They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

Sometimes slave-owning women had good reason to delegate slave punishment to others, and their decision to do so aligned with the choices slave-owning men made in this regard. The white men in their families or those they hired generally proved to be willing participants. Yet slave-owning women also knew firsthand that slave management and discipline could pose difficulties that neither a master nor a mistress was capable of handling. Violent and resistant enslaved people might need more than the authority of a single man to keep them in line.31 Pauline Howell’s enslaved aunt, for example, killed two male overseers after she “grabbed [their] privates and pulled ’em out by the roots.” Afterward, her aunt was sold, along with all of her children, to a man who lived in Mobile, Alabama.32 A woman who could mutilate and kill two adult men in this way was not going to acknowledge the authority of a master because he was a man. And who knew what kind of damage she might inflict upon a mistress? Whether master or mistress, the owner was likely to seek reinforcement before attempting further punishment.