On Slavery’s Border: Missouri’s Small Slaveholding Households, 1815–1865 by Diane Mutti Burke (review)

FALL 2011 85 On Slavery’s Border: Missouri’s Small Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865 Diane Mutti Burke Diane Mutti Burke’s On Slavery’s Border appearsatatimewhentheborderslavestates arefinallygettingtheirscholarlydue.Whilesouthern historians have long contended that there are many Souths, only recently have they rigorously studied how distinctions between them have shaped southern historical institutions and events. Unlike plantation regions further south, Missouriwas,fromitsinceptionthroughtheCivil War, a state dominated politically and economically by slave owners, the vast majority of whom owned ten or fewer slaves. This produced a brand of the peculiar institution that differed greatly from the Deep South version. Burke reveals, for example, how Missouri’s small-scale, mixed agriculture led to the pervasive practice of slave renting .Becauseslaveholdersoftenownedmoreslaves than they needed to meet their labor needs during much of the year, they commonly rented them out to non-owners. This practice ensured that slavery remained a flexible and profitable labor form despite its small scale, and meant that many more white Missourians experienced mastery than rates of slave ownership suggest. Beyond institutional differences, Burke succeeds in writing a compelling study in the way human relationships functioned within border South slavery. Previous historians, she argues, “simply have not opened the doors of small slaveholders’ homes and examined the relationships and the lives of the individuals found within: How owners and slaves lived and worked with one another each day; how the circumstances of small-scale slavery affected their family lives; and how they socialized with their neighbors” (4). In her consideration of these associations, Burke fittingly focuses on the slaveholding household as a unit of study, examining the relationship between husbands and wives, adults and children, masters and slaves. As such, On Slavery’s Border is not only a thoroughly revealing study of slavery in Missouri but also a fascinating social history of the state in the antebellum era. The intimacy suggested by the questions Burke asks speaks directly to the physical nearness of masters and slaves. As Book Reviews Diane Mutti Burke. On Slavery’s Border: Missouri’s Small Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010. 413 pp. ISBN: 970820336831 (paper), $24.95. BOOK REVIEWS 86 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY she asserts, “working and living so closely together fostered personal interactions between owners and slaves and allowed them the extraordinary power to influence one another’s lives. It was in these homes and fields that black and white Missouriansstridentlycontestedthetermsoftheir relations and labor and ultimately determined their experience of life on slavery’s border” (141). For slaves, the intimate nature of small slaveholding had mixed consequences. Although proximity to their slaves sometimes led white owners to treat them better physically and materially , it also enabled them to scrutinize slave labor more closely and interfere in their slaves’ personal matters. It also increased the chances that male owners might coerce slave women into sexual relationships. By the same token, close living arrangements sometimes made it possible for white women to pursue sexual relationships with enslaved men. Small slaveholding also compelled whites and African Americans to cross other intimate boundaries. Burke cites three fascinating cases in which white slaveholding women briefly nursed the babies of their slaves. Though it violated convention, she argues that in small slaveholdings with few lactating women, a practice that would have been unlikely, even unfathomable , within larger slaveholding households became a measure of economic efficacy. Small slaveholdings and the practice of renting also affected marriage and family patterns among border slaves. Based on her evidence, Burke estimates that 57 percent of Missouri’s slave marriages existed between husbands and wives who lived on different plantations, forming abroad unions at rates almost twice as high as those historians have found in other parts of the South. Burke also argues that Missouri’s small slaveholdings made the impact of slave resistance greater. Owners often submitted to their slaves’ demands to keep their small farms functioning, while the practice of hiring out could also undermine slaveholders ’ authority by diffusing it among multiple masters. Importantly, Burke asserts: “although Missouri slavery was small in scale, slaves’ resentment of their exploitation, and often their owners , was as intense as anyplace” (145). One of the most impressive aspects of On Slavery’s Border is...