Introduction
The land and its products certainly played a guiding role in the daily experiences of slave families, both during their time for the master and their time for themselves, but at a more fundamental, demographic level the nature of regional agriculture also determined the very basis for family life. Local economic trends directly and indirectly influenced slaves‘ marriage strategies and the stability of their family relationships across time and space. In order to analyze slaves‘ family formation and experiences with forced separation in the coming chapters particular attention must first be paid to the very nature of their containment in different parts of the South.
Factors such as the spatial distribution and sexual composition of enslaved populations, both of which defined the social landscapes in which they lived, were crucial in this regard. First, the spatial distribution of enslaved populations among slaveholdings of various size played an important role in determining the nature of social contact and marriage strategies among slaves. Largely restricted in space and mobility to the agricultural units upon which they lived and worked, bondspeople throughout the South turned first and foremost to the slave communities of their home residence for social contact, although slaveholders‘ frequent permission for weekend visiting generally expanded social networking in all but the most isolated regions. Second, the sexual composition of enslaved populations determined the physical possibility and extent of
slave family formation in different localities. The boundaries and opportunities with which slaves were confronted when seeking a mate were thus greatly influenced by slaveholding size and sex ratios. These factors in turn varied across time and space, as dictated by the nature of slave-based agriculture in various communities of the nineteenth-century South.
This chapter will broadly examine the nineteenth-century evolution of slaveholdings on the grain farms of Fairfax County, the rice plantations of Georgetown District, and the sugar plantations of St. James Parish, respectively. What was the spatial distribution and sexual composition of enslaved populations in different regions of the non-cotton South, and how did they change over time? The aim of this chapter is to provide a basis from which to further explore enslaved people‘s experiences with family formation and stability in chapters six and seven by first establishing the social landscapes of slave populations in each region.
The Downward Spiral: Fairfax County, Virginia
Just before the turn of the nineteenth century Fairfax County ironically boasted one of the grandest slaveholdings of the newly formed United States. Only a handful of eighteenth-century plantations were of a truly grand scale to begin with there, but George Washington‘s famous Mount Vernon, situated on the banks of the Potomac River, contained close to three hundred slaves upon his death in 1799. By the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, however, the county no longer contained even a single plantation of any grandeur. Indeed, the largest slaveholding in 1860 numbered a meager forty-three bondspeople, of whom the great majority were actually resident on the farms and in the households to which they were annually hired. In Fairfax, the transformation of local agriculture and the economic hardships that plagued the county throughout most of the first half of the nineteenth century were paralleled by a spectacular decline in slaveholding size. Even Washington expressed the desire for fewer slaves as early as the 1790s. ―It is clear,‖ he wrote, ―that on this Estate I have more working negros . . . than can be employed to any advantage in the farming system. . . Something must [be done] or I shall be ruined.‖ The manumission of his slaves upon his death was doubtless the result of economic as well as moral considerations.1
Table 5.1 illustrates the general trend in Fairfax County. In 1810, some 42 percent of the enslaved population lived on plantations (slaveholdings which contained more than twenty slaves). The rest — 58 percent — lived on farms (units with twenty slaves or less). Fully 31 percent lived on holdings with ten slaves or less. In the entire county, only two slaveholdings —
accounting for just 6 percent of the total slave population — contained more than one hundred slaves. Clermont Plantation, owned by Charles J. Love, contained 140 bondspeople, and William Fitzhugh‘s expansive and well known Ravensworth contained 235.2
