Southern Women Black and White in the Old

McMillen summarises the latest thinking about the lives of women in the South, both white and black, elite and ordinary. One of the best features of the book is the author's ability to weave the lives of all these women together in the same chapters. The excellent introduction is followed by four chapters on Family Life and Marriage, Reproduction and Childrearing, Social Concerns: Education and Religion, and Women at Work. McMillen points out that many myths still surround antebellum Southern women. They were much more complicated people than the women portrayed in many novels and histories. Of course, they cannot be lumped into one group as they differed according to time, region, race, and class, but all were influenced by living in a rural, agricultural, slave society. In this society women were supposed to be submissive and hardworking and devoted to the family and home; each person had a place and women were supposed to know theirs.

Sally G. McMillen is Professor of history at Davidson College, where she has taught since 1988. She is also the author of Motherhood in the Old South: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Infant Rearing (1990), To Raise Up the South: Sunday Schools in Black and White Churches, 1865—1915 (2002) as well as several journal articles. She is co-editor of Major Problems in the History of the American South (1999).

Born and raised in southern California, she is the mother of two grown children. Her personal interests include running, hiking, biking, reading, and traveling.

Foreword

vii

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction: An Overview of the South and Southern Women

1

(12)

Family Life and Marriage

13

(44)

Family

13

(4)

Courtship and Marriage

17

(8)

Miscegenation and Sexuality

25

(9)

Marriage

34

(3)

Black Women and Marriage

37

(4)

White Women and Marriage

41

(7)

Laws and Marriage

48

(9)

Reproduction and Childrearing

57

(33)

Fertility

57

(5)

Pregnancy

62

(4)

Childbearing

66

(8)

Motherhood and Childrearing

74

(16)

Social Concerns: Education and Religion

90

(28)

Education

90

(5)

The School Experience

95

(6)

Education for the Less Privileged

101

(3)

White Women and Religion

104

(7)

Women's Benevolence

111

(3)

Black Women and Religion

114

(4)

Women and Work

118

(36)

The Meaning of Southern Women's Work

118

(2)

Slave Labor

120

(6)

Slave Protest

126

(2)

White Women and Work

128

(4)

Work on the Frontier

132

(3)

Paid Employment

135

(5)

Nontraditional Roles

140

(4)

Interracial and Class Relationships

144

(7)

Those Who Questioned Slavery

151

(3)

Southern Women and the Confederacy

154

(33)

Elite White Women

155

(17)

Slave and Free Black Women

172

(4)

Yeoman and Poor Farmwives

176

(4)

Coping Skills and Union Supporters

180

(2)

End of War

182

(1)

Conclusion

183

(4)

Bibliographical Essay

187

(22)

Index

209

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Southern Women Black and White in the Old South

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials