Malone

Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana. By Ann Patton Malone. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

During the 1970s and 1980s, a number of scholars including Eugene Genovese, Herbert Gutman, Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, and John Blassingame did groundbreaking research trying to uncover the lives of slaves in the antebellum South. Their work did much to combat the myth of weak African American families with missing fathers and overbearing mothers. In their zeal to return agency to the slaves, however, Ann Patton Malone argues that they have underestimated the damage inflicted by a brutal, inhumane system.

Rather than relying on W.P.A. interviews and slave narratives to construct a qualitative analysis of the slave family, Malone instead applies the techniques of Peter Laslett of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure in England. Using his terms, she examines the types of households in Louisiana slave society. The simple family is defined by a conjugal link; although the majority of simple families were standard nuclear families with two parents, this was not always the case. Solitaire households, an understudied group, consisted of members without a conjugal tie. Non-nuclear families might have blood but not conjugal ties. She also discusses extended family households as well as multiple family households. In all cases, the simple family was the most predominant on plantations, but Malone points out that only forty-eight percent of all slaves lived in a traditional two parent household at any given time.

Malone has divided the work into three sections. The first section represents an analysis of 155 slave communities in twenty-six Louisiana parishes. In this study, she examined both how the communities changed over time, the differences between cotton and sugar plantations, as well as the effect of the size of the slave community. Beginning her study in the 1810s with the influx of settlers to Louisiana, Malone shows several distinct patters of development within a slave community. In the first phase, the community typically experience crisis with high percentages of young, solitary members and skewed gender proportions. During the second phase, the building or rebuilding phase, the community experienced growth, marriages flourished, children appeared frequently, and gender balance was achieved. The third phase of community development, consolidation, became more stable with developed kinship systems. Often crises like economic downturns or estate divisions could disrupt the slave community’s transition to stability. Malone, however, credits these communities with their remarkable ability to adapt to new situations. She found that contrary to myth, sugar plantations were not intrinsically more male dominated than their cotton counterparts. The difficult work and often inhospitable terrain, however, did drastically increase the mortality rate. Malone also found that the large plantations generally had the most stable slave communities, with larger numbers residing in traditional nuclear households; however, this held true primarily when the population was over 200 slaves.

In her second section, Malone examines three plantations in greater detail: Oakland (founded 1809), Petite Anse (1818) and Tiger Island (1822). Malone has gathered a remarkable level of detail about the household structures of each of the plantations using probate records, cabin lists, parish records, church documents, and family papers. She traces each plantation decade by decade from its founding until emancipation, and she shows that each community began chaotically but typically stabilized within three decades. She demonstrates, however, that the whims of their owners could have devastating effects on the social structure of the slave communities. Although the goal of the slaves seems to have been two parent families, they often had to develop new non-traditional structures to meet their needs.

The final section of the book places her findings within the context of the historiographical debates surrounding slave families regarding marriage, miscegenation, childbearing, religion, and the importance of kinship ties. Her most important addition to the historiography is her cautioning against putting too much emphasis on the strength of the family. She shows that previous authors have conflated simple families with standard nuclear families and not studied the solitaires enough. In addition, she argues that most of the works rely on the hazy childhood memories of former slaves rather than taking into account the entire life cycle of a slave community.

Malone’s impressively researched book is accompanied by helpful charts and tables that make the often dense quantitative analysis easier to follow. Her examination of household structure rather than the family adds a new and nuanced dimension to the study of slavery.

Amanda Bresie Texas Christian University

Anne Patton Malone. Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Anne Malone’s study of over 10,000 enslaved Africans living in Louisiana between 1810-1864 concludes that maintaining kinship ties remained one of the most crucial objectives of a slave’s life. Whilst the communities within this study experienced dislocation through the sale or “loan” of specific slaves, those left behind were embraced and supported by a network of relations and friends. Consequently, the slave family unit became inordinately elastic, able to cope with the loss of members and flexible enough to incorporate cousins, illegitimate grandchildren, and even foster children when necessary. Rejecting traditional opinion that slave families operated in a predominantly matriarchal system, Malone argues that the slaves examined for this study preferred to live in single-family homes consisting of a mother, father, and offspring. In reality, the nature of slaves as a commodity ensured that white owners would continually, if sometimes unconsciously, re-order the formation of slave families and their household structures.

Malone employs a comparative statistical model and a developmental model applicable to other communities and evaluates the impact of time intervals, the size of the slaveholding, and the type of agriculture employed on slave structures. Significantly, Malone recognizes that her study is not conclusive; rather, it will provide a framework for future historians seeking to understand the multidimensional aspects of slave families and their households.

Malone’s research demonstrates her commitment to this project. The author drew on probate and court records, estate sales bills, as well as plantation documents and private papers. She provides her own definitions for the commonplace, yet highly subjective terms, used throughout the text. Whether the reader agrees with her understanding of the various labels for different family units, the fact remains that Malone clearly establishes a context for her findings.

