The narrative of American slavery often centers on male slaveholders, but emerging scholarship reveals the significant role white women played in perpetuating and profiting from the institution. While it is widely known that George Washington owned enslaved people at his Mount Vernon estate, fewer are aware that his wife, Martha Washington, significantly expanded the enslaved population there. Their 1759 marriage brought together George’s estimated 18 enslaved individuals with Martha’s 84, reflecting her status as one of Virginia’s wealthiest women. This article explores the active and often brutal participation of white women in slavery, drawing heavily on Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers’ groundbreaking book, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (2019), which challenges longstanding assumptions about women’s roles in the slave economy.
White Women as Slaveholders
Contrary to traditional narratives that downplay white women’s involvement in slavery, Jones-Rogers, a history professor at the University of California-Berkeley, demonstrates that white women were not passive bystanders but active participants in the slave market. Her analysis of the 1850 and 1860 U.S. Census data reveals that approximately 40% of slaveholders in the regions studied were white women. This high percentage underscores the economic and social significance of slave ownership for white women in the antebellum South.
Slaveholding was deeply embedded in the identity of southern white women. Parents often gifted their daughters enslaved people rather than land, tying their social status and personal identity to the ownership of human beings. “Their very identities as white southern women are tied to the actual or possible ownership of other people,” Jones-Rogers writes. Owning enslaved people enhanced a woman’s marriage prospects, as it signaled wealth and social standing. Once married, white women fiercely protected their legal ownership of enslaved individuals, often taking their husbands to court to maintain control over their “property.” As Jones-Rogers notes, “For them, slavery was their freedom,” highlighting the paradox that their economic and social power rested on the subjugation of others.
Active Participation in the Slave Market
White women were not merely passive beneficiaries of slavery; they were active and often ruthless participants in the slave economy. They bought and sold enslaved people, managed plantations, and pursued the return of those who escaped, driven by their vested economic interests. Historical accounts, including interviews with formerly enslaved people conducted by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s, reveal that white women’s involvement in slavery began early. From childhood, they were groomed to manage and discipline enslaved people, sometimes receiving enslaved individuals as gifts when they were infants or young girls. This early exposure normalized their role as enslavers.
The violence inflicted by white women was a critical aspect of their participation. WPA interviews document that white children, including girls, were trained to beat enslaved people as part of their plantation management education. One formerly enslaved woman recalled, “It didn’t matter whether the child was large or small. They always beat you ’til the blood ran down.” Such accounts challenge earlier scholarship that suggested white women avoided violent or managerial roles due to societal expectations of femininity. Instead, Jones-Rogers shows that violence was integral to their exercise of power.
Exploitation of Enslaved Women
One of the most harrowing aspects of white women’s slaveholding was their exploitation of enslaved black women, particularly as wet nurses. White women frequently separated enslaved mothers from their infants to force them to nurse white children instead. This practice created a robust market for enslaved women who had recently given birth, with white women placing thousands of newspaper advertisements seeking “wet nurses.” The motivation was not purely practical; some white women explicitly expressed resentment at the physical demands of motherhood. One mistress complained that nursing her children made her “a slave” to them, revealing a perverse irony: white women sought to escape their burdens by imposing even greater ones on enslaved women.
WPA interviews also suggest that some white women orchestrated sexual violence against enslaved women to increase their “stock” of enslaved people. Formerly enslaved individuals reported instances where mistresses either sanctioned sexual assaults by white men or arranged forced pairings between enslaved individuals to produce children, who would then become their property. These acts of reproductive coercion further entrenched white women’s economic stake in slavery, as each new child born into bondage increased their wealth.
Resistance to Abolition
White women’s commitment to slavery did not wane as the Civil War approached. As Union troops advanced, freeing enslaved people in their path, some white women took extreme measures to preserve their human property. For example, Martha Gibbs relocated enslaved people to Texas, forcing them to work at gunpoint until 1866, a year after the formal abolition of slavery. Such actions reflect the lengths to which white women went to maintain the wealth and labor that slavery provided.
Post-Civil War, many white women sought to recreate the dynamics of slavery through exploitative labor contracts, compelling formerly enslaved people to work under conditions that mirrored their prior enslavement. Additionally, some white women contributed to a revisionist narrative that portrayed slavery as benevolent. Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind (1936), written by a woman born decades after abolition, is a prominent example. The novel’s romanticized depiction of slavery, embodied by characters like Scarlett O’Hara, obscured the brutal reality. Yet, as Jones-Rogers argues, these women were not merely defending an ideological vision of slavery; they were protecting their economic interests, just as Scarlett fiercely guarded her plantation’s profitability.
The role of white women as slave owners in the American South challenges traditional narratives that have minimized their participation in the institution of slavery. Far from being peripheral figures, white women were central to the slave economy, actively buying, selling, managing, and abusing enslaved people. Their actions were driven by economic self-interest and a desire to maintain the social power that slaveholding conferred. By examining primary sources like census data and WPA interviews, scholars like Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers have illuminated the depth of white women’s complicity in slavery’s atrocities. Understanding this history is crucial to grasping the full scope of slavery’s impact and the complex ways in which power, gender, and race intersected in the antebellum South.