Forging Freedom
Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston
AMRITA CHAKRABARTI MYERS
Series: Gender and American Culture
Copyright Date: 2011
Published by: University of North Carolina Press
https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807869093_myers
Pages: 288
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9780807869093_myers
Search for reviews of this book
Book Info
Forging Freedom
Book Description:

For black women in antebellum Charleston, freedom was not a static legal category but a fragile and contingent experience. In this deeply researched social history, Amrita Chakrabarti Myers analyzes the ways in which black women in Charleston acquired, defined, and defended their own vision of freedom.Drawing on legislative and judicial materials, probate data, tax lists, church records, family papers, and more, Myers creates detailed portraits of individual women while exploring how black female Charlestonians sought to create a fuller freedom by improving their financial, social, and legal standing. Examining both those who were officially manumitted and those who lived as free persons but lacked official documentation, Myers reveals that free black women filed lawsuits and petitions, acquired property (including slaves), entered into contracts, paid taxes, earned wages, attended schools, and formed familial alliances with wealthy and powerful men, black and white--all in an effort to solidify and expand their freedom. Never fully free, black women had to depend on their skills of negotiation in a society dedicated to upholding both slavery and patriarchy.Forging Freedomexamines the many ways in which Charleston's black women crafted a freedom of their own design instead of accepting the limited existence imagined for them by white Southerners.

eISBN: 978-1-4696-0259-2
Subjects: History, Sociology
You do not have access to this book on JSTOR. Try logging in through your institution for access.
Log in to your personal account or through your institution.
Table of Contents
Export Selected Citations Export to NoodleTools Export to RefWorks Export to EasyBib Export a RIS file (For EndNote, ProCite, Reference Manager, Zotero, Mendeley...) Export a Text file (For BibTex)
Select / Unselect all
  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii)
  3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (pp. ix-xiv)
  4. INTRODUCTION: IMAGINING FREEDOM IN THE SLAVE SOUTH
    INTRODUCTION: IMAGINING FREEDOM IN THE SLAVE SOUTH (pp. 1-18)
    https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807869093_myers.4

    Sometime between 1800 and 1820, a black female Charlestonian by the name of Catherine petitioned the South Carolina General Assembly and asked the assemblymen to ratify her freedom. Originally the enslaved laborer of one Peter Catanet, Catherine was sold to a man named Dr. Plumeau for $300, “a sum far below her value,” in order to enable “the wench to purchase her freedom.” Catherine and Dr. Plumeau then entered into a contract, witnessed by Peter and his wife, which stated that Catherine would be manumitted when she had repaid Plumeau her purchase price of $300. Catherine hired herself out and...

  5. PART I: GLIMPSING FREEDOM
    • CHAPTER 1 CITY OF CONTRASTS: CHARLESTON BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR
      CHAPTER 1 CITY OF CONTRASTS: CHARLESTON BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR (pp. 21-36)
      https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807869093_myers.5

      White visitors arriving in Charleston in the mid-nineteenth century found themselves alternately fascinated, shocked, perplexed, and repulsed. As they disembarked onto docks teeming with black men hauling cargo, and pushed their way past dozens of black female vendors like Mary Purvis, selling everything from fresh fruit and oysters to clothing and homemade crafts, they wondered where all the white people were.¹ Somewhat disoriented, but continuing on, newcomers soon found themselves on Meeting Street, one of the city’s main thoroughfares. Heading up Meeting, away from the water and toward the center of town, they walked by prostitutes of all colors who...

  6. PART II: BUILDING FREEDOM
    • CHAPTER 2 A WAY OUT OF NO WAY: BLACK WOMEN AND MANUMISSION
      CHAPTER 2 A WAY OUT OF NO WAY: BLACK WOMEN AND MANUMISSION (pp. 39-76)
      https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807869093_myers.6

      In 1814, Sophia Mauncaut, a resident of Charleston, was accused by authorities of being an illegally freed black woman. With the threat of reenslavement hanging over her head, Sophia escaped the auction block by acquiring affidavits from four white Charlestonians, all of whom vouched that she was legally free. Philippe Barreyre, a local merchant, swore that Sophia came to Charleston in 1804 with her mistress, Josephine Catreuille, recently deceased. Joseph Dupont stated that he had known Josephine well and had advised her, when her financial situation was bleak, to sell Sophia. Josephine, however, informed Joseph that Sophia and her children...