Of obvious importance to scholars seeking to find a more complex and legitimate understanding of slave-determined family units, the work nevertheless seems to repeat deductions made by most other contemporary historians: slaves ran away from brutal masters; dedicated service did not necessarily save slaves from being sold; inexperienced owners often proved the worst masters; and slaves separated from loved ones spent years trying to re-connect with their families.

Of more interest is Moore’s analysis of the contradictory conclusions made by such noted historians as Clement Easton, U. B. Phillips, Robert Fogel, and Stanley Engerman, when assessing the number of slave families disconnected by the internal slave trade. The author ably illustrates the misery of such separations with the inclusion of a few slave letters in the text. One such note, written by a wife upon finally hearing news of her husband, describes the efforts she had taken to keep alive his memory in their young son.

Not all owners proved completely insensitive to the pain they caused to slave families when removing a member, and some did reunite loved ones. House-servants occasionally successfully pleaded for news, or even the return, of family members. No doubt their continual presence and service played on the conscious of a few masters. The field hands, away from sight and mind, had neither the influence nor the opportunity to confront white owners with the moral consequences of their economic ambitions.

Ann Malone provides a detailed quantitative analysis of slave family structure in nineteenth century Louisiana. Through her study, Malone attempts to discover significant patterns present in slave families, thereby creating a model of slave family organization on which futures studies may rely. What the author discovers is an overarching theme present in Louisiana slave households—that is, Malone determines that the paradox of “mutability” and “constancy” characterized slave families. To Malone, slaves attempted to retain some form of constancy by solidifying family ties. Nonetheless, due to the often turbulent realities facing slaves, including slave sales that could ultimately tear families apart, slaves demonstrated flexibility in the types of family structures in which they identified. As a result, Malone proposes multiple forms of slave families present on Louisiana plantations, and suggests that outside influences like the size of the plantation influenced each family category.

Through her analysis, Malone brings into question slave scholarship that suggests a majority of slaves lived in standard nuclear family households, or households with both parents and children. In actuality, Malone’s research shows that most slaves lived in other types of households, including single parent families (children and one parent—usually the mother). Nonetheless, Malone emphasizes that the matriarchal household is a myth. Malone suggests that abolitionist literature generated the matriarchal myth, for abolitionists pointed to female-led families as evidence of the immoral conditions in which slaves lived. According to the author’s research, single mothers headed only a small percentage of households. Generally speaking, slaves on larger plantations tended to represent standard nuclear families (both parents and children), while on smaller plantations slaves organized into solitaire or single parent families. Overall, slaves, according to Malone, organized first by their masters into working groups, created family organizations as “a protective structure, a defensive building, a fluid, adaptive fortress on wheels—a chariot” (6).

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Malone’s work is her bibliography, which includes roughly seven pages of manuscript sources, newspapers, private collections, and public records. The author’s attentiveness certainly lends credence to her findings. The crux of any statistical study is that numbers do not accurately portray the actual experiences of the individuals within specific groups. But Malone addresses this problem, admitting that her work does not consider other outside social factors like religion, and emphasizing that her study is simply a “model,” and not an inclusive analysis. Nonetheless, the author’s lack of attention to such social factors raises some questions as to how those factors might explain her data. For instance, Malone does not attempt an analysis of how religion might solidify family structures, although she mentions religion in passing. As a result, the author’s work, although certainly a significant contribution to social history in that it does provide a basis for future study, should only be considered an impetus for further research.

Overall, Malone provides a compelling argument for the resiliency of slave families. Interesting, indeed, is her broad definition of the concept of “family.” By considering multiple variations and definitions of family, Malone is able to show that slaves did organize themselves into kinship networks in spite of outside influences that threatened separation. Her methodologies alone contribute to the social history of slaves, for Malone, through her loose definition of family, points out a bias historians tend to have in organizing societies in accordance with their own social constructs. The family, in this sense, represents more than mother, father, and children, but any group that provides some sort of stability for its members. In consequence, Malone’s work challenges social historians to expand their definitions and open their minds to social and cultural variations when studying American slavery.

Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana. By Ann Patton Malone. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Pp xiv, 369. ISBN 0-80782-026-1.)

Ann Patton Malone takes a quantitative look at slave communities and while she comes to some of the same conclusions as previous historians, she also discovers data reflective of new ideas about slave households. Malone's endeavor was to discover "how slaves of the southern United States organized into domestic units and how that organization developed or changed over time" (4). Her book is divided into three parts: analytical (quantitative) research into 155 slave communities from 26 parishes (which amounted to more than a little over 10,000 slaves), analysis and description of specific plantations, and description (qualitative) of slavery within the larger scope of Louisiana slave history. For reasons mainly dealing wither availability of resources, her specific time of study is Louisiana in 1810-1864 with specific focus on a group categorized as "solitaires." This section of the population has not studied in detail in previous histories yet they are a common group in any work society and Malone notes that this group can yield information regarding stability of communities. All book sections address the organization of the family either quantifiably or qualitatively and how community organization affected the quality of life for slaves in nineteenth-century Louisiana. Malone uses two models to conduct her research: one of patterns in the collective family cycles and the other of change over time as related to crisis and adaptation.

