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Course of Study: (HSY204) History of Sex and Sexuality

Title of work: Intimate matters; a history of sexuality in America, Third edition. (2012)

Section: Chapter 2 Family life and the regulation of deviance pp. 15--38

Author/editor of work: D'Emilio, John.; Freedman, Estelle B.

Author of section: John D'Emilio, Freedman Estelle B.

Name of Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

I

14 INTIMATE MATTERS

brought more severe penalties than similar acts between whites. The law did not yet forbid interracial marriage, which seems to have been tolerated during the early years of settlement. Only after slavery became entrenched during the late seventeenth century did southern legislatures ban marriage between blacks and whites. Illicit unions persisted, however; mulattoes accounted for over one-fifth of the children born out of wedlock in Virginia at the tum of the century.2'

By the early eighteenth century, white demographic and social patterns in New England and the Chesapeake were converging in ways that influenced sexual life in the colonies. By 1700, a sex ratio of approximately three men to two women made family formation easier in the Chesapeake, while the decline of white indentured servitude removed other obstacles to early marriage. For both reasons, reproductive rates increased. White married women in the Ches- apeake, as in New England, now raised seven or eight children.2• By the mid-eighteenth century, the Afro-American population began to reproduce itself too. Lower mortality, higher birth rates, and the evolution of an Afro- American family structure all contributed to this process. As sex ratios evened out, it became easier to marry, and slaves tended to form stable, monogamous unions. In addition, breastfeeding practices came to resemble the one- to two-year European pattern, rather than the longer African custom, thus en- couraging more frequent conception and higher fertility. By the end of the eighteenth century, married Afro-American women in the Chesapeake region bore an average of six children.2' Meanwhile, New England communities lost some of the characteristics that had produced an excess of order. As small towns grew in population and grown children moved further away from parental homes, community control over sexuality became less effective. As early as the 1680s, Puritan clergy lamented the decline in godly living and church membership. By the early eighteenth century, New England churches echoed with jeremiads that fornication, "a shameful sin," was "much increas- ing among us, to the great dishonor of Godde. " 2•

Two significant regional distinctions persisted, however, as the colonies matured in the eighteenth century. First, New Englanders remained more vigorous in their efforts to regulate individual morality than did their neigh- bors in the southern or middle colonies. Second, the slave system, along with the sexual tensions surrounding interracial unions, clearly differentiated the southern colonies, foreshadowing an even greater divergence in sexual systems in the next century. Regional differences notwithstanding, by the early eigh- teenth century, sexual practice and sexual meaning were clearly situated within marriage, and the goal of sexuality was procreation.

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CHAPTER 2

Family Life and the Regulation of Deviance

IN 1650, young Samuel Terry of Springfield, Massachusetts distressed his neighbors when, during the Sabbath sermon, he stood outside the meeting- house "chafing his yard to provoak lust." Several lashes on the back may have dissuaded him from masturbating in public again, but in 1661 Samuel Terry endured another punishment for sexual misconduct. Now married, his bride of five months gave birth to their first child, clear evidence that the pair had indulged in premarital intercourse. A four-pound fine was not the last Terry would pay for defying the moral standards of his community. In 1673 the court fined Terry and eight other men who had performed an "immodest and beastly" play. Despite this history of sexual offenses, however, a sinner like Samuel Terry could command respect among his peers. Terry not only served as a town constable, but, in addition, the court entrusted him with the custody of another man's infant son.' In short, as long as he accepted punishment for his transgressions, Samuel Terry remained a citizen in good standing.

The case of Samuel Terry allows us to refine the stereotype of the American colonists as prudish, ascetic, and antisexual. This view has enjoyed so much popularity in modem America that the term puritanical has come to mean sexually repressive. Not all colonists were Puritans, those nonconforming, largely middle-class English men and women who attempted to establish a community of saints in seventeenth-century New England. Members of the Anglican and Quaker churches, and migrants from the Netherlands, Ger- many, and northern Ireland settled in the southern and middle colonies, especially during the eighteenth century. Even among the Puritans and their Yankee descendants, sexuality exhibited more complexity than modem as- sumptions about their repressiveness suggest.

An accurate portrait of sexuality in the colonial era both incorporates and

16 INTIMATE MATTERS

challenges the puritanical stereotype. Early Americans did indeed pay close attention to the sexual behavior of individuals, as the case of Samuel Terry and numerous church and court records confirm. They did so, however, not in order to squelch sexual expression, but rather to channel it into what they considered to be its proper setting and purpose: as a duty and a joy within marriage, and for the purpose of procreation. Both religious beliefs and eco- nomic interests supported this family-centered sexual system. A close look at sexuality in colonial America reveals that, despite gender differences in the meaning of sexuality, for both women and men the organizing principle of sexual relations was reproduction. An examination of, first, the family and, second, the treatment of deviance illustrates the main contours of this repro- ductive matrix from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries.

Sexuality in the Family Life Cycle

Despite initial regional variations, the family quickly became the central economic unit in every American colony. As in other preindustrial societies, the family both produced and consumed almost all goods and services. Repro- duction and production went hand in hand, for family survival in an agricul- tural economy depended on the labor of children, both in the fields and in the household. Moreover, English inheritance practices supported parental au- thority, for fathers bequeathed to their sons the land that was necessary for establishing new families. For all of these reasons, colonial laws and customs strongly supported family formation. New England colonies forbade "solitary living" in order to insure that everyone resided within a family, either their own or, as in the case of servants and apprentices, in another household. Even in colonies without such laws, economic survival demanded family living. Thus the life of the individual was integrally connected with that of the family. To understand the meaning and practice of sexuality in colonial America, then, we look first at the life cycle of the individual within the family, beginning with attempts to socialize children to channel sexual desire toward marriage, and turning next to the experiences of courtship, marriage, and childbearing.

A young person growing up in colonial America learned about sexuality from two primary sources: observation within the family and moral instruction from parent and church. A small minority of colonists were also exposed to medical advice literature published in London and reprinted in America dur- ing the eighteenth century. Although these various sources of information might conflict on specific points, overall they transmitted the expectation that sexuality within marriage, aimed toward reproduction, would become a part of normal adult life.

Childhood observation of sexual activity is common in agricultural soci-

Family Life and the Regulation of Deviance 17

eties, and all regions remained agricultural throughout the colonial period. "Procreation was everywhere, in the barnyard as well as in the house," one historian has written of seventeenth-century New England. 2 Colonial laws against bestiality, and scattered prosecutions for buggery with farm animals, attest to one influence of the barnyard. In Connecticut, for example, a man confessed to having had sexual relations with a variety of animals since the age often; Massachusetts executed several teenage boys for buggery. Sexual rela- tions with animals required harsh punishment, for colonists believed that these unions could have reproductive consequences. The mating of humans and animals, they feared, would produce monstrous offspring. For this reason, colonists insisted on punishing not only the man but also the beast, who might bear such monsters. Thus William Hacketts, "found in buggery with a cow, upon the Lord's day," had to witness the execution of the cow before his own hanging took place. Sixteen-year-old Thomas Grazer of Plymouth confessed to buggery "with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey." The court ordered a lineup of sheep at which Grazer identified his sexual partners, who were "killed before his face," and then "he himself was executed. " 1 Although executions were rare, sexual observation or experimen- tation with animals was no doubt as widespread in colonial America as in other agricultural societies.

