The voices of those not usually heard. Todays guest author, Stephanie Jones rogers has done this in her new book, they were her property, white women as slaveowners in the american south. She uses an impressive assortment to piece together the stories of the slaveholders and the enslaved with the oral histories of formally enslaved people, news paper advertisements, slave records sells records, court doctrines and more. Two weeks ago we displayed the d. C. Emancipation act ended slavery in the district of columbia in 1860 two. Among the records generated as a result of this you will find several references to women owners. To come up for example, sot compensation for their freed slaves, one claiming one slave was a gift from her sister and worth 1500. They were her property and received favorable reviews. A writer because at a stunning new book. The New York Times reviewer says as they taught and cogent corrective that examines how historians have misunderstood and misrepresented white women as reluctant actors. The Washington Post says that the author has provided in Innovative Analysis of american slavery, one that sets a new standard for scholarship on the subject. Stephanie jones rogers is an associate professor at uc berkeley where she specializes in africanAmerican History, women and gender history and the history of american slavery. They were her property is based on her revised and it dissertation which one applies for the best doctoral dissertation in u. S. History in 2013. Please welcome Stephanie Jonesrogers. [applause] dr. Jonesrogers thank you for the invitation and the introduction, david. Thank you all for coming this afternoon and spending your lunchtime with me. It is a pleasure to be here with you today. This is James Redpath. In 1859 after touring the antebellum south he attempted to explain for his readers white white southern women opposed the southern emancipation. Why white southern women opposed southern emancipation. He believed it was tied to a lifetime of indoctrination reared under the saddle of the peculiar institution. Slavery was quote incessantly plate praised and defended unquote. Partially everywhere these women went by virtually everyone a new and in most publications they read. Their consciences were thus easily perverted, redpath argued, or never afterward appealed to. With the result that they saw no reason to change their views. Redpath assumed white southern women did not know legal slavery as it is because their society shielded them from the institution horrific realities. Insulated by southern patriarchs he argued white women seldom saw slaverys most obnoxious features and they never attend auctions, never witness what were called examinations. Seldom if ever saw the need grows last. More profoundly they did not know that the interstate trade in slaves was a gigantic commerce. Southern men revealed only one view of slavery redpath surmised, and if the women of the south knew slavery as it is he suggested they would join in the protests against it. Redpath assumption represent a commonly held picked rocco view. Yet narrative sources, legal and financial documents and military and government correspondence make it clear that white southern women new the most obnoxious features of slavery all too well slave owning women not only witnessed the most butyl 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, might think that white women were invisible and southern slave markets. They are 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 distance from the horrors of the market, from the sales. But also from the traumatic separation that came after those sales were finalized. We might think that white women and their children were merely passive observers of all of this. And more profoundly that they were powerless to stop these hard enter medic separations, like what you see in this image. This image is a depiction of the kind of trauma and violence of those separations that occurred after a slave auction took place and an enslaved person was sold from their family and highlighted in the yellow box tore the lefthand side of the image you can see a white woman at a child distanced from at separation. Distance from that are and that trauma, separated and indirectly witness to and experiencing it but not directly implicated in the violence and the trauma of the market. But this is not how enslaved and formally enslaved people remember things at all. First, they made it clear, that white southern womens economic relationship to slavery began in childhood. In some cases during infancy. Not just in adulthood. Fillmore hancock told an 3interviewer his grandmother was interviewer his grandmother was given to the misses as her own on the date she was born. Remarkably, Fillmore Hancock recalled the old medis was only one year old than so his grandmother was given to her mistress when she was only one. One year old. Enslaved people and formally enslaved people talk about the lifelong processes of socialization by which white girls came to understand themselves as markedly different than slave people and the rituals that drove this point home for an slave free people alike. White slaveowning girls also made it clear they had the power to claim other africanamericans as their property when they selected specific enslaved children to serve them. When betty coffered was born, her masters daughter ella was only a little girl but she nevertheless claimed betty 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 