Gift from her sister, was worth 1,500, they were her property has received a number of highlily favorable reviews. Its called a stunning new book. Paris of the New York Times says its a cogent corrective that examines how historians have misunderstood and misrepresented white women as reluctant actors. In the Washington Post elizabeth bar ren writes jonesrogers has an one that sets a new standard for scholarship on the subject. Stephanie jonesrogers is an associate professor of history at the university of california berkeley, specializing in africanAmerican History, gender history. They were her property won a learner scott prize for the best doctoral dissertation in u. S. Womens history in 2013. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome stephanie jonesrogers. [ applause ] hnch. Thank you so much that are that invitation, and the introduction, david, and thank you for coming this afternoon and spending your lunchtime with me. Its truly a pleasure to be here with you today. So this is James Redpath. In 1859, after touring the antebellum south he attempted to explain to readers why white southern women opposed southern emancipation. He believed their sentiments were tied to a lifetime of indoctrination, eared as they were under the shadow of the peculiar institution. Slavery was incessantly praised and defended everywhere they want and by everyone they knew and in most of the publications they read. Their consciences were easily perverted, redpath argued, were never afterwards appealed to, with a result that they saw no reason to change their views. Redpath assumed that white southern women did not know negro slavery as it is because their society shielded them from the institutions horrific realities. Insulated by southern patriarchs, he argued, white women seldom saw slaverys, quote, most obnoxious features, never attend auctions, end quote, never witnessed what were called examinations, seldom if ever, saw, quote, the negros lashed. More profoundly they did not know the trade in slaves was a gigantic commerce. Southern men revealed only the south side view of slavery, redpath surmised and if the women of the south knew slavery as it is he was convinced they would join in the protests against it. Redpaths assumptions represent a commonly held patriarchal view yet narrative sources, legal and financial documents and military and government correspondence make it clear that white southern women knew the most obnoxious features of slavery all too well. Slaveowning women not only witnessed the most brutal features of slavery, they took part in them, profited from them, and defended them. After hearing what James Redpath said about white womens relationship to slavery we might think that white women were invisible in southern slave markets. They are most notably absent from this painting from 1854, which depicts a very public slave auction in the city of charleston, South Carolina. Or we might think of them as distanced from the horrors of the market, from the sales. But also from the traumatic separations that came after those sales were finalized. We might think that white women and their children were merely passive observers of all this. And more profoundly, that they were powerless to stop these horrors and traumatic separations like what you see in this image. This image is a depiction of the kind of trauma and the violence of those separations that occurred after a slave auction took place and an enslaved person was sold away from their family. And highlighted in the yellow box towards the lefthand side of the image you can see a white woman and a child distanced from that separation, distanced from that horror and that trauma, separated from and indirectly kind of witness to, but experiencing that, but not directly implicated in the violence and the trauma of the market. But this is not how enslaved and formerly enslaved people remembered things at all. First, they made it clear that white southern womens economic relationships to slavery began in childhood. And in some cases during infancy. Not just in adulthood. Fillmore hancock told his interviewer has grandmother was given to the missus as her own on the day she was born. Remarkably Fillmore Hancock recalled that old missus was only a year old then, so his grandmother was given to her mistress when she was only 1, 1yearold. Enslaved people and formerly enslaved people talked about the lifelong processes of socialization by which white girls came to understand themselves as markedly different than enslaved people. And the rituals that drove these things home. It was made clear they had the power to claim other africanamericans as their property when they selected specific enslaved children to serve them. When betty coffer was born her masters daughter ella was only a little girl but she nevertheless claimed betty coffer as her slave shortly after betty was born. They played together and grew up together, betty recalled, eventually betty became ellas personal servant, waiting on her, standing behind her chair during meal times and sleeping beside her on the bedroom floor. More profoundly, formerly enslaved people tell us this process of socialization was effective. White girls often made claims of ownership in their conversations with enslaved people. A formerly enslaved woman melinda recalled her young mistress would frequently tell her when i get big and marry a prince you come with me and take care of all of my children. When she did get married she took them as part of her household. As southern girls young white women thought about how enslaved people would fit into their lives, not just as play mates or companions, but as property. When they were old enough they turned their imaginings into reality. Formerly enslaved people remarked upon how this process of socialization also involved lessons about slave management and discipline, what we would typically refer to as slave mastery. Nancy thomas recalled that she was the special little girl for her mistress harriets daughter pelonia