On Slavery's Border: Missouri's Small Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865

Early American Places

by Diane Mutti Burke

On Slavery’s Border is a bottom-up examination of how slavery and slaveholding were influenced by both the geography and the scale of the slaveholding enterprise. Missouri’s strategic access to important waterways made it a key site at the periphery of the Atlantic world. By the time of statehood in 1821, people were moving there in large numbers, especially from the upper South, hoping to replicate the slave society they’d left behind.

Diane Mutti Burke focuses on the Missouri counties located along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to investigate small-scale slavery at the level of the household and neighborhood. She examines such topics as small slaveholders’ child-rearing and fiscal strategies, the economics of slavery, relations between slaves and owners, the challenges faced by slave families, sociability among enslaved and free Missourians within rural neighborhoods, and the disintegration of slavery during the Civil War. Mutti Burke argues that economic and social factors gave Missouri slavery an especially intimate quality. Owners directly oversaw their slaves and lived in close proximity with them, sometimes in the same building. White Missourians believed this made for a milder version of bondage. Some slaves, who expressed fear of being sold further south, seemed to agree.

Mutti Burke reveals, however, that while small slaveholding created some advantages for slaves, it also made them more vulnerable to abuse and interference in their personal lives. In a region with easy access to the free states, the perception that slavery was threatened spawned white anxiety, which frequently led to violent reassertions of supremacy.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Steve Wiegenstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the great challenges in moving from dissertation to published book is making the work more readable and accessible to a wider audience. This book feels like one that has not made that transition, I'm sorry to say. The material is of interest to social historians who specialize in 19th Century America, but if you're a general-interest reader, you'll find it tough going. Suitable for the specialist.

[Ellen Reichert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellently documented and well-written account of slavery in Missouri. Includes first-hand accounts from diaries, letters, and testimony that bring life to the thoroughly researched descriptions of what life was like for the enslaved and the enslaver. A captivating read.

[Richard Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was 307 pages long. If it would have been 240 pages, it would be a four star book. As a resident of Missouri, the content was very interesting and about a subject not frequently covered.