and stand behind her chair during mealtime and sleeping beside her on the bedroom floor. More profoundly, formally enslaved people tell us this process of socialization was effective. Why girls often make claims of ownership in their conversations with enslaved people. A formally enslaved woman named melinda recalled her young mistress would frequent the tell her, and i get big and get married to a prince, you come with me and 10 all of my children. And when her mistress did mary, she took melinda with her as part of their new household. As southern girls, young white if she did something wrong, polonia would pinch nancys ear and say, you dropped a stitch, nanny. She was a mistress in the making. Girl andg the enslaved disciplining her when it did not meet requirements. Serving as a metaphorical fly on the wall of the southern household, formerly enslaved people talked about some of the most violent, traumatic, and intimate dimensions of life for those who are bound and those who were free. They heard and saw things that typically remained obscured from view. Details couples often left out of correspondence for public communication. Women islaveowning discuss contended with some form of illiteracy. Enslaved and formerly enslaved recollections of owners service some of the only records about these women to survive. Cue from takes its formerly enslaved people. No group spoke about white women investments more often or more powerfully than enslaved people subjected to their ownership and control. They were the people whose lives were forever changed when a mistress sold someone so she could buy a new dress. It shook their body and soul when they return from aarons ds tovered erran discover their children were gone. Only they could speak about female owners contributions to their continued enslavement with such astonishing precision. What did formerly enslaved white have to say about females economic relationships to the institution of slavery . Formally enslaved people s interviews offer insight into the most intimate workings of white households as well. Formally enslaved people like mary edwards, who you see pictured tell us some some households breast , feeding constituted a form of labor slave owners required enslaved women to perform. Nursing white children was one of her 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 did not simply use enslaved mothers to breastfeed their children because of physiological elements that resulted in inadequate milk supply, and inability to produce milk at all, or as last resort. But that 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 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 perform the most arduous forms of labor in their 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 result of sexual assault. How widespread was this phenomenon . Widespread that a niche market a small corner but a significant corner of the slave market emerged in order to demandswhite mothers for enslaved wet nurses. The market of enslaved nurses was primarily a hiring one but these ads revealed some enslaved women and mothers were offered capacity to their serve as wet nurses was a selling point. These are just three examples of newspaper advertisements i collected as part of the whichch for this book reflects a number of things. One, they were not only putting these ads in southern newspapers, but what you do not see in these but in others, what becomes clear is that white women were also some of the individuals who are supplying these white mothers with the enslaved mothers and wet nurses that they wanted and that they were seeking. These three are examples of enslaved wet nurses, seeking enslaved wet nurses to purchase or higher and what i found was an important intersection between the market in enslaved wet nurses and the slave market proper. Most of the men and individuals offering enslaved women for sale were also slave traders who made their living buying and selling enslaved people. So, in addition to that, we attend closely to what enslaved and formally enslaved people had to say about white womens economic investments in slavery. It becomes clear 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 learned that when they said they belonged to white women, they meant belonged to buy law. Sally nightingale owned Alice Marshall and her mother. Marsha claimed her mistresses husband , jack, had nothing to do with me and my mother because they belong to the missus by law, not her husband. Here you say a lost friends add, also information wanted ads. These are unique because they emerge as the civil war is coming to an end and also in the years following the civil war. Is formallyflect enslaved peoples attempt to reconstitute their families. All of those individuals who belong to their families and communities that have been sold away from, that they wanted to reconnect with Family Members. That they had children and mothers and fathers and brothers and uncles who they had lost contact with because of sale and separation. They placed ads to reconnect with those individuals and reconstitute their families. These advertisements also show more than simply their attempts to reconnect with their families. They also show how the separations occurred in the first place and they highlight the owners who are responsible not only for their sale but separation. Here, i am showing an advertisement placed by Caroline Mason seeking information about her Family Members. What