Since the 1970s, the status of American women has been the focus of much scholarship and revision.  Like the study of other minorities, women’s history has emerged as a valuable addition to the historical discourse, defining women not by the accomplishments of men, but rather by their own, unique, merits.  One area for which this rethinking of women’s roles has been relatively lacking, however, is the antebellum period in the slave states.  Whereas women in the northern states were pioneering the abolition and women’s rights movements, Southern women during this period are often left behind, portrayed as loyal wives and daughters, blindly allegiant to the strict patriarchy of the Old South.   Drew Gilpin Faust, one of the most well-respected historians of Southern womanhood, writes: “In 1861, however, women still largely accepted the legitimacy of divisions between the private and public, the domestic and the political, the sphere of women and the sphere of men.” [i] What Faust fails acknowledge, however, is the number of women who lived life outside of the tradition bounds created for them by gender and were able to succeed independent of fathers or husbands.  Property ownership, especially ownership of slaves, offered women in the South unprecedented opportunities at individual success outside of the domestic realm.  Patterns of slaveholding among women between 1840 and 1861 in Prince George’s County, Maryland exemplify this independence within the female community and the transitional nature of gender roles during the time period, even in a slave state.

Faust’s statement embodies the traditional view of Southern womanhood in during antebellum period and Civil War at the time and in the historical memory.  John C. Inscoe mirrors this sentiment in an article about women’s empowerment during the Civil War, in which he describes slave ownership as an “exclusively male” area of Southern life prior to the departure of men for the battlefield.[ii]  Contrary to this statement, however, Kristin Wood states in her article “Broken Reeds and Competent Farmers: Slaveholding Widows in the Southeastern United States, 1783-1861” that 10 percent of all slaveholders were women in 1850.[iii] Like Inscoe’s work, most scholarship ignores even the possibility of white, female freeholders outside of the context of wartime empowerment. 

Likewise, antebellum men saw their wives and daughters as unable to care fro themselves or handle affairs outside of the home.  In 1835, the affluent planter Walter Bowie of Prince Georges County, Maryland described his daughters as “helpless” and provided for them explicitly in his will.[iv]  As may be assumed, from his description the girls, Bowie did not entrust the resources for their care to his daughters, themselves, but instead to his son, Walter W. W. Bowie, the executor of his estate.[v] 

In some ways this image of the dependent woman certainly holds up.  In 1840, 1850, and 1861 (data for 1860 is missing) only 208, 256, and 248 women, respectively, were assessed for any property at all in Prince George’s County, which, in 1850, had a free population of more than eight thousand.[vi]  Furthermore, property holding was not necessarily an indication of total independence among antebellum Maryland women.  In 1850 107 of 256 women assessed for property held no land and in 1861 the same was true of 94 of 248 women assessed for property.[vii]  The 1840 assessment record did not list real and personal property in the same tables, and therefore no assumptions can be made as to the numbers of women who held both at that time.[viii]  Thus only 139 and 154 women, respectively, even had the possibility of complete independence from men in Prince George’s County at the time, which is, admittedly, a small minority.  But to ignore these women, as many scholars have, is unacceptable because of the social progress which they represent.  Furthermore, even small holdings within the context of a male dominated household illustrate women’s independence because of the resources and responsibility they demonstrate. 

Many women’s resources came from personal capital that they had with friends and relatives, and during this period women often gained from large inheritances.  Widows, especially, were able to benefit from the wills of their loved ones.  Catharine Bowie, who in 1861 was one of the twenty wealthiest women in Prince Georges County, gained all of her wealth through her husband’s bequests.[ix]  Even Walter Bowie, who was so distrusting of his daughters’ abilities to support themselves left his entire estate to his wife, Amelia M. Bowie, for her lifetime.[x]  And, while to the modern observer inheritances for wives or daughters may not seem standard, at a time when primogenator was traditional, the substantial inheritances that many Prince George’s County women received are an important indication of social progress.[xi]  The fact that Walter Bowie would entrust his substantial estate of land, slaves, and property to his wife and then his son, rather than his son outright is an especially telling example of the intersection between tradition and social innovation occurring at the time. 