    • CHAPTER 3 TO SURVIVE AND THRIVE: RACE, SEX, AND WAGED LABOR IN THE CITY
      CHAPTER 3 TO SURVIVE AND THRIVE: RACE, SEX, AND WAGED LABOR IN THE CITY (pp. 77-112)
      https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807869093_myers.7

      In the spring of 1835, Charlestonian Dye Mathews lost her husband of many years. A free man of color and an artisan, George Mathews left an estate that included his carpentry tools, a lot with several buildings on it located on Friend Street, and five enslaved persons. It is not surprising that George bequeathed his five grandchildren equal shares of his estate. His widow, however, received only her basic dower rights. George wrote that Dye “requires no provision as she is capable of maintaining herself and I know she will continue her kindness and protection to our grandchildren. She has...

    • CHAPTER 4 THE CURRENCY OF CITIZENSHIP: PROPERTY OWNERSHIP AND BLACK FEMALE FREEDOM
      CHAPTER 4 THE CURRENCY OF CITIZENSHIP: PROPERTY OWNERSHIP AND BLACK FEMALE FREEDOM (pp. 113-146)
      https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807869093_myers.8

      In 1857, Eliza Seymour Lee initiated a lawsuit against fellow Charlestonian Henry Gourdin. A respected businesswoman, Eliza and her husband, John, had owned the city’s two most illustrious hotels for decades, lodgings that catered to prominent whites from across the nation and around the world. By the 1850s, Eliza was a wealthy widow with ties to Charleston’s white elites, and she oversaw her business affairs with the help of Henry Gourdin, whom she hired to help manage her finances. A prominent attorney, Henry appeared happy to take Eliza on as a client. Their relationship soured, however, when Eliza discovered certain...

  7. PART III: EXPERIENCING FREEDOM
    • CHAPTER 5 A TALE OF TWO WOMEN: THE LIVES OF CECILLE COGDELL AND SARAH SANDERS
      CHAPTER 5 A TALE OF TWO WOMEN: THE LIVES OF CECILLE COGDELL AND SARAH SANDERS (pp. 149-175)
      https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807869093_myers.9

      In 1831, Cecille Langlois Cogdell left her husband, Richard Walpole Cogdell, and moved out of the home they rented together on Broad Street. A middleclass matron and mother of five whose respectability had been demonstrated through her marriage, her church attendance, her ownership of enslaved laborers, and her social activities, Cecille had always appeared to adhere to the rules that governed the raced and gendered roles that South Carolina society afforded to her. As a result, she was rewarded by the church, the state, and her peers by being accorded all the rights and privileges of virtuous, middle-class, feminine whiteness....

    • CHAPTER 6 A FRAGILE FREEDOM: THE STORY OF MARGARET BETTINGALL AND HER DAUGHTERS
      CHAPTER 6 A FRAGILE FREEDOM: THE STORY OF MARGARET BETTINGALL AND HER DAUGHTERS (pp. 176-202)
      https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807869093_myers.10

      In 1842, Barbara Tunno Barquet became ensnared in the legal battles of a wealthy South Carolina couple. That year, Elizabeth Heyward Hamilton, a member of a powerful planter family, sued her husband, James, for violating their marriage contract.¹ Elizabeth brought an estate worth $100,000 into her marriage, and she and her husband agreed to place this property in a trust estate for Elizabeth’s “sole and separate use.” By law, James could not use the entrusted property to guarantee or pay his own debts. But he did just that. A land speculator and gambler, James, who had himself appointed guardian of...

  8. EPILOGUE: THE CONTINUING SEARCH FOR FREEDOM
    EPILOGUE: THE CONTINUING SEARCH FOR FREEDOM (pp. 203-210)
    https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807869093_myers.11

    Free black life in the antebellum South has long been a topic of research among scholars. Despite the lengthy historiography of the field, however, the lives of free black women in the Old South have largely been relegated to the shadows. From their efforts to gain their freedom to their involvement in the marketplace, from their attempts to acquire property to their forays into the worlds of litigation and finance, free black women played an integral part in the daily affairs of antebellum cities. Indeed, while Charleston’s legal, political, social, and economic systems were created and maintained by white male...

  9. NOTES
    NOTES (pp. 211-248)
  10. BIBLIOGRAPHY
    BIBLIOGRAPHY (pp. 249-262)
  11. INDEX
    INDEX (pp. 263-267)
University of North Carolina Press logo