone through with every form necessary to authorize me to pronounce each of these several couples as man and wife.” He then enjoined “according to the good old custom of our fathers and mothers, that each bridegroom now salute the bride.”
64

Historian Carl Degler noted that this ceremony, though influenced by the standard Christian model, did not call upon God to bless the union, nor did it ask the couple to remain faithful to one another forever. Such a vow would have been meaningless in a society where the master had the right to destroy the couple by selling off a husband or a wife.
65

Virginia Bell, an ex-slave from Louisiana, described the process of marriage on her plantation: “Iffen any of the slave hands wanted to git married, Massa Lewis would git them up to the house after supper time, have the man and woman jine hands and then read to them outen a book. I guess it was the Scriptures. Then he’d tell ’em they was mar- ried but to be ready for work in the morning.”
66
Another former slave from Louisiana told a similar story, except that her master was a trifle kinder to the new couple: “When a black gal marry, Marse marry her hisself in de big house. He marry ’em Saturday, so dey git Sunday off, too.”
67

In many other instances, a preacher performed the ceremony, sometimes in the big house and sometimes in church. Nancy King, a

former slave from Texas, recalled that she had been married in church by a white preacher during the war. “Old Missie give me the cloth and dye for my weddin’ dress and my mother spun and dyed the cloth, and I made it. It was homespun but nothin’ cheap ’bout it for them days. After the weddin’ massa give us a big dinner and we had a time.”
68

Another ex-slave from Texas fondly remembered the religious cere- mony that bound her to a man of her own choosing: “My husband’s name was David Henderson and we lived on the same place and belonged to the same man. No, suh, Master Hill didn’t have nothin’ to do with bringin’ us together. I guess God done it. We fell in love, and David asked Master Hill for me. We had a weddin’ in the house and was married by a colored Baptist preacher. I wore a white cotton dress and Missus Hill give me a pan of flour for a weddin’ present. He give us a house of our own. My husband was good to me. He was a careful man and not rowdy.”
69