Children also learned about sex in the home. The small size of colonial dwellings allowed children quite early in their lives to hear or see sexual activity among adults. Although curtains might isolate the parental bed, all family members commonly slept in the same room, especially during winters, when a single fireplace provided the heat. Thus a four-year-old girl reported to a servant that she saw a man "lay on the bed with her mamma," and heard him instruct the mother to "lay up higher." Furthermore, the practice of sharing beds exposed some young people to adult sexuality. In one home, three adults and a child were sleeping together when one of the men unbuttoned his breeches and had "carnal knowledge" with a female bedmate. One woman got into bed with her children, and when a man joined them, her daughter recalled, the mother instructed the children to "lie further or else shee would kick us out of bed." Even couples who sought greater privacy had difficulty finding it, for loosely constructed houses allowed neighbors and kin to observe what happened behind closed doors.•

Whatever they observed, children learned early on that sexual behavior ought to be limited to marriage. The harsh language directed at those who defied this model provided one kind of moral lesson. Neighbors cursed women with epithets such as whore, adulteress, slut, or "brasen-faced bawd." While women's illicit sexual relations evoked scorn, for men the equivalent slander was to be accused of cuckoldry, that is, ignorance or tolerance of a wife's

18 INTIMATE MATTERS

infidelity. For example, a Massachusetts woman hurled a slanderous comment at a couple, claiming that "the wife was a whore and that shee had severall children by other men, and that Cuckoldlay old Rogue her husband owned [acknowledged] them." In an extreme insult, a Maryland man declared that "Mis [Alice] Hatches Cunt would make Souse Enough for all the doogs in the Toune." In at least one instance, a man was ridiculed for monitoring too closely the sexual morality of women. In 1664, after an investigation into a morals case near the town of Concord, Massachusetts, neighbors posted a satiric verse outside the meetinghouse charging "cunstable" Thomas Pinion of unseemly behavior. To keep Pinion from prying further, one verse read: "If natures purll bag does burn / Then quickly send for they pinion. / If sick though art and like to die/ Get pinon to fuck thee quickly."' Such scornful or satiric speech encouraged youth and adults alike to limit sexuality to the marriage bed.

Formal moral teaching confirmed what popular speech implied. Clergy and lawmakers warned that sex ought to be limited to marriage and aimed at procreation rather than mere physical gratification. Ministers throughout the colonies invoked biblical injunctions against extramarital and nonprocreative sexual acts, while colonial statutes in both New England and the Chesapeake outlawed fornication, rape, sodomy, adultery, and sometimes incest, prescrib- ing corporal or capital punishment, fines, and, in some cases, banishment for sexual transgressors. Together these moral authorities attempted to socialize youth to channel sexual desires toward marriage.

The best-known of the colonial authorities, the New England Puritan clergy, were extremists among Protestants on issues of church doctrine and sexual morality. These ministers left abundant evidence that they considered sexuality itself "uncleane," and lust a danger to body and soul. Spiritual leaders such as Thomas Shephard and Cotton Mather advised youth and adults alike to avoid sexual stimulation and to control the desires that "lie lurking in thy heart." As Mather wrote, extramarital sexuality would "bloodily Disturb the Frame of our Bodies, and Exhaust and Poison the Spirits, in our Bodies, until an Incurable Consumption at last, shall cut us down, Out of Time." Puritan clergy emphasized marriage as the only suitable outlet for sexual desire and warned against both masturbation and premarital sex. Their ideas reflected age-old gender distinctions about proper sexual behavior. To young women they directed a particular message about the importance of chastity. According to Mather, it was scandalous for a woman to exhibit "sensual lusts, wantonness and impurity, boldness and. rudeness, in Look, Word or Gesture." New England ministers chastised women for wear- ing immodest dress and blamed them for enticing men into sexual sin.' Men, considered more rational and better able to control their passions than women,

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L'r.e and the Regulation of Deviance Fam1y v•

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· ed with warnings to resist their carnal desires by concentrating on were ra1s their Jove of God. . . .

Puritan clergy, however, were not the only moral authonttes m e~rly

A · a youths growing up in the middle colonies or the Chesapeake might

menc. . .. ch be exposed to the religious advice of Quaker and ~nghcan mm1sters or at o- lic priests. Equally important, both secular advice and the model of adults

d them influenced the sexual values of the young. Although all adults aroun . eed on an ideal of marital, reproductive sex, some penmtted greater accept-

agr . .. IA. ance of sexual desire than did the early Puntans. Descnbmg ear y m~ncan childrearing practices, historian Philip Greven identified three categones of Protestant "temperaments," each of which had a different attitude toward sexuality. Unlike Puritan "evangelicals," who emphasized the suppression of l st "moderate Protestants" placed less emphasis on sexual control. Thus J:h~ Adams acknowledged to his children that he was "ofan amorous disposi- tion," even as he assured them that he had sired no illegitimate offspring. A third temperament allowed the open expression of sexual desires and approx- imated the European libertine ideal, represented by three young rakes who frequented New York coffeehouses and indulged in a "g_ood deal of polite smutt then went out whoring." This ''genteel" model, which appeared more frequently after 1740, characterized many upper-class southern men, such as William Byrd of Virginia, whose diary recorded numerous sexual conquests. Even though church and court in this region upheld the ideal of marital, reproductive sexuality, young white males of the planter class learned that they did not necessarily have to exert sexual control around female servants and

slaves.' Although church and court remained the most important sources of sexual

standards, in the eighteenth century a limited medical advice literature ap- peared in America. It is impossible to know whether these books about repro- duction and sexuality were read by youth, but if so, young men were far more likely than young women to have access to them, for women's literacy rates lagged behind those of men. Only a few gynecological or marital advice texts could be found in early America, including The Oeconomy of Love ( 1736) and The Art of Preserving Health (1744), both reprinted from British editions. The eighteenth-century anti-masturbation tract Onania had only two or three

editions in America.' Aristotle's Masterpiece, first published in London in 1684, did become

highly popu\ar in America. Largely a compendium of reproductive lore, Aris- totle's Masterpiece also contained a prescriptive message about sexuality. It repeated early modern English beliefs that sexual pleasure for both male and female was not only desirable but also necessary for conception. That repro- duction was the primary goal of sexuality recurred as a theme throughout its

20 INTIMATE MATTERS

various editions. Offering no information about contraception, the book stressed means to insure conception. It admonished couples to chain the imagination to melodious airs, rather than to sadness, during intercourse, and to avoid withdrawal too soon after "they have done what nature requires," lest they lose "the fruit of the labor." Moreover, the language of Aristotle's Master- piece underscored the association of pleasure and procreation. Thus an expla- nation of sexual desire stated that "nature has implanted in every creature a mutual desire of copulation, for the increase and propagation of its kind. " 9

It is difficult to know to what extent colonial youth internalized either religious or medical views about sexuality. Most personal testimony about youthful sexual feelings comes from Puritan clergy, who were most likely to have left introspective written accounts and to have accepted the evangelical view that emphasized the suppression of lust. In their diaries, young Puritan men recorded their efforts to contain the desires that rose up in them and to subordinate sexual desire to the love of God. Michael Wigglesworth's diary recounted his dismay over frequent "unresistable torments of carnal lusts"- masturbation and seminal emissions-that were provoked when he read, dreamed, or felt "fond affection" for his pupils at Harvard College. He prayed to God to deliver him from his lusts: "The last night some filthiness in a vile dream escaped me for which I loathe myself and desire to abase myself before my God." Only marriage, Wigglesworth concluded, could save him from temptation. Similarly, Cotton Mather prayed and fasted for fear that as "a Young Man in my single Estate" he might fall into "lascivious violations of the Seventh Commandment." Although no such personal accounts exist for young women, one kind of evidence, conversion narratives recorded during the religious revivals of the mid-eighteenth century, suggests that New England women who joined the church accepted the evangelical view of sexuality. Women, even more than men, interpreted their past sinfulness in sexual terms. References to improper dress signified mere wastefulness in men's narratives but represented "Harlotry" in women's accounts. 10