she says here is that she was owned by betsey mason, a white woman, and was sold by her as well. She does not simply say she inadvertently was sold by some man who is related to betsy. She identifies betsey as her legal owner but also the person who was ultimately responsible for the separation that occurred after the sales took place. This is another advertisement that goes farther and shows more complex elements or dimensions of slavery. William mayes highlights several things about white slaveowning women and their families but also their business practices. He identifies his female owner, elise stokes, in this advertisement, and describes the conflicts within her family over her property and Property Rights. He argues or tells us that jack sampson, his owners grandson, stole his mother and siblings telelise. He is not willing to recognize the kind of in viability of telelise stokes Property Rights in this case. He also tells us that while she held legal title to him while she was his owner, she would hire him out so he refers to this process of hiring out as living with jim some at the living with at the time. In the top element he talks about Jack Simpsons decision to sell him away from his family, i mean to steal his family away from him and he also talks about elises business practices, meaning she would hire him out and receive his wages in return for the labor that he performed for jensen this case. The sources get at more complex dimensions of slavery that often do not enter popular understanding of the institution and ways in which enslaved people were passed between people, how separations occurred, etc. Here, what guy smith is telling us, is that he and his wife were separated from their children and that his children were drawn this refers to a process being drawn by different members of his owners family, some of whom were women. In doing so he also talks about the Legal Process by which the separations took place. He does not use all the terms we would think to look for but he plainly tells us that while the separations of Family Members did not take place in the slave market, they nonetheless brought about the same kinds of traumatic severance from loved ones. What he tells us is the process of being drawn and falling to someone refers to the process that happens during the administration of a deceased persons estate in this context. And afterner dies that owner died, all of his property they would have a drawing. So very much like a lottery. They would put the names of the eirs into a bag or hat and that would also be written alongside a group of enslaved people. They would draw either their names out of a hat and that person would be told what property they received or they would draw out a piece of paper that had a list of property they would receive. There were a variety of ways the ritual took place. Fact,iterally did, in draw enslaved people as part of this Estate Division. That is what guy is referring to here. This is not simply something enslaved people talk about in terms that are not 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 where it lists the individual enslaved people who are part of that deceased persons estate and shows the ages of the enslaved people, the value of the enslaved people, and at the very bottom of the document it shows drew which enslaved people. What i thought was really remarkable about this document and in relationship to what guy ad,s in his lost friends is that Elizabeth Henry on the top line drew more enslaved people than the other heir, richard henry. Why is this important . In the book i show that colonial historians those that look at show thatperiod slaveowning parents would typically give their daughter more slaves than any other form of property. They would give them property and money and in some cases stocks and bonds but they would often get their daughters far more enslaved people than property, particularly land. They would give their sons the land so that when these two got together, they would have everything they needed to get a start on the new life they were going to be living. I see the same thing happening in the 19th century. Your of the 19th century, you see similar patterns were slaveholding parents would also give daughters more enslaved people than land. Factis reflective of the that even if richard did not receive land, you can see that kind of inheritance practice play out here in this document by showing the elizabeth received more slaves than the other heir which might also suggest he received land in addition to receiving those enslaved people. I think the sources are really important to showing the process by which i wrote the book. And foregrounded the experiences and accounts and reflections formally enslaved people in order to lead me in more productive directions in relationship to the sources. By looking at fragments of information, data, for those scientists in the room or mathematically inclined folks by using the data that formally enslaved people provided i was able to piece together details of the lives of the female owners they identified. This is a really important or a really interesting example of that process for me. James skinner was a reverent who countyn yazoo mississippi. On november 20, 1879, he placed in thest friends ad southwestern christian advocate because he was looking for his brother, edward. The last time he had seen his brother was on october 12, 1860, in georgetown and in the district of