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Some Aspects of Female Resistance to Chattel Slavery in Low Country Georgia, 1763–1815*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Betty Wood
Betty Wood
Affiliation:
Girton College, Cambridge
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Extract

Although often differing dramatically in their methodologies and conclusions, most studies of the slave societies of the American South either draw to a close by the middle years of the eighteenth century or begin their story only in the 1820s and 1830s. Moreover, whilst some scholars have differentiated between particular patterns of black behaviour, as for example between African- and country-born slaves, field hands and domestic slaves, until quite recently comparatively little interest has been shown in delineating the ways in which black women perceived and responded to their status and condition.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , September 1987 , pp. 603 - 622
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

1 Although attention has been paid to various aspects of the life and labour of black women in the American South there has been a dearth of detailed studies which address the slavery experience from their perspective. For two studies which go a long way towards remedying this deficiency see White, Deborah Gray, Ar'n't I a woman? Female slaves in the plantation South (New York, 1985)Google Scholar and Jones, Jacqueline, Labor of love, labor of sorrow. Black women, work, and the family from slavery to the present (New York, 1985)Google Scholar. Unfortunately, neither of these authors has much to say about black women in the eighteenth-century South.

2 Bush, Barbara, ‘Towards emancipation: slave women and resistance to coercive labour regimes in the British West Indian colonies, 1790–1838’, in Richardson, David, ed., Abolition and its aftermath. The historical context, 1790–1916 (London, 1985), pp. 27–54Google Scholar.

3 For a recent discussion of the debate which preceded the introduction of slavery into Georgia, see Wood, Betty, Slavery in colonial Georgia, 1730–1775 (Athens, 1984), pp. 1–87Google Scholar.

4 The demographic and economic growth of Georgia during the years of Royal government is dealt with by Wood, , Slavery in colonial Georgia, pp. 89–98, 104–9Google Scholar and Smith, Julia FloydSlavery and rice culture in Low country Georgia, 1750–1860 (Knoxville, 1985), pp. 15–29, 93–100Google Scholar.

5 Dobell, John to the Trustees, , Savannah, , 11 June 1746, in Candler, Allen D. and Knight, Lucian L., eds., The Colonial records of the state of Georgia, 26 vols. (Atlanta, 1904–1916), XXIV, 72Google Scholar (hereafter Col. Recs.).

6 Frey, Sylvia, ‘“Bitter fruit from the sweet stem of liberty”: Georgia slavery and the American revolution’ (paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association held in New York City, 12, 1985), p. 13Google Scholar.

7 Ibid. p. 15.

8 As Robert S. Glenn Jr. has observed, Georgia ‘approximated the pattern of the other southern colonies in that it did not develop a direct slave trade with Africa until its economy was advanced enough to absorb cargoes of 150 to 200 slaves at a time’. Glenn, , ‘Slavery in Georgia, 1733–1793’ (Senior thesis, Princeton University, 1972), pp. 63–4Google Scholar. Between 1766 and 1771, the only pre-war years for which there is detailed evidence, 2487 Africans were landed in Georgia and an unknown number of ‘New Negroes’ purchased by Georgia planters and merchants in the South Carolina slave markets. For discussions of the slave trade to Georgia in the eighteenth century see Wood, , Slavery in colonial Georgia, pp. 98–104Google Scholar; Smith, , Slavery and rice culture, pp. 93–8Google Scholar; and Wax, Darold D., ‘“New negroes are always in demand”: the slave trade in eighteenth-century Georgia’, Georgia Historical Quarterly, LXVIII (1984)Google Scholar.

9 Frey, , ‘“Bitter fruit”’, p. 14Google Scholar.

10 Wood, , Slavery in colonial Georgia, pp. 103–4Google Scholar; Donnan, Elizabeth, ‘The slave trade into South Carolina before the Revolution’, American Historical Review, XXXIII (1928), 816–17Google Scholar; Littlefield, Daniel C., Rice and slaves: ethnicity and the slave trade in colonial south Carolina (Baton Rouge, 1981)Google Scholar.

11 Telfair, Cowper and Telfair to Robert Macmillan, Savannah, 2 Sept. 1773; to Thomas Wallace, Savannah, 2 Sept. 1773. Telfair papers, Item 43, Cover 2, Letterbook, 11 Aug. 1773 to 11 May 1776. Georgia Historical Society, Savannah.

12 Mohr, Clarence L., ‘Slavery and Georgia's second War of Independence’ (paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association held in New York City, 12, 1985). P. 5Google Scholar.

