WS 370 Discussion

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5 INTIMATE MATTERS

search for sexual control. Three patterns stand out that differentiate nine­ teenth-century sexual life from the past. First, both women and men had become more self-conscious about sexuality. as a personal choice and not simply a reproductive responsibility. When sex no longer fell under the regula­ tion of a larger community, each individual had to decide whether to engage in premarital sex or not, whether to have frequent or infrequent marital intercourse, arid whether to yield to or resist the temptation to commit adul­ tery. Second, especially within the middle class, sexual desires had become increasingly fused with a romantic quest for emotional intimacy and even spiritual union. The use of language-a "blending of hearts," "holy kisses," "spiritual joy," when "souls entered Paradise" along "beautiful paths of happi­ ness" to new "joys and blessings"~ontrasted with the frankly physical and reproductive terms in which earlier Americans had spoken of sexuality. Ex­ tramarital relations also echoed with "rapture" and "communion with beloved ones." The exultation of pure physical pleasure-"tall fucking" and the "best fucking matches" -typically appeared within the working class or in rural and frontier areas. Finally, although women and men shared in both the intensifi­ cation of sexuality as a form of interpersonal intimacy and the separation of sexuality from reproduction, gender made an important difference in the ways they experienced these changes. The separate spheres of the middle class, the emphasis on female purity, the double standard, and woman's reproductive role all made the transformation of sexuality more problematic for women. Although they did so in different ways, however, both women and men con­ tributed to the long-term transition of sexuality within the family, from the context of reproduction to the realm of romantic love and physical passion.

CHAPTER

Race and Sexuality

ELIZA GRAYSON was a Mississippi slave whose husband died while fighting in the Union army. In 1893 she applied to the federal government for a widow's pension. In order to determine the legitimacy of her claim, a special examiner took depositions from Mrs. Grayson and a neighbor. The interrogation, con­ ducted by Julius Lemkowitz of the Pension Office, disclosed much about racial differences in sexual practices and attitudes. It also revealed the power whites had to pass judgment on the morality of people of other races.

"Elisha Grayson and I were Mr. Montgomery's slaves before the war," Eliza Grayson told the examiner. "We were married by Jerry Benjaman some time before the war; I cannot say when." "Who is Jerry Benjaman? ... Was he a preacher?" Lemkowitz inquired. "He was no preacher; but being the head man on the plantation and a member of the church he married me and Elisha." "Whose permission did you get to marry? ... Could Jerry Benjaman read and write?" They had their master's permission, she answered, and the headman was literate. The Graysons' first son had died three months after birth, but a second son, Spencer, survived. "How many children have you had before your marriage to Elisha Grayson, and who is their father?" "I had one by my master's son, Frank Montgomery," Mrs. Grayson stated, without further comment. "After the birth of that child" and before marriage, the examiner continued, "have you lived or cohabited with any man?" "No sir," she assured him. "I never lived with any man after that until I took up with Elisha Grayson." "How long after your marriage to Elisha Grayson was Spencer born?" "I do not know," Mrs. Grayson replied, "but we did not 'get' him till after our marriage." Hadn't she cohabited with Elijah Hall, a married man, before Elisha enlisted? "No, sir." Only several years after her husband left the plantation did she "commence cohabiting" with Elijah Hall. "I was a faithful

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wife as long as Elisha Grayson was at home." In answer to a query about her other children, Eliza Grayson listed four with Hall's last name, and of the remaining two, she explained, "I have had to do with several men and I cannot say really who their fathers are." Since the birth of her last child by Hall, over ten years ago, she swore "that no man has ever touched me." The inquiry closed with the question, "By whom can you prove that your first child was by your master's son?" "By Hanson Clay, if he is living."'

From youth to old age, Eliza Grayson's sexual life was shaped by two worlds, that of black slaves and that of white authorities. Within the slave community, she was no doubt a respectable woman. Serial monogamy and frequent childbearing characterized her life, like that of most slave women. Interactions with whites, however, transformed Mrs. Grayson from a wife and mother into a loose woman. Presumably raped by her master's son, the ambig­ uous phrase "I have had to do" suggests that forced sexual relations may have led to the births of two more of her seven surviving children. Under slavery, white masters assumed Eliza Grayson to be sexually available to them. In freedom, a white government interpreted her history as one of illegitimacy and infidelity. The final requirement that Eliza Grayson prove her own rape reveals how little whites were willing to acknowledge their own role in a system of racial and sexual exploitation. For blacks, as for Indians and Mexicans, this story of sexual stereotyping, sexual difference, and sexual abuse recurred throughout the nineteenth century.

Ever since the seventeenth century, European migrants to America had merged racial and sexual ideology in order to differentiate themselves from Indians and blacks, to strengthen the mechanisms of social control over slaves, and to justify the appropriation of Indian and Mexican lands through the destruction of native peoples and their cultures. In the nineteenth century, sexuality continued to serve as a powerful means by which white Americans maintained dominance over people of other races. Both scientific and popular thought supported the view that whites were civilized and rational, while members of other races were savage, irrational, and sensual. These animalistic elements posed a particular threat to middle-class Americans, who sought to maintain social stability during rapid economic change and to insure that a v:irtuous citizenry would fulfill the dream of republicanism. At a time when middle-class morality rested heavily upon a belief in the purity of women in the, home, stereotypes of immoral women of other races contributed to the belief in white superiority. In addition, whites feared the specter of racial amalgamation, believing that it would debase whites to the status of other races. Thus Thomas Jefferson favored the removal of blacks to avoid racial mixing, for "their amalgamation with the other colour produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character,

Race and Sexuality

can innocently consent." The belief in white moral superiority surfaced in relation to all racial and ethnic groups-whether the Chinese in California, who were considered a "depraved class," or the Irish in eastern cities, who were portrayed as an animalistic race with a "love for vicious excitement."2

Indians, Mexicans, and blacks elicited the most extensive commentaries, in part because of the nature of their contact with whites. Patterns differed, but in each region the belief that white sexual customs were more civilized, along with the assumption that Indian, Mexican, and black women were sexually available to white men, supported white supremacist attitudes and justified social control of other races.

Cultural Conflict in the West and Southwest

The interplay of racial and sexual ideology can be seen clearly in the attitudes of whites who moved into and annexed western and southwestern territories. Encountering native American Indians whose sexual practices dif­ fered from their own, whites condemned them as sexually debased. As in the colonial period, the tolerance for cross-dressing and sodomy among some Indians evoked strong censure. One observer cited the berdache as "another illustration of the strange capacities which the California Indians develop for doing morbid and abnormal things." In other tribes, the idea of a bride price, or paying a young woman's family in order to marry her, shocked many Anglo-Americans, who condemned the practice as symptomatic of "a loose state of morals." Europeans and Americans also expressed horror at the practices of polygamy and premarital sex among Indian tribes. In the case of the Plains Indians, for example, whites wrote that polygamy demeaned women. In fact, women in these tribes enjoyed a fairly high status, and polyg­ amy, often the product of an unbalanced sex ratio after wartime losses, offered women the benefit of sharing domestic work with other wives. Polygamous marriage also lessened the reproductive labors of each wife; among the Lakota, for example, plural wives bore an average of six children, monogamous wives an average of eight children. Missionaries to various Indian tribes failed to recognize the advantages of this practice and demanded that Indian converts adhere to strict monogamy.'