and that even during them days she would sew and knit. She had a little threelegged stool and shed set it between the girls legs while she was sitting down then palonia would watch her while she knitted. If she did something wrong she would pinch nancys ear a little and say you dropped a stitch, nanny. As her testimony shows she was what i refer to as a mistress in the making, responsible for overseeing the production of the enslaved girl she would come to hone and disciplining her when it did not meet her requirements. So serving as the metaphor call flies on the walls of southern households, formerly enslaved people talked about some of the most violent, traumatic, and intimate dimensions of life for those who were bound and those who were free. They heard and saw things that typically remained obscured from view, details that white slaveowning couples often left out of their personal correspondence or public communications, when they were able to write at all. Many of the slaveowning women i discuss in this book contended with some form of illiteracy. They were either unable to write and read, or possess the ability to do one but not the other. Enslaved and formerly enslaved peoples recollections about their female owners thus serve as some of the only archival records about these women to survive. This book takes its cue from formerly enslaved people. No group spoke about white womens investments in slavery more often or more powerfully than the enslaved people subjected to their ownership and control. They were the people whose lives were forever changed when a mistress sold someone just so that she could buy a new dress. They were best equipped to describe the agony that shook their bodies and souls when they returned from their errands to discover that their children were gone and their mistresses were counting piles of money they had received from the slave traders whod bought them. Only enslaved people could speak about their female owners profound economic contributions to their continued enslavement with such astonishing precision. So what did formerly enslaved people have to say about white females economic relationships to the institution of slavery . Formerly enslaved peoples interviews offer insight into the most intimate workings of white households as well. This former enslaved person tells us that in some households breastfeeding constituted another form of labor that slave owners required enslaved women to perform. Nursing white children was one of her primary jobs. But for enslaved mothers like mary edwards nursing white children was the only work they performed during slavery. These recollections make it clear that white mothers didnt simply use enslaved mothers to breastfeed their children because of physiological elements that resulted in inadequate milk supply, an inability to produce milk at all or as a last resort but they compelled enslaved mothers to perform this labor as a matter of course in some households. Moreover, in order for enslaved women to serve in this capacity consistently they also had to give birth or at the very least lactate on a routine basis. But what often remains unexplored is what led to these constant conceptions in the first place. While enslaved women performed the most arduous forms of labor in their own owners fields and in their households they also had to conceive, carry a pregnancy to full term, give birth and lactate in order to be able to serve as wet nurses in the first place and sources suggest this is precisely what happened. Some of the enslaved womens children were undoubtedly conceived within relationships of love, but others were undoubtedly the result of sexual assault. So how widespread was this phenomenon . Wide spread enough that a in each market, significant corner of the slave market emerged to fulfill white womens demands to enslave wet nurses. The market in enslaved wet nurses was primarily a hiring one but these ads reveal that some of the enslaved women and mothers were offered for sale and that their capacity to serve as wet nurses was a selling point. So these are three just three examples of some of the newspaper advertisements that i collected as part of the research for this book, which reflect a number of things. One, that white mothers were creating such a demand for enslaved mothers services and labor as wet nurses that there were not they were not only putting these ads, placing these ads in southern newspapers, but that also what you dont see in these, but in others, what also becomes clear is that white women were also some of the individuals who were supplying these white mothers with the enslaved mothers and wet nurses, that they wanted, that they were seeking. Here these three are examples of enslaved wet nurses seeking enslaved wet nurses either to purchase or to hire. And what i found also is that there was a really important intersection and connection between the market in enslaved wet nurses and the slave market proper. So most of the men and individuals who were offering enslaved women for sale to serve in this capacity were also slave traders who made their living buying and selling enslaved people. So in addition to that when we attend very closely to what enslaved and formerly enslaved people had to say about white womens Economic Investments in slavery it becomes clear that they had so much to tell us about the institution of slavery and the roles that white women played in the slave market economy and in their continued captivity. We learn that when they said that they belonged to white women they meant belonged to by law. Sally nightingale owned Alice Marshall and her mother, for example, and she claimed her mistresss husband jack had nothing to do with me and my mother because they belonged to the missus by law and not her husband. This is referred to as a lost friends ad, also typically they were referred to as information wanted ads. And these are very unique in large part because they emerge right as the civil war is coming to an end, and also in the