Enslaved women runaways in South Carolina, 1820--1865

This dissertation examines the resistance efforts of enslaved women runaways in antebellum South Carolina in an effort to illustrate another dimension of the female experience of enslavement. South Carolina provides a useful case study because of the large numbers and concentration of slaves, the system of waterways that provided fugitives a great degree of mobility, the proximity of port cities with gender imbalances favoring black women, and the high infant mortality rate which gave women both motive and opportunity to run away. The research for this study connects African American history, gendered analysis, cultural studies, and oral history, using newspapers, planters' journals, wills, census records, and former slave narratives as historical sources that will enable a fresh interpretation of slave resistance. A gendered analysis of female runaways considers how the particularly female aspects of slavery both encouraged certain women to abscond and made their escape attempts different from those of male runaways. Reading their actions as a statement of their intent, this study considers the ways in which women's escapes speak to their views of womanhood, motherhood, and freedom. Women ran away in an effort to defend their bodies and womanhood against attack, to protect their children and assert their identities as mothers, and to enjoy a taste of freedom. Defining freedom in terms of family, labor, and mobility, most women runaways did not seek their freedom in the North. Instead, they relied on their networks of acquaintances, marketable skills, clothing, and language skills, to assume identities as free women and carve out free spaces for themselves in the city. Through their actions, enslaved women rejected their owners' negative view of black women as brute laborers, breeders, and jezebels and asserted a positive, self-defined view of black womanhood.