At the same time that whites condemned the sexual habits of Indians for degrading women, their own accounts objectified native American women in sexual terms. The image of the good Indian-the beautiful, pure princess who saved white men, as did Pocahontas-gave way in the nineteenth century to the image of the savage and promiscuous squaw. Cowboy lore in particular elaborated on the theme of the Indian whore, who "lays on her back in a cowboy shack, and lets cowboys poke her in the crack." Even more refined

88 89 INTIMATE MATTERS

observers, such as authors of travel accounts or pioneer journals, referred to "dirty little squaws" who slept with or married white men. According to one white woman, intermarriage with Indians was a "shame and disgrace to our country."•

Similarly. Americans used sexual imagery to criticize the Mexicans they encountered in the areas that would later become California, New Mexico, and Arizona. White travelers described residents of northern Mexico as "debased in all moral sense." One writer claimed that all "darker colored" races were "inferior and syphillitic." Mexican women received particular censure. As Richard Henry Dana wrote in Two Years Before the Mast, "the women have but little virtue," and their morals were "none of the best."' White stereotypes rested upon misinterpretations of native cultures. For example. white settlers and Protestant missionaries expected courtship to take place in private and young people to act with extreme decorum. Just as in Eastern cities they found the behavior of working-class youth disturbing, when they observed Mexicans courting in public, celebrating festivals in the streets, and dancing without restraint; they labeled the women "vicious" and disparaged their "low virtue." Similarly, eastern settlers, revealing the ways that white cultural standards of physical privacy had evolved since the colonial era, expressed shock at the sight of women suckling their infants in public. 6

These judgmental newcomers failed to appreciate the unique sexual system that had evolved in the Southwest, a combination of Spanish-Mediterranean and indigenous Indian practices. Before the growth of commerce in the mid­ nineteenth century and the inftux of Protestants after the Mexican-American War, Anglo-American notions of internalized sexual controls had not pene­ trated this region. In the traditional preindustrial culture of the area, the Catholic church and the family played important roles in the regulation of morality and the maintenance of individual and familial honor. As in the seventeenth-century English colonies, the family insisted that marriage occur when premarital sex led to pregnancy, and some young couples used premari­ tal sex to win approval for a union not arranged by their parents. In addition, neighbors made public accusations or spread rumors about anyone whose behavior deviated from community standards. A young woman who had illicit sexual relations might have her braids snipped off JlS a form of public humilia­ tion. When an anonymous rumor maligned her virtue, Maria Francisca Mar­ tinez found it impossible to marry in her hometown. Moreover, it was illegal to tolerate sexual immorality among one's kin. In 1836, for example, Luis Rael went to jail for allowing a female relative to commit adultery with a married man.'

Cultural misunderstanding also arose when sexual values in the Southwest differed from those evolving in the rest of North America. Catholics, ·like

Race and Sexuality

Protestants, emphasized the importance of female purity, and they maintained a double standard that allowed men to indulge in pre- or extramarital sexual relations. However, no ideal of passionlessness emerged among the Mexicans. Women could both have and express their sexual desires, as long as they did not betray the honor· of their families. As in the seventeenth-century colonies, both men and women might be tempted by pre- or extramarital relations, and church and community attempted to keep both sexes in line. At a time when reticence characterized white middle-class culture, Mexicans openly expressed sensuality. Thus dancing in public was not in itself offensive. A love poem published in 1858 spoke freely of male and female desire:

I want to gaze at your rising bosom Showing the agitation within your soul. And I want to see your colored cheeks When you awaken with divine calm.

By your side in the silent country side I want to look at your purple aurora. I want to see, by your side In the repose of the night, The seductive moon.•

For the most part, external controls kept sexual desire from threatening com­ munity stability. Only rarely did individuals defy accepted standards. In an extreme case, for example, a woman defended her right to have extramarital relations. In 1844, Juana Lopes's Anglo husband, testifying to the Santa Fe court, complained of rumors that "adulterers knock on the window when they want my wife to go out." Lopes retorted that "it is my ass, I control it, and I'll give it to whomever I want." The judge's plea for reformation no doubt went unheeded.•

Despite the acceptance of sexual desire, in the northern Mexican region marriage continued to be based on economic rather than romantic considera­ tions, and parents continued to play an important, though gradually declining, part in their children's decisions to wed. Marital separation was also likely to be an economic matter. For example, Barbara Roybal complained to the Santa Fe court that her husband had affairs and beat her, but she was more interested in obtaining alimony in order to feed her children than in regaining his affec­ tions. Economic factors also influenced the acceptance among Mexicans of "free unions," which constituted between five and thirty percent of all Mexican marriages in midcentury California and the Southwest. Adopting Spanish and Indian customs, those who could not afford a wedding or who lived far from

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a local priest simply established households and lived as husband and wife. The children of these unions, recorded in church documents as hijo or hija natural, did not bear the stigma of illegitimacy. To Anglo eyes, however, both parents and children were deemed immoral. 10

Whatever distaste white Americans had for Mexican and Indian sexual customs, some migrants formed interracial unions when they came into con­ tact with natives. The nature of these unions differed, depending on white attitudes, the sex ratio during each period of contact, and the changing propor­ tion of whites in the region. Overall, three patterns of interracial sexual rela­ tions formed: the assimilation of whites via marriage into Indian or Mexican society; the assimilation of Indian and Mexican women via marriage into Anglo society; and white sexual dominance, whether through physical violence or through efforts to obliterate "uncivilized" Indian and Mexican sexual prac­ tices.

The assimilation of whites took place in areas where a small number of white men settled near Indians or Mexicans. Typically the earliest white male migrants, such as trappers, traders, miners, and sailors, sought wives of an­ other race because they had no women of their own to marry. These marriages provided an important form of economic alliance between white men and the groups among whom they lived. Some men used them to acquire land or trading rights, and some deserted their wives when they had nothing more to gain. Others expressed sexual attraction for native women. One white settler found "the Eve-like and scanty garments" worn by Indian women both a "little astonishing" and "really graceful, easy-ay, becoming.""