Not all young people were as devout as the clergy and the newly converted. Court records attest to the sexual escapades of those youths who, rather than struggling against their lusts in private, attempted to express them in public. Recall Samuel Terry of Springfield, whose first sexual offense involved public masturbation. Similarly, a group of "sundrie youthes" in New Haven "com- mitted much wickedness in a filthy corrupting way one with another"-so filthy, in fact, that the court refused to record the acts. In Middlesex County, Massachusetts, a "girl and youth" partied until two in the morning one Thanksgiving by singing dirty songs. Harvard students often engaged in "youthful lusts, speculative wantonness and secret filthiness," according to Thomas Shepard, Jr., who warned his son that "there are and will be such in

Family Life and the Regulation of Deviance 21

every scholastic society, for the most part, as will teach you how to be filthy." One group of Harvard students, for example, spent their evenings drinking, singing, and dancing with Negroes and maids, for which several were fined or whipped. Furthermore, servants in all colonies defied proscriptions on

remarital sex. Indentured servant Elizabeth Starkey committed fornication ~nd adultery in Virginia. In Massachusetts, a female servant confessed to fornicating with two men "when all in the house were in bed" and a black maid and servant held secret rendezvous in the attic of the home in which she

worked." For those young people who accepted the primacy of marital sexuality,

courtship provided a transitional period in which they might begin to express their sexual desires. In the colonial system of courtship, parents did not ar- range marriages. Nonetheless, parental opinion played a large role in the selection or approval of a future spouse, for as long as sons expected to inherit land from their fathers, they tended to heed parental advice. Furthermore, although a young man courted the daughter, he proposed marriage to her parents. According to a popular British advice book available in the colonies, "Children are so much the goods, the possessions of their Parents, that they cannot without a kind of theft, give away themselves without the allowance of those that have the right in them." Thus, for example, William Byrd of Virginia spoke first to Lucy Parkes's father about marrying her, and in turn Byrd threatened to disown his own daughter if she married a particular gentle- man who did not meet with his approval. 12

Within the confines of parental approval, formal courtship between young men and women took place unhampered by the supervision of a chaperon but often in public view. In New England, courtship included visits by a young man to a young woman's home or meetings after church. In the Chesapeake, within the planter class, family connections played an important role in intro- ducing couples. Young people met at social affairs such as barbecues, dances, and, in the late eighteenth century, elaborate balls. When a couple did form, their choice rested largely upon a sense of compatibility rather than on notions of romantic love. Couples hoped to develop loving relationships, and courtship gave them an opportunity to begin the process."

That courting couples sought to explore their sexual desires is clear from their efforts to circumvent community surveillance. During warm weather a couple might wander off into the barn or fields in search of the privacy unobtainable in small colonial homes. According to one moralist, during harvest time, with its abundant opportunities for outdoor meetings, New England youth were filled "with folly and lewdness." In 1644, a New England couple left a party but were soon "seen upon the ground together, a little from the house." The cold winters necessitated greater ingenuity. One daring young

22 INTIMATE MATTERS

man crept through the window of his beloved's home, only to wind up in court charged with "incivility and immodesty" for courting without her parents' consent. Some young men tried to exploit opportunities for premarital sexual encounters. After three years of courting Elizabeth Gary of Maryland, Robert Hawood cornered her in a garden and forced her "to yield to lie with him" in an attempt to ruin her for any man but himself. 14

In the eighteenth century, and probably earlier, courting couples in New England and the middle colonies had the opportunity for physical intimacy with parental approval through the custom of bundling. This practice, which had antecedents among Welsh, Dutch, and German peasants, allowed a couple to spend the night together in bed as long as they remained fully clothed or, in some cases, kept a "bundling board" between them. Bundling served the needs of suitors who traveled long distances and called in small houses that offered neither privacy nor much heat. Parents and youth shared the expecta- tion that sexual intercourse would not take place, but if it did, and pregnancy resulted, the couple would certainly marry."

The treatment of premarital pregnancy suggests that, as in England, en- gagement might include the right to have sexual intercourse. As one young woman explained, "He promised marriage or I never would have yielded." As long as a couple's sexual relations were channeled toward marriage, colonial society could forgive them. Although church and civil authorities officially condemned fornication and prosecuted offenders, they showed greater le- niency toward betrothed couples. In addition, in both New England and the Chesapeake, those who had sex and then married could remain respectable members of the community as long as they participated in the rituals of punishment affirming that marriage provided the only appropriate locus for sexual relations. 16

Fornication carried heavy penalties, including fines, whipping, or both. In Maryland, where laws were less likely to be enforced, unmarried couples who had sex could receive up to twenty lashes and be fined as much as five hundred pounds of tobacco. In Plymouth Colony, civil penalties for fornication in- cluded a ten-pound fine-reduced to only fifty shillings for a betrothed cou- ple-several lashes on the back, or both. Throughout New England, a fine of nine lashes awaited both parents of a child born too soon after marriage. Thus, when Lawrence Clenton and Mary Woodin of Massachusetts confessed to fornication, he was sentenced to be severely whipped and fined forty shiUings plus court fees, and she too received a whipping and a fine. 17

Prenuptial pregnancy rates varied by region and over time. The high rates of up to thirty percent of all brides for the mid-seventeenth-century Chesa- peake declined in the eighteenth century, while the low ten-percent rate of early New England rose significantly during the same period. There is little

Family Life and the Regulation of Deviance 23

d for the middle colonies, but in one eighteenth-century community, Ger-

~ . d . mantown, Pennsylvania, one-fourth of all first _births occurred u~ er mne months after marriage, a pattern that reflected m part the premantal preg- ancy rates in the settlers' German homeland."

n Through confession and repentance, colonial society offered a means of !earing the stigma associated with premarital pregnancy. In New England,

:ouples whom the church court found guilty of fornication had to repent ublicly before their child could be baptized. They stood before their congrega-

~on, confessed to premarital sex, and often wept, as did a Plymouth woman who in I 689 "manifested much sorrow and heavyness by words and tears." Having confessed, and if truly repentant, sinners were welcomed back into good standing in the church. Even in Maryland, where there was less church discipline, marriage and repentance could reduce the punishment. In 1663, for example, Thomas Hynson, Jr., came into court "very sorrowfull" for having committed fornication with Ann Gaine. Since Hynson had "now made her his Lawfull Wife," the magistrate ordered no fine or whipping, but merely sus- pended him from sitting in the county court for a year and a day. His wife, Ann, later appeared in court, as ordered. For "submissively tendering her selfe ... and Acknowlidgeing her faulte with Extreame Sorrow," the court remitted her punishment." That Thomas Hynson, Jr., could resume his seat at the county court after a year and a day reflects the ease with which Chesapeake society reintegrated sinners. Similarly, New Englanders accepted the penitent fully. Like Samuel Terry, who became a Springfield town constable, New England men convicted of fornication later served as town clerks, selectmen, and even as representatives to the General Court. Women convicted of fornica- tion could marry and join the church.2° In contrast, those who refused to undergo public confession could be excommunicated from their congregation.