13 The colonial inventories are taken from Inventory Book F (1754–1771) and FF (1771–1778), Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta and from the Telamon Cuyler Collection, Box 7 (special heading Georgia. Colonial. Estate Papers) and Boxes 38A and 38B (special heading Georgia. Governor. Wright, James, 1760–1776) held in the Manuscript Room, University of Georgia Library. The Chatham County inventories were consulted at the Chatham County Courthouse, Savannah.

14 Gray, Ralph and Wood, Betty, ‘The transition from indentured to involuntary servitude in colonial Georgia’, Explorations in Economic History, XIII (1976), 363Google Scholar.

15 Based on an analysis of the inventories cited in note 13 (above).

16 In Savannah women outnumbered men by around 115 to 100. For a rare contemporary account of the sex ratio of Savannah's slave population see the census of ‘all the people of color above the age of Fifteen in the City of Savannah’ (dated 28 May 1798) in the Negro History Files, File 2: 1773–1800 folder, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta. For the sex ratio of Charleston's slaves see Morgan, Philip D., ‘Black life in eighteenth-century Charleston’, Perspectives in American History, new series, I, (1984), 188–9Google Scholar.

17 On estates with more than twenty adult slaves the ratio of men to women was in the order of 161 to 100; on those with fewer than ten slaves it dropped to roughly 127 to 100. Based on an analysis of the inventories cited in note 13 (above). Thomas R. Statom Jr has estimated that between 1755 and 1764 the sex ratio on all estates was 160:100 and between 1764 and 1776 134:100. His analysis is based on Inventory Books F and Statom, F F., ‘Negro slavery in eighteenth-century Georgia’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Alabama, 1982), pp. 180–1Google Scholar.

18 For the occupational structure of one of colonial Georgia's, largest holdings see The Georgia Gazette, 13 02 1781Google Scholar, which lists the posessions of John Graham, Lieutenant-Governor of the colony. 18.5 per cent of his male slaves filled skilled or semi-skilled positions and another 7 per cent were ‘Usually employed and kept around the House’. Of the women owned by Graham 23.5 per cent worked as seamstresses, washerwomen, cooks, midwives, and ‘house wenches’. For the occupational structure of one of Chatham County's larger post-war holdings see the inventory of James Mackay's estate, drawn up on 1 January 1787. Seventeen, or 51.5 per cent, of Mackay's male slaves were skilled or semi-skilled. Only three, or 9 per cent, of his slave women worked as cooks (one), nurses (one), and maids (one).

19 None of the advertisements placed in The Georgia Gazette between 1763 and 1795 for the sale or hire of a slave woman, or the return of a runaway, mentioned the woman's value as a ‘breeder’.

20 For a rare contemporary comment about the rate of increase of Low Country slaves see James Habersham to William Knox, Savannah, 24 July 1772. Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, VI, 193–4. For late eighteenth-century Jamaican attempts to boost the rate of natural increase of the island's slave population, and the inducements offered to black women to produce more children, see Wood, Betty and Clayton, Roy, ‘Slave birth, death and disease on Golden Grove Plantation, Jamaica, 1765–1810’, Slavery and Abolition, VI (1985), 99–121CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Wood, , Slavery in colonial Georgia, p. 155Google Scholar.

22 Loewald, Klaus G., Starika, Beverly, and Taylor, Paul S., trans, and eds., ‘Johann Martin Bolzius answers a questionnaire on Carolina and Georgia’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., XIV (1958), 236, 256Google Scholar. An analysis of newspaper advertisements, wills, and miscellaneous bonds (which recorded the transfer of slaves by deed of gift and sale) strongly suggests that this practice continued throughout the period under consideration here.

23 Wood, , Slavery in colonial Georgia, p. 156Google Scholar.

24 Between 1763 and 1775 six of the female runaways advertised in The Georgia Gazette took at least one of their children with them. The same was true of eight women who ran away between 1783 and 1795. Another six women, who absconded with men who might or might not have been their husbands, also took children with them. The only advertised runaway between 1763 and 1795 said to have abandoned one of her children was Hannah, who ran away in 1786. Hannah's owner, Martha M. Melven, commented that although she had taken her daughter Lydia, ‘about five years old’, she had ‘inhumanly’ left ‘a child at her breast’. Hannah had ‘extensive acquaintances … in and around Savannah’, and her mistress believed that she was being ‘harboured by some ill-intentioned person’. The Georgia Gazette, 20 Apr. 1786.

25 For a discussion of the framing and content of Georgia's slave laws see Wood, , Slavery in colonial Georgia, pp. 110–30Google Scholar.