columbia where we are today. John and his family were forced to leave edward behind when their owner did what historians and individuals at the time referred to as being refugeed. His owner refugeed them to mississippi and compel them to leave edward behind. When youre after john placed his first advertisement, he still had not found edward. So he placed another. This time he offered more detail and each of these advertisements more clear. Angelica chu he identifies as a woman who owned him and his family and who orchestrated the separation via that process of refugeeing, and that she was the reason that him and his family were still searching for edward. Initially, it was difficult for me to find angelica in large part because of the variations in spelling and the ways in which he refers to her in these advertisements. In the first yellow box on the misshe refers to her as jellico chu and the , with a phrisbee chu ph. So i said ok, jot that down. I went to the second advertisement and i said ok, he is saying something completely different the second time. So i thought, then he refers to her as angelo chu. I know that sometimes today and in then when woman is married she may be referred to by her husbands first and last name. So i said ok, ok we know they lived in yazoo, mississippi. We know he was in georgetown because he said that and we know chus womans last name is but wewith a u or an e will figure that out. [laughter] i went to ancestry. Com. They have been in trouble lately but it is an extraordinary resource where you can find archival documents the National Archives has available onsite here. I was able to find phrisbee. I said wait, there he is. I found phrisbee freeland chu, angelicas husband, here in the newspaper. Anduaries are very dark depressing pieces of archival fragments, if you want to call them that, but they often give these rich descriptions of peoples lives, of a deceased life, and you can see migrations and that is what is apparent in phrisbees obituary. And hemarried to ms. Chu references yazoo, mississippi. This time he places his lost friends advertisements we have that one collaboration. It talks about his children and that he was on his way to the government at washington. It tells us he had been appointed a governmental position which would not only corroborate what James Skinner is talking about, placing him in in d. C. ,t also but also the connection between mississippi and d. C. Chus were why the in washington, d. C. And tells us how he died. This is an interesting component. It corroborates what james is saying, this formally enslaved person is saying but it also gives details about angelicas life, her migrations, how she is moving around the country or parts of the country at this moment and then, i am about to have a search thats a super nerdy moment. I found angelicas fathers will. For those into genealogy, any kind of history, you know this is archival goal. For me it was really important because it underscored not simply the parental relationships between parents and daughters and the ways in which their inheritance practice is almost insured that white women who received enslaved people would be deeply and profoundly invested in the institution and its perpetuations. Even in continuing to invest economically in the Institution Even afternd selling they receive such inheritances. It shows them how they were able to maintain control over and exercise control over the enslaved people they inherited. How does it do that . In this yellow box what it says i will read it to you. Apparent immediately to a lot of you what it says. Very, whato sit in a i might imagine a George Washington way. [laughter] having made gifts by way of advancement to my dear daughter, angelica chu and designed to , make my dear daughter emmas share of my stay proportionate with her sisters share, i give and bequeath to my dear wife annemarie misko, in trust for the sole and separate use of our said daughter emme, the following servants. Then he describes the servants that emme will receive. So, whys this important and why did i get excited about this . It tells us the angelica, sometime during the course of her life before her father died, he gave her a portion of his estate. That is important for me and important for us to understand because when we think about slavery and we think about thatitances, we think happens just when a person dies and when they leave a particular heir property in their will. This is an argument i make in the book and that slaveowning parents did not just leave their daughters enslaved people as property in their will. They gave them enslaved people over the course of their lives, even from infancy, as birthday gifts, christmas presents, and especially as wedding gifts. They would often give them a group of enslaved people as i mentioned earlier upon notification they were going to get married. They would typically have a ritual at the recital no, the reception. I did not have one of those because i was poor when i got married. [laughter] they would line up the enslaved people and there would be an announcement made at the wedding reception that essentially wife, the newlywed daughter, her wedding present which would involve a group of enslaved people. Bisco isge washington saying is he already gave angelica her share and she likely received those enslaved people at the time of her wedding or sometime over the course after she got married. That is one thing that is really important it