Scholars Thought White Women Were Passive Enslavers. They Were Wrong.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/us/white-women-american-slave-trade.html?unlocked_article_code=1.d04.W2Fa.6XWSJpxR3RKF&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

For generations, scholars argued that white women were rarely involved in the active buying and selling of Black people. But a growing body of research is challenging that narrative, documenting the significant role that white women played in the American slave trade.

Between 1856 and 1861, white women engaged in nearly a third of the sales and purchases of enslaved people in New Orleans, which was home to the nation’s largest slave market at the time, according to a working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research earlier this year.

In 1830, white women accounted for about 16 percent of the purchases and sales of enslaved people in New Orleans, the study found. Elsewhere, an analysis of runaway slave advertisements published between 1853 and 1860, which were compiled by the Black abolitionist William Still, found that white women were listed as owners in about 12 percent of the listings.

(snip)

Dr. Jones-Rogers’s research found that female enslavers were ubiquitous and showed that their ability to buy and sell Black people brought them significant economic freedom in a patriarchal society that sharply curtailed female economic independence.

The article also cites Jones-Rogers's "They Were Her Property," which is an excellent read.

[malaise]

1. K & R for

Visibikity

[onecaliberal]

2. K&R

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

[Nasruddin]

4. It makes a lot of sense

Think how the division of labor worked in the antebellum south. The woman of the house whether wife, mother, sister, or daughter, ran the household. No labor saving devices whatsoever, they often lived high off the hog and anyway they had social obligations galore and all that meant lots of sewing, weaving, cooking, cleaning, and child rearing. You don't need to guess who did that work. The mistress would consequently be in the slave business.

Now property rights are kind of woozy in this period but often enough the wife brought money into the family, and/or had a father or brothers nearby to help with any disputes, so women wielded a lot of power defacto. What she wanted she probably got.

You can look at Gone WIth the WInd for a rosy view of this from people at the very top but this also applies to a small tobacco and corn farmer in western KY too.