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Josephine Howell was seventy-two years of age when she told her story. She was the daughter of a slave named Rebecca Jones born in Nashville, Tennessee. Rebecca's mother and Josephine's grandmother was known as a "breeding woman" worth a great deal of money. She was so productive that she gave birth to twenty-one children in her lifetime. The Jone's had wanted to keep Rebecca but they found her to be a young lady with a terrible temper so she was sent to live with their relative Gabe McAlway in Arkansas.
Within the institution of slavery, Josephine's grandmother was treated better than other female slaves. She was a money-maker with every child she birthed. As a "breeder" she was given a lighter workload and even more food to keep her healthy and productive. After the birth of her baby, she would have been allowed more time to care and nurture the babe and to recuperate. This was not done out of kindness from her slave master but was done so she'd be ready to reproduce again. For the slaveowner, it was simply an economic focus on the women giving birth, producing the best specimen to be able to make the most money.
As Josephine's story continues: When her mother became of the age where she too could reproduce Gabe McAlway "forced motherhood upon her". Another fact of slaves having children. It was never their choice. The slaveholders breeding program necessitated the breeding process and there was only one way for that to continue and that was through forced sex. Since Josephine was born before the war; Josephine was born a slave; Josephine's father was killed during the war; Josephine never met her father.
During the 19th century, the majority of births were attended by a midwife. It was also a time where so much could and did go wrong during the birthing process. Complications that are easily handled today, usually meant death during this time period sometimes for both mother and the child. Historians looking at the numbers estimate that in 1850 before babies reached their first birthday, those babies born into slavery died at a rate 1.6 times higher the that of white infants.
Usually after a birth a slave who was not viewed as a "prize breeder" was expected back at her duties. There would be no reduction of her duties and she was expected to care for her newborn as well. If they were desired specimens then the process repeated itself over and over until they were too old or as many did, they died giving birth. What happened to the few older slaves that survived giving birth? According to an interview by Charles Sackett Sydnor a slave from Mississippi:
"Negro women were too valuable in the field to be allowed much time to care for their children. A month or so after the birth of a child, the mother returned to her task. Thereafter the child was cared for during the day by the plantation nurse, who was generally a woman too old for work". {2}
Harriet Jacobs (1815-1897) was born into slavery in Chowan County, North Carolina. Her mother died when she was six and her life was a living hell. As an adult she was driven by her slave owner's demands to escape and find refuge in her grandmother's attic where she lived for seven years in isolation.
"Living in an area about 9 feet long, 7 feet wide and 3 feet high, the attic admitted no light until she drilled a tiny hole. It was stifling in the summer and frigid in winter, home to rodents and stinging insects. She could not stand up, and when she rolled over she bumped her head on the roof. Despite the discomfort and the isolation, she preferred staying there to living as Norcom's slave." {5}
She eventually gained her freedom and is the author of the book "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl!" published in 1861 from which the introductory quote is taken. In the book she also wrote this:
"My master was, to my knowledge, the father of eleven slaves. But did the mothers dare to tell who was the father of their children? Did the other slaves dare to allude to it, except in whispers among themselves? No, indeed! They knew too well the terrible consequences.Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves.
They do not trouble themselves about it. They regard such children as property, as marketable as the pigs on the plantation; and it is seldom that they do not make them aware of this by passing them into the slave-trader's hands as soon as possible, and thus getting them out of their sight." {6}
Although some slaves married, their unions were never considered legal. Some slave owners were aware of family connections and tried to keep families together, while others used the threat of separation to keep their slaves in line. Sometimes when a slave owner died, families were separated per the will or if debts were incurred, slaves were sold to raise money. Historian Michael Tadman has estimated that approximately one third of enslaved children in the upper South states of Maryland and Virginia experienced family separation in one of three possible scenarios: sale away from parents; sale with mother away from father; or sale of mother or father away from child. {7} Perhaps the saddest stories are those where slave mothers were placed in a position where they believed they had no more options except one.
Margaret Garner was a slave living in Kentucky in 1850's America. It's January of 1856 and she sees it is time to make a run to freedom. The Ohio River is frozen over and she heads off with a group of slaves across the snow and ice to slide across the river to freedom. It was a group of seventeen that headed on the escape. After a successful crossing, the group divided as they would not attract so much notice.
The mother of four would not make a successful run as she was soon caught by slave catchers. Vowing she would never let her children go back to slavery and seeing her path to freedom fading, she grabbed a butcher knife and cut the throat of her two-year old daughter. It was said this was the little one she loved the best. Her attempts to harm herself or her children was thwarted, although she had managed to attack several of them with the knife. She was arrested and sent to jail. She was tried and forced to return to Kentucky and back to slavery where she died in 1858 from typhoid.
George Moses Horton (1798–after 1867) was born into slavery the sixth of ten children. He loved reading, learning and writing poems. With encouragement from friends he was able to published his first book of poems in 1829. The book was titled "The Hope of Liberty" and included in the book was the poem "On Liberty and Slavery". He would not be free until the Union Army arrived in 1865 to liberate him. His poem sums up the anguish Margaret Garner must have felt that awful day in January when she sees hope only despair.
"Alas! and am I born for this,
To wear this slavish chain?
Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil and pain! . . . .
To wear this slavish chain?
Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil and pain! . . . .
Sources
1. https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/mss/mesn/mesn-023/mesn-023.pdf
2. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humani...l-sciences-magazines/childbirth-and-midwifery
3. https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2014/06/19th-century-midwives.html
4. https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/hidden-voices/enslaved-women-their-families/motherhood-and-children#
5. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/16338196/harriet-ann-jacobs
6. https://spartacus-educational.com/USAmulatto.htm
7. https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1609-1865/essays/aafamilies.htm
8. https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=510
{*} https://www.brandeis.edu/projects/fse/slavery/lullabies/three-lullabies.html
{**} https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/beyond-poems-on-slavery.htm
{***} https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/the-cotton-revolution/harriet-jacobs-on-rape-and-slavery/
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