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

by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

It is crucial to recognize that, as human property that was exchanged, bought, sold, hired, and parceled out among white southerners, enslaved people were not simply objects of sale or potential liquidation; they took an active interest in the market processes to which they were subjected and acquired extensive financial knowledge as a consequence. The slave market in all its aspects was a pervasive feature of enslaved African Americans’ daily lives, and their direct and indirect encounters with three dimensions of the slave-market economy—slave auctions and sales, inheritance or debt collection, and self-purchase—offered opportunities to learn about credit, debt, and contracts; allowed them to engage in financial negotiations; and taught them to develop strategies for fiscal management. They calculated their own value, established the price for their freedom, decided terms of payment, and worked until they reached their financial goal. These financial calculations and dealings challenge us to rethink the intellectual and economic relationships between slavery and freedom for African Americans in the nineteenth century and the roles white slave-owning women played in the process.