During the early period of white migration, men tended to assimilate into the cultures of their native wives, and their children retained their mothers' racial identity. In 1850, for example, half of the small group of white men in Santa Fe lived with Mexican women, whose culture predominated. Some men adopted the local custom of forming free unions with Mexican or Indian women. In other parts of the West, "squaw men" lived with or married according to native practice, such as French traders who sometimes took several wives. Among the northern and southern California Indians, there were many mixed households. These included informal, or free, unions, in which white men acknowledged the children as their own. ~frequently, white women assimilated through intermarriage. A long tradition of women who married their Indian captors provides one example. More unusual was the experience of a New England teacher, Elaine Goodale, who married an Indian physician with whom she worked on a Sioux reservation in the 1880s.'2

As more white men and women migrated west, the pattern of intermarriage and assimilation changed. Men who married Indian or Mexican wives now expected them to conform to Anglo customs, and their children no longer

Race and Sexuality

retained the racial identity of their mothers. In the southeastern states, where intermarriage of white men and Cherokee women accounted for one-fourth of Cherokee marriages, children were taught to observe the legal and sexual rules of white, rather than Indian, society. In addition, whites increasingly defined themselves as racially superior to Cherokees and began to oppose intermar­ riage. Similarly, after 1848, when white families migrated to the territories annexed after the Mexican-American War, racial barriers to intermarriage arose. Not only did the white sex ratio even out, but as Mexican-Americans became the minority, Americans drew on long-standing stereotypes to label them both racially and sexually inferior. Intermarriage persisted, but now when white men married Mexican women, they brought their children up as whites." After the American conquest of California, white men who married Mexican women attempted to transform the earlier image of immoral Mexi­ cans into that of "aristocratic, virtuous Spanish ladies," despite the fact that the women they wed were neither Spanish nor aristocratic. Historian Antonia Castaneda argues that this shift in stereotype was part of an effort to assimilate Californian women into Anglo-American society. At the same time, it drew a distinction between "good" (Spanish and assimilable) and "bad" (Mexican and unassimilable) women, with the latter usually depicted as prostitutes. In creating this distinction, whites rewrote their genealogies in an effort to purify their bloodlines and deny their Mexican heritage. The distinction was not necessarily effective, for in many western communities, the terms "Spanish woman" or "senorita" remained synonymous with "prostitute." 14

A third category of sexual interaction evolved when whites invaded native territory and claimed the right to control the sexuality of individual women or of a whole culture. In the nineteenth century, this pattern was typically one of American dominance over Indians or Mexicans, but it had antecedents in the Spanish treatment of Indians in the Southwest. One means by which Spaniards had subjugated local Indians was rape. As a Spanish man explained, "only with lascivious treatment are Indian women conquered." Seventeenth­ century Pueblo Indians had petitioned the Spanish government because sol­ diers so often forced Indian women to have sex. Some Indians also complained against the Catholic clergy, and at least one priest was accused of raping Indian servants. In a different form of sexual imperialism, the Catholic church tried to force Indians to give up their sexual practices. For example, the church opposed polygamy, and friars physically punished Pueblos who continued this custom. The Spanish also attempted to suppress the cross-dressing berdaches among those Indians who were brought under the influence of the missions."

When white Americans became the conquerors in western territories, they too claimed sexual access to native women and tried to obliterate Indian and Mexican sexual customs. Warfare with western Indian tribes justified, for

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white soldiers, the rape of Indian women. During the Beat Flag Revolt in California; John C. Fremont ordered a Mexican prisoner to deliver her young Indian maid to the officers' barracks. "By resorting to artifices," Rosalia Vallego de Lessee recalled, "I managed to save the unhappy girl from the fate decreed to her by the lawless band." Other Indian women were less fortunate. After winning a battle in 1869, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer allegedly invited his ofticers to "avail themselves of the services of a captured squaw," while he selected a Cheyenne woman named Monasetah for himself. The absence ofAnglo women at frontier military garrisons encouraged enlisted men to seduce or bribe Indians to become prostitutes. Some army officers were known to.keep "favorite squaws," or mistresses, and several were court-mar­ tialed for their involvements with Mexican or Indian prostitutes. 1•6

In the predominantly male mining areas of California, where local Indian tribes had been decimated by disease and impoverishment, sexual contact between white men and Indian women usually took. the form of rape, and sometimes paid prostitution. Miners seeking temporary sexual outlets assumed the availability of local Indian women. The fact that most of these women did not cover their breasts gave miners the false impression that they had no modesty or were promiscuous. Miners also knew that they could act with impunity, since white men could not be convicted of rape, or of any crime, based on the· testimony . of an Indian. Together, these white stereotypes and legal privileges made Indian women highly vulnerable to sexual attack. In 1850, for example, three Indian women were "bedevilled and tormented" by white men. Some white miners otfered food or money to buy Indian women's sexual favors, but as a California newspaper reported in 1858, if men failed to "obtain a squaw by fair means, [they would] not hesitate to use foul." White men were known "to drag oft"' Indian women as ifthey were literally fair game. As one settler recorded after a hunting trip, he had bagged, "all told, two grizzlys one Antlope and a digger squaw este noche." Indians resisted white men's assaults, either through retaliatory raids or individual effort. During a California military expedition in 1850, a settler approached ''a comely squaw hidden in the brush" and tried to force her to go with him; the woman's response left him "more glad to escape with his life from the clutch of a she bear, than he was to get away from her." Other women fted to the mountains to escape pursuit by drunken white men in search of sexual partners. For those unable to avoid the assaults, the birth of a mixed-blood child often resulted."

Other white settlers and Protestant missionaries in the West-and throughout the world, as well-attempted to impose the sexual values of the northern middle classes upon native peoples. In California, for example, fe· male missionaries condemned polygamous marriage among the Chinese who immigrated at midcentury and sought to convert them to the ideal of the

Race and Sexuality

Christian, nuclear family. Elsewhere, missionaries called for intervention in the lives of Indians on the grounds that young people too easily engaged in premarital sexual relations, women learned to be sexually assertive, or married couples performed varieties of sexual acts. They defined these Indians as pagans who had to be converted to the "missionary" position-man on top, woman on bottom-and taught to repress their "uncivilized" sexual practices. Among the Hopi Indians of the Southwest, for example, those who converted to Christianity could no longer attend the ritual snake dance, where. male cross-dressing, adultery, and bestiality could be observed publicly. Missionar­ ies urged Indians to adopt the nuclear family and the separate spheres of middle-class Americans. They tried to wipe out the practice of polygamy among the Cherokee and encouraged both Cherokee and Seneca to confine women to domestic pursuits. Indian boarding schools attempted to achieve these goals by teaching girls the values of domesticity and purity."

The pattern of imposing middle-class American sexual values upon Indian and Mexican communities persisted throughout the nineteenth century. Dur­ ing this period, however, interaction between whites and Indians remained fairly limited, in part because large areas of the West continued to be sparsely populated. More importantly, the prevailing reservation policy insured large­ scale racial separation by relegating Indians to lands where whites did not expect to settle. Even after the reservation policy officially ended with the Dawes Act of 1887, many Indians remained on reservations, and whites (other than soldiers, missionaries, or Indian agents) had little to do with native Americans. After the conquest of California arid the Southwest, the Mexican population diminished as white ·Americans seeking land and gold came to dominate these regions demographically, economically, and politically. Here, too, racial segregation increased as the earliest Mexican-American barrios formed in the .late nineteenth century and Mexicans became marginalized in isolated communities. Most white Americans took little notice of sexual prac­ tices among minority peoples who were removed from their view, although they retained the stereotypes of women of color as sexually available and likely to be prostitutes.

Master and Slave

The institution of slavery conditioned sexual as well as racial relations in the South in ways that differed from both the North and the West. White supremacist ideology characterized all regions. Northerners, for example, stereotyped free blacks as immoral, outlawed interracial marriages, and segre­ gated their schools because of a fear of racial "amalgamation. " 1' Unlike north­ eme~s. who lived in racially segregated cities with very few blacks, and in

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contrast to those inhabiting the West, where geographical distance separated whites from Indians and Mexicans, southerners lived in close proximity to the majority of blacks. For southern whites and blacks, slavery and the culture that supported it generated a unique moral system.

