Slaves, sex and souterners

[Whitewings]

I'm putting this here because it seems the least wrong location. If it should be somewhere else, just move it. I don't mind.

On to the actual question. In the antebellum South, slave owners had sex with their slaves, with or without the cooperation of the slaves in question. That's not in doubt. But I haven't been able to find any sort of information on how common a thing this was. Actually, I can find quite a few articles, but nothing resembling a consensus. Were such relations common, uncommon, open, hidden? I'm assuming male owner and female slave for purpose of this question.

 

[DG Valdron]

I'm putting this here because it seems the least wrong location. If it should be somewhere else, just move it. I don't mind.

On to the actual question. In the antebellum South, slave owners had sex with their slaves, with or without the cooperation of the slaves in question. That's not in doubt. But I haven't been able to find any sort of information on how common a thing this was. Actually, I can find quite a few articles, but nothing resembling a consensus. Were such relations common, uncommon, open, hidden? I'm assuming male owner and female slave for purpose of this question.

Common. 90% of black people in America have some white ancestry, and 30% of white Americans have a black person in their ancestry.

Hidden. Raping a slave was not a respectable thing.

 

[Komodo]

As far as I know, the consensus is "pretty common." According to Orlando Patterson and his global study of slavery, Slavery and Social Death, in pretty much every slave society of which we have records the rape of female slaves by masters was common.

To answer your second question, though, it is widely believed that southern American culture encouraged the "covering up" of such relations. Patterson (in his work above) claims that southern American Christianity and concepts of honor drove white southern slave-owners to resent mixed-race offspring as a sign of their infidelity, and cites this as part of the reason as to why the United States had such hostility to freed African-Americans.

Now, Patterson is a sociologist, not a historian, so his analysis is a bit odd to those of us more accustomed to historical analysis. For a historian's take on it, Carl Degler (Neither Black Nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States) supports the claim that mixed-race sexual relations were much more downplayed in the United States, though rather than citing Protestant Christianity he cites a larger number of wealthy, relatively powerful women in the southern United States who could (and would) create issues for their husbands if they discovered any infidelity on the part of their husbands w/ female slaves, which also encouraged the "covering up" of such sexual relations. Degler's claim is a bit problematic when one tries to apply this line of thought to Brazil, but as far as the US is concerned this should work to answer your question.

So, in short, the answer to your question is "very common but not openly discussed at the time."

 

[TFSmith121]

Well, for obvious reasons, at the time

I'm putting this here because it seems the least wrong location. If it should be somewhere else, just move it. I don't mind. On to the actual question. In the antebellum South, slave owners had sex with their slaves, with or without the cooperation of the slaves in question. That's not in doubt. But I haven't been able to find any sort of information on how common a thing this was. Actually, I can find quite a few articles, but nothing resembling a consensus. Were such relations common, uncommon, open, hidden? I'm assuming male owner and female slave for purpose of this question.

Well, for obvious reasons, at the time the realities were obscured by law, custom, and tradition.

Because the enslaved were legally property, they did not have any rights to self-defense, and all black women were sexually available to (essentially) any white male. African-American marriage and parenthood was not legally recognized, other than establishing the status of enslaved for children, and there was no virtually no recourse for sexual abuse in the courts; when it (occasionally) became a factor in a legal case, as in the Celia case in Missouri, a defense on such a basis was - generally - disallowed, or failed to secure a not guilty verdict.

Children of mixed race, however, were found everywhere in the south - the 1860 US census listed almost 600,000 people as mulattos, which compares to the total of 3.5 million enslaved in what became the rebel states. A tiny number of whites recognized their children and attempted to provide for them; some encouraged escape and passing, but the vast majority of enslaved children of mixed ancestry were simply worked and sold like any other slave. The "fancy trade" in "high yaller" women was generally understood as a reality, as well. Selling one's daughters into prostitution was profitable, if the father could stomach it.

Puddn'head Wilson was published in 1893-94, but even as a tragicomic take on the realities of slavery, it is sharp enough; Clemens knew of what he wrote.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/102/102-h/102-h.htm

The larger issue of sexual abuse of enslaved women (and men, presumably) was understood in antebellum America, north and south; it is what the Brooks-Sumner affair was really about.

Best,

 

[riggerrob]

Antebellum Southern planters were as hypocritical Boers on the subject of sex with blacks.
White plantation owners were never shy about sex with black girls, then punishing the for getting pregnant. Some even bragged (in their diaries) about "flourishing" slave girls.
The nature of relationships varied widely (the full range) from loving and supporting (mixed race children) to routine beatings.
Mixed race sex was so common that few dark-skinned North Americans can claim pure African heritage. Today, the majority of "Afro-Americans" are quadroons, octroons, etc. because their facial features can no longer be attributed to any single African tribe.
I can identify some (recent) African immigrants just by their facial bones.

Apartheid South Africa had huge problems with "coloured" mixed race people because they did not fit gracefully into any racial classification. Old school Boers tried to blame all the mixed-race people a randy sailors.
Hah!
Hah!
One cheeky South African school boy did the math and concluded that every sailor would have had to drop his pants and work hard until his ship sailed again to conceive that many mixed race South Africans (Rhodesians, etc.). We suspect that one or more Boers may have "fiddled with" the kitchen help.

