Money over Mastery, Family over Freedom: Slavery in the Antebellum Upper South

3 Domestics

chapter 3 Domestics C ontemporary defenders of slavery characterized it as a domestic institution framed by bonds of reciprocal duty and even affection. in 1850, George fitzhugh termed Virginia slavery “a joint concern, in which the slave consumes more than the master, of the coarse products, and is far happier, because although the concern may fail, he is always sure of a support; he is only transferred to another master to participate in the profits of another concern.”1 fitzhugh’s imagined world of domestic slavery hits a snag when one scrutinizes these transfers in the real world. absent in his characterization, and perhaps intentionally so, was that in a slave market society, bonds of affection and duty were constantly threatened by the market . those without the ability to generate cash as a counterstrategy to being “transferred,” especially children and women, sought and exchanged human resources instead. they did not have the remunerative skills that kept frederick douglass in shipyards and moses Grandy on canal boats rather than in fields of cotton. enslaved domestic workers looked for alternative strategies to earning money for use in dealings with slaveholders. their trials featured contests of wits using interpersonal skills and sentiment, and sometimes sexual- 100 Money over Mastery, Family over Freedom ity, within a local and intensely personal set of circumstances. they recruited allies to act on their behalf in public roles, but instead of canals, dockyards, or farms, their sites of strategy were kitchens and parlors, where they built social capital, relied on family members and neighbors, and forged emotional ties, all of which time and again exposed fitzhugh’s brand of slaveholding paternalism as obfuscation. yet the market did not stop at the front gate of slaveholders ’ households. Some enslaved domestic workers used the market as part of contingent, evolving, and often desperate strategies to reunite with family members or prevent further dislocations of themselves or kin. EF at eleven years old, William robinson saw his father cultivate a broad network that suddenly vanished when his owner sold him. “he shook my hands and kissed me good bye through the iron bars,” robinson recalled of his father , bound in a slave trader’s coffle set to depart Wilmington. “then three sisters and two brothers climbed upon the wheel and bade him good bye.”2 they would never see him again. the robinson family’s woes did not end with the father’s disappearance and along with it plans to free their family. the owner died the same year he sold peter robinson, about 1858, and the robinsons fell to a violent and iniquitous son, who employed rosy as his cook and William as his manservant . robinson found himself regularly serving at his owner’s gambling table. following a breakfast dispute over biscuits, in which the new owner assaulted rosy, William struck him with an ax handle, an action prompted by the memory of his missing father. the child ran off and fell in with a band of local fugitive slaves who were moving about the countryside helping other runaways and “foraging” for food and other provisions at night. robinson was caught a few weeks later in a raid in which he witnessed a slave shot and killed at the behest of the young man’s owner, who also happened to be his father, from whom he had escaped. robinson was returned to town and whipped severely. his family had been punished as well. “When i arrived home i found that my mother, one brother and one sister that were with her when i left, had been sold to negro traders” and that three brothers who had been sold to a brother of his owner “were also sold away, and no one could tell me anything about their whereabouts. of course my master wouldn’t tell me.” then he too was sold.3 like his father, William robinson responded to adversity by seeking allies Domestics 101 who could provide information and protection. unlike his father, William had no marketable skill or property to barter with whites, no tangibles other than his head, body, and limbs. confined in a local slave trader’s pen, he began by investigating the whereabouts of his family. three of his siblings were sold from Wilmington, at least two of whom, “it was said,” “were taken to Georgia.” inside the slave market, robinson learned what he could about his relatives, plugging into the grapevine telegraph...