years following the civil war. And what they reflect is formerly enslaved peoples attempts to reconstitute their families. So all of those individuals who belonged to their families and communities that had been sold away from them, that they wanted to reconnect with, family members that children and mothers and fathers, and even brothers and uncles, who they had lost contact with because of sale and separation, they placed these ads in order to try to reconnect with those individuals, to find those people, and to reconstitute their families. And so these advertisements also show more than simply their attempts to reconnect with their families. But they also show how those separations occurred in the first place. And they highlight, in many of them they highlight the owners who were responsible not simply for their sale, but their separation. Here what you show here what im showing is an advertisement placed by caroline mason, seeking information about her family members. And so what she says here is that she was owned by betsy mason, a white woman, and was sold by her as well. So she doesnt simply say, you know, that she inadvertently was sold by some man who was related to betsy. She identifies betsy as her legal owner. But also the person who was ultimately responsible for the separations that occurred after those sales took place. This is another advertisement which goes a little bit farther, more deeper and shows more complex elements or dimensions of slavery. William mays advertisement highlights several things, not only about slave owning women and their families but also their business practices. He not only identifies his female owner telalee stokes in this advertisement he also described the conflicts within her family over her property and her property rights. He argues, or he tells us that jack stampson, his owners grandson stole his mother and siblings from telalise, a grandston and a grandmother, he is not willing to recognize the kind of inviability of telalise stokes property rights. While she held legal title to him, while she was his owner, that she would hire him out. He refers to this process of hiring out as living with at the time. In the top element he talks about Jack Simpsons decision to sell him away from his family, to steal his family away from him, and also talks about telalises business practices, meaning she would hire him out and then receive his wages in return for the labor that he performed for jimson in this particular case. These sources really get at some of the kind of, again, these more complex dimensions of slavery that often dont enter into the kind of popular understanding of the institution and of the ways in which enslaved people were passed between people, how those separations occurred, et cetera. So here, what guy smith is telling us is that his wife, he and his wife were separated from their children and that his children were drawn, refers to a process called being drawn by different members of his owners family, some of whom were women. But in doing so he also talks about the Legal Process by which these separations took place. He doesnt use all the terms that we would like to so that we would think to look for, but he very plainly tells us that while these separations of family members didnt take place in the slave market, they nonetheless brought about the same kinds of traumatic severances from loved ones. What he tells us is that this process of being drawn and falling to someone, refers to the process that happens during an estate the administration of a deceased persons estate, in this particular context. So his owner dies. And then after that owner died, all of his property was then they would, in fact, have a drawing. So very much like a lottery. They would put the names of the individual heirs into a bag, or hat. And that individual heir would also the name would also be written alongside a group of enslaved people, or that person would draw. So they would draw either their names out of a hat and then that person would then be told what property they received or they would draw out a piece of paper that had a list of property that they would receive. So there were a variety of ways that this ritual took place. And so they literally did, in fact, draw enslaved people as a part of this Estate Division process. And so that is what thats what guy is referring to here. And so this is not simply something that enslaved people talked about in legal in terms that arent necessarily proper legalese, but these recollections are also reflected in documents that appear in archival collections throughout the south. What you see here is a handwritten document that shows exactly what guy smith is referring to, an Estate Division in which it lists the individual enslaved people that are a part of that deceased persons estate and it also shows the ages of those enslaved people. It shows the values, the estimated values of those enslaved people. And then towards the bottom, at the very bottom of this document it shows which heirs drew which enslaved people. And so what i thought was really remarkable about this document, and in relationship to what guy shows, in his lost friends ad is that Elizabeth Henry, the very top line there, Elizabeth Henry drew more enslaved people than the other heir, Richard Henry did. Why is this important . What i show in the book is that colonial historians who look at slavery in the colonial period in the country have shown that slaveowning parents would typically give their daughters more slaves than any other form of property. They would give them other property and they would give them money and they would give them in some cases stocks and bonds that were given to daughters but they would often give their daughters far more enslaved people than other forms of property, particularly land. And they would give their sons the land. So that when those two when that couple got together they would have everything they needed to get a start. To get a start on that new life that they were going