Aside from the "sporting" nature of sex with slaves, I suspect that it was also a "power trip" similar to " man love Thursday" in Afghanistan.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Consider Thomas Jefferson, today it's well known that he had several children with his slave Sally Hemings. Sally Hemings also was the half sister of his wife Martha Jefferson with them both having the same father, John Wales.

 

[The Uchronian]

I'm putting this here because it seems the least wrong location. If it should be somewhere else, just move it. I don't mind.

On to the actual question. In the antebellum South, slave owners had sex with their slaves, with or without the cooperation of the slaves in question. That's not in doubt. But I haven't been able to find any sort of information on how common a thing this was. Actually, I can find quite a few articles, but nothing resembling a consensus. Were such relations common, uncommon, open, hidden? I'm assuming male owner and female slave for purpose of this question.

It certainly did happen to some extent, yes, but, TBH, it also wasn't quite as majorly widespread as some modern sources have claimed.
Of course, whatever did occur, including outright rape, was generally covered up for the most part; a lot of that, had to do with the fact that interracial relations seen as quite unacceptable(and sometimes downright immoral) by the vast majority of Southern society(and much of the North, too, but rarely with the same severity of disapproval as in the South) in the antebellum era.

Antebellum Southern planters were as hypocritical Boers on the subject of sex with blacks.
White plantation owners were never shy about sex with black girls, then punishing the for getting pregnant. Some even bragged (in their diaries) about "flourishing" slave girls.
The nature of relationships varied widely (the full range) from loving and supporting (mixed race children) to routine beatings.
Mixed race sex was so common that few dark-skinned North Americans can claim pure African heritage. Today, the majority of "Afro-Americans" are quadroons, octroons, etc. because their facial features can no longer be attributed to any single African tribe.
I can identify some (recent) African immigrants just by their facial bones.

Apartheid South Africa had huge problems with "coloured" mixed race people because they did not fit gracefully into any racial classification. Old school Boers tried to blame all the mixed-race people a randy sailors.
Hah!
Hah!
One cheeky South African school boy did the math and concluded that every sailor would have had to drop his pants and work hard until his ship sailed again to conceive that many mixed race South Africans (Rhodesians, etc.). We suspect that one or more Boers may have "fiddled with" the kitchen help.

Aside from the "sporting" nature of sex with slaves, I suspect that it was also a "power trip" similar to " man love Thursday" in Afghanistan.

True, but let's not also forget that there was a significant amount of crossing the "color line" as it were, in the South, in those years immediately after the Civil War ended.

 

[Komodo]

It certainly did happen to some extent, yes, but, TBH, it also wasn't quite as majorly widespread as some modern sources have claimed.

Can I ask which modern sources you are referring to, and which sources you consider to be more accurate? And why?

 

[The Uchronian]

Can I ask which modern sources you are referring to, and which sources you consider to be more accurate? And why?

Sorry, but I don't have anything in particular on hand right now in terms of refutations(though I do believe others have listed at least one or more of the types of sources I was referring to); if I have the time to track something down, I'll get back to you.

 

[Komodo]

Sorry, but I don't have anything in particular on hand right now in terms of refutations(though I do believe others have listed at least one or more of the types of sources I was referring to); if I have the time to track something down, I'll get back to you.

Sounds good.

 

[NothingNow]

Consider Thomas Jefferson, today it's well known that he had several children with his slave Sally Hemings. Sally Hemings also was the half sister of his wife Martha Jefferson with them both having the same father, John Wales.

Yeah, but it's also really disingenuous to bring it up as an example of well anything. It's just that goddamned weird a relationship by any standard.

I mean we know about it, and it's surprisingly well documented. But it's also a really unusual circumstance. I mean it's his wife's half sister, but she was apparently mostly the caretaker the daughter Jefferson brought with him to France (where she actually passed up a chance to be free, probably because it would have meant never seeing her family again,) before becoming one of the servants at Monticello, and definitely acting as Jefferson's mistress/concubine for most of the remainder of his life.

I mean it's hard to fit that relationship into anything else, aside from the fact that Jefferson did refuse to officially acknowledge the Hemings children as his descendants, he did educate them as servants or craftsmen and then free them (after which most entered white society,) which represented a major opportunity cost for a slave owner in any time frame.

I mean there are examples of similar situations in the Sea Islands where the owner in question didn't bother to hide the relationship (but the Sea Islands were and continue to be weird,) but for the most part, in the 18th century it seems to have been something kept under wraps.

And then the 19th Century saw slavery mixed with a really racist ideology, which presumably made it both more desirable to do such things, and much less respectable to do so.

 

[Nofix]

To quote Kentucky politican Richard Mentor Johnson, "Unlike [Thomas] Jefferson, [Henry] Clay, [George] Poindexter and others I married my wife under the eyes of God, and apparently He has found no objections."

It was expected to be a reality for any given slaveholder, but also expected to be vigorously denied by the man in question. (Johnson was also a bit of an unusual case too, as he had an open common-law marriage* with Julia Chinn an octaroon slave.