Whatever ambivalence colonists had toward premarital sexual relations, they agreed that husbands and wives ought to have sex. For New England Puritans, conjugal union was a duty; if unfulfilled, the neglected spouse might be tempted to commit adultery. So important was marital sex that a bride could leave a marriage if her husband proved to be impotent. At least one church excommunicated a husband because he denied conjugal relations to his wife for two years. Sexual attraction was valued within marriage only in moderation, however, and sexual intercourse as an act necessary to propagate the family. The Puritans admonished married couples not to allow their affec- tions for one another to compete with their love for God. Cotton Mather warned of the "Inexpressible Uncleannesses in the married State," including "Inordinate Affection." Michael Wigglesworth decided to marry as a way of channeling his lusts, but then feared that his conjugal relations were excessive.

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"Lord, forgive my intemperance in the use of marriage," he prayed." Some authorities believed that too-frequent marital sex could be physically danger- ous as well as impious, warning that "satiaty gluts the Womb and renders it unfit for its office.""

In spite of these fears of sexual excess, affectionate and even passionate relations developed between husbands and wives. The Puritan Edward Taylor valued spiritual union with his savior over physical union in marriage, yet he wrote of his relationship with his wife as "the True-Love knot, more Sweet than Spice." Similarly, John Winthrop wrote to his "sweet wife," Margaret, that her "love is such to me and so great is the bond between us." "I Kisse and love Thee," he closed, "with the Kindest affection." The correspondence between married couples in the southern colonies included expressions of affection and desire. "How is it possible for me to live without my only Joy & comfort?" wrote the southerner Thomas Jones to his wife, Elizabeth, in 1728. Margaret Parlor wrote to her husband that she longed to go to bed with him, while Theodore Bland, Jr., assured his "dearest Patsy" that on his return she would feel her "husband's lips flowing with love and affection warmth. " 23

Explicit discussions of physical relations in marriage were much less com- mon than references to affection, and so we have few clues about the nature of marital sex. Mary Knight of Massachusetts threw some light on the subject when she forgave her lover for having climaxed too soon. "That is no strange thing," she said, "for my Husband has done so often when he has been gone a few Nights." 24 Her admission suggests both an ideal of mutual pleasure and the difficulty of achieving it. We know that couples sometimes had sex during pregnancy, for women cautioned their husbands to be gentle at such times. The Virginian William Byrd had sex with his wife, Lucy, during her frequent pregnancies, even in the later months. Byrd's "secret diary" provides a rare, though probably atypical, record of marital intimacy among southern planters. Lucy and William Byrd quarreled often, and sexual union provided an impor- tant means of resolving their differences. According to Byrd's accounts of his sexual prowess, both husband and wife enjoyed these unions. "I gave my wife a powerful flourish and gave her great ecstasy and refreshment," he wrote in 1711. Another time, after a quarrel, the couple reconciled with a "flourish" performed on the billiard table." Unfortunately, Lucy Parkes Byrd did not record her version of these events.

Sexual complaints from both husbands and wives appeared in divorce cases heard in New England in the eighteenth century. Dissatisfaction did not necessarily result from physical disappointment but rather when one partner believed that the other had stepped outside the bounds of the marital, repro- ductive sexual system. The Puritan Benjamen Keayne sought a divorce be- cause of "the insatiable desire and lust" of his wife, Sara, whom he accused

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L'r..e and the Regulation of Deviance Fam1y !I•

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of adultery and of exposing him to "the french pox," or venereal disease. . 'I Bailey mother of ten, filed for divorce after her husband not only had

Abigai ' " " h . Id d h 1 lations with a servant but also began to court t e1r e est aug ter. sexua re . . 1 fl' · ·11 ed The importance of maintaining marnage, despite sexua con 1cts, 1s I ustrat

by the case of Stephen Temple's wife. Although she went to court to accuse her husband of sexually violating their fourteen-year-old daughter, Mrs. Tern-

le did not seek a divorce. Rather, she wanted to force her husband to change :is behavior. When he apologized and promised to reform, the couple recon-

ciled. 2' Whether sexuality was a source of comfort or conflict, married couples

engaged in intercourse with the knowledge and hope that it would lead to children. Among free, white colonists, the availability of land and the need for laborers in the New World encouraged reproduction. They welcomed the birth of a child and, within most families, had little reason to think about preventing conception. For Puritans, theological principles supported the emphasis on procreation, including the biblical injunction to "be fruitful and multiply" and the view that childbearing was woman's "calling." So important was reproduc- tion to marriage that failure to participate in marital sexual relations could be grounds for divorce. A Plymouth wife testified in a 1686 divorce case that her husband was "always unable to perform the act of generation." 2' Her choice of a reproductive term to describe male impotence reflected the understanding that the duty to engage in marital relations meant the duty to procreate, and not simply to provide mutual comfort. For similar reasons, a woman who was past her childbearing years was less likely to gain a divorce on the grounds of

her husband's impotence. 2• The need to produce children, along with the risk that a child would not

live to adulthood, required that married women endure repeated pregnancies. In addition to the risk of death in childbirth-which in some regions of the colonies accounted for as many as twenty percent of maternal deaths-the physical labors of pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing preoccupied married women. For good reason, women feared childbirth, or in one woman's terms, "the Dreaded apperation."" Mary Clap, who bore six children and buried four before she died at the age of twenty-four, recognized that "Bearing tending and Burying Children was Hard work." At the same time, however, most women assumed that childbearing was their natural "calling." Mary Clap believed "it was the work she was made for and what god in his providence Had Called Her to." After six childless years of marriage, the Puritan poet Anne Brad- street expressed a longing for pregnancy: "It please God," she wrote, "to keep me a long time without a child, which was a great grief to me and cost me many prayers and tears before I obtained one." Bradstreet knew that lying-in carried the possibility that she would "see not half my day's that's due." She herself

26 INTIMATE MATTERS

survived the births of eight children, seven of whom outlived her. Less fortu- nate was her daughter-in-law Mercy Bradstreet, who lost three infants and died herself after childbirth at the age of twenty-eight. After each of these deaths, Anne Bradstreet wrote not only of her grief, but also of her resignation to God's will. She consoled herself that the dead "with thy Saviour art in endless bliss. " 30

Although colonists knew about contraceptive methods such as withdrawal or prolonged nursing, demographic evidence from New England and Pennsyl- vania reveals that few married women limited family size. Women commonly spaced pregnancies by breastfeeding their infants for a year, during which time many couples refrained from intercourse. Throughout the colonies, however, other means to impede conception or terminate pregnancy were rarely em- ployed. Women turned to folk remedies and fertility medicines to encourage conception and avoid miscarriage rather than to avoid pregnancy." Contra- ceptive practice could lead to divorce, as in the case of Abigail Emery, who in 1710 complained that her husband practiced the "abominable" sin of Onan (withdrawal) because "he feared the charge of children." The Plymouth Pil- grims banished an adulterous minister not only because he "satisfied his lust" on women, but because he did so while he "endeavored to hinder conception." Cases of attempted abortion usually involved illicit lovers, not married cou- ples. "When a single woman," Margaret Lakes later confessed, she "used means to destroy the fruit of her body to conceal her sin and shame." Elizabeth Robins of Maryland confessed that she had twice taken savin, an abortifacient; her husband suspected that she had an incestuous relationship with her brother. 32 In contrast, married couples had little motive to prevent or terminate pregnancy.