Malone's research indicates the most significant family type was the simple family, defined as those with married couples with or without children, and single persons with children. Nearly three-fourth’s of sampled slaves were members of simple families (15). She cites this in contrast to the "exaggerated" old literature of slavery which indicated families headed by single mothers were dominant. Malone says "female-headed households did not predominate on most Louisiana holdings at any time" (16).
Malone also sought to determine how and whether slave household composition varied by time period and she groups the individual yearly numbers and examines them by decades. She was looking for the "symbiosis that existed between the destinies of master and slaves" (71) and comes to what may appear an obvious conclusion: the external forces which produced the greatest change in the everyday lives of the slaves themselves, "had the greatest impact on the internal slave family organization" (253). This kind of information could have been derived without looking at any numbers, but rather by observing human nature, at any time, at any place. Clearly, what can be deduced next is that "personal and business decisions of the owners probably affected the slaves more than any political or economic influences” (253).

Malone says that regardless of the fact of dramatic growth in both white and slave populations, the outside political and inside social influences did little to change the composition of slave family households -- it was always dominated by simple families, and within the simple family structure, what we have come to call the "nuclear" family was the dominant form. Malone believes that while the structure of the family was vulnerable to external forces, the relative stability of the slave household sheds light on the family's ability for “survival and adaptation" (252).

Malone is clear in her intent not to give primacy to those factors which are more qualitative, and acknowledges that internal factors of the slave community, like the community's health, religion, internal leadership and morale are difficult to ever know with any certainty. She does believe that household types and studies of such serve as "barometers of change" within the slave community and that certainly these areas would be fruitful for further study.

Malone's largest disagreement with previous historiography is that she believes "revisionist literature" frequently infers that the "majority of American slaves lived in the cozy American family unit of mom, dad and the kids" (255). She says this widely espoused belief does not reflect reality and underestimates the devastation the institution of slavery had upon the slave household and in turn on the community. She directly takes to task Jacqueline Jones (Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow) and Deborah White (Ar'nt I a Woman?) for their "overzealousness in revising earlier misconceptions concerning the composition of the slave family" and their desire to "overemphasize the supposed patriarchal features, and to overestimate the incidence of two-parent family households" (258). Malone believes her research supports the idea the while the two-parent household was the ideal, the dominant type of all the households was the simple family. Within the simple family form, the two-parent nuclear family prevailed. She further posits that the parent-child unit was the core of slave community, and while this delves into the area of qualitative research, there was little in the book which addressed this hypothesis. Malone stresses that the real strength of the slave family household was not in emphasizing the two-parent household, but rather in the various forms the slave household took, from simple family, to solitaries, to extended family and multiple family, and the tolerance in the community for its variety and acceptance of all types as contributing to the community.

She also asserts that the slave household was not matriarchal or patriarchal in makeup. She says that in Louisiana, wives had equal or near-equal status with their husbands. Unfortunately, this assertion occurs in the qualitative portion of the book as well, so it is difficult to know this with any certainty.

Another misconception she dispels is that parish types, or crops grown did not have an effect on slave household composition. Previously, it had been thought that sugar plantations were less stable and were less likely to have a majority of simple families. Malone states, “household organization of slaves who labored primarily in cotton production did not differ significantly from those who worked on sugar estates, contrary to popular, long-held assumptions" (67). In fact she notes that the cotton plantations had more solitaires than sugar estates. She believes evidence exists to show that there was greater instability with a large-scale cotton production than for those who were in sugar production.

The conclusion of the study reveals that in Louisiana slave households had a collective ideal of the family structure and a strong desire to attain it but along with this desire was the ability to be flexible. She believes, "the suppleness of their forms prevented domestic chaos and enabled most slave communities to recover from even serious crises” (272).

While the book is extraordinarily unique in its presentation and examination of a huge amount of data, it seems as if the conclusion and findings should have been at the beginning of the book, which would have led nicely into the research and data which supported it. Often, the reader is left with the feeling of having many numbers but with little sense made of them. Examining over 10,000 individual slaves and their family placement was a Herculean task; Malone does this concisely. If you are looking for a book which is more narrative in format and more social in specific cases examined, this is not the book to choose. If you are looking for hard analysis of raw numbers and are able to extrapolate for yourself the meaning of the numbers with her brief commentary as a springboard, this is a great choice.