shows. It also reflects that as historians and genealogists we can look elsewhere to try and these connections. Bealle not the endall to understanding property transfers between white southerners or any folks that had the ability to own property and to 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 he states. These would be like trust funds established for wealthy folks these days. We are familiar with trust funds. What slaveowning parents would often do is, if they gave their daughters property before they inried or before they died their wills, they would do so by creating a trust. They would put that property in the trust, appointed trustee sometimes the husband or the father or a male Family Member sometimes it was a woman. As you see here, george appoints his wife as emmes trustee. He creates a separate trust fund and he puts and in charge of that estate, that property, until she comes of age. He puts in that really important clause, in trust for the sole and separate use of our said daughter, emme. This has such power in the legal in a legal context. What it is making clear is that George Washington did not w future husband to control over the property that he was giving to emme. So, by saying in trust for the sole and separate use of emme, he is telling her husband, ha ha, you thought you were going to get your hands on this property but no. 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, there was a legal doctrine for food to his coverture which essentially said that upon marriage, any of the property that those women brought into marriage, any property they might acquire after marriage, either by inheritance or by purchase, would automatically become her husbands. After marriage, she was not able enter contracts in her own name or to create a business in her own name or to go into court and sue on her own behalf. So, what this clause does is it circumvents some of those constraints. It circumvents the property and wealth constraint to allow for emma to maintain control of any property she brings into the marriage. In order to continue to own property after the marriage, he would have had to haves will entered into the court and recognized and authenticated by the court. This is something he certainly did because we have the record here. If we did not it probably would be in a private paper and we would not know it existed. This is a really important way that slaveowning parents not only insured their daughters would not be at the well of will of husbands that may not have their best interest in mind and also how they were able to continue to secure ownership over enslaved people and maintain control over them, even when the law on the books looks like they should not have that ability, and have that power and control. This is one of the document that got me really excited and i was also able to find this extraordinary document. At the beginning of my comments during the introduction you were told about the d. C. Emancipation act. On april 16, 1862, d. C. Did in fact pass the emancipation act which provided compensation for any slaveholders that were willing to accept the abolition the emancipation of enslaved people in the district. If they were willing to do that, and submit an application for compensation listing the enslaved people 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 angelicas emancipation application. Application for compensation after emancipation. It corroborates some of the same details that James Skinner provided in his ad. In the yellow box on the left, thes the names of in name of angela because mother angelicas mother as well as emmas name. Lists James Skinner and some of his siblings as well as his mother in the yellow box. At that time, their surnames were with gray. He states that. These are some of the ways that book,ated as i wrote this using those interesting, seemingly disconnected fragments of information that james provided in those ads. Able to dig deeper and find all of these other archival documents that were elsewhere, legal documents, obituaries, newspaper advertisements, as well as civil warera financial corroborate some of the information that james was telling us, but also tracing and trying to reconstruct some details of angelicas life as well. Enslaved people that were talking about white womens economic investments in the institution. Of individualsst and entities that similarly described or documented white slaveowning women. At the very top, the federal government did, in fact, document white womens slave ownership. What is interesting about the census, which you have ample 1840 the census was very different than it was done in 1850 and 1860. Like40, the census looks the patriarchal households we envision in the 19th century. It documented and identified by name the male head of household. The female head of household. Thethe other inhabitants in household would simply be checked off under these categories. Age zero to women, 12. They check off all these boxes, enumerate individuals, but would not name them, identify them by name. So you could not tell who owned property in the household, whether women owned enslaved people in that household. It kind of bunched all the other residents in a household together. 