*as actual marriage was illegal between whites and blacks.)

 

[Benevolent]

Speaking as someone with colonial ancestry that's both European and African and coming from one a side a long line of mulattos, griffes, quadroons and even a octoroon or two who were at varying levels of enslavement or success thanks to white fathers I have to say consent cannot be had in slave/master dynamics


It's impossible, it's unreasonable and anyone arguing it is possible is a romanticist and completely unaware.

I say this coming from a wealthy octoroon slave owner in Alabama who got freedom, education and money from his own father who laid with a "fancy slave" monogamously until he died.

 

[Benevolent]

To quote Kentucky politican Richard Mentor Johnson, "Unlike [Thomas] Jefferson, [Henry] Clay, [George] Poindexter and others I married my wife under the eyes of God, and apparently He has found no objections."

It was expected to be a reality for any given slaveholder, but also expected to be vigorously denied by the man in question. (Johnson was also a bit of an unusual case too, as he had an open common-law marriage* with Julia Chinn an octaroon slave.

*as actual marriage was illegal between whites and blacks.)

He was a predator who flouted his power on his human chattle, don't mollify him.

 

[Mikestone8]

Just google "white slaves" or similar, and study the pictures you find of slave children indistinguishable in colour from the "massa race", and you'll get a pretty clear picture of how common it was - and also how time-honoured, since it would probably have needed repeating over several generations to produce offspring as "white" as those shown.

 

[Benevolent]

Antebellum Southern planters were as hypocritical Boers on the subject of sex with blacks.
White plantation owners were never shy about sex with black girls, then punishing the for getting pregnant. Some even bragged (in their diaries) about "flourishing" slave girls.
The nature of relationships varied widely (the full range) from loving and supporting (mixed race children) to routine beatings.
Mixed race sex was so common that few dark-skinned North Americans can claim pure African heritage. Today, the majority of "Afro-Americans" are quadroons, octroons, etc. because their facial features can no longer be attributed to any single African tribe.
I can identify some (recent) African immigrants just by their facial bones.

Apartheid South Africa had huge problems with "coloured" mixed race people because they did not fit gracefully into any racial classification. Old school Boers tried to blame all the mixed-race people a randy sailors.
Hah!
Hah!
One cheeky South African school boy did the math and concluded that every sailor would have had to drop his pants and work hard until his ship sailed again to conceive that many mixed race South Africans (Rhodesians, etc.). We suspect that one or more Boers may have "fiddled with" the kitchen help.

Aside from the "sporting" nature of sex with slaves, I suspect that it was also a "power trip" similar to " man love Thursday" in Afghanistan.

Most of us are not octoroon or quadroon and about 50% of us are less than 15% European, most of which is very distant. SC, LA, MS, GA have the blackest black folks. LA, WV, VA, and pre-Great Migration New England had the most admixed but it depends on town, class, closeness of contact to white men while enslaved, how long pre-antebellum ones line has been free to really get a better idea of how admixture is distributed in our community.

Of course the Boer and Cape Colony Dutch created the mixed race, even in the book Afrikaner of the Kalahari open mixed unions were known and certain families had even older Khoi ancestry. Every single ancestry report of Afrikaners I've ever seen shows admixture, it went both ways from the beginning.

 

[Nofix]

He was a predatory who floated his power on his human chattle, don't mollify him.

Even I forgot how bad R. M. Johnson was until I did a little more research. After Chinn died in 1833 (cholera epidemic), he picked another slave as his "wife", who proceeded to run away. Johnson hunted her down, caught her, sold her at an auction, then picked her sister as his third "wife".

 

[Benevolent]

Even I forgot how bad R. M. Johnson was until I did a little more research. After Chinn died in 1833 (cholera epidemic), he picked another slave as his "wife", who proceeded to run away. Johnson hunted her down, caught her, sold her at an auction, then picked her sister as his third "wife".

There is no such thing as a good slave master

 

[DG Valdron]

It certainly did happen to some extent, yes, but, TBH, it also wasn't quite as majorly widespread as some modern sources have claimed.

I'm curious as to what you base that on?

Of course, whatever did occur, including outright rape,

It was all outright rape. A slave could no more legally consent to sex than could a ten year old.

 

[David T]

"Crawford's earlier analysis had provided an alternative interpretation of the way plantation size influenced the slaves' family patterns. He found that in one out of every six of the single slave mothers, the father was white. He also found that the probability of having a white father was also higher on small plantations. When Steckel analyzed data in the manuscript schedules of the 1860 census, his findings were consistent with those of Crawford. Using a more powerful statistical technique and a larger sample than could be obtained from the interviews with former slaves used by Crawford, Steckel found that on average, one out of every ten slave children was mulatto. He also demonstrated that this proportion likely to be was seven times as high on a farm of ten slaves engaged in mixed farming than it was on a cotton plantation of seventy-five slaves in the deep South. According to Steckel, the proportion of mulatto children was highest on small slave units in large predominately white cities and lowest on large plantations in the rice-growing region where the density of whites was low..." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/ensuringinequality.htm