Slave stealing women, slave-owning women, and stolen slaves in the American South

Bibliographic Data

ID16769191
AuthorsLaura R Sandy (0000-0002-2054-8159, University of Liverpool, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume22
Issue3
Pages271-288
Publication date2021-09-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Nineteenth Century History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1466-4658 • E-ISSN: 1743-7903
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14664658.2021.2022505
OpenAlexW4210794547
LanguageEN
References cited35

Slave stealing has not attracted scholarly attention; the women branded as kidnappers and “Negro thieves” are almost completely absent from the historiography of American slavery. Free women, across the spectra of race and class, played central roles in these dangerous, illegal, “unfeminine” ventures. On the other side of the law, slave-owning women were also embroiled in slave stealing cases. They frequently filed suits attempting to retrieve their stolen enslaved people. Both slave stealing and slave-owning women, despite their differing motivations exposed the fragility of the gendered identity that underpinned social and political authority in the South. Their behaviour complicates traditional definitions of female resistance under slavery. These women protested their treatment by their communities, governors, and family, proving willing to break, or manipulate, the law to advance their interests. Testing the pillars on which a patriarchal slave society rested, placed them at the centre of local and national dramas, which revolved around trafficking and owning human property. Their actions were destabilizing and underlined the ambivalent nature of Southern law and custom, and they contributed to a sense of insecurity over the future of slavery and the growth of sectionalism, which led to the outbreak of the American Civil War

Ambivalence · Criminology · Historiography · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society

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