Women's Perspective on the Patriarchy in the 1850S

SOUTHERN women were scarcely to be seen in the political crisis of the 1850s. Historical works dealing with that crucial decade seldom mention a woman unless it is in a footnote citing a significant letter from a male correspondent. In women's own diaries and letters the burgeoning conflict between the North and South almost never inspired comment before John Brown's raid and rarely even then. At the same time, women were a crucial part of one southern response to the mounting outside attack on slavery. The response was an ever more vehement elaboration of what has been called the "domestic metaphor," the image of a beautifully articulated, patriarchal society in which every southerner, black or white, male or female, rich or poor, had an appropriate place and was happy in it. "The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world," George Fitzhugh wrote, describing the happy plantation on which none were oppressed by care.' "Public opinion," he stoutly maintained, "unites with self-interest, domestic affection, and municipal law to protect the slave. The man who maltreats the weak and dependent, who abuses his authority over wife, children, or slaves is universally detested." Slavery, Fitzhugh thought, was an admirable educational system as well as an ideal society.2 What Fitzhugh argued in theory many planters tried to make come true in real life. "My people" or "my black and white family" were phrases that rolled easily from their tongues and pens. "I am friend and well wisher both for time and eternity to every one of them . . ." a North Carolinian wrote to his slave overseer upon the death of a slave, expressing