The Mistress

While many slaves called the slaveholder's wife the mistress of the plantation or homestead, the word mistress also referred to a slave woman forced into a sexual relationship with the slave owner. On the majority of homesteads, female slaves were always at the mercy of their masters who could either force them to breed with other slaves or would choose one or more for themselves.

Slave mistresses were commonplace and prevalent in the South. White women either ignored the situation or were resigned to it, knowing there was little they could do to change the relationship. They often blamed the mistresses, choosing to believe the slaves seduced their husbands, brothers, and sons—rarely acknowledging that the young women were regarded as property and had no rights whatsoever.

One of the more cited cases of a slaveholder/mistress relationship was that of Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation's third president. Jefferson had many slaves at his Monticello, Virginia, mansion and was particularly fond of the light-skinned, pretty Sally Hemings. Hemings was reportedly his mistress for years, and historians believe Jefferson may have fathered several of her six children.

Slaveholders' Wives

While many slaveholder wives were acutely aware of their husbands' sexual conquests, others chose to turn a blind eye. Wives found their husbands' liaisons disgraceful and sinful, but slave women didn't really count as human beings, let alone rivals. If a slave owner had sexual relations with a white woman, it was a far greater offense to the family and the community. Turnabout, however, was never fair play. Though rare, slaveholders' wives had dalliances of their own; it was considered far beyond shameful and kept quiet when and if it occurred. As Hortense Powdermaker commented in her book After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South (1939), "Any self-respecting woman … tries to observe strict secrecy about her extra-marital relations. Whatever 'disgrace' is connected with them lies in being talked about" (p. 163).

Some wives had no control over their husbands and feared them almost as much as the slaves. In Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936–1938, John Henry Kemp, known as "Prophet," related that his father and master John Gay was known throughout Mississippi as one of the cruelest and most vengeful slaveholders. When Gay had set his sights on Kemp's mother (as a teen), she begged Mrs. Gay to intervene. "So great was the fear in which Gay was held that when Kemp's mother, Annette Young, complained to Mrs. Gay that her husband was constantly seeking her as a mistress, and threatening her with death if she did not submit, even Mrs. Gay had to advise the slave to do as Gay demanded, 'My husband is a dirty man and will find some reason to kill you if you don't" (Born in Slavery, vol. 3, p. 186).

The same was true of the Donaldson plantation in Florida, where Sarah Rose and her mother lived. According to Sarah's reminiscences in Born in Slavery, "Donaldson was a very cruel man and frequently beat Sara's mother because she would not have sex with the overseer…" (p. 168). Additionally, "Donaldson's wife committed suicide because of the cruelty not only to the slaves but to her as well" (p. 169).

Conditions

While all female slaves could be forced into sex—with other slaves for breeding programs, into arranged marriages, or as sexual conquests for the slaveholder, his overseers, or his sons—the lot of a mistress could be particularly brutal. Slaveholders sometimes chose girls barely into puberty, especially if they were physically attractive. If they thwarted the advances of their owners, they could be beaten, whipped, hung by the wrists, sold, or mysteriously disappear. Slave mothers dreaded the onset of adolescence for their daughters, but had little or no control of the future.

Not all slave mistresses, however, lived in misery. Some slaveholders genuinely cared for their mistresses, providing them many comforts. For the very fortunate, chores were decreased or done away with completely, extra food and nice clothing was provided, and they lived in furnished cabins away from slave quarters—mostly so the owner could come and go as he pleased in private. The downside to such amenities was the resentment of their fellow slaves, and the vitriolic hatred of the white women on the homestead.

Not surprisingly, the results of slaveholder-slave liaisons were mixed-race children. Sometimes these children were prized for their light coloring and supposed intelligence (most slaveholders believed the lighter the skin the higher the intellect) and raised alongside their white siblings. Other times, the mixed race offspring were sold as house servants or gotten rid of very quickly if they looked too much like the slaveholder.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936–1938. Online collection of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress. Available from http://memory.loc.gov.

"Thomas Jefferson: A Biography," and "Sally Hemings." Monticello: The Home of Thomas Jefferson. Available from http://www.monticello.org.

Powdermaker, Hortense. After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South. New York: Viking Press, 1939.

                                       Nelson Rhodes