The African-American Family in Slavery and Emancipation (review)

The Appalachians and slavery are not topics that one expects to find in the same study, but Dunaway has produced two studies of slavery as an economic and social institution in that area. Relying largely on social-science methodology and an extensive data set compiled from U.S. manuscript censuses, interviews of ex-slaves from the 1930s, and other primary sources, she draws a detailed portrait of African-American life and labor in the southern Appalachians. Dunaway utilizes an expansive definition of the Mountain South that follows the geological formations of the Appalachians and their valleys rather than looking more narrowly at the hilliest regions. Although she presents maps of her region, she does not include a list of the counties. The most surprising inclusions are such Virginia counties as Albemarle, Fauquier, and Loudon, seldom designated in the Appalachians. Although Appalachia, defined narrowly or widely, spreads over a multi-state area, her version tends to dilute the cohesiveness of the region in terms of agriculture and other economic activities.

In both of these books, Dunaway seeks to counter what she believes to be an overly roseate view of slavery's place in the region and on the people enslaved there. In Slavery in the American Mountain South, she argues the importance of slavery to the area. She also asserts that slavery contributed to the region's underdevelopment because the wealthiest residents funneled their investments into land and slaves rather than industrial development, a trend that worsened through the antebellum period. Indicating that free blacks and enslaved African-Americans formed an important part of the Appalachian workforce—whether in agriculture, coal and gold mining, transportation, or tourism-related commerce—Dunaway also points to differences in treatment and activities between Lower South slaves and Mountain slaves.

In The African-American Family in Slavery and Emancipation, Dunaway explores slave marriages and the slave family, arguing that both were more fragile in the Mountain South than historians have recognized. The limited slaveholdings of the Appalachians lent themselves to "abroad marriages" in which husband and wife lived apart. The practice of hiring out slaves, prevalent among Appalachian slaveholders, also separated spouses. Yet a third factor driving families apart was the extensive slave trade of the area, in which youngsters and young adults were sold to Lower South areas. Such traffic in humans separated husbands and wives but more often pulled adolescents and young adults away from their parents.

Perhaps the greatest strength of these two books is the detailed account of life and labor on what Dunaway calls "small plantations," operations with relatively few slaves. Dunaway has compiled numerous accounts showing that the slaves belonging to small slaveholders worked extremely hard, were frequently separated from kin, and suffered under inhumane punishments and living conditions.

Yet Dunaway's books are not without problems. Many scholars intrigued by her statements and comparisons derived from her data (which integrated census data with plantation records and the qualitative reports of travelers and ex-slaves) will want to refer to her numerous tables. Though mentioned in her footnotes, they are not in the books but on a companion website through Adobe Acrobat, a non-digitized format that does not allow searching. This decision makes resort to the tables cumbersome and greatly detracts from the volumes' usability.

Scholars may also find some of Dunaway's comparisons strained. For example, she asserts that "the Mountain South exhibited higher slave mortality rates than those regions of the United States characterized by larger plantations" (85). Yet this comparison is to the South in general, rather than regions such as rice-planting South Carolina and Georgia, which, given the mortality rates that Dusinberre has found on such plantations, were likely far more fatal.¹ Moreover, her conclusion that Appalachian slaves endured harsher punishments and worse material conditions than other American slaves may be...