Once sex ratios had balanced in the late seventeenth century, this empha- sis on reproduction contributed to the rapid increase of the colonial popula- tion, which doubled itself every generation. Natural increase, rather than immigration, accounted for this remarkable growth rate. A lower average marriage age than was prevalent in England allowed native-born women to begin childbearing early; many bore a child every two to three years, an interval determined in part by breastfeeding practices. Some white women had as many as ten pregnancies and bore up to eight live children. They could expect from three to seven of these to survive. Completed families could include from six to eight children. 33 In the eighteenth century, early marriage and high fertility contributed to population growth in the South as well, and among the planter class, women bore as many as seven to eight children, of whom five to six survived into adulthood. Slave fertility rates also rose by the mid-eighteenth century. Married black women bore an aver- age of six children. Their lower fertility rates no doubt resulted from the

.1 L'"e and the Regulation of Deviance Fam1'Y !I• 27

health and more strenuous labor performed by slaves." poo;e high fertility rates of _the colonial period, al~ng with ~ualitative evi-

about both religious behefs and personal behavior, all pomt toward the dence · 1· · 1 A · 0 th importance of marital, reproductive sexua tty m ear y menca. ver e

f the life cycle youths expected to marry and couples expected to course o ' . · mutually pleasurable marital sex that would lead to procreation. The

engagem . . oals of reproduction and sexual pleasure dtd not necessanly clash, as long as

~hey were combined within marriage. Even premarital intercourse could be mmodated if a couple wed and affirmed that marriage was the rightful

a= for sexual relations. When the primacy of marital, reproductive sexuality :as challenged, however, colonists took strong steps to maintain their sexual

institutions.

Regulating the Boundaries: The Treatment of Deviance

Although colonial society upheld an ideal of marital, reproductive sexual- ity, and many individuals attempted to put it into practice, a significant minor- ity deviated from the norm when they committed adultery, sodomy, incest, or rape, or when women bore bastard children. Church and court records reveal the extensive efforts colonists made to identify, outlaw, and punish such prac- tices. New Englanders enforced their laws against sexual deviance more thoroughly, but all English colonists inherited a legacy in which the state played a role in the regulation of personal life. From the founding of each colony, community members, churches, and the courts mobilized to impose sanctions in response to sexual offenses-that is, sexual relations that took place outside of marriage and, especially in the South, those that threatened the racial dominance of whites over blacks. In doing so, they revealed the extent of community involvement in the sexual lives of others.

Through their response to sexual transgressions, colonists reaffirmed the boundaries of acceptable behavior. Courts in New England and the Chesa- peake typically sentenced offenders to some form of public humiliation, such as whipping at the post or sitting in the stocks. Thus a Maryland court sent Agnes Taylor to the whipping post to receive twelve lashes "in the Publicke Vew of the People" for having borne a bastard child. Hugh Davis of Virginia was whipped "before an assembly of Negroes and others for ... defiling his body in lying with a negro." 35 In New England, public confession and repent- ance both restored the individual to the congregation and at the same time confirmed the propriety of sexual rules. When someone was convicted of a capital crime, such as rape or infanticide, clergy preached execution sermons, elaborating on the wages of sexual sin and the need to resist temptation. The regulation of deviance served the larger function of reminding the community

28 INTIMATE MATTERS

at large that sexuality belonged within marriage, for the purpose of producing legitimate children.

The gender of offenders shaped the treatment of deviance. Sodomy and rape were men's crimes. Although adultery, fornication, and bastardy involved couples, women in both northern and southern colonies were more likely than men to be prosecuted and convicted for these sexual offenses. 36 The fact that pregnancy made a woman's participation in these acts apparent helps account for the disparity. In addition, Western culture had traditionally feared the sexual voraciousness of women. As the "weaker vessell," woman supposedly had less mastery over her passions and had to be carefully controlled. Penalties also differed. Men more often had to pay fines and court costs, while women, who had less access to property, had to accept whipping. Despite these distinc- tions, both women and men participated fully in the regulation of deviance. Both kept a close watch on neighbors and testified in court about illicit activi- ties; both faced fines, whipping, public humiliation, or execution; both could repent and be reinstated in the community.

For men and women, laws against extramarital sexuality carried harsh penalties. Even behaviors that might lead to sex outside marriage required punishment. The relatively minor offense of being a "person of Lude Life and conversation" earned a fine of fifty pounds sterling in Virginia, while one man paid twenty pounds for "profainly" drinking and dancing with a married woman. In 1631, Massachusetts enacted the death penalty for adultery-a crime defined as sexual relations between a man and a married woman. (Sex between a married man and a single woman, or between a single man and woman, would have been charged as fornication.) Most other colonies adopted the death penalty for adultery, although it was rarely enforced. After 1660, New England courts usually imposed fines of ten to twenty pounds, along with public whipping or the wearing of the letters AD on a garment or burned onto the forehead. In 1736, Thomas Clarke of Dorchester, Massachusetts, had to choose between a five-pound fine or ten stripes for having "in a wanton and Lascivious Manner had the use and Carnal Knowledge of the Body of Susan- nah the Wife of Joseph Browne ... with her consent." Maryland law con- demned adultery whether the man or woman was married. Southern courts often sentenced whipping and sometimes used the threat of banishment to punish adulterers; they might also require a bond ofup to one hundred pounds sterling to prevent an adulterous couple from seeing each other."

In some cases, adultery could lead to divorce, separation, or violence. In New England, over half the divorce cases in the seventeenth century cited adultery as a cause. One woman sought a divorce when her husband acknowl- edged "that he had Rog[e]red other women and meant to Roger Every Likely Woman He Could and as many as would Let Him." 38 Husbands sometimes

Family Life and the Regulation of Deviance 29

physically attacked adulterous partners. After Stephen Willey found his wife, Abigail, in bed with one man and saw her sitting on the lap of another, he struck her and threatened to kill her. 39

The regulation of adultery, like all forms of nonmarital sexuality, depended upon the extensive involvement of community members in each other's lives. Intrusiveness characterized the attitude toward sexuality, especially in the closely knit settlements of New England, where individuals could not easily engage in illicit sexual activities without being noticed.•• Among Puritans, each community member had responsibility for upholding the morality of all lest God punish the group as a whole. Acting on these precepts, Clement Coldom of Gloucester, Massachusetts, "heaved the door off the hinges" to see what his neighbor John Pearce was doing with "the widow Stannard" at night. So clear was the responsibility of family and neighbors to help regulate sexuality that a New England father who allowed his son to live with an unmarried woman was charged as an "accessory to fornication. " 41 Even without the Puritan religious obligation to oversee the behavior of others, men and women in other colonies testified about the sexual crimes of neighbors, illustrating an accept- ance of intrusiveness in what would later come to be considered purely private

matters. The testimony of observant neighbors was essential for convicting adulter-

ers in court. In Maryland, for example, several people witnessed John Nevill having sexual relations with Susan Aitcheson, a married woman; they testified that they had seen her hand in his breeches and his "in Susan's placket" (a slit in her skirt). The court fined Nevill and ordered Aitcheson whipped. When Susanna Kennett and John Tully of Virginia heard snoring in the next room, they stood on a hogshead of tobacco and peered over the wall to see that "Richard Jones Laye snoring in her plackett and Mary West put her hand in his Codpis." Kennett then pried loose a board to observe Mary West "with her Coates upp above her middle and Richard Jones with his Breeches down Lying upon her." In 1732, a New England woman testified to having "look'ed in at a hole in the End of the house," where she saw her neighbor's wife and another man "on the bed in the act of Adultery." Similarly, a widowed lodger testified in the 1760s that he "heard a Man and woman discoursing in the Chamber over the Room" and looked in to find the mistress of the house having sex with a male friend."

