I decided not to get into the debate on quilt codes on H-Slavery but I also 
thought the claim that slaves didn't make quilts in the 18th century to be 
odd.  After all, a quilt is a product of discard cloth and many 19th century 
plantations had sewing houses where enslaved women did stitch work of all 
kinds.  This may have been true for some of the bigger plantation houses in 
the 18th century but I am not sure.

I prefer to keep an open mind on the subject of "hidden transcripts" (James 
Scott's term from Domination and the Arts of Resistance:...) even in the 
form of cloth design, etc.  But the specific thesis that the Underground 
Railroad sued a specific quilt code is at the least not proven and probably 
false.

Harold S. Forsythe
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Henry Wiencek" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 11:48 AM
Subject: Re: "Quilt code" debunked


While I agree with Nancy's comment that we have to be careful about
dismissing things just because there's no documentation, the quilt story
seems to have been invented recently, out of whole cloth, so to speak.  Take
a look at the H-SLAVERY discussions for more details on this.  One historian
remarked that slaves didn't make quilts in the eighteenth-century, a
"blanket" assertion I'd like to check.

Henry Wiencek
Charlottesville

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