Most
slave-owners encouraged their slaves to marry. It was believed that
married men was less likely to be rebellious or to run
away. Some masters favoured marriage for religious reasons and
it was in the interests of plantation
owners for women to have children. Child-bearing started around
the age of thirteen, and by twenty the women slaves would be expected
to have four or five children. To encourage childbearing
some plantation owners promised women slaves their freedom after they
had produced fifteen children. Several slaves recorded in their autobiographies
that they were reluctant to marry women from the same plantation.
As John Anderson explained: "I did not want to marry a girl belonging
to my own place, because I knew I could not bear to see her ill-treated."
Moses Grandy agreed he wrote: "no
colored man wishes to live at the house where his wife lives, for
he has to endure the continual misery of seeing her flogged and abused
without daring to say a word in her defence." As Henry
Bibb pointed out: "If my wife must be exposed to the insults
and licentious passions of wicked slave-drivers and overseers. Heaven
forbid that I should be compelled to witness the sight."
A study of slave records by the Freedmen's
Bureau of 2,888 slave marriages in Mississippi (1,225), Tennessee
(1,123) and Louisiana (540), revealed that over 32 per cent of marriages
were dissolved by masters as a result of slaves being sold away from
the family home.
(1)
Annie L. Burton, Memories of Childhood's
Slavery Days (1909)
If
a slave man and woman wished to marry, a party would be arranged some
Saturday night among the slaves. The marriage ceremony consisted of
the pair jumping over a stick. If no children were born within a year
or so, the wife was sold.
At New Year's, if there was any debt or mortgage on the plantation,
the extra slaves were taken to Clayton and sold at the court house.
In this way families were separated.
(2)
Bethany
Veney, A Slave Woman (1889)
Master Jonas Mannyfield lived seven miles from
us, on the other side of the Blue Ridge; and he owned a likely young
fellow called Jerry. We had always known each other, and now he wanted
to marry me. Our masters were both willing; and there was nothing
to hinder, except that there was no minister about there to marry
us.
One day, there was a colored man - a pedler, with his cart - on the
road, and Jerry brought him in, and said he was ready to be minister
for us. He asked us a few questions, which we answered in a satisfactory
manner, and then he declared us husband and wife. I did not want him
to make us promise that we would always be true to each other, forsaking
all others, as the white people do in their marriage service, because
I knew that at any time our masters could compel us to break such
a promise; and I had never forgotten the lesson learned, so many years
before, in the blackberry pasture.
(3) Walter Hawkins,
From Slavery to Bishopric (1891)
To enslave men successfully and safely it
was necessary to keep their minds occupied with thoughts and aspirations
short of the liberty of which they were deprived. Thus masters gave
the slaves some holidays, which served the purpose of keeping their
minds occupied with prospective pleasures within the limits of slavery.
It was during these holidays that the young man could go wooing; the
married man went to see his wife; the father and mother to see their
children; the industrious and money-making could earn a few dollars:
it was then that the strong tried their strength at wrestling or boxing;
then the drinker drank plenty of whisky, and the religious spent their
time in praying, preaching, singing
and exhorting. Before these holidays their pleasures were in prospect,
after they were pleasures of reflection; but for these holidays, which
acted as safety-valves, the rigours of bondage would have been carried
off by the explosive elements produced in the minds of the slaves
by the injustice and fraud of slavery.
(4)
William Box Brown,
Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown (1851)
I now began to think of entering the matrimonial state; and with that
view I had formed an acquaintance with a young woman named Nancy,
who was a slave belonging to a Mr. Leigh a clerk in the Bank, and,
like many more slave-holders, professing to be a very pious man. We
had made it up to get married, but it was necessary in the first place,
to obtain our masters' permission, as we could do nothing without
their consent. I therefore went to Mr. Leigh, and made known to him
my wishes, when he told me he never meant to sell Nancy, and if my
master would agree never to sell me, I might marry her. He promised
faithfully that he would not sell her, and pretended to entertain
an extreme horror of separating families. He gave me a note to my
master, and after they had discussed the matter over, I was allowed
to marry the object of my choice.
When Nancy became my wife she was living with a Mr. Reeves, a minister
of the gospel, who had not long come from the north, where he had
the character of being an Anti-slavery man; but he had not been long
in the south when all his anti-slavery notions vanished and he became
a staunch advocate of slave-holding doctrines, and even wrote articles
in favour of slavery which were published in the Richmond Republican.
My wife was still the property of Mr. Leigh and, from the apparent
sincerity of his promises to us, we felt confident that he would not
separate us. We had not, however, been married above twelve months,
when his conscientious scruples vanished, and he sold my wife to a
Mr. Joseph H. Colquitt, a saddler, living in the city of Richmond,
and a member of Dr. Plummer's church there. This Mr. Colquitt was
an exceedingly cruel man, and he had a wife who was, if possible,
still more cruel. She was very contrary and hard to be pleased she
used to abuse my wife very much, not because she did not do her duty,
but because, it was said, her manners were too refined for a slave.
At this time my wife had a child and this vexed Mrs. Colquitt very
much; she could not bear to see her nursing her baby and used to wish
some great calamity to happen to my wife.
Eventually she was so much displeased with my wife that she induced
Mr. Colquitt to sell her to one Philip M. Tabb, for the sum of 450
dollars; but coming to see the value of her more clearly after she
tried to do without her, she could not rest till she got Mr. Colquitt
to repurchase her from Mr. Tabb, which he did in about four months
after he had sold her, for 500 dollars, being 50 more than he had
sold her for.
(5)
Henry Clay Bruce,
Twenty-Nine Years a Slave (1895)
My parents belonged to
Lemuel Bruce, who died about the year 1836, leaving two children,
William Bruce and Rebecca Bruce, who went to live with their aunt,
Mrs. Prudence Perkinson; he also left two families of slaves, and
they were divided between his two children; my mother's family fell
to Miss Rebecca, and the other family, the head of which was known
as Bristo, was left to William B. Bruce. Then it was that family ties
were broken, the slaves were all hired out, my mother to one man and
my father to another. I was too young then to know anything about
it, and have to rely entirely on what I have heard my mother and others
older than myself say.
(6)
Henry
Bibb, The Life and Adventures of an American Slave (1851)
If
my wife must be exposed to the insults and licentious passions of
wicked slave-drivers and overseers; if she must bear the stripes of
the lash laid on my an unmerciful tyrant; if this is to be done with
impunity, which is frequently done by slaveholders and their abettors.
Heaven forbid that I should be compelled to watch the sight
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