In addition to testifying in court, neighbors zealously guarded moral stan- dards in the community. The comments of two Massachusetts women who observed a man "in Act of Copulation" attest to the sense of community responsibility for regulating morality. Interrupting the act, the women asked "ifhe was not Ashamed to Act so when he had a Wife at home." An incident in Maryland further suggests how even in a less settled area, the community

I

l

30 INTIMATE MATTERS

could mobilize against adultery. Several travelers lodged overnight at the residence of Captain Fleet, who became "verie angerie" when he realized that one lodger, Mr. Carline, was committing adultery on the premises. Fleet had the couple turned out-of-doors. The court subsequently banished Carline for disowning his wife; when he tried to return home, Carline's neighbors would not allow him to show his face. Finally, in the fishing town of Marblehead, Massachusetts, neighbors wielding clubs attacked the home of William Beale, whose wife, Martha, was suspect for having a previous marriage annulled and an intimate relationship with a servant. "Come out, you cuckolly cur," they called to William, "we are come to beat thee. Thou livest in adultery.""

Because they so clearly defied the norm of reproductive sexuality, the crimes of sodomy, buggery, and bestiality carried the death penalty. As the founder of Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, explained in the case of William Plaine, who was executed for sodomy and corrupting youths "by masturbations," these acts were "dreadful" because they "tended to the frus- trating of the ordinance of marriage and the hindering [of} the generation of mankind." The narrow legal definition of sodomy, which required proof of penetration, along with the requirement of two witnesses for capital punish- ment, limited the application of the death penalty. At least five men were executed for sodomy or buggery during the seventeenth century--0ne by the Spanish in Florida, one in Virginia, one in New Haven, and two in New York. No one was executed for sodomy in the eighteenth century, but men convicted of "sodomitical acts," such as "spending their seed upon one another," re- ceived severe and repeated whipping, burning with a hot iron, or banishment. As in other morals cases, the higher the status of the accused, the less likely was severe punishment. Despite his thirty-year history of attempted sodomy with servants and neighbors, the wealthy Nicholas Sension of Connecticut merely had his estate held as bond to insure his future good behavior.••

It is important to note that the crime of sodomy was not equivalent to the modern concept of homosexuality. Sodomy referred to "unnatural"-that is, nonprocreative-sexual acts, which could be performed between two men, a man and an animal (technically considered buggery or bestiality), or between a man and a woman. When a Maryland woman sued her husband for divorce, charging that he had committed "diverse inhumane usages and beastly crimes," she could have meant anal intercourse in marriage or with another man. Although the term sodomy was not applied to sexual relations between women, one colony, New Haven, listed among its capital offenses women's acts "against nature." The few surviving cases that refer to "lewd behavior" be- tween women record punishments of whipping or admonishments, rather than execution. In 1642, for example, a Massachusetts court severely whipped a

Family Life and the Regulation of Deviance 31

servant and fined her for "unseemly practices btwixt her and another maid."" Unlike many native American tribes in which the male berdache might live

as a woman and marry a man, colonial society had no permanent cultural category for those who engaged in sexual relations with members of their own gender. Like other sinner~, wo~en.or ~en ~ho were punished for unnatural sexual acts did not acquire a hfet1me identity as "homosexuals," and they could be reintegrated into the fold. In 1732, for example, Ebenezer Knight of Marblehead confessed and repented "a long series of Uncleanness with Man- kind." His church suspended Knight, but after he returned from a six-year sojourn in Boston, the congregation reinstated him.••

As in the case of sodomy, conviction for rape carried the death penalty, but lesser punishments usually applied. Rape was the only sexual offense that did not involve consensual acts, and much of the testimony by a rape victim and the required witnesses focused on proving that the woman did not consent to the act. Accounts of rape and attempted rape emphasize the extent to which women resisted their assailants. Nonetheless, conviction and sentencing pat- terns disclose a reluctance to prosecute men fully for this crime. Out of seventy-two rape accusations in seventeenth-century New England, only six resulted in executions, though more than half the men were convicted. That Massachusetts courts were more likely to convict when a child or a married woman had been raped suggests that single, adult women were often perceived as willing sexual partners. The rape of a daughter or wife could be seen as an attack on the "property" of a father or husband, rather than a crime against the woman herself. Indeed, the death penalty for rape applied only if a woman was married, engaged, or under the age of ten. 47

The disposition of rape cases depended strongly upon the status of both victim and assailant. Men of higher social standing-farm owners and artisans, for example-were less likely to be brought to trial for rape or attempted rape, while lower-class and nonwhite men accused of rape could expect harsher treatment by the courts. In 1685, a servant convicted of attempted rape upon a married woman received the severe punishment of thirty-five lashes. In eighteenth-century Massachusetts, three of the five executions for rape in- volved blacks or Indians, even though nonwhite men represented only fourteen percent of those accused of rape. The other two executed were white laborers. 48

The harshest penalties for sexual assault applied to blacks who attacked white women. In New York, a free black convicted of two attempted rapes of white women was burned alive. Another free black in Virginia received twenty-nine lashes, an hour in the pillory, and a sentence of temporary servitude for attempted assault on a seven-year-old white girl. In several colonies, the laws prescribed castration for blacks who attempted to rape white women.••

Neighbors were especially important as witnesses in rape cases, for it was

32 INTIMATE MATTE Rs

incumbent upon the victim to call out in order to notify others of an attack; otherwise, the court might consider her a willing partner. When Elizabeth Goodell of Salem accused her brother-in-law of frequent "assaults" and "af- fronts," her neighbors stated that she should have called out for help. Even nine-year-old Ruth Parsons testified that she had cried out when Edward Sanders forcibly abused her by "enteringe her body with his pisseinge place (as shee called it)," but no one was near the house to hear her, except "little children wch he put out of doores."'0 In some cases, women were punished for not having called out when assaulted. When a victim of unwanted sexual advances was afraid to call out or press charges, neighbors might step in to bring the case to light. The testimony of other members of the community was also important in determining whether a rape had actually occurred. Midwives and other women who examined the victims of assault helped the court deter- mine whether to prosecute for rape or a lesser charge.' 1 As in the response to adultery, the entire community mobilized to ferret out those who engaged in sexual acts outside of marriage.

Bastardy, like adultery, sodomy, and rape, threatened the centrality of marital, reproductive sexuality, but it also posed a particularly troubling eco- nomic problem for the colonists: who would provide for children born out of wedlock in a society in which the family was the central economic unit? Lest the cost fall upon other members of the community, colonies passed bastardy laws, patterned upon English antecedents, that severely punished the parents of bastards and attempted to hold the purported father responsible for the child's care. In order to establish paternity, midwives questioned an unmarried woman during labor, "the time of her travell [travail]," when they believed she would be incapable of lying about the father's identity. The court then accused the father and meted out punishment to both parents in the form of fines or whipping, along with an effort to enforce marriage. Maryland courts, for example, doled out thirty-nine lashes to parents of bastards, while Connecticut courts sentenced five pounds and ten stripes of the lash. By the mid-eighteenth century, many courts ceased to punish the parents for their sexual transgres- sions and concentrated entirely on obtaining support for the child. It was then left to the churches to enforce morality and try to pressure the parents of bastards into marrying."

