Title:
Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and Revolutionary New England
Author:
Catherine Adams and Elizabeth Pleck
Year of Publication:
2010
Thesis:
Digs deep into how enslaved women saw freedom. Begins with the suit of Hagar Blackmore in MA, who draws on New England Bible rhetoric to argue against man stealing. Offers a typology and examples of how women saw their freedom: self-ownership, owning property, right to Christianity, and freedom for their families. She argues that they appealed based on a patriarchal understanding of freedom, not an "equality of the sexes" type of freedom. Shows women's agency as they simultaneously were circumscribed by coverture and used it to garner financial support. Refutes the benign-northern-slavery myth. (review, Alexander) Women constructed groups, such as the Colored Female Society (early 1830s), which supported political movements even as it sought to alter the perception of Black women as prostitutes (191). At the same time women were getting people to subscribe to Freedom's Journal, it was promoting women staying home (193)
"Enslaved women in colonial and revolutionary New England sought their freedom through legal manumission, profession of their Christian faith, property ownership, and reunification of their families." However, they still held a "belief in the subordination of women to men." "While emancipation was equally meaningful to black women and black men, the moment of winning freedom actualy brought to the fore longstanding conflicts between black women and men." (3) Slavery/bondage also equally as horrible in the North.
Time: 1630-1790 (Colonial/Revolutionary Periods)
Geography: New England
Organization:
Introduction: Hagar Blackmore's Journey from Angola to New England
- 1669 - Blackmore sues in MA as a citizen claiming "manstealing," prohibited in Puritan doctrine (but ok to receive enslaved people in "just wars" - 6)
- Significance of changing people's names (Hagar = biblical "bondswoman") (7)
- Hagar bore a child & was questioned during the birth as to the father (belief is that pregnant mothers will not lie at this time) (8)
- Enslavement to Africans, according to Adams & Pleck, was a signifier of nonpersonhood (9)
- Major forms of resistance fall under category of disobedience & noncooperation (including suicide) (9)
- "Enslaved women resorted to distinctly female means of resistance, such as feigning pregnancy, abortion, infanticide, or poisoning the master's food." (10)
- ARG: Black male property owners also under rules of coverture Rights spelled out on this page. (11)
- ARG: Black women's independence because of their earning potential is a myth - developed in ch.3 (12)
- Enslaved men had more mobility in terms of opportunities - visited women at their houses w/permission from the masters (even when married) (15)
- Enslaved men interacted w/Native Americans (16)
- Blacks held elections/parades (men only w/the "franchise") (16)
1. The Uniqueness of New England
- "Chapter 1 examines the significance of the slave trade in New England from the time of English capture of Angolans in the 1600s to the larger importation of slaves mainly from further north along the West African coast in the next century. It shows the main ways that black men and women defined free- dom even while enslaved, as well as the significance of the patriarchal ideal among New England slaves." (25)
2. Property and Patriarchy
"Chapter 2 looks at the unique conditions of New England slavery for women, their social isolation in the countryside, health and work conditions, and the favorable circumstances afforded to them in New England criminal and civil law." (25-6)
3. Spiritual Thirsting
"Chapter 3 sketches the impact of property ownership on three black marriages in the eighteenth century. Detailed case studies of these unions prove the significance of the ideal of the propertied farmer or urban homeowner for women’s definition of freedom and independence. No matter what the personal dynamics of individual marriages were, the outlines of patriarchy were always present." (26)
4. Marriage and the Family
"Chapter 4 reveals that black women’s ideal of freedom through Christ strengthened the emphasis on personal character and sexual morality but also connected them to that part of the Christian world that condemned slavery as a grievous sin." (26)
5. Seeking Possession of Her Liberty
"Chapter 5 shows that while the slave trade destroyed African families, New Eng- land slaves created new ones and nurtured the desire for a household headed by a man who was a protector and provider for his family. Although some free black unions were long-enduring partnerships, the model of the fam- ily was not an egalitarian but a hierarchical unit. During the first moments of emancipation, beginning in the 1780s, conflicts between black men and women, already apparent in slavery, became quite visible precisely around issues of male authority and married women’s employment. Black husbands in defense of their reputation, their honor, and their credit at the store strove to control their wives; as a result, some black wives fled their marriage. " (27)
6. Spirit of Freedom
"The primary focus of chapter 6 is the story of enslaved women who brought indi- vidual suits for emancipation in the courts; at the end of the Revolutionary War one woman made larger collective claims, that slavery was unconstitu- tional in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts based on the principles of the new state’s constitution. Overall, winning legal freedom through the courts was the form of emancipation that most clearly involved interracial associa- tions and the assistance of white abolitionists." (26)
7. Citizenship
"Chapter 7 reveals that black men and women exploited the chaos of wartime and antislavery sympathy among whites to declare themselves free. There were many reasons why slavery ended in New England after the Revolution, but among them were the efforts of black women and men to secure it and take advantage of the spirit of liberty present among their white neighbors. As emancipated slaves, black women as well as men in New England became citizens of the newly founded New England states, even though their rights were circumscribed. " (26)
...
