Kevin,
The source is from 16th & 17th Century English Literature, not
Ecclesiastical debates. This is most readily seen in the homosocial love
poetry of Shakespeare, *The Sonnets, *specifically* *to the Young man and
the reasons for marriage. Shakespeare provides the gentry's view on the
institution of marriage, not the Church of England's nor that of the Roman
Catholic Church. I will check my source when I next speak to him but this
is the convergence of History, Literary Criticism, and Theology.  If there
is a European (Settler-Colonial) rank before your name, you are not of the
socioeconomic class that I examine; President Jefferson is all well and
good, but what about the Hemmings and their relationship to the Wayles (nee
Skelton), since both women shared a common father and children by Thomas?
If slavery ended in 1820 (prior to Jefferson's death), how would his
in-laws have received his children by an enslaved mother? How would the
local community have reacted?  Would their reaction not have more bearing
on the end of slavery than pronouncements from the pulpit, podium, or
political grandstand?  If Melvin Patrick Eli is correct in *Israel on the
Appomattox,* should not the experience of the "otherwise free" serve as a
guiding experience and not just the enslaved people, for the end of slavery
without the Civil War?

The equivalency I was attempting was that human beings, that had less than
perfect possession of themselves (enslavement or coverture, as examples)
did have acknowledged souls after the Second Great Awakening.  Whether we
call it Social or Cultural History, women were treated as property by
custom by the lower socioeconomic classes and non-hegemonic groups in the
South.  Even among the elite, Martha Custis Lee (Washington's
granddaughter) did not posses Arlington House under her father's will; her
husband, Robert E. Lee, did. She did not enjoy complete possession of
herself because of the customs, and the law, at that time.  Even your
qualifications as to potential male punishment for assault or murder are
couched in a "could."   I agree.  Blanket statements have little place here
but I never said it was law.  It was custom.  When a woman signs her own
Marriage Bond during the same time period, it is usually commented upon by
Historians because it is unusual for a woman to assert that form of
self-possession.  Frederick Douglass assaulted the white slave breaker and
received no punishment in MD where the law was quite clear about such an
attack: death for the assailant.  Yet, the law was ignored for local
reasons.  Elizabeth Keckley was unjustly whipped by the headmaster of the
Bingham School in Mebane, NC and while he was not guilty under the law, she
claims that she held him up to public scorn so that he never did it again.
She employed a sophisticated understanding of balance between societally
acceptable behavior and as you correctly indicate, the full power available
under the law.  However, if we are not to protect sacred cows, even the
argument (as to stratum of human society) that the enslaved could not
testify in court does not survive the tale of Hillery G. Richardson's
enslaved man, William.  Facts are clear; William brutally attacked and
"virtually obliterated" Richardson's knee with a wheat cradle & scythe
after running away and being subsequently whipped.  The jury investigated,
took testimony from enslaved witnesses and returned a conviction on a
lesser charge, based in some degree, on those people's testimony. (Eli,
407-11)  This was in subsequent "Massive Resistance" (rolled into *Brown v
Board*) Prince Edward County.  If the attack would have occurred a decade
or more later, William would probably have been lynched.

For example, Baptist membership rolls from Sandy Creek Baptist Association
and Kentuck Baptist (the mother church in Pittsylvania county) indicate
membership was not extended to the enslaved people until the 1820s, the
earliest I recall was 1824.  Prior to that, enslaved and free people, who
were not white, do not appear in the membership lists.  Mount Olive, the
mother of Baptist churches in Alamance County, NC had 37 founding members
on 2 August 1834, 26 whites and 11 non-whites.  Kentuck, the Mother in
Pittsylvania, was in existence for three decades without non-white
membership while Mt. Olive has founding membership that is non-white.
Something has changed over that time period in the Baptist church, which
appears to represent cultural or social change.  First African Baptist in
Richmond appears to follow a similar pattern when it was turned over,
albeit under white supervision, to non-white Trustees.  The point I was
responding to was that in 1860, religious groups appear to acknowledge that
the bondspeople have souls because they are baptised and brought under
doctrinal punishment regiments.  The Society of Friends had done a similar
inclusionary membership among their future dispossessed enslaved people in
the early 19th Century.  I have always been led to believe, this doctrinal
issue of punishment had prevented earlier memberships because of oxymoronic
nature of Christian master/Christian slave.  I would welcome any additional
information on this change.  I have skimmed Charles' book but have not
returned to it yet.  (It is on my summer reading list.)  So by the 1840s,
the Baptist, Friends, Dunkards (who ordained their first African American
minister during the decade), Presbyterians, Wesleyans, and the United
Brethren (all with significant memberships in VA and the northern border
counties in NC) hold that chattel have souls and can be of the
Elect/Select, even if they can be alienated.  That is somewhat dramatically
different than "they were not in the stratum of human society."  If one
assumes that literature represents a certain segment of society, then the
status of white women, however that is defined, who had an earlier, similar
position, experienced an evolution of thought on their possession of
souls.  If I overstepped propriety, it was not my intent but to compare
analogous situations. But does not the enslavement of indentured white
women, who had children by enslaved men, allow for more latitude in
comparison?  Reproductive control reduced women to slaves for life and
their offspring followed *Partus Sequitor Ventrem.*  If one cannot find
analogies between antebellum women and chattel, than a considerable amount
of African American Literature that argues for a common enemy for women and
African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries is based upon
false assumptions.  It is a logical incongruity in sister disciplines and
the fictive realm may tell us more about broader social currents, if one
believes Cultural History methodology.

