★★★★★ 5
Remarkable analysis of slaveholding women in Antebellum America
Format: Paperback
Stephanie Jones-Rogers has provided us with a book that looks at the South's "peculiar institution" through a very different lens - the slaveholders/slaveowners, but this analysis looks at women that owned slaves, thus opening up a new avenue of study that I hadn't previously seen.
Jones-Rogers offers a well written account that is rich in historical details. She demonstrates through vivid historical evidence that the women that owned enslaved people were primarily driven by economic motives, and that these women were just as demanding and could be just as harsh as the "typical" slaveowner image that has been crafted over the years.
The book is organized thematically, and each chapter demonstrates the economic motivation behind slave ownership. The reader is offered views of everything from young children becoming slave owners when their parents "gifted" them an enslaved person, and how these young girls were taught that this was "property" that could be used as desired to how these female slaveholders would sell their slaves to meet their economic goals.
All told, this is a fascinating book that uncovers a long ignored slice of Antebellum American history that makes the historiographical literature of pre-Civil War history much richer.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2021