White southern sexual norms differed from those of the North in large part because of slavery. The concentration of southern resources on slave labor and plantation agriculture prevented the development of the· urban, commercial, and industrial economy that gave rise to social-and sexual-transformation in the northern states. In contrast to the separate spheres of northern middle­ class families, the southern planter family remained a patriarchy in which a man ruled over the women, children, and slaves within his household. Parents continued to influence marital choice, courtship remained public rather than private, and fertility rates showed very little decline. Although bonds of love developed within marriage, during courtship economic considerations con­ tinued to be significant, and men expected to exercise sexual freedom with women slaves. 20

Although both northerners and southerners idealized white female purity, the demand for self-control-by men or women-rarely appeared in the slave states. Rather, familial surveillance over female virtue prevailed. The presence of slavery heightened planter insistence on protecting white women, and their family line, from the specter of interracial union. Greater regulation of women's sexuality was matched by greater sexual privilege for white men. Slavery provided abundant opportunity for white men to exercise sexual li­ cense. Especially within the planter class, relations with black women provided white men with both a sexual·outlet and a means of maintaining racial domi­ nance.

For white women, the effects of this system could be sexually stultifying. As early as 1809, a northern visitor noted the impact of slavery on white women's sexuality. The "dull, frigid insipidity, and reserve" of southern women, he claimed, was one of the worst "curses slavery has brought on the Southern States." A slave recollection supported this observation that the availability of black women as men's sexual partners destroyed the sexual relations of white men and women. After discovering that her husband had sex with black women, Mistress Mary Reynolds "don't never have no more children, and she ain't so cordial with the Massa."u Another reason for southern women's sexual reserve was the strict controls placed upon them. A belief in women's moral weakness, rather than moral superiority, necessitated standards that made courtship, for example, less private and more supervised than in the North.· Both elaborate social rules and the geographical ist>lation of plantations limited opportunities for intimacy during courtship. Chaperons escorted unmarried young women to balls or on visits, restricting premarital

Race and Sexuality

sexual exploration and reminding women that property and family connec­ tions were as important as romance in the selection of mates. As in the North, the woman who "fell" from the standard of female purity...,.,.as evidenced by the birth of an illegitimate thild;......,paid extremely high social costs. The unwed mother Rachel Warrenton, for example, was considered "lost to everything that is dear to women. " 22 Even worse was the fall from racial purity, for a white woman's sexual relations with a black man challenged the basic hierarchy of southern society.

Strict controls on women's sexuality persisted after marriage. Married women in the South might have chaperons when they traveled, lest their reputations be tainted. An extreme double standard condemned any woman who engaged in extramarital sexual . relations .. She risked personal disgrace, violent physical punishment by her husband, divorce, and the loss of her children. Furthermore, although married women of the planter class did de­ velop loving relationships with their husbands, their sexual lives remained, for the most part, associated with procreation and the duty to produce heirs. As a result, southern women were less likely to limit family size and more vulnera­ ble to condemnation if they attempted to do so. They continued to bear the full physical costs of repeated pregnancies and childrearing-up to seven children in a planter-class family-at a time when their northern sisters were beginning to reduce these labors. 23

In contrast to the exaggerated protection of white women's virtue and the containment of female sexuality within marital, reproductive relations, south­ ern white men of the planter class enjoyed extreme sexual . privilege. Most southern moralists condoned white men's gratification of lust, as long as they did so discreetly with poor white or black women. Polite society condemned the public discussion of illicit sex, but men's private writings reveal a good deal of comfort with the expression of pure sexual desire, unrelated to love or intimacy. One college youth recorded in his diary bow he sought black or white women when his "cock stood as furious as a studs," and another young man told a friend where to find girls and how to avoid "the Damn's clap." As in the eighteenth century, a single or married gentleman could engage in such "wenching" (or casual, recreational sex) without shame or tarnish to his reputation. One planter defended his own wide-ranging sexual activities in a diary entry: "the very greatest men ... have been addicted to loose indulgences with women ... Webster and Clay are notorious for it and President Harrison got his wife's niece by child." Men's affairs were so institutionalized that southerners had a special term-the "gander months"-that referred to the late months of pregnancy, when husbands typically sought sex outside of marriage. Defenders of the southern system, such as William Gilmore Simms, argued that the planter's ability to have sex with his female slaves provided

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a safety valve that protected the virtue of white women. 24 Critics of this view, such as a Louisiana planter who sent his sons north to be educated, lamented that there was "no possibility of their being brought up in decency at home.•• One southern mother warned her son not to adopt "the vile and bad habits of men.... The more I see and know men," she confessed, "the more f.-dislike them and think they are a vile set of animals. " 2'

South Carolina politician Jaines Henry Hammond illustrated the sexual privilege enjoyed by men of the planter class, as well as the effect of their behavior on white women. Governor of the state during the 1840s, Hammond not only had sex with female slaves, but he also engaged (in his words) in "everything short of direct sexual intercourse" with his four teenage nieces, the daughters of politician Wade Hampton II. Over a period of two years Hammond kissed and fondled the girls and pressed against their "most secret and sacred regions." When one of his nieces informed her father of these episodes, Hampton tried to ostracize his brother-in-law from polite society and ruin his political career. At first, the revelation of Hammond's incestuous relationships seemed to damage his social and political prestige. It also tempo­ .-arily estranged his wife. However, Hammond recovered from the setback and went on to serve in the U.S. Senate. In contrast, the reputations of the four nieces were ruined by the scandal. As one observer explained, "no man who valued his standing could marry one of the Hampton girls." They all remained single. Hammond showed no contrition; in his diary he blamed the girls for "permitting my hands to stray unchecked" and for not "shrinking" from his touch. He showed as little concern for the feelings of his wife, with whom he never discussed the affair, and whose coldness he found unjust. While sepa­ rated from her, Hammond had a relationship with a female ~ve, justifying the liaison on the grounds that his wife could not fulfill the "great craving of my nature. " 2•

The double standard for southern men and women may have been less extreme among yeoman farmers and poorer whites. Although the evidence for these groups is scanty, scattered incidents suggest that female sexual expres­ sion could occur more easily outside of planter Society. An 1833 divorce case cited the wife of an "illiterate yeoman" who engaged in adulterous sex with several different men ''in broad daylight." When caught in the act, the woman rejoined with language as bold as that of Juana Lopes of Sante Fe: "My ass is my own and I will do as I please with it." Poor and servant· white women occasionally crossed the racial barrier to cohabit or have sex with black men. One married woman who bore a black child explained to her white husband that "she saw no more harm in a white woman's having a black child than in a white man's having one, though the latter was more frequent. " 27 Although many southern women shared her knowledge about the prevalence ofmiscege-

Race and Sexuality

nation between white men and black women, very few dared to act on the logic of her defense.

