Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 8-23-2011 12:00 AM A Season in Town: Plantation Women and the Urban South, 1790-1877 Marise Bachand University of Western Ontario Supervisor Margaret M.R. Kellow The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in History A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Marise Bachand 2011 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Women's History Commons Recommended Citation Bachand, Marise, "A Season in Town: Plantation Women and the Urban South, 1790-1877" (2011). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 249. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/249 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A SEASON IN TOWN: PLANTATION WOMEN AND THE URBAN SOUTH, 1790-1877 Spine title: A Season in Town: Plantation Women and the Urban South Thesis format: Monograph by Marise Bachand Graduate Program in History A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Marise Bachand 2011 THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION Supervisor Examiners ____________________ ____________________ Dr. Margaret M.R. Kellow Dr. Charlene Boyer Lewis ____________________ Dr. Monda Halpern ____________________ Dr. Robert MacDougall ____________________ Dr. Samuel Clark The dissertation by Marise Bachand Entitled: A Season in Town: Plantation Women and the Urban South, 1790-1877 is accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of “Doctor of Philosophy” ____________________ ___________________________________ Date Chair of the Dissertation Examination Board ii Abstract What did the city mean for plantation women in the slaveholding South? This dissertation documents how a privileged group of women experienced and represented urban space in a society primarily defined by its rurality. From the very beginning of colonization and until the end of slavery, cities like Charleston and New Orleans occupied a key place in the lives of these women. Bridging the artificial gap between country and city present in the historiography, this study revises the plantation mythology, which contends that plantation mistresses rarely went to town, and when there, they seldom ventured beyond the domestic space. After examining the residential pattern of elite planting families, characterized by seasonal migrations and absenteeism, it explores the interplay between gender, space, and power in the city. Town houses, yards, theaters, ballrooms, libraries, coffee houses, parks, and streets were sites of intense gendered politics in the Old South. Whether they were born on a rice or a cotton plantation, whether they were Americans or Creoles, whether they were young belles, middle aged matrons or older widows, plantation women overwhelmingly took pleasure in a season in town. Even though a number of them were somewhat ambivalent about the moral and sexual dangers of the city, they still prized the proximity of social networks and the urban amenities. In all cases, however, their enjoyment of the city was based on the exploitation of the enslaved, either in the cotton fields or the urban household. Privileged by their class and race, these women were nonetheless subordinated by their gender. The story of the encounter of plantation women with the urban South told in this dissertation is therefore a story of accommodation and resistance to southern patriarchy. Keywords: Women, City, South, Plantation, Charleston, New Orleans, Gendered Spaces, Absenteeism, Town houses, Migrations, Domestic slaves. iii Acknowledgements There are two kinds of advisors: the ones that want you to think like them, and the ones that just want you to think. I was lucky enough to come upon the latter kind. I am thankful to Margaret M.R. Kellow for several years of magnanimous advice. The worst sentences in this dissertation are mine. Some of the best are hers. Institutions have been generous. I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, The University of Western Ontario, the Society of Graduate Students, and The New Orleans Historical Collection. I am grateful to Judith Bonner and Daniel Hammer of the TNHOC, who have patiently provided me with images and documents. They are fine representatives of the professionals that I have met in southern archives. As I presented pieces of this dissertation in conferences throughout North America, Joan E. Cashin, Cynthia Kierner, Catherine Clinton, David Moltke-Hansen, and Kirsten Wood have engaged with my work, offering helpful suggestions and fair criticisms. This dissertation is embedded in two places: London, Ontario, and Montreal, Quebec. My teachers at Western, Ian K. Steele, George Emery, and Katherine McKenna, have expanded my intellectual horizons and encouraged me to tackle tough historical questions. Craig Simpson read the preliminary