![]() Some former slaves charged that owners forcefully bred slaves not only to enlarge their workforces but also to “improve” their “stock.” Henry H. 8įorced pairings were uncommon, but slaveholders attempted them from time to time. Some masters and mistresses went so far as to write love letters on behalf of slaves. They tried to orchestrate courting by insisting that couples obtain an owner’s approval before seeing each other. Miscalculations such as these explain in part the efforts undertaken by some slaveholders to intervene directly in sexual relationships among slaves. 5 Slaves considered rewards for motherhood a customary right and acted proactively to secure them from owners. “A ‘breeder’ always fared better than the majority of female slaves,” former slave Douglas Parish observed. Some women were able to avoid field or other arduous labor as the result of bearing children. These included “extra clothing,” exemption from harsh punishment, even (rarely) freedom. Rewards for motherhood followed the birth of children. These could consist of not only separate housing, small patches of land, and passes but also chickens or other animals and time to perform domestic tasks. 4Īn owner who suspected a couple of courting might persuade the man and woman to set up a household by offering a variety of inducements. For youths experiencing the glow of first love and sexual attraction, mild pressure often proved effectual. She apparently meant that he would press the pair to live together as husband and wife. ![]() Their courtship lasted only a brief time, Jacob later recalled, because the master gave his permission for marriage “’fore I axes fer hit.” Georgina Gibbs testified that her Virginia master “would marry” any couple he saw spending time together. Jacob Thomas married Phoebe the year the Civil War began. ![]() Many exploited an attraction that already existed by encouraging or insisting on marriage. Those who did not might hurry women to have children in other ways. Not all owners purchased spouses specifically for particular slaves. If enslaved mothers did not bear sufficient numbers of children to take the place of aged and dying workers, the South could not continue as a slave society. With so much at stake, black women’s reproductive role became politically, as well as economically, decisive. As of 1808, when Congress ended the nation’s participation in the international slave trade, planters could no longer import additional slaves from Africa or the West Indies the only practical way of increasing the number of slave laborers was through new births. The extension of the so-called Cotton Kingdom required new laborers. Published by Harvard University Press.īy the 1820s planters and would-be planters were moving in large numbers to places previously unavailable for settlement and growing the fiber for sale in Europe and New England, where a textile industry was beginning to thrive. Įxcerpted from Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South by Marie Jenkins Schwartz. ![]() To learn more and to enroll, visit /Academy. Please join Slate’s Jamelle Bouie and Rebecca Onion for a different kind of summer school. This article supplements Episode 7 of The History of American Slavery, our inaugural Slate Academy.
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