Among slaves, about whom there has been much more research, sexual values both resembled and differed f~ those of the white planter class. According to historian Herbert Gutman, whites perpetrated a myth of unre­ stricted black sexuality, explaining it either as the product of inherent racial tendencies toward licentiousness (the southern view) or as the product of the institution ofslavery, which denied black people the right to legal marriage and thus the restraint on passion that marriage provided (the northern abolitionist view). Both groups, Gutman argues, failed to see the unique Afro-American family system that evolved under slavery and within which slaves adhered to a moral code that differed from that of whiteS.21 In many ways, the slave community resembled certain preindustrial and peasant societies. Premarital sex might occur without stigma; most adults married and maintained stable unions when possible; and sexuality and reproduction remained closely linked, with little tension between the goals of pleasure and procreation and little thought to family limitation. At the same time, however, slavery complicated this picture immensely. The inability to wed legally, the separation of partners by sale or by residence on separate plantations, and the ultimate ownership of women's bodies by white masters rather than by black husbands or wives all forced slaves to balance their own desires with the demands of their masters.

Courtship provides a good illustration of the ways that slaves ~aintained their own sexual system even as they were continuously inftuenced by bondage itself and by the whites with whom they came in contact. Among whites,. the taboo on premarital intercourse rested largely upon the need to establish legitimate heirs and to maintain female purity before marriage. These consider­ ations had little relevance for slaves, who were themselves property rather than property owners and who could not marry in law. For these and other reasons, slaves did not have arranged marriages. Although. parents might be consulted, individual attraction could be a major consideration in courtship. In addition, slaves did not condemn premarital intercourse, and many adolescent girls had sexual relations. No special stigma attached to the young woman who bore an "outside" child, that is, one born outside of marriage. According to one set of plantation records, up to twenty percent of all slave mothers had one or more children before marriage. Although this premarital pregnancy rate far exceeded that of the planter class, it probably resembled that of poor southern whites. A slave named Violet illustrated the common pattern of premarital pregnancy followed by marriage. Violet had several children before she settled down with a man whom she married two years later, and then only after she had assured herself that he accepted her children. Such trial, or "make-out," marriages ~ed advantageous to the white mistress Mary Boykin Chestnut,

98 99 INTIMATE MATTERS

who wrote in her diary that slave women "have a chance here that women have nowhere else. They can redeem themselves-the 'impropers' can. They can marry decently, and nothing is remembered against these colored ladies." Most members of her class, however, condemned the practice as immoral. 29

The acceptance of premarital sex did not imply indiscriminate sexual relations. Rather, blacks, like whites, expected to form stable, monogamous unions. A woman who bore several "outside" children, for example, eventually settled down with one man for a long-term marriage. In addition, blacks regulated moral standards within the slave community. Like white settlers in the colonial period, some slaves preferred to marry before the birth of a child. Eliza Grayson had borne a child to her master's son; later she married Elisha Grayson and gave birth to a son who was not conceived until after their marriage. As one man reminisced about slave morality: "If you fooled up a girl with an arm full of you, you had to take care of her." Similarly, if a young woman seemed too sexually active, traditional sanctions might be imposed to restrain her. In Georgia, where slaves held especially strong views about female chastity, one community employed an African custom of"drumming" a banjo to control such women: "Den everybody know an dat girl sho better change her ways." Finally, the myth of slave promiscuity is belied by the facts that slaves had no prostitution and very little venereal disease within their com­ munities.10

Aside from engaging in premarital sexual activity, slaves also participated in courtship rituals when they sought to marry a particular mate. Although slaves had little leisure time and few private meeting places, they carried on courtships that could last up to a year. Initial meetings took place at holiday parties, dances, or at church services, and courtship continued during formal visits. For some slaves, marriage preceded sexual relations, as was the case for Jim, who proposed before the first kiss, and only after asking permission of his intended wife's mother." It was common to seek parental approval for mar­ riage, and it was uncommon for slaves to choose spouses from among their own blood relatives. Although some slaves spoke of love as a basis for mar­ riage, one historian has concluded that "for every marriage that was anchored in romantic love there was probably one that grew out of pragmatic considera­ tion. "12

In addition to adhering to the customs of their own community, slaves had to obtain the consent of their masters to court women from other plantations (since a pass was needed to travel alone) and to marry. Former slave Camilla Jackson recalled that Dr. Hoyle, a Georgia planter, allowed his slaves to chose their own mates, as long as they came from the plantations of his friends and not from his own. A suitor, armed with pass, went to call on Sundays, courting in the presence of the woman's parents. When the couple married, Dr. Hoyle

Race and Sexuality

provided a wedding feast and a white preacher to perform the ceremony. Underlying such benevolence was the control that masters exercised over slave courtship. For example, as another ex-slave from Georgia explained, "If the woman wasn't willing, a good, hard-working hand could always get the master to make the girl marry him-whether or no, willy nilly." When Rose Wil­ liams's master sent her to live with Rufus, she complained to her mistress, who explained, in Rose's words: "Yous am de portly gal and Rufus am de portly man. De massa wants yu-uns fer to bring forth portly chillen." Rose stayed with Rufus until emancipation, when she left him. Not all women slaves complied with their masters' commands, however. As Violet explained when refusing several mates chosen by her owner, "No, Misses, I can't take one ob dem, 'cause I don't lub' em." She succeeded in choosing her own partner."

As the property of their masters, slaves did not have the legal right to contract marriage, but they nonetheless performed marriage rituals ranging from jumping over a broomstick to Christian wedding ceremonies performed by black or white preachers, along with festive celebrations in the slave quar­ ters. Once married, a couple had little privacy. If they came from the same plantation, a young couple usually shared a separate area of a crowded slave cabin. If theirs was a "broad marriage," in which husband and wife lived on separate plantations, the husband ~ould usually get a pass to visit on Saturday nights.'• As a former slave from South Carolina recalled, her father "had to git a pass to come to see Mammy. He slipped in and out 'nough of times to have four chillun." If the couple was sold apart, each was likely to remarry."

Despite these obstacles to traditional family life, most slaves· participated in long-term, monogamous marriages. Slaves and masters jointly supported the ideal of monogamy. Some masters, like a Florida planter, "never interfered in their connubial or domestic affairs, but let them regulate these after their own manner," but others attempted to impose monogamy on slaves. Thus an Alabama owner whipped those slaves who violated "the right of husband and wife and such other immorality."" Regardless of their owners' efforts, slaves regulated marriage through their own traditional mechanisms of group pres­ sure and church discipline. As did preindustrial white congregations, black churches punished adultery by suspending sinners from church membership. In addition, either partner might leave a marriage if he or she suspected adultery, for no disgrace fell upon those who "divorced."n

Reproduction, like courtship and marriage, meant different things to mas­ ters and slaves. For the former, children represented property; for the latter, family. Slave fertility rates, like those of southern white women, remained high during the first half of the nineteenth century, for both owners and slaves encouraged reproduction.'• Owners had a financial interest in slaves producing children and openly encouraged "breeding." Women known as breeders