I look at ethnicities across the South. If we look at pre-contact VA,
Mourning War would have functioned as a societal safety valve, keeping
communities in balance by replacing members from outside the group,
including women.  Julianna Barr's* Peace Came in the Form of a Woman:
Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands* looks at this female
commodification in Texas, which may be similiar to what was seen between
John Smith  & Pocahontas in VA.  If it is chattel bondage, the woman
appears to be alienable, following the Federal Indian Civilization program
under Jefferson, even in historically matrilineal groups.  If it is
Mourning War, it is not so clear.  Some Native American females were
alienable (those captured in war in VA during the late 17th Century) while
others were not alienable but were still a form of property under a Native
American form of slavery.  This system is what the English colony was
founded alongside.  When did it disappear?  The Dawes Freedmen rolls have
Catawba women listed as former bondspeople in the 1890s, who went on the
Trail of Tears.  Since Removal was imperfect and the initial discussion was
on the end of slavery without the Civil War, these types of slavery (and
with Mourning War, a different route to manumission) exist concurrently
with gang, task, maritime, and rice & indigo slavery.  If we are to argue a
counter-factual, should not divergent sources be included?

Thank you for the criticism.  I should have been even more specific.
Best,
Eric

On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 3:45 PM, Hardwick, Kevin - hardwikr <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Eric Richardson writes:  "As to inclusion in the stratum of human society,
> women were property regardless of ethnicity during the same period and
> coming from English tradition, there were questions as to whether they had
> souls.  John Donne, Shakespeare, And Milton all hold a similar viewpoint
> about women."
>
> I'd like to see these claims warranted somehow in sources.  I can say with
> complete confidence, based on study of Church of England theology, that no
> Anglican, in Virginia or in Great Britain, at any time tried to defend the
> claim that only men had souls.  The broader notion that Christian faith
> more broadly denied the existence of souls in women is something of a
> canard, and derives from various relatively obscure debates during the
> reformation (over the proper translation of the latin "homo" for example).
>  I don't know the theology of protestant dissent anywhere near so well as I
> do that of the Church of England, but I'd be very surprised indeed if
> Baptist or Presbyterian ministers at any point attempted to argue that
> women did not have souls.  Perhaps Charles Irons or John Ragosta, or
> someone similarly knowledgeable in these sources can comment?
>
> I am also uncomfortable with the blanket assertion that "women were
> property" under 17th or 18th century Virginia law.  It certainly is the
> case that the legal doctrine of coverture operated in British Colonial
> Virginia, and that this doctrine was debilitating to the status of women.
>  But there were important distinctions between the dependent status of
> women and that of enslaved persons.  For one thing, enslaved persons, as
> property, could be alienated--they could be bought and sold.  For another,
> Virginia law released masters of slaves from the sanctions applied against
> men or women who perpetuated the various legal categories of violence
> against other persons.  In other words, a master who killed his slave was
> not guilty of murder; and a master who physically attacked his slave was
> not guilty of assault or battery.  But in Virginia law, a husband who
> killed his wife, or a father who killed his daughter, or a son who killed
> his mother, *could* be found guilty of murder.  Similarly, a husband who
> beat his wife, mother, or daughter could, under certain conditions, be
> found guilty of assault or battery.  These strike me as important
> distinctions.
>
> Generally speaking, scholars who try to document evolving status of
> dependency and supremacy, of hierarchy, or of oppression and exploitation,
> draw a distinction in their work between the operation of slavery, and the
> various institutional dependencies to which women were subject.  Thus, for
> example Chris Tomlins, in his brilliant (if unnecessarily difficult and
> over-written) study FREEDOM BOUND, treats slavery in one chapter, and
> dependencies of gender in another.  He does this because they are not the
> same thing--they had different logics to them, both legal and social, and
> hence should be treated as analytically distinct categories.
>
> All best,
> Kevin
> ___________________________
> Kevin R. Hardwick
> Associate Professor
> Department of History, MSC 8001
> James Madison University
> Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807
> ______________________________________
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-- 
Eric J. Richardson
Master's of Arts in History
Master's of Arts Candidate in English
North Carolina Central University
Durham, NC 27707
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(336) 202-7341

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