Very interesting and important observations, Martha -- thank you!  Your 
essay in the Thompson book sounds well worth reading, so I'll look 
forward to doing that.

You closed your message by saying:

> From all of this research, plus the research I have done since then, 
> it is
> clear to me that the relationship between the enslaved and the people 
> who
> owned them was complex and contradictory.  Just accepting that slaves 
> both
> *were* property and *owned* property is pretty difficult for a lot of 
> people
> to understand, let alone finding out that some slaves owned more 
> property
> than some poor whites.  But this is what the records reveal--and I am 
> glad
> to have had a hand in helping thousands of visitors to Carter's Grove 
> (and
> the Peyton Randolph Kitchen, another one of my projects) understand 
> some of
> the complexities of 18th century Virginia society.
>
I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the scholarly study of 
American slavery by perhaps the finest history teacher I know, James 
Oliver Horton (he is also a superb scholar).  Whether to clueless 
undergraduates or advanced graduate students, Jim's message was the 
same: if we are to understand slavery, we must never lose sight of what 
an extraordinarily complex phenomenon it was, and how complex were the 
human relationships -- economic, social, psychological -- it 
engendered.

An insight whose wisdom my own research has endlessly underscored, and 
one reinforced, I think, by some of the best discussions on this list.

A good weekend to all --

-- Jurretta Heckscher