to be living. I see the same thing happen in the 19th century. Throughout the 19th century you see similar patterns where slaveholding parents would also give their daughters more enslaved people than land. And this is this is reflective of the fact that even if richard did not receive land, he actually you can see that kind of inheritance practice play out here in this document by showing that she received elizabeth received more slaves than her than the other heir, which might suggest also that he received land in addition to receiving those enslaved people. And so i think these sources are really important to showing kind of the process by which i wrote the book because i centered and foregrounded the experiences of the accounts and reflections of formerly enslaved people in order to lead me in more productive directions, and additional directions in relationship to the sources. So by looking at just fragments of information, data for those scientists that might be in the room, or mathematically inclined folks in the room, by using the data that formerly enslaved people provided, i was able to piece together some of the details of the lives of the female owners that they identified. And so this is a really important or a really interesting example of that process for me. So James Skinner was a reverend who lived in yazu county, mississippi. And on november 20th, 1879 he placed this lost friends ad in the southwestern christian advocate because he was looking for his brother edward. And so the last time john had had seen edward was on october 12th, 1860 in georgetown, in the district of columbia, where we are today. Not long after the brothers crossed paths that day john and his family were force today leave edward behind when their owner did what historians and what individuals at the time referred to as being refugeed. His owner refugeed them to mississippi and compelled them to leave the district and leave edward behind. And then one year after john placed his advertisement, he still hadnt found edward. So he placed another, this Time Offering more detail, so each of these advertisements made one point clear. Angelica chu, although you can see here, he spells her name differently in both advertisements, but nevertheless, he identifies angelica chu as the woman who own the him and his family, who orchestrated the separation via the process of refugeeing and that she was the reason that him and his family were still searching for edward. So initially it was difficult for me to find angelica in large part because of the variations in spellings and the way in which he refers to her in these advertisements. As you can see in the first yellow box on the left, he refers to her as ms. Ann gelica chow. Jot that town. I went to the second advertisement. Hes saying something completely different the second times like, is this the same person . Like, whats going on here . You can see he refers to her as mrs. Angelo chow. I said, okay, i know in this period, even sometimes today when a woman is married and even if a woman is widowed, she may be referred to as mrs. By her husbands first and last name. I said, okay, is she the widow of angelo chow . Like, whats going on here . So, im looking at the details, like, okay, we know they lived in we know hes in yazer, mississippi, now. We know he was in jorngtogeorge because he said that. We know this womans last name is chow, spelled with a u or e is chow, spelled with a u or e e, well figure it out. Ancestry. Com. Its a wonderful resource where you can find archival documents they have available on site here. I was able to find frisbee. So i was like, wait, there he is. So i found frisbee freeland chow. I found angelicas husband. His obituary in this newspaper. Not only does it obituaries are interesting, even though theyre macabre, dark, depressing pieces of archival fragments if you want to call them that. Nevertheless, they give rich descriptions of these peoples lives, the deceased persons life and see migrations, can see all kinds of things. Thats whats apparent in frisbys obituary. Yes, it tells us he was married to mrs. Chu. It doesnt refer to her by name but refers to yazoo county, mississippi, which is where James Skinner was at the time he placed his lost friends advertisements. We have that. Thats one corroboration. It talks about his children, talk s about the fact he was on his way to the government at washington. So it tells us he had been appointed to a governmental position which would, again, explain not only crorroborat what James Skinner is talking about, placing him and edward and his family in d. C. , how the heck how the connection between yazoo county, mississippi, and d. C. Came from. It tell us why they were in washington, d. C. , and tells us how they died. Its an interesting component. It corroborates what james is saying. This formally enslaved person is saying. It gives details about angeli angelicas life, her migrations. How shes moving around the country. You know, im about to have a super nerdy moment for you, on you, but then i found angelica chews fathers will. For those who are into genealogy, for those who are into any kind of history, you know this is like archival gold. For me, it was really important, again, because it underscored not simply these kind of parental relationships between parents and daughters and the ways in which their inheritance practices almost ensured that white women who received enslaved people would be deeply and profoundly invested in the institution and its perpetuation and even in continuing to invest economically in the institution by buying and selling enslaved people after they received inheritance such as this one. It also shows how they were able to maintain control over and exercise control over the enslaved people that they inherited. So how does it do that . So, in this yellow box, what it says, ill just read it to you because it is not, you know, i think immediately apparent to a lot of you what it says. So it says im going to say it in a very, what