To Have and to Hold: Slave Work and Family Life in Antebellum South Carolina

Looking closely at both the slaves' and masters' worlds in low, middle, and up-country South Carolina, Larry E. Hudson Jr. covers a wide range of economic and social topics related to the opportunities given to slaves to produce and trade their own food and other goods--contingent on first completing the master's assigned work for the day. In particular, Hudson shows how these opportunities were exploited by the slaves both to increase their control over their family life and to gain status among their fellow slaves.

Filled with details of slaves' social values, family formation, work patterns, "internal economies," and domestic production, To Have and to Hold is based on a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, emphasizing wherever possible the recollections of former slaves. Although their private world was never immune to intervention from the white world, Hudson demonstrates a relationship between the agricultural productivity of slaves, in family situations that range from simple to complex formations, and the accumulation of personal property and social status within slave communities.

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Hudson, Larry
Published: 05/15/2016
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820350370
Pages: 264
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.60d