The mechanism by which colonists attempted to determine paternity was extremely vulnerable to manipulation by either the mother or the father of a bastard. For one, no matter how coercive they might be, midwives could not always force an unwilling mother-like Nathaniel Hawthorne's fictional Hes- ter Prynne-to reveal the name of her child's father. The Quakers, as an added sanction, disowned from their church congregations a woman who did not

. 1

Lifie and the Regulation of Deviance Faml!Y

33

the f:ather Or a woman might calculatingly decide to follow the course name · ' . f he servant Elizabeth Wells, who told another servant that "[1]fshee should ~ with child shee would bee sure to lay it un to won who was rich enough bell to mayntayne it weather it wear his or no." A pattern of false paternity

a usations is revealed by another woman, who wrote to her illicit lover: "der ::e [love] ... i am a child by you and i will ether kil it or lay it to an other ... 1 have had many children and none [of the fathers] have none of them [to

support]. ,,,i At the same time, fathers could refuse to acknowledge paternity. The

wealthy George Hammond of Maine, cited by Lydia Spinney as father of her child, refuted the charge and would not pay child support. Some men at- tempted to deny responsibility by claiming that the mother had been promiscu- ous; others claimed economic inability to support a child. In New Amsterdam, Geleyn Verplank admitted "to have had carnal conversation" with Geertruyd Wingres, but he denied that he promised to marry her and failed to pay the lying-in charges and child maintenance ordered by the court.,. John Harring- ton denied paternity in a 1771 bastardy case by claiming that he could not possibly be the father of the child. In the process, he inadvertently revealed what was probably the predominant method for avoiding conception: "I f-----0 her once," he admitted, "but I minded my pullbacks. I sware I did not get it." The court did not share his faith in coitus interruptus, and Harrington was convicted."

The female servant could have an especially hard time sustaining a pater- nity charge. If a man denied her claim, she had to produce witnesses to support her in court. If a free man, and particularly a master, denied paternity, the court might well accept his word over that of a servant. In Maryland, servant Jane Palldin bore an illegitimate child by her married master, John Norton. Afraid of the consequences of revealing the father, she first claimed that a stranger "gott her with Child." Indeed, after she confessed the truth, Norton's wife "began to raile at her" and a brawl broke out among the three of them." Masters could abuse the law by impregnating a servant and enjoying not only sexual privilege but an extra year of servitude as well. To prevent this practice, courts began to remove female servants from households if their masters allowed them to become pregnant."

Despite the difficulties of enforcement, colonial society did maintain a low rate of illegitimacy. Historical demographer Robert Wells has estimated that prior to 1750, between one and three percent of all births occurred outside of marriage. The seventeenth-century Chesapeake, with its large number of in- dentured servants, had a much higher rate, while some regions had even lower ones. In the middle colonies, Quaker congregations recorded no bastardy cases until 1780, and in Germantown, Pennsylvania, illegitimate children accounted

34 INTIMATE MATTERS

for under one percent of all colonial-era baptismal certificates. Persistent re- gional variation is clear from the ratios of illegitimate births per thousand live births at the beginning of the eighteenth century. These ranged from a low of one in a New York Dutch Reformed church, to between thirteen and eighteen in several Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia counties, to a high of twenty-six in one Maryland county."

Both the stigma and the cost of bearing an illegitimate child led some unwed mothers, whether free or servant, to commit infanticide. In Massachu- setts, Grace, a "Negro single woman servant," murdered her bastard son in 1692, and Elizabeth Emerson, an unwed mother who lived with her parents, buried her illegitimate children in the garden. Lucy Stratton of Maryland received thirty lashes for having "unnaturally dried up her milk," a neglectful action that the court believed had put her infant's life in danger." Because unwed mothers, attempting to avoid prosecution, sometimes claimed that their children had been stillborn or had died of natural causes, colonial, like English, law assumed maternal guilt if a bastard child was found dead. Therefore it was a crime to conceal the death of a bastard child. Widespread concern about infanticide led the colonies by the eighteenth century to enact laws providing that unless sworn witnesses could testify that a child was stillborn, the mother of a dead bastard was presumed to be guilty of murder. Nonetheless, New England courts charged only thirty-two women with infanticide in the seven- teenth century. Although the overall indictment rate was over twice as high in the Chesapeake, conviction rates were lower in the South. As in other criminal prosecutions, black servants and slaves had a higher conviction rate than all whites, free or servant. 60

Even though infanticide rates remained low throughout the colonies, this crime provided a particularly frightening symbol of the wages of sexual sin. Since so many infanticide victims were newborn bastard children, the crime represented the ultimate destructiveness wrought by illicit sexual union. The clergy did not miss the opportunity to bring this message home to their flock. As Cotton Mather expounded in his sermon on the execution of Sarah Smith, who had murdered her newborn infant, "an Unchaste Life" had brought Smith to the gallows, for the "Fires of Lust" had baked her heart into "Insensible Hardness. " 61 Lust, unchecked, could lead not only to illegitimacy, but worse, to the death of both child and sinner as well.

In the late seventeenth century, the prohibition of interracial sex and marriage emerged as an additional sexual boundary. In the early years of settlement, before slavery became entrenched, interracial unions, though un- popular, did not necessarily elicit harsh punishment. In cases of fornication, adultery, or bastardy, the offenders received punishments similar to those

l

.t I l

l 1

.1 Lifie and the Regulation of Deviance Fam1y 1 35

h·t couples endured. In 1640, for example, a Virginia gentleman had "to do w

I e · · h h'ld " h'l h nance in church . . . for getting a negroe woman wit c 1 , w I e t e

~oman received a whipping-not an extraordinary punishment. •2 In many areas of the South, the white sex ratio remained so unbalanced that white men sometimes sought black mates in the absence of white women. By the late seventeenth century, however, the white sex ratio began to even out. More importantly, large numbers of Africans were being imported as slaves, and slavery began to supplant indentured servitude as the major source of labor. Colonial assemblies soon enacted an array of statutes-including laws punish- ing interracial sexual relations-to strengthen the race line by reinforcing the unequal status of blacks and whites.

As with native American Indians, sexual stereotyping provided one means by which the English colonists justified their domination of Africans. English colonists brought to America a set of stereotypes that differentiated Europeans from Africans by assigning to the latter a sexual nature that was more sensual, aggressive, and beastlike than that of whites. Influenced by the Elizabethan image of "the lusty Moor," colonists accepted the notion that Africans were "lewd, lascivious and wanton people." With the growing reliance on slavery, colonists drew upon these English stereotypes to help justify their economic and social control of blacks. Not only their dark color, but also their allegedly animal-like sexuality, whites argued, proved that blacks were of a different breed than whites; it was thus "natural" that the two races should not mix, and that whites should dominate blacks. Throughout the American colonies, a caste system based on race took hold by the eighteenth century. From New Englander Samuel Sewall to Virginian Thomas Jefferson, white colonists, regardless of their views on slavery, opposed interracial mixing. But in the southern colonies, where slavery grew in economic importance, the racial boundary became more deeply institutionalized. 63 Individuals who trans- gressed this racial boundary challenged not only a set of cultural values but also the basis of an emerging system of racial control.