While seemingly innocuous, the emergence of women’s property rights was an important step forward for Maryland women.  Coverture, or the complete sovereignty of husbands over wives, was accepted practice through the late 18^th century in America. The frequency of bequests to women from testators of both genders speaks to the acceptance of women’s new roles in society, as well as the relative taboos that still surrounded property holding for women in the antebellum period.  It was not until 1843 that Maryland law officially acknowledged the rights of women to hold slaves independent of their husbands, but the fact that many women, 191 in Prince Georges County, are listed as independent slaveholders in 1840 assessment records further emphasizes the acceptability for women to hold slaves, and therefore have some measure of economic freedom even before the law recognized this right.[xii]  In fact, the number of women assessed for slaves is higher at this time than it was in either the 1850 or 1861 assessments after independent slave ownership was recognized as legal for women. 

Slave property was an especially desirable commodity for women in the antebellum period. More than 92% (191 of 208) of all women property holders held slaves in 1840.[xiii]  With time both the proportion and overall numbers of slaveholding women declined gradually to 62% (171 of 248) in 1861.[xiv]  This change could be due to growing antislavery sentiment or greater accessibility of other forms of property to women, but throughout the antebellum period more than three fifths of women who chose or were allowed to own property held at least one slave.  These high proportions, especially in 1840, when women’s right to hold slave property was not even recognized by law, signify the desirability of slave property to women. 

Slave property was so desirable because it offered women many unique advantages.  Just under one third of women slaveholders who died between 1840 and 1858 had farm tools and/or crops listed on the inventories of their estates.[xv]  While many slaves belonging to women were probably domestics, this fact illustrates that many also weren’t.  Slavery, in this way, provided a foot in the door to farming for women and as such, another avenue to economic independence.  Some women may even have been able to cross into the business world through their involvement in the slave economy. Mary Weems, for example, was probably able to combine public and private economies, owning 46 slaves, 30 of them women and girls, at her death in 1848 but no farming equipment or crops despite having a total worth of almost fifteen thousand dollars.[xvi]  Ms. Weems probably employed some or most of her slaves in domestic pursuits, but also likely sent slaves to work for others, gaining income and independence in this manner.

Slaveholding women not only loosened constraints on women’s behavior economically, but also crossed into the male domain socially and morally in their dominance over their slave property. While many certainly relied on managers and overseers (Mary Hall, for example, could not have overseen the operations of the 88 slaves working at least 3 crops on her plantation all alone) it is questionable whether women like Martha A. Ridgeway, whose only personal property at her death in 1851 were 2 slaves, a bed and quilt, and a “standing crop corn” worth a total of only $265, could have afforded to employ overseers.[xvii] 

Their close, supervisory contact put women like Ms. Ridgeway in an interesting position in society: whereas women were supposed to be meek, mild preservers of human morality, women who oversaw slaves could not afford such actions for fear of losing control of their property and therefore their livelihoods.  Slave mistresses in male dominated households experienced the same necessity for “masculine” behavior in overseeing household slaves, often abandoning their femininity and polish to discipline slaves in the name of preserving the social order.  In 1859 Tryphena Blanche Holder Fox, a married Louisiana mistress, typified this contradiction when she wrote that rather than tell her husband of a house slave’s misbehavior, she beat the woman herself, but only because she was worried that he beat his slaves “so severely.”[xviii] 

Like Fox, many Prince George’s County slave mistresses often struggled with the moral dilemmas of slaveholding.  In her 1840 will, Mary Ann Scott wrote that slaveholding was against her better nature and she wished that she could free all the slaves that belonged to her and her sisters, but could not and instead left all her property to her sisters.[xix]  Her actions explicitly demonstrate the conflict between the Southern Belle’s “better nature” and the demands of a society rooted in barbarity.  The decisions of all women slave owners to hold human property represents a significant step away from the sweet, innocuous image of the Southern belle.

Property ownership, and especially slaveholding represented a unique opportunity for Southern women to step outside of their assigned gender roles during the antebellum period.  More research would be necessary in order to determine how proactive most women were with their slave property, but to be sure they held a unique and progressive place in antebellum Maryland.

Notes