Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture)

376 Pages·2007·1.47 MB·English

by  Anthony E. Kaye

Joining Places
The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture
Waldo E. Martin Jr. and Patricia Sullivan, editors
Anthony E. Kaye
A
Joining Places
Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South
The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill
∫ 2007 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by Jacquline Johnson
Set in Janson
by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
This book was published with the assistance of the John Hope
Franklin Fund of the University of North Carolina Press.
Parts of this book originally appeared in ‘‘Neighbourhoods and Solidarity
in the Natchez District of Mississippi: Rethinking the Antebellum Slave
Community,’’ Slavery and Abolition 23 (April 2002): 1–24, reprinted in
revised form by permission of Routledge; and ‘‘Slaves, Emancipation, and
the Powers of War: Views from the Natchez District of Mississippi,’’ in
The War Was You and Me: Civilians in the American Civil War, edited by
Joan E. Cashin, 60–84 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book
Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kaye, Anthony E.
Joining places : slave neighborhoods in the old South / Anthony E. Kaye.
p. cm. — (The John Hope Franklin series in African American history and
culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8078-3103-8 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Slaves—Mississippi—Natchez (District)—Social life and customs.
2. Slaves—Mississippi—Natchez (District)—Social conditions.
3. Community life—Mississippi—Natchez (District)—History.
4. Neighborhood—Mississippi—Natchez (District)—History. 5. African
American neighborhoods—Mississippi—Natchez (District)—History.
6. Natchez (Miss.: District)—Social life and customs. 7. Natchez (Miss.:
District)—Social conditions. 8. Slaves—Southern States—Social life and
customs—Case studies. 9. Slaves—Southern States—Social conditions—
Case studies. 10. Community life—Southern States—Case studies.
I. Title.
e445.m6k29 2007
307.3%36208996073076226—dc22 2007003201
11 10 09 08 07 5 4 3 2 1
To Melissa
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 Neighborhoods 21
2 Intimate Relations 51
3 Divisions of Labor 83
4 Terrains of Struggle 119
5 Beyond Neighborhood 153
6 War and Emancipation 177
Epilogue 209
Appendix: Population, Land, and Labor 221
Notes 223
Bibliography 311
Index 343
Maps
1 Natchez District of Mississippi 2
2 Slave Neighborhoods East of Second Creek 122
3 Slave Neighborhoods along Second Creek 125
Acknowledgments
This book has benefited from the help of many people, and it is a pleasure, at
long last, to thank them in print. Several archivists went beyond the call of
duty. Gordon Cotton kindly put me up during a research visit to the Old
Courthouse Museum in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Anne Lipscomb Webster an-
swered queries for years after my work at the Mississippi Department of
Archives and History. Mimi Miller of the Historic Natchez Foundation af-
forded me the rare pleasure of working all night in the archives.
I received financial support from several institutions. Primary research got
off the ground during fellowships at the National Museum of American His-
tory. The Princeton University Committee on Research in the Humanities
and Social Sciences provided a grant for work in the Natchez Trace Collec-
tion. Time for sustained work on revisions was provided by a semester leave
courtesy of the Pennsylvania State University College of Liberal Arts and by a
course release funded by the Institute for the Arts and Humanities and the
Richards Civil War Era Center.
Several people at these and other institutions took me under wing and
contributed to this book in their own singular ways. Pete Daniel, famous for
his boon companionship, is also a gifted teacher who taught me what I needed
to know about the South but did not know to ask and would never have read
in books. Dale Tomich initiated me into the Caribbean history of slavery.
John M. Murrin showed me what historical problem solving looked like and
what a comparative approach to American history could accomplish. Leslie S.
Rowland and Steven F. Miller of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project
at the University of Maryland, College Park, renewed my engagement with
the history of emancipation and Reconstruction. Nan E. Woodruff brought
me to Penn State, a kindness for which I repaid her by—I kid you not—
buying the house next door. That she responded by making our neighborhood
the warmest place I have ever lived will surprise no one who knows her.
William A. Blair has made collaborating with the Richards Center a pro-