100 INTIMATE MATTERS

brought higher prices on the slave market and might enjoy special privileges, such as a job in the master's house rather than in the fields. Male slaves known as "bucks" also brought higher prices and had special privileges, as the former slave John Cole recalled: "If a hand were noted for raising up strong black bucks . . . he would be sent out as a species of circuit-rider to the other plantations ... [and] there he would be 'married otr again-time and again. This was thrifty and saved any actual purchase of new stock." More typically, some owners offered incentives to reproduction, such as a new pig for each child born to a family, a new dress for each surviving infant, or Saturdays off for mothers of six children. 39

The extent of planter breeding, however, has probably been exaggerated, for slaves bore children for their own reasons and not simply at the bequest of their masters. As Angela Davis has suggested, the creation of families gave slave women an arena of personal meaning denied them in the productive labor they performed for their owners. Thus slaves, like most preindustrial peoples, valued motherhood and did little to interfere with it. Within marriage, children were usually welcomed, and those born outside of marriage attracted no stigma. Planters did complain when they suspected that women slaves tried to avoid childbearing, and some slave women clearly did prevent conception or abort through the use of herbs. At least one "barren" slave proved capable of bearing children after emancipation. On the whole, however, slaves did not attempt to limit family size. Like southern whites, and unlike increasing num­ bers of northerners, the southern slave family maintained a close link between sexuality and reproduction.••

Interracial Sex in the South

In the South, as in the West, the mingling of races led to interracial sexual relations, but slavery restricted the possibilities for permanent unions and encouraged the pattern of white dominance. It is difficult to know the precise extent of sexual relations between white masters and black slaves, but the percentage of mulattoes among southern blacks provides a clue. Among free blacks in southern cities in 1860, close to forty percent were of mixed blood; for urban slaves, the proportion was twenty percent; and for rural slaves, it was only ten percent. Some historians cite these figures to argue that whites rarely had sex with blacks, since ninety-five percent of southern blacks were rural slaves." From another perspective they suggest that children of mixed unions were more likely to be freed. Furthermore, in comparison to the large number of rural slaves, there were only a few white men who had access to them; thus, even if all planter-class men had sex with slaves, the mulatto population could have been as low as ten percent.

Race and Sexuality IOI

Whatever the actual extent of interracial sex, it is important to recognize that these unions did not simply involve powerless black victims subject to the total domination of white masters. Incidents of brutal rape and sadistic beat­ ings of slave women, popularized in nineteenth-century abolitionist literature, did in fact take place. But when abolitionists emphasized these acts in the cause of opposing slavery, they often overlooked the ability of slaves to resist or circumvent the sexual advances of their masters. (They also attributed to slavery a form of sexual exploitation that occurred in the free-labor society of the North, where prostitution grew visibly by midcentury and working women had to contend with the sexual advances of their employers.) To characterize interracial sex purely in terms of the victimization of black women would be a distortion. Not only did black women resist sexual assault successfully, but in addition, sincerely affectionate unions sometimes formed between white men and black women. As in the colonial era, white men's access to black women continued to provide a critical link between the economic need of masters to reproduce their human property and their psychological need to dominate both blacks and women. At the same time, however, this volatile intersection of sex and race encompassed a range of relationships-from rape to informal marriages-some of which could challenge as well as support the status quo.

Both law and social thought encouraged white men to assume sexual access to female slaves. By legal definition, a slave could not be raped, since she was the property of her master. According to popular white opinion, black women had strong passions and always desired sexual relations. As a rt"Sult, owners and overseers often approached slave women, expecting or commanding sex­ ual relations to satisfy their own physical desires or confirm their superior status. Some men used brute force or the threat of severe whipping or sale to overcome women's resistance. As a Georgia slave explained to a white mis­ tress, "When he make me follow him into de bush, what use me tell him no? He have strength to make me." One owner fathered children by many of his female slaves by beating reluctant partners, and other masters also resorted to whippings if slaves resisted their advances. A former slave recalled how a South Carolina master prevented the intervention of other slaves. He would tell a young female slave, "You go yonder and shell corn in de crib. He's de marster so she have to go. Then he send others to work some other place, then he go to the crib. He did dis to my very aunt and she had a mulatto boy." Male as well as female slaves suffered sexual humiliation from these assaults, as did a husband whose master told him "to go outside and wait 'til he do what he want to do" with the slave's wife.•2

Despite the enormous power of slave owners to force women to have sex with them, the stories of women's resistance testify to the influence that slaves

102 103 INTIMATE MATTERS

could at times exert over whites. Martha Bradley, an Alabama field-worker, took her hoe and knocked down an overseer when he "come 'roun and say sumpin' to me he had no bisness say." A cook named Sukie refused her master's order to take oft" her dress. When be tore it off, a former slave reminisced, "dat black gal got mad. She took an' punch ole Marsa ... an' den she give him a shove an' push his hindparts down in de hot pot o' soap." In retaliation, however, the master sold Sukie to slave traders. Other women avoided being alone with seductive white men. One maid evaded the sexual advances of her master, first by taking her children to sleep with her and nailing up the windows of her house. and then by threatening to holler when he managed to enter during the night. Blacks and occasionally white women helped prevent masters from cornering female slaves. Finally, white men who raped black women might have to confront a husband's anger and efforts to defend his wife. In at least one case a male slave killed a master who raped his wife, even though he knew that he would die for his act. 0

Although the rape of a female slave was probably the most common form of interracial sex, other types of unions also existed. Many white men took black mistresses, visiting them regularly in their quarters or setting up a special residence for the purpose of sexual relations. Occasionally, white men brought their black mistresses into their own homes, enraging the wives who were forced by propriety to remain silent. Some single men lived with concubines, referring to .their mistresses as "housekeepers." In a rare case, Richard John­ son lived openly with Julia Chinn and acknowledged their two children, but they were condemned by planter society. Another interracial couple who married were run out of town for their act. More typical was the experience of the slave Louisa Picket, who was purchased as a concubine. "Mr. Williams told me what he bought me for soon as we started for New Orleans," she recalled. "He said if I behave myself he'd treat me well; but if not, he'd whip me almost to death." During his lifetime Williams never acknowledged their sexual relationship or their offspring, but in his will he freed Picket and their four children ...

For those men who preferred light-skinned women as concubines, a "fancy trade" in women operated in New Orleans and Charleston. Interracial patterns in the lower South resembled those of the West Indies, where sexual mingling took place to a much greater extent. ·Both slave and free black women in Louisiana participated in forms of concubinage. A fancy girl could bring in more than twice the price of a prime field hand and would enjoy a less taxing life, as well. Freeborn light-skinned women contracted sexual relations with white men through a system known as p/afage. A white gentleman usually met one of these free black women at a Louisiana quadroon ball and then courted her, making a formal arrangement to support her and their children for a

Race and Sexuality

period of several years to a lifetime." The concubine might be able to use her sexuality to negotiate an economic partnership with a white man. Sex could thus become one of the few areas of economic exchange open to black women. Whatever leverage they may have achieved, however, the bartering of sexuality reinforced notions of sexual availability that would haunt black women long after slavery ended. In addition, the open concubinage of New Orleans left a legacy of a multiracial society that represented the worst fears of whites, who opposed any mixing of the races.

