Revolutionary South By
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Propertied White Women, Family Property, and Governance in the Post-Revolutionary South by Emily Margolis Department of History Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Laura Edwards, Supervisor ___________________________ Adriane Lentz-Smith ___________________________ Juliana Barr ___________________________ Philip Stern Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University 2017 i v ABSTRACT Propertied White Women, Family Property, and Governance in the Post-Revolutionary South by Emily Margolis Department of History Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Laura Edwards, Supervisor ___________________________ Adriane Lentz-Smith ___________________________ Juliana Barr ___________________________ Philip Stern An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University 2017 i v Copyright by Emily Margolis 2017 Abstract “Propertied White Women, Family Property, and Governance in the Post- Revolutionary South,” examines white women’s changing legal and social relationship to family property—chiefly land and enslaved people—in the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Louisiana from 1790 to 1840. My research shows that throughout this time, many white women owned and managed land, enslaved people, and other forms of personal property, both formally in their own names, and informally, as representatives of their families. But when state lawmakers amended laws in the decades following the Revolution, they changed white women’s formal legal relationship to family property and enslaved people. As southern state lawmakers enacted new laws to stabilize and grow their exploitative slave states, they invested a broader class of white men with more authority over family land and enslaved people. Traditional legal customs, which had made room for propertied women to manage family businesses and estates, increasingly gave way to more formal and uniform laws that promoted men’s individual control over family property and collective control over enslaved people. My dissertation argues that new laws had unintended consequences. By making it more difficult to pass property through female family members, these laws could undermine the ability of individual patriarchs to keep property within their families and ensure the status of future iv generations. While wealth remained a powerful and meaningful marker, white masculinity gradually became more important in claiming the vote and, more broadly, a voice in public governance. Upon witnessing the indirect and unintended consequences of laws, which in some instances jeopardized women’s control over property, elite white lawmakers (who were the same group that enacted the laws) began to rethink the laws. Consequently, women, family, and property became a large part of debates about status in the decades following the American Revolution. My conclusions are drawn primarily from legal documents, including state and local court records, state digests and code books, petitions, census records, land grants, conveyance records, wills, and marriage contracts. In addition, this study also pulls from other sources that explain how propertied families and their communities reacted to these legal changes, including memoirs, family papers, newspapers, travel literature, and personal correspondence. v Dedication To Karl Goodman, I love you more than words can say…and I won’t even try, because that would just be one more thing I would ask you to edit. And to Jack Goodman, your giggles, hugs, and cuddles have been the best motivation to finish. vi Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ............................................................................................................................. viii List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... x Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Propertied White Women and Family Estates in the Wake of the American Revolution, 1776 to 1812 ............................................................................................................ 37 Chapter Two: Determining Authority and Reforming Property Laws in the New United States, 1776 to 1820 ...................................................................................................................... 76 Chapter Three: Married Women and Family Property, 1785 to 1835 ............................... 113 Chapter Four: White Women and Slave Codes in South Carolina, 1820 to 1835 ............ 158 Chapter Five: Women of the Ancienne Population, Slaves, and American Governance in Louisiana, 1820 to 1835 ............................................................................................................. 200 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................ 250 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 257 Primary Sources .................................................................................................................. 257 Manuscripts ....................................................................................................................... 257 Newspapers and Periodicals .......................................................................................... 258 Published Primary Sources ............................................................................................. 260 Secondary Sources .............................................................................................................. 269 Biography ................................................................................................................................... 291 vii List of Figures Figure 1: “Revenge Taken by the Black Army for the Cruelties Practised on Them by the French” ....................................................................................................................................... 221 viii List of Abbreviations NCDAH North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Raleigh NARC Notarial Archives Research Center, New Orleans NOPL City Archives, Louisiana Division, New Orleans Public Library SCDAH South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia SCHS South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston ix Acknowledgements Having spent several years on this dissertation, it is a pleasure to finally thank the many people and institutions that helped bring the project into being. First, I would like to thank my adviser, Laura Edwards. She has provided a great deal of guidance and encouragement for the last eight years. She has read every draft, multiple times, and provided insightful and constructive comments each time. Her enthusiasm for history is inspiring and she has been invaluable to the work. I would also like to thank the members of my committee—Adriane Lentz-Smith, Juliana Barr, and Phil Stern—whose feedback has greatly improved the quality of the project. Other historians at Duke have generously provided helpful comments and encouragement that have both helped the project and helped me develop as a historian. I would especially like to thank Reeve Huston, Sally Deutsch, John Martin, and Pete Sigal. Outside of Duke, in addition to being generous with their time, I received incredibly helpful feedback from Sally Barringer Gordon, Kirsten Wood, Felicity Turner, and Kimberly Welch. I would also like to thank the members of the Triangle Legal History Seminar and American Society for Legal History. My project received generous support from the Duke Graduate School and History Department, the American Society for Legal History, and Kenyon College. I was particularly fortunate enough to have received funding from the William Nelson x Cromwell Foundation Fellowship for Legal History, the Julian Price Endowed Dissertation Research and Writing Fellowship, the Richard Watson Fellowship, Anne Firor Scott Merit Awards; and the Henry G. Dalton Endowed Graduate School Fellowship. The archivists and staff at research libraries throughout the South have been courteous and helpful to me. I would like to extend a special thanks to those at Duke University Libraries, The Historic New Orleans Collection, Louisiana Notarial Archives Research Center City Archives, Louisiana Division, New Orleans Public Library, Louisiana State Museum Historical Society, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, North Carolina Department of Archives and History, South Carolina Historical Society at the College of Charleston, and the South Carolina Department of Archives. My fellow graduate students at Duke have been supportive in many ways. Samanthis Smalls read and reread more conference papers and chapter sections than I care to mention. Moreover, her friendship has shaped