project and the penultimate version, sharing grammar rules and his legendary enthusiasm for southern history. Thanks to Peter V. Krats and Samuel Clark for contracts and conversations. Because I was fortunate enough to have great colleagues in grad school, London has become a home away from home. As undergraduate papers were graded, babies born, some married, other divorced, and dissertations eventually submitted, we shared a common passion for good food and a meaningful life. Many of them have also edited my hesitant English prose, and thus helped me become a better writer. Thanks to Michelle Hamilton, Jamie Mather, Lynn Kennedy, Forrest Pass, Andrew Ross Margaret So, Andrew Smith, Chris Tait, Amy Tait, Wes Gustavson, Marsha Dilworth, Mark Eaton, Robert Wardhaugh, and Richard Holt. In Montreal, Isabelle Lehuu has been a source of encouragement, an acute critic, and the Americanist I have long sought to emulate. François Furstenberg showed interest in my work when it was the most needed, and shared his pragmatic outlook on the profession. My iv students in Montreal, Rimouski, Ottawa, and Trois-Rivières have fed my passion for American history and continuously reminded me why this solitary work mattered. I have been seldom alone as I traveled through the vagaries of doing a dissertation while raising a little girl, thanks to my family and friends. Their support took countless forms and, in the end, made the difference. I am especially indebted to François Perras for morning coffees, which have given me the courage to sit at my desk, day after day, and learn the craft of the historian. I dedicated this dissertation to my daughter Simone, born at the beginning of this project, and for whom I now write the history of women. v Table of Contents Certificate of Examination ii Abstract iii Acknowledgments iv Table of Contents vi Prologue: “All the Pleasures the Town Affords” 1 Chapter 1: Town & Country: Elite Southerners and Seasonal Migrations 29 Chapter 2: A Town House, a Dower House: The Gendered Politics of 81 Urban Domestic Space Chapter 3: Understanding Something of Urban Housekeeping: Racial 127 Politics in the Urban Household Chapter 4: The Gay Season 174 Chapter 5: Places “Inviting and Agreeable to Ladies”: The Geography of 227 Respectability in the Urban South Epilogue: Lives offered “on the Altar of the Country” 276 Bibliography 284 Curriculum Vitae 314 vi 1 Prologue “All the Pleasures the Town Affords” With the death of Harriot Pinckney Horry in 1830, the Old South lost one of its most accomplished women. For the last forty-five years of her life, Harriot had successfully managed the rice plantation of her deceased husband Daniel, and she bequeathed to her daughter a considerable fortune, consisting of hundreds of acres of prime land in the South Carolina Lowcountry, dozens of head of cattle, and nearly two hundred slaves. Her legacy also included two residences: a plantation house in Saint James Santee and Prince George Winyah County, known as The Hampton1; and an elegant dwelling on Tradd Street in Charleston. While the plantation was her principal residence during her married life, the widow Harriot chose to inhabit the southern metropolis for the greatest part of the year.2 As a girl, she had loved the country.3 But as she aged, the life of a plantation mistress weighed heavily on her shoulders, and a niece recommended that she “certainly ought now to enjoy some respite, some cessation from constant exertion.”4 In Charleston, Mrs. Horry‟s fêtes were grand events.5 The dowager entertained large gatherings in her townhouse as the posthumous inventory of her goods, which included plenty of chairs, nearly two thousand bottles of wine, and the finest china and silverware, testified.6 She also enjoyed being surrounded by friends and family members who came to Tradd Street for a morning call or an evening tea.7 A close acquaintance of Harriot, who had known her for decades, never 1 In this study, the names planters gave to their plantations (and sometimes to their town houses) are italicized to highlight the fact that they were mental constructs, in addition of being places of residence and economic production. 2 While her husband was alive, the couple divided their time between the plantation and a house at the corner of Broad and Legare Street. Elise Pinckney, ed. The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, 1739-1762, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972, xxiii; Harriot Horry Ravenel, Eliza Pinckney, New York: Charles Scribners‟s sons, 1896, 244. According to family correspondence, Harriot Horry appears to be in town most months of the year starting in the mid-1790s. See Rutledge Family Papers, Ralph Izard Papers, Manigault Family Papers, all three collections at the South Caroliniana Library, Columbia, South Carolina.