A dramatic shift in slaveholding size was clearly underway by 1820, however, a trend which continued into the decade that followed. The census returns for 1820 show that by that year the percentage of slaves living on plantations had plummeted to 32 percent, while the percentage of those living on farms jumped to 67 percent. By then 41 percent lived on holdings with ten slaves or less. As the percentage of slaves living on small farms increased, the percentage of those living on large plantations decreased. William H. Fitzhugh, the son of William Fitzhugh and main heir to his father‘s Ravensworth estate, owned 158 slaves in 1820, down from the 235 slaves that his father had owned in 1810. After Fitzhugh, the largest slaveholders in the county were Lawrence Lewis of Woodlawn (ninety-three slaves), and Bushrod Washington of Mount Vernon (eighty-three). Charles J. Love had lifted stakes and moved with his slaves to Tennessee. By 1830 the percentage of slaves living on farms had increased slightly, to 69 percent, but the decline in the largest slaveholdings had continued unabated. Indeed, in 1830 there was not a single slaveholding in Fairfax County which contained a hundred slaves. The labor force on the Ravensworth estate had been reduced to eighty-two, and that of Woodlawn had shrunk to fifty- seven. Only eight slaveholders throughout the county held more than forty slaves.3
The intensity of the decline was given added force during the 1830s and 1840s. The percentage of slaves living on smallholdings continued to increase in direct proportion to the declining percentage of those living on large holdings. By 1840 some 78 percent of the enslaved population lived on farms, with 50 percent living on holdings with ten slaves or less. Plantations now accounted for only 22 percent of the enslaved population, and a meager four slaveholdings contained more than forty slaves. The largest plantation — that of absentee landowner Anne Fitzhugh — contained seventy-six slaves, accounting for two percent of the total slave population. In 1850 the figures were even more dramatic. No less than 84 percent of slaves now lived on farms, and 60 percent lived on holdings with ten slaves or less. The largest slaveholder, Dennis Johnston, owned fifty-four slaves and was one of only two slaveholders who owned more than forty. (David Fitzhugh, the owner of forty-six slaves, was the other.)4
By the eve of the Civil War, the rapid decline in slaveholding size had levelled out to some extent, holding at 1850 levels. In other words, 84 percent of the enslaved population continued to live on farms in 1860, while 16 percent continued to be held on plantations. The absolute number of slaves on the largest plantations continued to decline, however. Virginia Scott‘s Bush Hill, now the largest slaveholding in the county, contained only forty-three slaves,
most of whom she hired out annually. The next largest slaveholder was Alexander Grigsby, who was listed as the owner of forty slaves. Grigsby was a known slave trader, however; presumably he intended to sell most of his slaves to the Deep South. Not only had the size of Fairfax County slaveholdings reached an all-time low by 1860, but so had the size of the slave population itself. Indeed, between 1810 and 1860 the slave population was slashed by 47 percent, from 5,927 to just 3,116.5
At least three interrelated factors contributed to the general decline in slaveholding size in Fairfax County during the first half of the nineteenth century. First, excessive estate divisions obviously took their toll on the distribution of the slave population. Primogeniture law, by which a slaveholder‘s inheritance was passed on in bulk to the eldest son, was no longer widely practiced in Virginia by the turn of the nineteenth century, and indeed was eventually abolished. (It was viewed by many as an outdated and unrepublican practice.) This meant that by the beginning of the nineteenth century, slaveholdings were being divided more or less equally among several heirs, effectively breaking up the colonial pattern of moderate and large slaveholdings, a topic that will be further explored in chapter seven.6
