audiobook The Battle of Waterloo Experience by Peter Snow; Dan Snow; National Army Museum in History

Description

Historians have traditionally neglected relationships between slave men and women during the antebellum period. In Chains of Love; historian Emily West remedies this situation by investigating the social and cultural history of slave relationships in the very heart of the South. Focusing on South Carolina; West deals directly with the most intimate areas of the slave experience including courtship; love and affecton between spouses; the abuse of slave women by white men; and the devastating consequences of forced separations. Slaves fought these separations through cross-gender bonding and cross-plantation marriages; illustrating West's thesis about slave marriage as a fierce source of resistance to the oppression of slavery in general. Making expert use of sources such as the Works Progress Administration narratives; slave autobiographies; slave owner records; and church records; this book-length study is the first to focus on the primacy of spousal support as a means for facing oppression. Chains of Love provides telling insights into the nature of the slave family that emerged from these tensions; celebrates its strength; and reveals new dimensions to the slaves' struggle for freedom.