i would imagine George Washington visco might sound like. Heaven made gifts by way of advancement to my dear daughter, an jegelica chow, and desiring make my dear daughter, emmas, shared of my estate with her dear sisters, i give to my dear wife, ann marie bisco, trust in my said daughter, emma, the following servants. Hen ae describes the servants that emma will receive. So why is this important . Why did i get excited about this . So what is tells us is that angelica some time during the course of her life before her father died, he gave her his portion of the estate. When we think about slave ry sometimes, we think about e inheritan inheritances, we often think that happens just when a person dies and when they leave a particular heir property in their will. But what this shows is that, and this is an argument that i make in the book, is that slaveowning parents didnt just leave their daughters enslaved people as their property in their wills. They gave them enslaved people over the course of their lives even from infancy, birthday presents, and wedding gifts. Theyd often give them a group of enslaved people, as i ment n mentioned earlier. Theyd typically have a i didnt have a reception because i was poor when i got married so i didnt have a reception. During the reception they would essentially line up the enslaved people then there would be kind of an announcement made at the wedding reception that essentially granted that the wife, the new the newlywed daughter, her wedding present, which would involve a group of which would entail a group of enslaved people. So what what George Washington biscoe is saying here is he already gave angelica her share and that likely means she received that those enslaved people at the time of her wedding or some time over the course after she got married. Okay . Thats one really important thing it shows and reflects as historians and genealogists that we can look elsewhere to make these connections that wills are important but not the end all be all to understanding property bequested, property transfers, between white southerners or southerners or any folks that had the ability to own property and transfer that property to someone else. What it also shows is an important legal clause that many slaveholding parents not only built into their wills as we see here but also in trust estates. These would be very much like trust funds that are established for wealthy folks these days. So were familiar with trust funds so what slaveowning parents would often do as well, if they gave their daughters property before they married or before they died in their wills, like we see here, they would do so by creating a trust. And they would put that property in a trust, appoint a trustee, sometimes be the husband, sometimes it would be a father or a male family member. Sometime s it was even a woman. As you see here, george appoints his wife as emmas trustee. He creates a separate trust estate, a separate trust fund for emma and he puts ann in charge of that estate, that property, until she comes of age. And he states here the underlines clause, he puts in that really important clause, in trust for the sole and separate use of our said daughter, emma. This has such power in the legal in a legal context. What it says, what its making clear is George Washington did not want emmas future husband to have any control over the property that he was giving to emma. For saying in trust for the sole and separate use of emma, shes essentially telling her husband, ha, ha, ha, you thought you were going to get your grubby hands on this property, but, no. So, slaveowning parents and their daughters are working together before they get to the point in which women might be fearful that their husbands might dispose of their property in ways that they do not agree with. You also might be wondering why that would be necessary. Some of you may know that when a woman, a single woman or widowed woman got married or remarried in this period, there was a legal doctrine referred to as coverture, said upon marriage any of the property that those women brought into marriage, any property that they might acquire after marriage, either by inheritance or by purchase, would automatically become her husbands. After that point after marriage, she wasnt able to enter into contracts in her own name, to create a business in her own name and to go into court and sue on her own behalf. So what this particular clause it is circumvents some of those constraints. It circumvents the property and wealth constraint. So it essentially allowed for emma to maintain control of any property that she brings into the marriage. In order to continue to own property after the marriage, she would have he would have had to have had this will entered into the court and authorized or recognized by the courts. Authenticated by the courts. Necessary is somethi this is something that he certainly did because we have the record here. If he didnt, it would probably be in some private paper somewhere and never know it existed. This is a very important way not only that slaveowning parents ensured their daughters would g not be at the will of husbands that might not have their best interests in mind but also how they were able to continue to secure ownership over enslaved people and to maintain control over them. Even when the law on the books looks like they shouldnt have that ability. And have that power and control. So this is someone of those documents that got me really excited. And i was also able to find this extraordinary document. So at the beginning of my comments, actually during the sp introduction, you were told about the d. C. Emancipation act. So, on april 16th, 1862, d. C. Did, in fact, pass the emancipation act in the district of columbia which provided compensation for any slaveholders that were willing to accept the emancipation of enslaved people in the district and if they were willing to do that and then submit an application for compensation listing the enslaved people that