1860, people thought it was important to say, hey, we have all these enslaved People Living in the country. Probably a good idea to know how many there are. Unfortunately, they did not name enslaved people in the 1850s census, but they did start to name the residence of white households the households, white but also started to enumerate individuals slave holding throughout the nation. A page out here is of the tennessee census reflecting the slaveholding of miss sarah rhodes. So it identifies the person who owns the slave for the first time at the federal level. Numbererates the total of enslaved people that she is claiming as her own. You can see she had a pretty sizable slaveholding. This number is typical for the typical slaveholder. The typical slaveholder was not a person who owned 1000 slaves. Slaveholders who owned thousands, particularly in louisiana. But the typical slaveowner owned 10 enslaved people or less. Women typically owned five or less. These women that i talk about in the book are part of the majority of slaveholders, which admittedly were a small number of southerners. I am not arguing that slave were all southerners. They weresmall a small percentage of all southerners, but women were among the majority of slaveholders, meaning they typically owned 10 enslaved people were less. Sarah owned a few more than 10. So she is right on the edge of becoming more of an elite slaveholder here. 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 who are hungry for numbers. Social scientists are really hungry for numbers. Data, ing at census have been looking for several years now, collecting it, looking specifically at slaveholding women in the census data, i have been able to see or show that, in some regions, women may have constituted 40 of slaveholders. Prior estimates placed them at 10 . Sources,g at the rich i am able to start to piece together some of the detail that is 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 a kind of racially divided social order that characterized our nation and continues to shape our encounters with each other today. At the state level that was at the state level but at the state level, i talked about the legal documents. I talked about how the law of coverture says women should not have the ability to own property exercisey get married, all these different legal and economic to engage in all this legal and economic activity. But at the same time you have state laws, like this one for missouri, that identify women and recognize women as slaveowners right in the law. This law is essentially what they call black votes. They were laws pertaining to the interactions of enslaved people and free black people who would often constitute the minority in this period. What you see is constant references to the mistress, to not belong to him or her, not to be her own, her plantation or tenement. The laws on the books of our states in this moment are not simply saying, hey, this woman may exercise a certain kind of power in her husbands stead and her husbands stead. The law is actually saying she is equally empowered, emboldened by the law to engage with, interact with enslaved people in this way, to behave in these particular ways. It also recognizes that the law holds these slaveholding women accountable for enslaved peoples misdeeds enslaved peoples misdeeds. That is huge. Levelhe laws at the state are recognizing womens and also maintaining a system of surveillance they keeps enslaved people in their place. Thate city level, you see cities like new orleans need laborers. Slaveowning women have them. They would often contract with slaveowning women as they did with other slaveowners in the city to work on public works. What you see here is a receipt issued by the city of new farrell. O miss eliza 1. 5, which is a significant amount for that time for roses labor. So the cities are documenting property ownership, the slave ownership of white women in the south. This document was probably really funky to you guys from over there, but it shows the way in which the city, municipal officials, recognize women as slaveowners. If you have never been, i highly recommend it. New orleans is an extraordinary city characterized by a vibrant, small mercantile culture. There are all these peddlers were vendors that all these peddlers or vendors that immerse you in all kinds of products in the city. And a white women were a part of that mercantile culture. So the city is interesting in finding out who these merchants are. They are issuing licenses to these merchants. They want to know who needs a license. Censusegins to create specifically of the merchants in the city. This is a page out of that senses. Census. The first red arrow is harriet. She is operating in oyster restaurant and oyster restaurant not far from her are two slave traders. As who is quite notorious well as david weiss. This shows that the there was this idea that the slave market was a vice, put in the dark corner of the city and you went there kind of like a red light district. But that was not the case at all. What this reflects is that this kind of commerce, the slave trade, the purchase and sale of enslaved people, was essential to the commercial district of new orleans and women were a part of that commercial district. There is no way women could avoid slave markets. Even if they never bought a sleeve, they could never avoid encountering the enslaved market, and in some cases benefit from offering their goods and services to those individuals involved in the sleep shape involved in the slave trade. And that is not how that is supposed to look. I apologize. So, i canially tell you what it is supposed to look like. This would have been a newspaper whatement