The break-up of these slaveholdings was exacerbated by the economic difficulties facing planters and farmers in the nineteenth century, which not only prevented expansion in either land or slaves, but triggered a decrease in slaveholding size. In other words, small slaveholdings tended to remain small — virtually all actually shrank over time. A ―distressed community oppressed by debt,‖ as county residents collectively described themselves, the Fairfax County slaveholding class could not afford to expand its slaveholdings. Indeed, one visitor observed in 1835 that ―the land-holders in [these] parts of Virginia are becoming poorer nearly in direct proportion to the number of their slaves . . .‖ Quick to realize this, local slaveholders not only culled their naturally growing slave population, but reduced it in absolute numbers by 47 percent in the antebellum period, occasionally by manumission but mostly by selling them via the domestic slave trade to the Deep South, where the demand for slave labor was practically insatiable. Farmers and planters tried to relieve some of their financial problems by making do with a minimum amount of slave labor: less slaves became responsible for more tasks.7
A third important factor which contributed to the decline in local slaveholding size was the decreasing fertility of the soil, which triggered a shift from extensive to intensive cultivation in local agriculture. In other words, slaveholders expressly turned to cultivating smaller plots more intensively. Plantations devolved into farms, and farms devolved into smaller farms. One historian noted that in the nineteenth century Fairfax County farmers were keen to ―intensively cultivate smaller plots, without the hindrance of a ‗plantation mentality.‘‖ James Redpath, a
northern reporter who traveled through Fairfax County in the 1850s, observed that by that time the land was ―chiefly held in small sections.‖ When Lawrence Lewis‘s unusually large Woodlawn Plantation was offered for sale in 1846, the advertisement read that ―900 acres of the tract are cleared and have been under cultivation at different times . . . It can be divided into small farms.‖ Farmers found that their scanty supply of manure, crucial in any attempt to revitalize the soil, could only be spread over a limited space. The least productive fields of many planters‘ inherited estates were therefore abandoned and left for the forests to reclaim. As the amount of actual acreage that was brought under cultivation declined, slaveholders could not only not afford more slaves, but they did not need more slaves. Redpath heard from a local farmer that it took only ―two men and a boy to cultivate . . . twenty-five acres and attend to the cows.‖ Most agreed that it was better to reduce their number of slaves to the bare minimum — extra hands (whether free or slave) could always be temporarily hired on during especially labor intensive seasons such as the harvest — than to keep and maintain superfluous slaves. John Taylor, a northern Virginia planter and agriculturalist, warned his neighbors‘ against keeping more slaves than could be personally supervised or put to efficient use. Other progressive farmers, such as Edmund Ruffin, also encouraged a reduction in the number of slaves and the procurement of better results from the remainder.8
This trend was given added impulse throughout the nineteenth century by the widespread adoption of more labor-saving devices which further reduced the number of hands necessary to cultivate grains. Implements such as improved plows (which diminished part of the need for excessive hoeing), scythes, cradles, and harrows, were popular among local farmers. Richard Marshall Scott, who in 1846 complained that it ―will require much constant labor‖ to turn a profit from his inherited plantation, took a step in the right direction when he ―went to town and bought a thrashing machine‖ in November 1848. The introduction of reapers in the wheat harvest resulted, according to one local, in ―the saving of much expense and great risk; by their aid with seven hands and two boys, fifteen acres can with ease be cut and shocked per day — the Self Rakers requiring one less hand.‖ Dennis Johnston‘s estate, which was sold upon his death in 1853, contained ―ploughs, harrows, wheat fans, [a] threshing machine, scythes, cradles, mowing scythes, forks, rakes, &c.‖ And in local newspapers, implements such as ―Revolving Horse Rakes, Scythe Sneaths . . . Hay Rakes, Whet Stones, Scythe Rifles, English Scythes, Cradles, &c.‖ were widely advertised.9
Enslaved people in Fairfax County thus increasingly found themselves living on small holdings between 1800 and 1860, as local farmers and planters inherited small fractions of their forefathers‘ once moderate-sized plantations, and moreover found that they could neither afford,
nor did they need, many slaves. By the eve of the Civil War a majority of local slaves lived on units with ten slaves or less. But was their distribution across the county even, or were there variations in the density of population groups? And what was the sexual composition of the enslaved population in the nineteenth century?