they were claiming as their own, they could, in fact, receive a sum of money from the federal government to pay them for the enslaved people that they owned and that they were willing to allow to be free and emancipated. This is angelica chows emancipation application for compensation. Application for compensation after emancipation. If thats a better way to refer to it. What it also shows is exactly some of the information those details that corroborates some of the same details that James Skinner provided in his lost friends ad. So, in the yellow box on the left, it shows the names of ann biscoe, whos angelicas mother, angelicas name as well as emmas name. So, again, it goes back to the will and also goes back in some ways to James Skinners information that he details in those advertisements. But it lists it lists James Skinner and some of his siblings as well as his mother in the yellow box. At that time, their surnames were gray. So he states that in his lost friends ads. So these are some of the ways that i operated as i wrote this book. Using those really interesting and seemingly disconnected fragments of information that james provided in those lost friends ads, i was able to dig a little deeper and find all of these other archival documents that were elsewhere, legal documents, obituaries, newspaper advertisements, as well as civil war era financial documents. I what would be considered a legal but also a financial document to corroborate some of the information that james was telling us but also tracing and trying to reconstruct some details of angelica chows life as well. And so what i think is also interesting is that it wasnt just formally enslaved people that were talking about white womens Economic Investments in the institution, there were a host of other individuals and entities that similarly described or documented white slaveowning womens Economic Investment in the institution, their slave ownership. So at the very top, the federal government did, in fact, document white womens slave ownership in the census. So whats really interesting about the census, which you have ample access to is that in 1840 the census looks very different than it does in 1850 and 1860. So in 1840 the census looks very much like the patriarchal household that we envision in the 19th century, in 1840 the c very much like the patriarchal household that we envision in the 19th century so it documented and identified by name simply the mail head le he household. If there was a woman head of household because she might be a widow, it would identify that individually name. All the other inhabitants, residents in the household, would simply be checked off under these categories. Like, women, white women, age, you know, zero to 12, you know, check off all these little boxes and enumerate individuals but they wouldnt name them, they wouldnt identify them by name. So you couldnt tell who owned property in that household, whether women owned enslaved people in that household. It just kind of bunched all of the other residents in that household together. But in 1850 and 1860, well, 1850, people i guess thought it was important to say, hey, we have all these enslaved People Living in the country, probably be god to know how many they are so they started to count them. What they did start to do is name the residents of white househo households, identify them by name no matter whether they were male or female. So we can gather that information. But they also started to enumerate individual slaveholdings throughout the nation. So, what you see here is a page out of the tennessee census reflecting the slaveholding of mrs. Sarah m. Rhodes. So it identifies the person who owns the slaves. For the very first time youre seeing this at the federal level, anyway. Then it enumerates the total number of inslaved people that she is claiming as her own. You can see, she had a pretty sizable slaveholding. This number is pretty typical so the typical slaveholder wasnt the person who owned a thousand slaves. There were actually slaveholders that owned thousands of slaves. Particularly in louisiana. But the typical slaveowner owned ten enslaved people or less. Women typically owned five or less. So, these women that i talk about in the book are, in fact, part of the majority of slaveholders, which admittedly were a small number of southerners. So im not arguing at any in any way in this book or at this talk that, you know, slaveowners were all southerners. There were they were a small percentage of all southerners, but women, they were among the majority of slaveholders. Meaning that they typically owned ten enslaved people or less. Sarah owns a few more than ten. So shes right on the edge of becoming, you know, what would be considered an elite slaveholder near, bslavehold er here, but this makes it possible now to be able to say not simply that there were slaveowning women but actually to tell us just how many there may have been to provide calculations, concrete numbers, for those hungry for numbers. Some historians are really hungry for numbers. By looking at census data, ive been looking at census data for several years and collecting it and looking specifically at slaveowning women in the census data, ive been able to see, or to show, that in some regions women may have constituted up to 40 of slaveholders. Prior estimates place them at 10 . So, by looking at the rich sources, some of which are available here, like the census information, im able to start to piece together some of the kind of details that are really important for us to know as a nation. In particular, how these women are not simply invested economically in the institution of slavery but also in kind of racially divided social order that characterize our nation and continues to shape our encounters with each other today. And at the state level, so that was at the federal level, but at the state level, what i thought was really interesting is that on the one hand, i talked about the legal doctrine of coverture. I talked