placed by their names were, where they came from, and where they took over. At the municipal level, the federal level, and at the state level. You see a people identifying women as invested in the institution of slavery. Who would say how much they would pay for that person and who they would sold and who they sold a person to and for what amount. Slaveage of john whites trade account book reflects the fact that he sold enslaved four times. It reflects the profit margin for the enslaved people that he sold to her as well. When those sales were finalized, places like South Carolina head preprinted bills of sale. These are very much like receipts we received today when we buy something. ,n this particular case Elizabeth Morrison sold an enslaved woman to a notorious South Carolina slave trader for 410. It sounds like a very small amounts, but there is a website you can use if youre interested called measuring worth. You can put in the amount of money that an individual was bought or sold for and it will tell you, will calculate, how much purchasing power that money would have today. Using measuring worth to do that, i was able to calculate that 410 would have been the equivalent of 13,000 in 2018. That is a small amount back then it seems today it seems, but not necessarily back then. This receipt reflects the fact that women not only in not only owned enslaved people but engaged in the selling and purchase of enslaved people and did so connected with slave traders, something that others historians something the other historians have said they did not do on a regular basis. Interesting about this this is a man. There is a highway in new orleans named after this guy. It is interesting to see how in a city like new orleans slavery is everywhere but nowhere at the same time. He is trying to hunt lucy down. What is interesting is that he identifies three of her previous owners. Her,ys captain kelly owned theyses true good miss true good. This chain of ownership that allows us to see not only the kind of violence of the market, the way enslaved people were passed from person to person, but also the Important Role that white women played in that chain as well, their location on those chains, but also they were also in creating these separations through the process of sale as well. Probably cannot see this clearly from where you are, but during the civil war, the confederacy needed fortification to protect themselves from federal troops. They would often impress enslaved people from local slaveowners to do their work. Not do it without paying themselves. They would keep track of the payments they issued to the slaveholders whose slaves have been impressed into constructing fortifications. This is what we call the confederate slave payroll, a document housed in the National Archives here. There are thousands of them. What it shows is that women were counted among the slaveholders whose enslaved people were impressed by the confederacy, but also some of those who were paid for the work that enslaved men typically did. You had eliza listed. Let me see. Eliza sims and her son earl as to their. Eliza sims and her son are listed there. Even though there are initials here, this is emily. Sorry, ella crosby. I found that corroborated by an additional document. Is one ofalso shows the things that is interesting when people ask me about the numbers is they say, how many are there . I talk about this difficulty coming to a precise quantity because of things like this. Is listed notella e. Ella but is the but as crosby makes it difficult to know the complete number of slaveowning women because of the fact that they were often referred to only by their initials. You are unable to identify whether they where women are not in some cases. They were women or not in some cases. Nevertheless, it shows women, even into the civil war, are benefiting from the labor of enslaved people. Era, you the civil war see that slave owning women are hunting down enslaved people even when you think the jig is up. It is february 9 that lee surrenders. They are still hunting down enslaved people. Ultimately, these are the kinds of documents that i used to construct the narrative that i tell. I had been working on this book for 10 years, this is what i hope the book does. It takes a picture. You can find this image in hundreds of books. Interested inne what i highlight here. Children are at the auction, even though it is a pictorial illustration it may be based on fact, may not, but nonetheless women were everywhere. They were hiding in plain sight. It just takes a closer to kind of, a lens, show their presence, their roles, and their importance in this more broadly. So thank you, everybody for listening. This is American History tv on cspan3, where each weekend we feature 48 hours of programs exploring our nations past. American history tv is on cspan3 every weekend and all of our programs are archived on our website at cspan. Org history. You can watch lectures, tours of historic sites, archival films, and see our schedule of upcoming programs at cspan orourke history at cspan. Org history. The country exploring the american story. We have been to more than 200 communities. Like many americans, our staff is staying close to home. Next, a look at one of our cities toward visits. Tour visits. We are about 4 10 of a mile from the library. President bush chose this site to be his final resting place. In april, about a year and a half ago now, we buried miss bushe