The precise distribution of the enslaved population in nineteenth-century Fairfax County is difficult to ascertain; locating the farms and plantations listed in the census schedules is no simple task. The county was divided into two parishes: Truro, which was lower lying and bordered the Potomac, and Fairfax, which consisted of the upper western and interior sections. In his demographic study of the Fairfax County slave population, historian Donald Sweig found that throughout the antebellum period a majority of local slaves were ―clustered‖ in the lower parish of Truro, probably along the Potomac River. In 1820, for example, 62 percent of the enslaved population lived in Truro Parish. Truro also contained many of the largest and most famous slaveholdings — Mount Vernon, Woodlawn, and Ravensworth, to name a few. In 1820, 22 percent of slaves in Truro Parish lived on holdings with more than forty slaves, compared to only 6 percent in upper Fairfax Parish.10
A detailed map of Fairfax County which dates from the Civil War and was used by the Army of Northern Virginia also indicates a high concentration of farms and plantations near the river, especially within a few miles of Alexandria and along the Accotink Turnpike (which ran roughly parallel to the river toward Occoquan in Prince William County). It is unclear, however, how many of the farms were in fact slaveholdings, as the local slave population had diminished substantially by the Civil War and non-slaveholding farms are indistinguishable from slaveholding farms on the map. Several farms were also located near Bailey‘s Crossroads and Falls Church (both towns within easy reach of Alexandria and Washington), as well as along the northern banks of the Occoquan River (which serves as the southern boundary between Fairfax and Prince William Counties). The interior and western sections of Fairfax County — especially near Fairfax Court House, Centreville, and Dranesville — appear to have been less densely populated. In 1845 one Quaker spoke to a northern man who had bought a farm and settled with his family near Dranesville in western Fairfax, and asked him ―what could have induced him to. . . settle here on an exhausted soil and in a neighborhood so sparsely inhabited that he must feel the want of society.‖ The Quaker further claimed that ―at a distance of 15 or 20 miles from the District of Columbia, the traveller finds himself in a wilderness of pines, and journeys for miles without seeing a single habitation.‖ The general trend, thus, appears to have been a higher population density and larger slaveholdings near the Potomac River, especially near Alexandria
and Washington, with inland and western Fairfax County being less densely populated and containing smaller slaveholdings.11
The sexual composition of the enslaved population in nineteenth-century Fairfax County appears to have been conducive to family formation, at least in theory. In order to gain an understanding of the local sex ratios between enslaved men and women of reproductive age (between fourteen and forty-five years old), it is useful to analyze the census data for the years 1820 and 1850. The reasons are twofold. First, the census returns for these two years allow for an easy calculation of sex ratios for the ages mentioned above, contrary to the census returns for other years such as 1810 or 1840, both of which list ages in different categories. Moreover, by comparing data from 1820 and 1850, any demographic developments over time, if there were any, can be detected. The figures present a clear picture. In 1820 there were 2,062 slaves of reproductive age living in Fairfax County, of whom 1,073 were male and 989 were female — a relatively small difference of eighty-four, meaning that eighty-four males may not have been able to secure a spouse within the county. The male/female sex ratio was at that time 1.1. In 1850 the sexual composition of the local slave population was even more balanced. Of the 1,468 slaves of reproductive age living in the county at that time, 729 were male and 739 were female. The male/female sex ratio in 1850 was virtually balanced at 1.0.12
In sum, slaves in Fairfax County increasingly lived on small slaveholdings over time, and slaveholdings tended to be even smaller and more widely scattered as the distance from the Potomac River and the city of Washington increased. The slave population was reduced by 47 percent between 1810 and 1860, but this did not significantly alter the population‘s sexual composition, which remained stable and theoretically continued to provide the decreasing number of slaves with opportunities to form families.
Building Momentum: Georgetown District, South Carolina
From the outset, exceptionally large slaveholdings dominated the fertile rice country of the Carolina lowcountry, which in the eyes of many contemporaries more closely resemble a Caribbean slave society than an American one. With time, lowcountry slaveholdings only grew larger, especially during the nineteenth century, and nowhere was this growth more pronounced than in Georgetown District. At the dawn of the century almost 90 percent of Georgetown‘s slaves lived on plantations — most of the rest lived not on farms but rather as domestic servants in the village centers. By the time South Carolina seceded from the Union, nearly 70 percent of
Georgetown‘s bondspeople lived on holdings which contained more than one hundred slaves. Some of these holdings were truly enormous. As mentioned earlier, the estate of Joshua John Ward, Georgetown resident and largest slaveholder of the South, counted a slave population of 1,131 in 1860. His may be an extreme example, but slaveholdings containing hundreds of