They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

Jones-Rogers begins Chapter 8 with her examination of an 1865 letter written by Eva Jones, a former slave-owning woman from Georgia, who laments over the abolition of slavery. In the letter, Jones writes that, “slavery is entirely abolished—a most unprecedented robbery, and most unwise policy” (181). Jones’s description of emancipation as a robbery serves as the inspiration for the title of Chapter 8.

In her final chapter, Jones investigates the aftermath of the Civil War and economic effects of abolition on white slave-owning women. Jones-Rogers explains that many of these women, in the face of poverty and starvation, turned to new options: either attempting to force formerly enslaved people to continue working under them or adapting “old management methods to accommodate new labor arrangements” (183).

Jones-Rogers chronicles the joy expressed by the newly freed enslaved people and the despair that overwhelmed their former owners. These slave-owning women struggled to adapt to a new reality in which slavery, so core to their identities, no longer existed. Many of these women regretted not selling their slaves earlier in preparation for a world without slavery. Others resisted emancipation and promoted the popular belief that African Americans did not possess the moral or intellectual ability to take care of themselves.

Jones-Rogers provides accounts of some former slave-owning women who simply maintained their ownership of their enslaved people by keeping them in the dark about their emancipation. As Union troops began to withdraw, anti-Black violence by whites surged and led to the formation of the Freedmen’s Bureau, which was responsible for the “supervision and management of all abandoned lands, and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen from rebel states” (185-186). The Freedmen’s Bureau helped both the formerly enslaved and former slave owners transition from slave labor to free labor, while also assisting freed people in matters involving employer mistreatment and abuse. Those African Americans who resided outside the reach of the Union Army or the Freedmen’s Bureau agents were sometimes misled by their female owners who kept their free status hidden from them.

Former slave owners also took advantage of the struggling formerly enslaved people who did lacked the financial means to care for themselves and their children. Many former slave owners persuaded freed parents to allow their children to keep providing slave labor for a bit more time. Isolated from their parents, these formerly enslaved children were more easily kept uninformed of their free status, opening the door for manipulation and deception. Apprenticeship laws often bound freed children to their former slave owners. These laws sought to find solutions for what to do with the huge number of freed children under 18 who, though classified as “orphans,” were in fact forcibly separated from their still-living parents. Former slave-owning women would fight for control over these children in the courts, dismissing attempts to reunite them with extended family members. Jones-Rogers confronts the true reasoning for apprenticeship promoted by these former slave owners. Jones-Rogers believes these former slave owners “wanted a bound labor force that was legally obligated to submit to their will, and the apprentice laws provided them with one way to secure it” (189). While some freed parents turned to the Freedmen’s Bureau for assistance in getting their children back, others took the law into their own hands.

Former slave owners struggled mightily to adapt to a system of free labor. As former slave owners battled these new restrictions, non-slave-owning women took advantage of their experience working with paid laborers before the war and thrived. Some former slave owners with this negotiation experience were able to make this transition easily. Those who did have this experience attempted “to extend their tenure as slave owners” and “used exploitative and coercive business practices to maximize their profits and deprive free African Americans of the compensation they deserved” (192). These coercive business practices included exploitative labor contracts, a refusal to pay employees after the completion of their work, and even threats of violence. This led many freed people to file complaints against these devious employers. Jones-Rogers praises the courage of these formally enslaved people, especially in the context of widespread anti-Black violence after the war.

Facing poverty as they never had before, many former slave owners turned to formerly enslaved for assistance, effectively embracing beggary. Despite surviving a lifetime of horrific abuse, these freed people provided as much as they could for their former slave owners. Jones-Rogers explains that white women cast themselves as victims in pleas to the federal government asking for reclamation of their lost properties. President Andrew Johnson approved the requests of married women who still owned property valued at $20,000 or more. These women were able to return to their properties and build new lives for themselves.