about how the law of coverture says that women shouldnt have the ability to own property after they get married, exercise all of these different kind of legal and economic to engage in all these legal and economic activities. But at the same time, you have state laws like this one from missouri that identify women and recognize white women as slaveholders right in the laws. So this law is essentially reflective of, you know, kind of what they call black codes, so these were laws that were specifically pertaining to the actions of enslaved people and also free black people who would often constitute the minority in this period, but what you see here is that there are constant references to the mistress, constant references to not belonging to him or her. Not to be her own, her plantation or tentament. So the laws on the books of our states at this moment are not simply saying, hey, this woman may exercise a certain kind of power in her husbands stead or if there are no men around, the law is actually saying she is equally empowered, equally emboldened by the law to engage wi with, to interact with enslaved people in this way, to behave in these particular ways, but it also recognizes that the law holds these slaveowning women accountable for enslaved peoples misdeeds. So thats thats huge. But the laws at the state level are recognizing the importance that womens ownership, but also their importance to maintaining a system of surveillance that keeps enslaved people in place. And whats also really interesting is at the city level what you see is that cities like new orleans are they need laborers and slaveowning women have them, so they would often contract with slaveowning women as they did with other slaveowners in the city to work on public works and so here what you see is a receipt that was issued by the city of new orleans to miss eliza farrell. She received 1. 50 which is a pretty significant amount for that period of time for roses labor. So, again, the cities are documenting the property ownership, the slave ownership of white women in the south. Now, this document probably looks really funky to you guys from over there from out there, but what it shows is, again, a way in which the city municipal officials recognized women as slaveowners. So, in new orleans, this is if youve never been, i highly recommend it, its an extraordinary city where its kind of characterized by this really vibrant small merchant, small mercantile, culture. So there are all these peddlers, what we refer to as pedddlers or vendors that kind of immerse you in all kinds of products and things in the city, and women, white women, were a part of that mercantile culture, and so the city is really interested in finding out who all these merchants are. They are issuing licenses to these merchants and they want to know who needs a license. So they begin to create a census specifically of the merchants in the city. And this is a page out of that census. And so what you see here, the first red arrow is madam harriet, so madam harriet is operating an oyster restaurant and not far from her are two slave traders. C. F. Hatcher whos quite notorious for his engagement in the slave trade as well as d. Weiss, david weiss, toward the bottom. What this shows, there are these ideas that the slave market is a vice, kind of centered, you know, like, put in a little dark corner of the city and you only went there kind of like a red light district. I think people think of the slave market as operating in red light districts but that wasnt the case at all. What this reflects is that this kind of commerce, the slave trade, the per shant, people was central to the commercial districts of new orleans and women were part of those commercial districts so there was no way that women could avoid slave markets even if they never bought a slave, they could not avoid encount kouncounteri market or offering goods to individuals who were invested in or involved in the slave trade. And that is not how that is supposed to look. So i apologize for that. Essentially, lets see. I can tell you what its supposed to look like. So this would have been if it had behaved itself been a newspaper advertisement placed by a local jailer. So when an enslaved person ran away and was captured, people would take those captured runaways to their local jailer and then the local jailer would then interrogate that enslaved person. So he would ask them what their names were, where they came from, and who owned them and theyd take that information and post it in the newspaper and in there theyd say, this person says they belong to you, if you are the Rightful Owner of this person, come down to the jail, bring proof of ownership then you can take them away. So in this particular advertisement that you do not see, there was an enslaved man who ran away and the local jailer asked him who he belonged to and he identified a female slaveowner. A female owner in his advertisement. So this is all of these ways in which theyre at the municipal level, the federal level, state level, city level, and on these individual levels you see people identifying women as invested in the institution of slavery. And so what you see here is a slave traders account book. So when a slave trader if, the most meticulous ones, when they purchased enslaved people, they would identify the enslaved person sometimes by name, most often not by name. By age. They would say how much they t paid for that person. Anyone who they sold that person to and for what amount. And this page out of john whites slave trade account book reflects the fact that he sold enslaved people to the same woman, mrs. R. J. Johnson, mrs. M. R. Johnson, sorry, four times. So it reflects also the profit margin for the enslaved people that he sold to her as well. And when those sales were finalized, places like South Carolina actually had preprinted bills of sale. These are very much like receipts that we receive today when we buy something, so it would well, in this particular case, Elizabeth Morrison