Geographies of Freedom: Black Women’s Mobility and the Making of the Western River World, 1814-1865 by Alisha J. Hines Department of History Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Thavolia Glymph, Advisor ___________________________ Sarah Deutsch ___________________________ Adriane Lentz-Smith ___________________________ Gunther Peck 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 2018 i v ABSTRACT Geographies of Freedom: Black Women’s Mobility and the Making of the Western River World, 1814-1865 by Alisha J. Hines Department of History Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Thavolia Glymph, Advisor ___________________________ Sarah Deutsch ___________________________ Adriane Lentz-Smith ___________________________ Gunther Peck 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 2018 Copyright by Alisha Hines 2018 Abstract Geographies of Freedom explores the Ways in Which free and enslaved black Women pursued freedom for themselves and their families in the middle Mississippi River Valley using the law and uniquely gendered access to forms of labor, mobility, and the special configurations of the region. The river-centric economy and the fluid mobility of goods, people, and ideas across state borders there begs the study of the region expanding out from the confluence of the Western rivers as a unique site to explore questions of mobility, geography, slavery, and freedom. My dissertation argues that black Women actively navigated the roiling World of the antebellum middle Mississippi River Valley—a region that offers an unparalleled opportunity to understand some of the most historically significant cultural, political, and economic shifts of the nineteenth century aneW. The black Women I discuss lived in a World being transformed by an increasingly market driven economy and attendant reconstructions of labor organization. At the same time, the demographic landscape Was shifting, neW industries and public social spaces emerged, and the conflict over the political geography of slavery and freedom heightened. Amidst the chaos, black Women found access to mobility, economic opportunity, and even the law, Which they used to pursue freedom. From court records, slave testimonies, neWspapers, government records, manuscript collections and contemporary popular literature, I extract narratives iv of black Women as migrants, laborers, litigants, and agents of their own lives in a border region perpetually in the process of making itself. By running away, suing for their freedom or that of their children, and achieving economic stability, black Women embodied the very promise of capitalism and democracy that most White men flocked to the river valley to pursue. In doing so, they threatened hardening notions of gender inequality and racial control. My dissertation shoWs that as they continued to act in these self-determined Ways, black Women fueled an accelerating political conflict over race and slavery in the border region leading up the Civil War. They challenged slave holders’ claims to their bodies, their labor, and their children, and they forced judges and attorneys in the region to reevaluate laws around slavery, freedom, and property. In the aftermath of the Civil War, black Women retained these methods of strategically appealing to the law and using their mobility and extended netWorks of communication to organize and maintain control over their lives. v Dedication For my family. vi Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ....................................................................................................................... viii AcknoWledgements ................................................................................................................ ix Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1 “Illinois Might Yet Become a Slave State…”: The Fraught Boundar(ies) BetWeen Slavery and Freedom in the Early Mississippi River Valley ...................................................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 2 “She Had an Idea of Endeavoring to Git Her Freedom”: Mobility, the Chattel Principle, and the Laws of Slavery in the Antebellum River Valley ....................................................................................................... 54 Chapter 3 “To Make Her OWn Bargains With Boats”: Gender, Labor, and Freedom in the Western Steamboat World ........................................................................ 101 Chapter 4 “Never Go Out of the City”: Forging Freedom in the Slave South ..................................................................................................................................... 155 Chapter 5 “I Trust We May Meet in a Better World Than This”: Black Women and the Politics of Mobility During and After the Civil War ............................. 196 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 249 References ............................................................................................................................. 254 Biography ............................................................................................................................. 266 vii List of Figures Figure 1 . Royal Mail Through Line Company Advertisement ........................................ 110 Figure 2. 1838 Map of St. Louis shoWing Chouteau's Pond in the center ........................ 119 Figure 3. "The Family Nurse" from David Hunter Strother's article "A Winter in the South" (1858).................................................................................................. 142 Figure 4. Chambermaids on the Charles Rebstock, ca. 1883. Thomas H. Gandy and Joan W. Gandy Collection ............................................................................... 252 viii Acknowledgements I have looked so forWard to the opportunity to thank all of those Who Were a part of making this dissertation possible. I have been extremely lucky to find brilliant and generous archivists to assist me in my research including, especially, Mike Everman and Pat Barge at the Missouri State Archives in St. Louis. I am one of many researchers Who has benefited from your dedication and expertise and the field Will continue to be enriched by your guardianship of the archive. Darla Brock and the archivists and staff at the Tennessee State Library and Archives and Vincent Clark and Frank SteWart at the Shelby County Archives Were also instrumental in carrying out this project. My research has been supported by several grants and felloWships from my home department at Duke University, the Graduate School, and other institutional bodies such as the PhD Lab in Digital Humanities and the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies. I am also indebted to the Coordinating Council for Women in History, the Marcus Garvey Foundation, the Tennessee State Historical Society, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, and the Association of Black Women Historians for their support. I have benefited personally and intellectually from the instruction and mentorship of my committee members Thavolia Glymph, Sarah Deutsch, Gunther Peck, and Adriane Lentz-Smith. Thank you for your enthusiasm about my Work, for reading my chapters and asking difficult questions, and for the invaluable feedback and advice ix you’ve given that I Will alWays return to as I continue to live With this project. Sally, as I begin my career I carry With me my first teaching experience as your teaching assistant. I regularly Watched in awe as you captured the students’ attention and imagination in your lectures and so engagingly and enthusiastically guided us through the history of Women and gender in the United States. I hope to be half the teacher that you are. Adriane, early on during my time at Duke you met me Where I Was and provided space for the groWth and development of my ideas, I thank you especially for that. You also gave me, literally, a place to sit and a place to Write, and for that I am eternally grateful! Gunther, our independent study truly changed the trajectory of this project and I am so glad that you stuck With me through the research and Writing and have continued to help me refine its conceptual frameWork. To Thavolia Glymph, my advisor and mentor for the past six years, you have pushed me to become the historian that I am and instructed me in the discipline in Ways that I cannot begin to thank you for. This dissertation and the contributions it Will make to the field in this iteration and others Will be a product of your close and careful attention to my research, Writing, and ideas. You have shoWn me What it means to be a historian. Working With you has been a privilege and an honor, and I can only hope the benefits of this experience Will remain evident in my scholarship. I have collected many mentors and friends over the course of my education