Chains of Love: Slave Couples in Antebellum South Carolina

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments Many people have provided me with help of one kind or another during this project, which began as a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Liverpool. First and foremost, I should like to express my gratitude to my dissertation supervisor, Mike Tadman. An excellent advisor and an historian of the utmost integrity, I only hope that he is pleased with my finished product. I should also like to thank other colleagues at the Universities of Liverpool, Newcastle, and Reading for their advice and encouragement , as well as the provision of cups of coffee when needed. Here I wish to single out Di Ascott, Sharon Messenger, and all the other “mad women of the attic,” Brian Ward, George Lewis, Jon Bell,Anne Curry, Stuart Kidd,Anne Lawrence, David Laven, and Helen Parish.The friends and acquaintances I have met through British American Nineteenth-Century Historians (BrANCH), in particular Liese Perrin, have provided many insights on slave relationships, and I have always found it much easier to work on this project following the annual October conference. The staff at the various libraries and archives I utilized during this project have been extremely helpful, especially in the United States, where I was made to feel particularly welcome by Tibby Steedly of the Institute of Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina and Brian Cuthrell of the South Caroliniana library. I shall also never forget the hospitality provided by Joe Sox, Jim Siti, and Susan Wolfe. Three awarding bodies made this project financially viable for me—the Economic and Social Research Council granted me a postgraduate award, which funded the first three years of my Ph.D. research; the British Academy awarded me a Small Research Grant, which enabled me to under- take my research into biracial Baptist churches; and last but by no means least, the Arts and Humanities Research Board provided me with a twoterm sabbatical to complete the book, for which I am extremely grateful. Joan Catapano of the University of Illinois Press has proved helpful and patient, and I am also grateful to the two anonymous readers who commented on the first draft of this manuscript. Finally, I have been fortunate to have a loving and supportive family who have offered help and encouragement at every step of the way. I could not have completed this book without the financial support of my paternal grandparents, Margaret and the late Aneurin West. My mother and father have offered much more than a polite interest in my work, and I am especially grateful to them for encouraging my initial interest in American history.My husband,Jamie,to whom this book is dedicated,has proven more than a diligent proofreader. I do not believe this book would have reached publication without his help, and for this I cannot possibly thank him enough. Lastly, my son, Conor, was kind enough to take to nursery like a duck to water, thus providing me with the hours I needed to write the final manuscript. I look forward to the day when he is old enough to read it. Some of the arguments espoused in this book originally appeared in article form. See “Surviving Separation: Cross-Plantation Marriages and the Slave Trade in Antebellum South Carolina,” Journal of Family History 24:2 (1999): 212–31 (© 1999 by Sage Publications; used by permission of Sage Publications; “The Debate on the Strength of Slave Families: South Carolina and the Importance of Cross-Plantation Marriages,” Journal of American Studies 33:2 (1999): 221–41 (© 1999 by Cambridge University Press; used by permission of Cambridge University Press); and “Masters and Marriages, Profits and Paternalism: Slave Owners’ Perspectives on Cross-Plantation Unions inAntebellum South Carolina,”Slavery and Abolition 21:1 (2000): 56–72 (© 2000 by Frank Cass & Co.; used by permission of Frank Cass & Co.). x Acknowledgments chains of love ...