Aside from open concubinage, more discreet long-term unions between white men and black women involved both economic negotiation and sincere aft"ection. The former slave "Linda Brent" recalled that at age fifteen, she constantly evaded her master's unwanted sexual advances in order to preserve her purity and self-respect, but when another white man appealed to her, she agreed to have sex with him. Contrasting the two sexual possibilities, she explained that "[i]t seems less degrading to give one's self, than to submit to compulsion. There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gives by kindness and attachment."46

When white men emancipated their mistresses and mulatto children in their wills they implied that more than mere physical exploitation characterized these relationships. The Virginia planter Ralph Quarles, who held antislavery views, made his slave Lucy the mistress of his household and treated their four children as his own, educating and eventually emancipating them. In Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi, prominent white planters left wills directing the emancipation of their slave mistresses and children. In 1854, Elijah Willis of South Carolina attempted to free his slave mistress and her children, four of whom were his own, by taking them to Ohio. Similarly, a Louisiana slave owner took his slave and their children first to Ohio and then to Texas, where they lived as man and wife. Another master willed money to the slave who had become his "adopted wife. " 47 These arrangements proved vulnerable to the whim of relatives, however. Elijah Willis died during the journey north, and his family contested his will by suggesting that he was insane to have allowed a black woman to act as the mistress of his household. Henry Grimke's will asked that his slave mistress, Nancy Weston, and her children be treated as members of the family, but his heirs disregarded his wishes and treated them as servants.••

As in the colonial period, the least frequent-or least frequently acknowl­ edged-interracial relationship was that between a white woman and a black man. Women of the yeoman or poor white classes had sexual relations with and married mulatto men. Frequent references in court records to black chil­ dren born of white mothers attest to these unions. In New Orleans. where police sent white women to jail for one- to six-month terms for having sex with

105 104 I NT I M A T E M A·T T ER S )

black men, the law was-less strictly applied to lower-class women. The extent of illicit sex between wonien of the planter class and bhlck slaves is not well documented; One Virginia- wife lived' fer:··six years "in open adultery with a, negro man,'' .and· some planters'<·;wives gave bitth to light..skinned- mulatro children;•'-An observer believed tbafthe daughter& of small plantm-and'other white women whoeameinto regular contact With slaves did in fact have·sexual relati~-with·t~ -and ma.y even have ··~pelled $0Jlle ·of the -~'tO i._ave somethmg to do with them. " 50 Because umons•of planter-class white woi(ien and black men so inverted the southern racial and sexual hieratchy, an intrigu­ ing historieal silence masks their· frequency and dynamics.-.

'" :~.

ReconStrilction: Sei' and Social Control

The emancipation of the slaves and the era of' Reconstruction presented both new opportunities and new chaQenges to the struggle of southern blacks to aeliieve some degree·of sexual freedom. On the one hand. emancipation enabled· former slav-es tb' enjoy the· privileges of/ legal marriage, to reunite lo*5eParated 'families, and tO escape· the· paternalistic control their former owners had exercised over ·courtship, marriag«i; and parenthood. On the other hand, the dismantling of slavery initiated a new and tei'iifying era in southern race relations Jn which sexuality1became oile ofthe central means ofreasserting whitesO:cial con~l.over blacks.· .,

The.postwai: South witnessed widespread family· formation and re-forma~ tion·• amang ·blacks. Some 50Uthern states automatically -validated slave mar­ riages·, after emancipation, while cothers required formal registration.. In both cases, -slaves·eagerlyJegitimated·their unions• holdil,lg mass-marriage ceremo­ nies and individual;weddinp. As one couple.explained. they "didn't know if de first marriage was good or not," so they held :a formal wedding. In 1866~ over 11me, tholisand couples registered . their marriages hr a ieventeeb-county area of North Carolina. indieatiiig the eagerness offormer slaves to aftirm their unions. For,:,those who had been separated, ·some of whom had remarried, family reconstitutirin could be Wrought with emotion. A literate couple, sepa­ rated by sale dbriiig slavery; corresponded gfugerly about the possibility of reunion after 'one had taken a new mate. Anticipating her former hlisband,..s return, Willie Alln Grey wrote to him in romantic terms: .. I know that I have lived with ·Y,ou and loved you then and love you still .. Every time I hear from you:my love··gr:ows strong/'"

Bath black ministers and the northern teachers and missionaries who came to the South during Reconstructirin preached the sexual values of premarital chaitity and monogamous marriaie, ·Some·blacks enibraced these views,; along with the .ideal of the ·middle-class separate ipherea and the importance of female purity. Like free blacks in the North who aspired to middle-class,

Race and Sexuality

respectability, postwar southern freedmen associated ''ra<:e·-ptogress.. W}th the vllfues of chastity Bnd.. tidelity•. Many··adopted the d~t;,i!:J:eql~ ~~-

gh. .aJ. dblack. · · • h and. b"-h· tabl ·.L-m.....··*·.;.41f•"'esou t to."""en womens onor esta wt. .s. e:.,~-...~,. , :~~,- northern states/the large majority of.:bl~lc. families .in ~'~MU•r;~ consisted of ..we.headed.. two,.parent household$. At the same ti~'how~et. older black sexual practi~: persis~ long-~ emancipation. ~~-,,~-· late-nineteenth-century , census · reportS,. for ~amp~ south~ b~;,,._... tinued to pracsice premarital in~urse and to. accept the birth of:cliU~ before marriage. ' 2 . . ·.. ,..J.\\>'

The Civil War: benefited blacks by allowing the legi~matioµ off~ili.es, but it also . set the stale. for a se~u.l battleground: that· would rage long past Reconstruction; As Herbert Gutman-· has written, .. Military occupaticm llll4 emancipation unsettled the explOitative.$eXual ties .. of slav~; Black womenrs vulnerabil~y to sexual ab.use. by.-whites. did.not disappear;'t•ith the. er_adication of slavery. For one, northern,,soldiers who shared southetner.s'.aS.Sumpi~on11 about the;sexual passions of black women both raped black. women~d-girls and. took .black concubines. Jn additiQn, during; Reconstruction soutbetners unleashed their rage against freed.slaves by sexually. ~ulting-black.~omen. Wh\tes; arguing:that:blaclc..men lusted after white woinen. also used the specter of black .-sexu-1 Niolence against whites •to· terrorize .black men, and ultimately tojustify lynching, . , ,, ., ...

.·Both poor ..aqd.-''upstandil)l'r white men .responded; tO the granting.·of political rights· to iblack men by. attacking black women. lo Louisiana, for example,·twOi.well-known white-men brQke into Martha-Kemp's homt,in.the mkldle of the night anti.attempted to have M?t with' her and an9Jher woman. Wh.en.,Kemp explained that 11he was "ll woman of the church:and did not do such .things," the-men hit her and ;threa~ to shoot her •. ln. an«he.r '.Louisi: 8IUl ~•. the ~-of a white employer raped the daughter- of a black .worker, while in 'te~Jour white men raped the daughter,Qfa. black man. During.the Memphis race riot incl 8.66; whites au.eked and killed black people,. burned their homes, robbed and gang raped fonneulaves;;rape4 several other blaclc. wpmen at gunpoint,, and attempied to rape.a<bi.ck.child. In 187l, Harriet Smirl, wife of :a black radical llepublicanJn Columbia, South, CarolU.., told a congressional.committee:.of.her otdeal. Ku Klux Klan members had bea~ her hus~ and later returned when.she was.alone in the house. They.~pit in .her face, threw dirt in her eyes, told her to ~ her h~ -vote Demo­ cratic,.and tllen gang raped her. When black men responded ·to these outrages and attempted to protect black women from the sexual essaults of white men, they becan1e subject tO physical attack themselves. In at least one case. a white sherift' authorized the public, sadistic beating C?f a black man who had tried ~to proteet,Jiis ,wife's virtue."