As African slaves came to dominate the labor force, slavery required legal support. Colonial legislatures acted to outlaw and penalize individuals who practiced what would later be termed miscegenation. Legislation to regulate interracial unions first appeared in the 1660s. The Virginia legislature in 1662 doubled the fines for fornication in the case of interracial couples, and in 1691 it outlawed "that abominable mixture" of interracial union, ordering banish- ment from the colony for any white man or woman who married or fornicated with a Negro, mulatto, or Indian. In 1705, the Assembly strengthened the law by ordering six months' imprisonment and a ten-pound fine for interracial marriage or fornication, and fined the minister who performed an interracial marriage ten thousand pounds of tobacco. Maryland banned such marriages

36 INTIMATE MATTERS

in 1664, ordering a white woman who married a slave to serve her husband's master. Between 1705 and 1750, all of the southern colonies, as well as Penn- sylvania and Massachusetts, passed laws prohibiting interracial marriages and any other "unnatural and inordinate Copulations" between whites and blacks. Discriminatory treatment of interracial children further supported the institu- tion of slavery. Delaware enacted heavier fines in interracial than white bas- tardy cases, and the 1664 Maryland anti-miscegenation law defined the chil- dren of mixed marriages as slaves. In most colonies, bastard children of mixed unions had to spend up to thirty-one years in servitude. 64

The laws against miscegenation did not entirely prevent the formation of interracial unions. Where French, Spanish, and West Indian influences re- mained strong, as in Louisiana and coastal South Carolina, the taboos on amalgamation were weaker, and interracial unions might be discussed in pub- lic. In all of the English colonies, however, some forms of miscegenation persisted. In New England, where few blacks lived and slavery failed to take root, some interracial marriages survived social and legal proscription. More typical, however, were illicit unions formed between southern whites and blacks. Male planters, by virtue of their class, were not bound by the prohibi- tions against interracial sex. Thus relationships between white planters and black women often formed. Some southern men acknowledged these unions when they manumitted or left property to their mulatto children."

In addition to ongoing interracial relations, brief sexual encounters took place frequently in the South. As a Boston traveler to South Carolina observed in 1773, "The enjoyment of a negro or mulatto woman is spoken of as quite a common thing." Given the prevailing stereotype of African sensuality, white men assumed that black women were willing to have sexual relationships with them. In fact, female slaves had little choice about whether to respond to white men's sexual advances, whatever their actual desires. Interracial unions be- tween white women and black men were least frequent and usually confined to the rural backcountry of the South, where the status difference between poor whites and slaves was narrower. One Maryland husband banished his wife from his sight and refused financial responsibility for her because she "polluted my Bed, by taking to her in my stead, her own Negro slave, by whom she hath a child." As in this case, a woman's adultery with a slave or free black male might lead to divorce. 66

Probably the rarest form of interracial union, but the most symbolically charged, was the rape of a white woman by a black man. So frightening was the specter of this inversion of the racial hierarchy that colonial legislatures devised a uniquely American criminal penalty, castration, as a means of deter- rence. Laws in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia allowed castration for blacks who attempted to rape white women. Even when this literally emas- culating punishment was dropped from other criminal codes, it could still be

Family Life and the Regulation of Deviance 37

lied in cases of assaults on white women by slaves. That assaults on black a':men provoked no such reaction confirms the racial character of this legisla- :on. At least one eighteenth-century Virginia slave was formally sentenced to castration. Blacks convicted of rape were usually hanged. 67 Nonetheless, the law set a precedent that could be followed by extralegal means. Thus in 1718, when a white man in Connecticut observed a black man lying with a white woman, he attacked the black and castrated him. Whites particularly feared that when slaves revolted against their masters, as they did on several occa- sions during the eighteenth century, the men would assault white women to retaliate for white assaults on black women. However, there is no evidence that black men sexually assaulted white women during the slave uprisings of the

colonial period. 6 ' White attitudes toward interracial sexual relations reflected complex psy-

chological, economic, and legal dynamics. That white men of the planter class could have casual sexual relations with slave women, but reserved the most brutal corporal punishment for black men who slept with white women, clearly illustrates the ways that sexual rules reinforced a system of racial dominance. That enormous scorn was heaped upon a white woman who had sex with a black man-even if they were married-while black women were expected to service the sexual needs of white men, reveals the combined forces of gender and racial hierarchy. As Winthrop Jordan has convincingly argued, white men desired sexual union with blacks, but given their culture's aversion to racial mixing they refused to acknowledge that desire and those unions. Thus white men projected sexual desire onto black women, viewing them as lustful and available, and onto black men, fearing them as potential rapists. Finally, white men refused to acknowledge the products of interracial union by systemati- cally relegating mulatto children to the status of slaves. Unlike Spanish and Portuguese colonies, with their elaborate racial hierarchies in which mulatto children were often considered to be free rather than enslaved, the English colonies allowed no gradation of color. They condemned the child of mixed unions to the status of slave. 69 The different sex ratios of Latin and North American colonies contributed to this divergent practice, but so did the colo- nists' psychological conflicts about interracial union. "Sexual intimacy," Jor- dan has written of the white man, "strikingly symbolized a union he wished to avoid. If he could not restrain his sexual nature, he could at least reject its fruits and thus solace himself that he had done no harm .... By classifying the mulatto as a Negro he was in effect denying that intermixture had occurred at all."'0

The regulation of deviance in the American colonies, from the mid-seven- teenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, helped to enforce the system of marital, reproductive sexuality and to maintain white dominance over blacks. Just as

38 INTIMATE MATTERS

the socialization of youth channeled sexuality into marriage, so too did church, court, and community join forces to identify sexual crime and publicly affirm the proper place of sex. Selective enforcement led to the prosecution of more women than men, and to lesser penalties for free, white, and wealthier in. dividuals. For all colonists, however, a clear message surrounded the public pronouncements about sexual crime: the family provided the only acceptable outlet for sex, with the primary goal of producing legitimate children.

Paralleling the growth of colonial society and the decline of Puritanism, the regulation of morality changed over time. In the eighteenth century, the sexual boundary between white and black intensified. In contrast, the enforce. ment of marital, reproductive sexuality among whites lessened. Even New Englanders, with their religious obligation to create a godly community, meted out fewer, and less severe, punishments for adultery, sodomy, rape, and infan. ticide in the eighteenth century. The middle and southern colonies tradition- ally had lower rates of enforcement for morals offenses, but there, too, convic- tions declined after l 720. As white colonists turned their attention to the pursuit of the secular goal of a prosperous community, sexual transgressions elicited less public concern, while state regulation of morality weakened. After 1750, even more rapid social changes would begin to transform the American family and with it sexual norms and their regulation.

CHAPTER 3

Seeds of Change

IN I 793, a mob of several hundred working men took to the streets of New York City, attacking brothels and gentlemen's residences. The riot protested the acquittal of Harry Bedlow, who had been charged with the rape of a seventeen-year-old seamstress named Lanah Sawyer. The two had met on the streets of New York and had "walked out" together on several evenings before Bedlow took Sawyer to a "bawdy house," where they had a sexual "connec- tion." Testimony at his trial centered on whether Bedlow-who posed as "Lawyer Smith"-had forced an innocent working woman to have sex with him, or if she had done so from "desire of gratifying her passions," knowing full well that when a working girl walked out at night with a gentlemen, it inevitably led to illicit sex.' The case itself highlighted both the possibilities for sexual encounters between strangers in late-eighteenth-century cities and the ambiguity of social rules governing such relationships. The riot that followed Bedlow's acquittal revealed deep popular discontent about the lack of regula• tion of sexual morality by the state, as well as the class antagonisms that could erupt from the sexual exploitation of working women by gentlemen. Above all, the seduction or rape of Lanah Sawyer suggested the extent to which both sexual relations and their social regulation had begun to move beyond the traditional networks of family and community life by the end of the eighteenth century.

The family-centered sexual life of the colonies had been undergoing subtle but important transformations for several generations in response to the eco- nomic, social, and political maturation of the colonies. Commercialized agri- culture, in which crops grown for cash were traded within regional markets, replaced the self-sufficient subsistence farms of the early settlements. By mid- century, a few port towns, such as Boston, Charleston, and Philadelphia,