Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T13:19:57.881Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - “Let our women and old men … be disabused of the false and unfounded notion that slavery is sinful”

Emancipation Contested

from Part II - Enslavers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2023

David Stefan Doddington
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
Get access

Summary

Intergenerational disputes shaped by white southerners’ hopes to profit from slavery did not end with the death of an enslaver. These contests became particularly virulent when the matter revolved around posthumous manumissions, and this chapter shows how elderly enslavers who sought to emancipate enslaved people in wills had their actions challenged by rivals who utilized the discourse that conflated old age with weakness, both of body and mind, to diminish their reputation and deny their mastery. The aging process had public and political ramifications in a slave society built on dominance and mastery, and a focus on emancipation and age serves as a fitting end to this study which underlines the wider importance of age as a vector of power in the antebellum south. Contests over emancipations underscore how far understandings of aging as a period of declining force led to conflict between white southerners looking to rise at another’s expense. White enslavers looked to their aged peers who sought to free their slaves as reduced in authority and status, and as figures whose claims to mastery must be usurped for the good of both private and public interests associated with slavery.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×