Ebook: Chains of Love: Slave Couples in Antebellum South Carolina

Historians have traditionally neglected relationships between slave men and women during the antebellum period. In Chains of Love, historian Emily West remedies this situation by investigating the social and cultural history of slave relationships in the very heart of the South.

Focusing on South Carolina, West deals directly with the most intimate areas of the slave experience including courtship, love and affection between spouses, the abuse of slave women by white men, and the devastating consequences of forced separations. Slaves fought these separations through cross-gender bonding and cross-plantation marriages, illustrating West's thesis about slave marriage as a fierce source of resistance to the oppression of slavery in general.

Making expert use of sources such as the Works Progress Administration narratives, slave autobiographies, slave owner records, and church records, this book-length study is the first to focus on the primacy of spousal support as a means for facing oppression. Chains of Love provides telling insights into the nature of the slave family that emerged from these tensions, celebrates its strength, and reveals new dimensions to the slaves' struggle for freedom.
| Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Courtship and Marriage 2. Family Life 3. Work, Gender and Status 4. Interracial Sexual Contact 5. Enforced Separations Conclusion Appendixes 1. Criteria Used in the Construction of a Database Relating to the Comments of the South Carolina WPA Respondents 2. Interracial Sexual Contact in the WPA Narratives Bibliography Index
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Slaves South Carolina Social conditions 19th century, Slaves South Carolina Family relationships History 19th century, Couples South Carolina History 19th century, Man-woman relationships South Carolina History 19th century, Slaves South Carolina Biography, Slavery South Carolina History 19th century, Plantation life South Carolina History 19th century, South Carolina Race relations, South Carolina History 1775-1865|

Emily West is a lecturer in American history at the University of Reading (UK).