Term Two: Week 3: Slave family life and death
Gobbets
- Douglass (1845) ch 1
- Douglass (1892) Chs 1 & 3
Questions
How did the slave family survive slavery? What techniques were employed by slaves to maintain family links? What was the reaction when those links were severed? What were the common causes of death among American slaves?
Core Reading
- West, Emily, 'The debate on the strength of slave families' JAS (1999)
- Lockley, Tim 'Black Mortality in Antebellum Savannah' Social History of Medicine 26.4 (November 2013), 633-652.
- Gutman, Herbert G., The black family in slavery and freedom.
E-resources
- Lockley, Tim "The forming and fracturing of families on a South Carolina Rice Plantation, 1812-1865" The History of the Family 23.1 (2018) 75-89.
- West, Emily, 'Surviving separation: cross plantation marriages and the slave trade in antebellum South Carolina ' Journal of Family History (1999)
- West, Emily, 'Slave-owners' perspectives on cross-plantation unions in antebellum South Carolina' S & A (2000)
- Emily West 'Tensions, tempers, and temptations: marital discord among slaves in antebellum South Carolina' American Nineteenth Century History (2004) 1-18
- Griffin, Rebecca J. 'Goin' back over there to see that girl': Competing Social Spaces in the Lives of the Enslaved in Antebellum North Carolina,' Slavery and Abolition, 25, 1 (2004), pp. 94-113.
- McMillen, Sally, "'No Uncommon Disease': Neonatal Tetanus, Slave Infants, and the Southern Medical Profession," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 46 (1991): 291-314.
- Young, Jeffrey R., 'Ideology and death on a Savannah River rice plantation, 1835-1867: paternalism amidst "a good supply of disease and pain"', JSH, LIX, (1993), 673-706.
- Durrill, Wayne K, 'Slavery, kinship and dominance: the black community at Somerset place plantation, 1786-1860' S&A 13.2 (1992) 1-29
- Steckel, Richard, 'A peculiar population: the nutrition, health and mortality of American slaves from childhood to maturity' JecH 46 (1986) 721-41
- Steckel, Richard, 'A dreadful childhood: the excess mortality of American slaves' Social Science History, (1986), 427-65
- Kiple Kenneth & Virginia, 'Slave child mortality: some nutritional answers to a perennial puzzle' JsocH 10 (1977) 284-309
- Johnson, Michael, "Smothered Slave Infants: Were Slave Mothers at Fault?" JSH (1981), 493-520
- Lee, Jean B 'The problem of slave community in the 18thC Chesapeake' WMQ (1986)
- Inscoe, John ,'Carolina slave names: an index to acculturation' JSH 49 (1985) 527-554
- Cody, Cheryll Ann, 'Naming, kinship and estate dispersal: notes on slave family life on a South Carolina plantation, 1786-1833', WMQ, XXXIX, (1982), 192-211.
- Cody, Cheryll Ann, 'There was no "absalom" on the Ball plantations: slave naming practices in the South Carolina lowcountry, 1720-1865', AHR, XCII, (1987), 563-596.
- Crowley, John E., 'The importance of kinship: testamentary evidence from South Carolina', JIH, XVI, (1986), 559-577.
- Warren, Christian, 'Northern chills, southern fevers: race-specific mortality in American cities' JSH 63 (1997) 23-57
Further reading
- Jones, Jacqueline, Labor of love, labor of sorrow: black women, work and the family from slavery to the present.
- Moody, V A, Slavery on Louisiana Sugar Plantations (ch 6)
- Malone, Ann, Sweet chariot: slave family & household structure in 19thC Louisiana (pt 1)
- Dusinberre, William, Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps (ch3, 4 & 8)
- Hudson, Larry, To have and to hold: slave work and family life in antebellum South Carolina
- Stevenson, Brenda, Life in Black and White: Family and Community In the Slave South
- King, Wilma, Stolen childhood: slave youth in 19thC America
- West, Emily, Chains of Love: Slave couples on antebellum South Carolina
- Morgan, Jennifer L, Laboring women : Reproduction & gender in New World Slavery
- Schwartz, Marie, Born in bondage : growing up enslaved in the antebellum South
- Blassingame, John W., The slave community: plantation life in the antebellum South.
- Land, Aubrey Christian, Bases of the plantation society.
- Savitt, Todd, Medicine and slavery
- Postell, W D, Health of slaves on southern plantations
- Morgan, Philip, 'Black society in the lowcountry' in Berlin & Hoffman (eds) Slavery and Freedom in the American Revolution