Marie Jenkins Schwartz. Ties That Bound

Over the last few years, historians have shown great interest in slaveholding by presidents of the early United States. Certainly the attention given to President Thomas Jefferson’s long-term sexual relationship with his slave Sally Hemings has provoked new questions from historians and the public alike, but of course Jefferson was only one of several slaveholding presidents. Marie Jenkins Schwartz’s most recent book, Ties That Bound, stands apart from other recent work on this subject by focusing on some of the earliest presidents’ white wives and daughters: Martha Dandridge Custis Washington; Martha Wayles Jefferson as well as her daughter Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph (who served as First Lady because her mother died long before Thomas Jefferson took office); and Dolley Payne Todd Madison. Their time in the White House is just a small part of Schwartz’s history of these women, beginning with their families of birth and continuing after their famous husbands and fathers have died. Schwartz’s book will have great appeal for enthusiasts of First Ladies, and it is accessible to a popular audience, but it does just as good a job of telling the stories of the many slaves who spent their lives serving these women. Therefore, Ties That Bound will be of great interest to historians of slavery, particularly those who study domestic slavery, because the slaves with whom the First Ladies interacted daily worked inside their homes.

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