White men's violent response to emancipation represented one part of a

106 107 INTIMATE MATTERS

wider quest by southern whites to replace slavery with a new system of social control over blacks. Once the absolute white dominance inherent in ownership no longer operated, whatever paternalism may have existed under slavery quickly became extinct. Now that blacks posed the threat of becoming social and political equals, whites sought new ways to maintain racial supremacy. Sexuality became a "weapon of terror" with which to intimidate blacks and keep them from assuming social equality with whites. Butsexuality was not simply another weapon alongside lynching, arson, and outright murder. Sex­ ual domination had particular meanings for southern whites, not only because of the access white men had to black women under slavery, but also because the demise of slavery reopened the troubling question of the status of children born of interracial unions. Who would they be now that slavery no longer made them the property of white owners? What, indeed, would happen to the concept of white supremacy if social and sexual mixture took place among free blacks and whites?

Historian Leon Litwack has suggested that the fear of racial mixture, outside of a system of white dominance, underlay the opposition to integration that so pervaded the South in the late nineteenth century. Although explicitly a means to prevent the races from associating in public accommodations, the institutionalization of segregation in the late-nineteenth-century South rested upon a deep-seated fear that social mixing would lead to sexual mixing. As one southerner explained, "if we have intermarriage we shall degenerate; we shall become a race of mulattoes; we shall be another Mexico; we shall be ruled out from the family of white nations. Sir, it is a matter of life and death with the Southern people to keep their blood pure." Although white men fully expected to continue to have sexual access to black women, they refused to consider the possibility that white women marry black men or that the children of interra­ cial unions be recognized as legitimate heirs of whites. The fear of mixing led southern states to pass new laws to prevent interracial marriage during the 1860s, and the term miscegenation first appeared in these laws. 1•

During the brief period in which they had a political voice in southern state governments, black men attempted to reform the laws governing interracial ·sex to extend legal protection to black women who had sexual relations with white men and to their muiatto children. Blacks hoped to make white fathers responsible for their bastard children and to outlaw the system of concubinage by forcing legal marriage upon cohabiting interracial couples. Similarly, black women exerted pressure to legitimize interracial unions. At least one quadroon mistress threatened to deny her services to a planter unless he married her. In the words of a northern observer, Mississippi concubines "not only kicked against the pricks, they actually began to wear armor against them." In New Orleans, black concubines married their white partners in the decade after the

Race and Sexuality

Civil War, and a small number of black men married white women. Elsewhere, black women brought paternity suits against the white fathers of their chil­ dren. '1

In the long run, however, blacks failed to legalize interracial sexual rela­ tions and to protect black women within them. Bastardy laws passed by Reconstruction legislatures were later repealed, and none of the legal reforms of concubinage passed. Rather, southern state legislatures outlawed interracial marriage, while courts and vigilantes prosecuted those who defied the ban. White men who slept with black women continued to escape criticism. Indeed, when black women were no longer the property of only a small number of white men, they became sexually available to all white men. As a result, the number of mulattoes increased after emancipation. But black men who courted or married white women could, along with their female partners, expect trou­ ble, foreshadowing the lynch law that soon emerged throughout the South. In Alabama, for example, a black man went to jail and paid a steep fine for proposing to marry a white woman in 1867; a decade later a white woman spent two years in prison for marrying a black man. When a former slave courted a "yaller woman" in Mississippi, a white man delivered a beating to enforce his warning that even a mulatto was off limits." Thus, in the post­ Reconstruction South, as in the West, whites asserted sexual dominance as one means of insuring political and economic dominance over members of other races.

Attitudes toward interracial sex reflected larger social dynamics in nine­ teenth-century America. In an era of rapid change, marked by anxiety about the maintenance of social order, the northern middle class clung to ideals of family stability, female purity, and male self-control. When members of this group encountered people of other races, whose sexual patterns differed from their own, their reactions were both extreme and ambivalent. For one, whites stereotyped other groups as negative images of their own ideals. By labeling them sexual savages, whites reassured themselves that their own race was indeed the civilized one it aspired to be. Distancing themselves from the sexuality of other races served instrumental, as well as symbolic, purposes. By characterizing other races as, at best, remote sexual pagans and, at worst, sexual monsters in pursuit of white women, whites could manipulate the sexual fears of their own culture in order to justify the conquest of Indians, Mexicans, and blacks. In the latter case, southerners invoked the specter of miscegenation to support their efforts to deny freed black people full citizenship and to create a racially segregated society based on a rule of terror. Thus, despite missionary efforts at conversion, white Americans had an investment in maintaining the differences between themselves and people of other races.

108 INTIMATE MATTERS

Given their own unique traditions, the preindustrial economic patterns they maintained, and the ambivalence of white "civilizers," it is not surprising that other racial groups maintained their own distinctive sexual customs throughout the nineteenth century. Whites influenced the patterns of sexual life wherever they had contact, but middle-class morality did not supplant older sexual traditions. Outside of the white middle class, for instance, neither reticence nor privacy characterized the treatment of sexuality. In addition, many Indians, Mexicans, and blacks accepted consensual unions, and they did not necessarily stigmatize children born outside of marriage as "illegitimate." Traditional church and community sanctions, rather than the internalized individual controls of the middle class, maintained sexual norms in these groups. Fertility rates remained high, and as in preindustrial societies, repro­ duction, love, and erotic desire coexisted within marriage.

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, the meaning of sexuality for white middle-class Americans balanced uncomfortably between the reproduc­ tive moorings of the past and the romantic and erotic leanings of the present, between female control and male license, between private passion and public reticence. No wonder that the sexuality of minority races became a foil against which whites redefined themselves. Alternative sexual systems threatened the precarious balance of white sexuality. Even more threatening was the chal· lenge from within their own culture, as sexuality moved beyond the family and into the public sphere.

I. A Massachusetts fornication case: "The Jurors for our Sovereign Lord the King ha~ng upon their Oath presented that Phinehas Parker of Groton in the County of Middlesex Gentleman and Mehitabef Flanden of Contoocuck in the Province of New hampshire Single Woman and Sempster on. the last Day of November AD 1748 at Groton aforesaid carnally knew each other, had carnal Knowledge of eaeh other's Bodies 8t committed the Crime of Fornication together in evil Example to others against the Peace of our Said Lord the King and the Law of this Province in that Case made and provided ...." Parker pleaded guilty and was tined live pounds and costs. (Courtesy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Archives.)