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Bonds of Womanhood: The World of a White Anti-Slavery Slaveholder

Susanna Delfino

0/5 ( ratings)

Class, race, and gender collide in this insightful examination of the life of Susanna Preston Shelby Grigsby -- a white plantation mistress and slaveholder who struggled to participate in the economic modernization of antebellum Kentucky. Drawing on Grigsby's correspondence, author Susanna Delfino uses Grigsby's story to explore the complex cultural and social issues at play in the state's economy before, during, and after the Civil War.

Delfino demonstrates that Grigsby engaged in certain kinds of antislavery activism, such as hiring white servants as a way of conveying her support for free labor and avoiding ever selling a slave. Despite her beliefs, however, Grigsby failed to hold to her moral compass when faced with her husband's patriarchal authority or when she experienced serious economic trouble. This compelling study not only illuminates how white women participated in the South's nineteenth-century economy, but also offers new perspectives on their complicity in slavery.

Pages: 230

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Release: December 14, 2021

ISBN: 0813154839

ISBN 13: 9780813154831

Bonds of Womanhood: The World of a White Anti-Slavery Slaveholder

Susanna Delfino

0/5 ( ratings)

Class, race, and gender collide in this insightful examination of the life of Susanna Preston Shelby Grigsby -- a white plantation mistress and slaveholder who struggled to participate in the economic modernization of antebellum Kentucky. Drawing on Grigsby's correspondence, author Susanna Delfino uses Grigsby's story to explore the complex cultural and social issues at play in the state's economy before, during, and after the Civil War.

Delfino demonstrates that Grigsby engaged in certain kinds of antislavery activism, such as hiring white servants as a way of conveying her support for free labor and avoiding ever selling a slave. Despite her beliefs, however, Grigsby failed to hold to her moral compass when faced with her husband's patriarchal authority or when she experienced serious economic trouble. This compelling study not only illuminates how white women participated in the South's nineteenth-century economy, but also offers new perspectives on their complicity in slavery.

Pages: 230

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Release: December 14, 2021

ISBN: 0813154839

ISBN 13: 9780813154831

More books from Susanna Delfino

Neither Lady nor Slave: Working Women of the Old South

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Southern Society and Its Transformations, 1790-1860

Global Perspectives on Industrial Transformation in the American South

Technology, Innovation, and Southern Industrialization: From the Antebellum Era to the Computer Age

The Southern Middle Class in the Long Nineteenth Century

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