26 Ibid. 120–2, 124–7, 129.

27 AN ACT For the better Ordering and Governing Negroes and other Slaves in this Province. March, 1755. Col. Recs., XVIII, 131–5.

28 AN ACT For Regulating a Work House, for the Custody and Punishment of Negroes. April, 1763, ibid. 558–66. The Act permitted owners to send their ‘stubborn, obstinate or incorrigible Negroes’ to the workhouse, where they would be ‘kept to hard Labour or otherwise…corrected’. Owners would be charged 6d. per diem for their upkeep and an additional ‘one Shilling and fourpence for each Chastisement’.

29 For white fears of organized slave rebellions, and the difficulties confronting would-be black rebels, see Wood, , Slavery in colonial Georgia, pp. 125–8, 188–98Google Scholar.

30 The only contemporary account of the Parish, St Andrew ‘revolt’ is in The Georgia Gazette, 7 12 1774Google Scholar.

31 Frey, , ‘“Bitter Fruit”’, pp. 14–15Google Scholar.

32 Ibid. passim.

33 For a discussion of the Laurens Plan and its reception in South Carolina and Georgia see Robinson, Donald, Slavery in the structure of American politics, 1763–1820 (New York, 1979), pp. 118–20Google Scholar.

34 There had been runaway communities in the colonial period which greatly alarmed white Georgians. For the ‘depradations’ committed by the members of these communities, and white attempts to root them out, see Col. Recs., XIV, 292–3. For a description of the post-war community headed by Lewis and ‘Captain Cudjoe’ see ‘Trial of Negroe Man Slave Named Lewis the Property of Oliver Bowen for the Murder of John Casper Hersman, Robbing Philip Ulsmer, John Lowerman of Ga. & Col. Borquin of South Carolina, 1787’, in Slave File, Telamon Cuyler Collection, Manuscript Room, University of Georgia Library. Lewis was sentenced to death.

35 Wood, Peter H., Black majority: negroes in colonial south Carolina from 1670 through the Stono rebellion (New York, 1974), p. 241Google Scholar.

36 For a detailed discussion of black runaways in colonial Georgia see Wood, , Slavery in colonial Georgia, pp. 169–87Google Scholar.

37 Mullin, Gerald W., Flight and rebellion: slave resistance in eighteenth-century Virginia (New York, 1972)Google Scholar, passim.

38 Wood, , Slavery in colonial Georgia, p. 180Google Scholar.

39 The fate of this group is unknown, but their overseer thought it ‘probable’ that those concerned would ‘keep along shore and be taken up either to the southward or northward of Savannah’. The Georgia Gazette, 25 Jan. 1775.

40 In 1790 there were 398 free blacks in the ‘District of Georgia’, of whom 180 lived in Wilkes County and 112 in Chatham County. ‘Census of the District of Georgia’, The Augusta Chronicle, 5 Nov. 1791.

41 For legislation regulating the hiring out and casual employment of slaves see Wood, , Slavery in colonial Georgia, pp. 131–2, 142–5Google Scholar.

42 The Georgia Gazette, 13 July 1774, 24 May 1775.

43 See for example ibid. 4 Apr. 1764.

44 The break-out in question occurred on 7 Oct. 1789 and involved five men and two women. Both women, Satira, who belonged to Levi Sheftall, and Eve, who was owned by Dr Beecroft, were said to be ‘well known in and about Savannah’, and no further description was given. One of the men, Tom, who belonged to Matthew McCallister, had ‘a large iron on one leg’ and another, a boy named Charles, was said to have ‘lost one leg’. It is not clear from the published account precisely how they managed to engineer their escape or how long they remained at large. The Georgia Gazette, 8 Oct. 1789.

45 Tappert, Theodore G. and Doberstein, John W., trans, and eds., The journals of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1942, 1958), 11, 575, 576Google Scholar.

46 The Gaol Book (which is unpaginated) is in the possession of the Georgia Historical Society, Savannah.

47 There is no sure way of knowing how many of these slaves might have changed hands between 1809 and 1815. Also, on some larger holdings it was not unusual to find more than one slave with the same name.

48 See note 28 (above). Virtually every issue of The Georgia Gazette between 1763 and 1795 carried an advertisement for runaways whose owners could not be identified.

49 Mohr, , ‘Slavery and Georgia's Second War of Independence’, pp. 5–6Google Scholar.

50 Nanny was owned by Mary Barnet.

51 Wood, , Slavery in colonial Georgia, p. 198Google Scholar.

52 Genovese, Eugene D., Roll, Jordan Roll: The world the slaves made (London, 1975), pp. 616'17Google Scholar.

53 Wood, , Slavery in colonial Georgia, p. 197Google Scholar.