In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

143 McHenry could not hesitate; the secretary of war position had been vacant for some time and he was needed in Philadelphia, the nation’s capital, immediately. So he mounted the fastest horse available and braved February’s chills despite an already serious cold, promising to return and manage the family’s move.1 But McHenry soon realized the work was far too demanding to return to Baltimore for his family. Peggy was thus left to manage all the details of the family’s move to the north, and she was not pleased. This scenario did not fit her—or the early republic’s—general understanding of proper household hierarchical authority . Traditionally, McHenry as husband stood at the pinnacle, representative to the outside world, obeyed by the family. Earlier in the century he could have been described as a patriarch. But by the revolutionary era, a near equality between husband and wife as companions within marriage became an ideal never really met. After all, a wife still owed deference to her spouse should they disagree (much as a junior partner might); she possessed only a restricted legal existence despite revolutionary rhetoric; and her province remained the domestic sphere, although sometimes a wife’s duties required that she reach beyond the home and play the role of deputy husband. The children occupied third place and naturally had to honor and obey their parents. But they were not obligated to respect the last category: servants or slaves, who had no authority whatever their age, having to submit even to the master’s children.2 Certainly Peggy McHenry played her roles in a solid and loving marriage of nearly equal companions. Peggy was always the housewife, but in James’s absence also became deputy husband, and her role as mistress of their slaves became more acute. Exactly when the McHenry family first owned slaves eleven “I Am Scarce Mistress of My Conduct” Peggy McHenry 144 chapter eleven is not known, but it is possible that they did so as soon as they could afford them, decades before this. As a city-dwelling, mercantile family, slaves probably were used both as domestics and as help in business. It is at this point, however, that references to slaves are first found in their papers. For their part, the slaves acted within an urban context, unlike the majority of slaves who lived in rural, agricultural settings. Baltimore was a highly entrepreneurial city with a labor force more like the North. Slavery had not been essential to the city’s early development. Although the institution had been adopted, many slaves were skilled, or hired out; became term slaves; and even bought their freedom. Substantial free black communities were developing in cities all along the seaboard, leading slaves in those areas to an awareness that they could in some ways ameliorate their conditions— even become free while maintaining their families.3 The first relationship within this hierarchy to be tested was that between husband and wife and clearly illustrates that the earlier “automatic deference ” from wife to husband that had existed earlier, in the colonial period, is too stark a description to fit the McHenrys. Their relationship was born in the republicanism of the revolutionary era and involved a greater equality than that allowed for by automatic deference. In addition, the fortune Peggy brought to the marriage (possibly protected through a trust) appears to have been somewhat larger than James’s, perhaps helping to undercut a more traditional patriarchy. In a society where wealth was more important than birth, her contribution to the family’s finances mattered.4 Thus, while James remained the primary decision-maker, in matters that involved her, Peggy came in a close second. At times, Peggy even took the upper hand. In a poem he wrote her for an anniversary, James professed his complete contentment with her and their marriage—with only one unimportant exception. Whenever other ladies came to call, Peggy persisted in tidying up his books and work notes despite his efforts to stop her. Clearly, her reputation as a housekeeper was at stake, and she would not allow that to be compromised. This was her sphere, her “job,” and she asserted her primacy.5 Now, in 1796, Peggy apparently did not want to return to Philadelphia, the city in which she had been born and raised. After all, the move would be a great deal of trouble for her to arrange in her role as deputy husband and would be costly...

Share