sold an enslaved woman to a notorious South Carolina slave trader named zeba b. Oaks for 410. Again, it sounds like a very small amount, but theres a website that you can use if youre interested called measuring worth, and you can actually put in the amount of money that the individual was bought, purchased for, or sold for and will tell you, calculate, how much it would be worth today. I was able to calculate that 410 would have been the equivalent of 13,600 in 2018 money. So thats a small amount back then, it seems, or today, it seems, but not necessarily back then. It was an extraordinary amount of money and so this receipt reflects the fact women not only owned enslaved people but engaged in the selling and the purchase of enslaved people, too, and did so and connected and interacted with slave traders. Something that other historians have suggested that they didnt do on a regular basis. But looking at these kinds of documents reflects the fact that they did, in fact, do so on a regular basis. And i think whats really interesting about this one here, so h. Bonnabell is a man. Theres part of a highway in new orleans named after this guy. Interesting to see how in the city of new orleans slavery is everywhere but nowhere at the same time. Anyway, h. Bonnabell is trying to hunt lucy down. Lucy ran away from him. Hes trying to find lucy. Whats really interesting is he identifies three of lucys previous owners. And so he says captain kelly owned her at one time. Then mrs. Tugood owned her then mrs. Clark owned her. And by doing so, he creates this chain of ownership that allows for us to see not only kind of violence of the market, ways in which enslaved people were passed from person to person to person, but also the Important Role that white women played in those that chain as well. The roles that their location on those chains, you know, they were, in fact, links but also that they were too implicit, they were also complicit in and involved in creating these separations through the process of sale as well. And you probably cant see this very clearly from where you are, but during the civil war the confederacy needed fortifications to protect themselves as did federal troops and they would often empress enslaved people from local sl slaveowners to kmcommandeer tha work, get that work done. They wouldnt do it without paying them, though. So theyd keep track of the payments that they issued to the slaveholders whose slaved had been empressed into constructing these fortifications and this is what was called a confederate slave payroll, a document that is housed in the National Archives here and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of them. And what it shows is that women were counted among the slaveholders whose enslaved people were empressed by the confederacy but also they were some of those who were paid for the work that enslaved those enslaved men, typically men, did. So you have eliza simms is listed on lets see if i c can yeah. So eliza simms and her son are listed there. You have mary simms there. Lets see where i can find the other one. Theres Ann Mansfield there. Even though her name there are initials here, this is emily. Im sorry, ella b. Crosby. So i found that corroborated that in additional documents beyond the slave payroll. What this also shows, again, is that one of the things thats really interesting when people ask me about the numbers is they say, well, you know, how many are there . And i talk about the difficulties with coming to a precise quantity because of things like this. The fact that ella is listed not as ella but e. B. Ycrosby makes t difficult to know the all over, complete number of slaveowning women because of the fact they were often referred to in the documents only by their initials so youren able to identify them, whether they were women or not in some cases. That makes it more difficult to come to a concrete number more broadly. Its a hiccup along the way. Nevertheless, it shows women even into the civil war era are benefiting from the labor of enslaved people. The civil war era, women are hunting down enslaved people. Even when you think its up, february, was it april 9th that theyre still hunting down slaveowning or enslaved people. Ultimately, these are the kinds of documents that i used to construct the narrative that i tell and they were her property. It becomes after ive been working on this book for ten years, this is what the this is what i hope the book does. It it takes a picture, this image, you can find this image in hundreds of books, if not thousands of books, and rarely is anyone interested in what i highlight here which is that there are many women, many children, that are at the auction even though its a pictorial illustration, it may be based on fact, may not be faced on fact, but nevertheless, women were everywhere. They were hiding in plain sight. It just takes a little bit more a more closer kind of perspective, a lens upon which to kind of show their presence and their roles and their importance in the institution more broadly. So, thank you so much, everybody, for listening and being here. Youre watching a special edition of American History tv. Tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern, programs on kent state university. 50 years after the antiwar protests. On may 4th, 1970, demonstrations against the vietnam war led to a deadly confrontation between students and the Ohio National guard. Four students were killed and nine wounded. Watch American History tv now and over the weekend on cspan3. In 1962 president kennedy authorized the creation of the Army Special Photographic Office to take pictures and film of the vietnam war. Next, veterans who served in the office share their experiences. From the National Archives, this is about an hour and a half. Now ill ask all of Vietnam Veterans or any United States veterans who served on active duty in the u. S. Armed forces at any time from november 1st, 1955, through may 15th, 1975, to stand and be recognized. [ applause ]