"As chapter 8 reveals, patriarchal principles limited black women’s participation in free black institutions. Since black citizen- ship was defined in terms of the assertion of black manhood it was not clear what role women could play other than working for wages in menial jobs and caring for their homes. Despite being denied the full rights of citizens free black women tried to carve out their own, more-limited definition of citizenship. They sought to achieve concrete benefits for themselves and their families from free black institutions or in petitioning the governments of New England states. In pursuing these goals they also showed that they wanted respect from their neighbors, education for their children, eco- nomic security, religious fellowship, and a government that affirmed and enforced their claims for justice." (26-27)
Epilogue
"Only in the early nineteenth century, as the epilogue indicates, did black women place great emphasis on gender as well as race, defining their role less as subordinates in a black patriarchal family and more as mothers of the race concerned both with home and family, and the abolition of slavery, while also confronting the “monster prejudice” they faced daily." (27)
Notes
Index
Type:
Methods:
Sources:
poetry, conversion narratives, lawsuits
Historiography:
Keywords:
Freedom, family, faith, entrepreneurship, womanhood, masculinity (3)
Patriarchy (from Gerda Lerner): "the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in hte family and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general." (10)
Coverture: "a framework of the English common law in which the woman at marriage took her husband's surname as her own and had her legal identity subsumed under that of her husband. Under coverture, a married woman had no right to her own wages, could not make a contract, could not write a will, and could not acquire property on her own." (Also speaks to the rights and responsibilities of the husband) (11)
Themes:
Critiques:
Questions:
Quotes:
"The association of Massachusetts with abolitionism is not undeserved so long as it is acknowledged that the first abolitionists were the slaves themselves." (4)
On the value (and paucity) of Black women's stories:
Yet there are additional reasons why women so often recede into the background in the chronicle of black history. “The slave,” as a generalized being, is often thought of as a male and the enslaved woman is instead considered the exception—a supplement or an aside to the main story, which is about men. There are more general assumptions as well about the major theme of African American history, the struggle for freedom. Freedom is perceived as such an overriding goal of all black people and race unity the best means to achieve it that it is assumed there is no particular woman’s angle in need of telling." (20)
"No black woman kept an account book, a journal, a diary, or published her autobiography, to our knowledge, or succeeded in having her wedding announcement placed in a newspaper. Thus, the contemporaneous written record about black women is less substantial than that for black men, in large part because they were much less likely to be literate. Sadly, many of the letters written by the few literate black women have not survived. For example, while some of the correspondence of Phillis Wheatley to her female friend Obour Tanner, a slave in Newport, has been preserved, none of Tanner’s letters to Wheatley have been found." (21)
On intelligence & the notion of using exemplary Black people as examples of it:
"The remembrance of individual enslaved men and women in New England was crucial to the abolitionist cause. Defenders of slavery argued that bondage was a natural condition for black people because they were men- tally inferior to whites. At a time when there were no standard measures of intelligence, the best way for abolitionists to refute such views was to point to the one black individual who was the equal or the superior of whites in character and intelligence; by those standards, Wheatley certainly was at the top of the list. In addition, some abolitionists chose the example of a black man but others pointed to a black woman they had known since childhood. Although black men were more often remembered than black women, it was nonetheless the case that black women were recalled more fondly because of the children that they had “tenderly nursed.” (22-23)
On religion:
"Evangelical Protestantism appealed to African women because it blended African and Christian elements, offered dynamic preaching, and provided religious services in which women could express their spiritual joy and personal anguish." (186)
Notes:
This is an important contribution to scholarship, especially in the Colonial Period. It gives some sense of where to look for Black women’s voices and how to read them. I think tracing how Black people perceived and articulated notions of freedom remains a worthwhile endeavor. That Adams and Pleck underscore the tension in the Revolutionary Period with respect to Black men and women, I still struggle to imagine a world in which this friction was not a constant undercurrent.