Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South
Item
Title
Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South
Creator
Brenda E Stevenson
Subject
19th century
African American History
Early 19th Century US History
Families
Family
History
Loudoun County
Loudoun County (Va.)
Race
Slavery
Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
Social conditions
U.S.A
Virginia
Abstract
This book provides a panoramic portrait of family and community life in and around Loudoun County, Virginia—weaving the fascinating personal stories of planters and slaves, of free blacks and poor-to-middling whites, into a powerful portrait of southern society from the mid-18th century to the Civil War. Loudoun County's most illustrious families—the Lees, Masons, Carters, Monroes, and Peytons—helped forge southern traditions and attitudes that became characteristic of the entire region while mingling with yeoman farmers of German, Scotch-Irish, and Irish descent, and free black families who lived alongside abolitionist Quakers and thousands of slaves. The book builds the complex picture of their intertwined lives, revealing how their combined histories guaranteed Loudon's role in important state, regional, and national events and controversies. Both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, for example, were hidden at a local plantation during the War of 1812 The area also was the birthplace of celebrated fugitive slave Daniel Dangerfield, the home of John Janney, chairman of the Virginia secession convention, a center for Underground Railroad activities, and the location of John Brown's infamous 1859 raid at Harpers Ferry. The book breaks new ground in her depiction of slave family life. Following the lead of historian Herbert Gutman, most scholars have accepted the idea that, like whites, slaves embraced the nuclear family, both as a living reality and an ideal. The book destroys this notion, showing that the harsh realities of slavery allowed little possibility of a nuclear family. Far more important were extended kin networks and female headed households.