The Devil's Lane Sex and Race in the Early South

by Clinton, Catherine; Gillespie, Michele

• ISBN13: 9780195112429
• ISBN10: 0195112423
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-06-26
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

When Europeans settled in the early South, they quarreled over many things--but few imbroglios were so fierce as battles over land. Landowners wrangled bitterly over boundaries with neighbors and contested areas became known as "the devil's lane." Violence and bloodshed were but some of the consequences to befall those who ventured into these disputed territories. The Devil's Lane highlights important new work on sexuality, race, and gender in the South from the seventeenth- to the nineteenth-centuries. Contributors explore legal history by examining race, crime and punishment, sex across the color line, and slander. Emerging stars and established scholars such as Peter Wood and Carol Berkin weave together the fascinating story of competing agendas and clashing cultures on the southern frontier. One chapter focuses on a community's resistance to a hermaphrodite, where the town court conducted a series of "examinations" to determine the individual's gender. Other pieces address topics ranging from resistance to sexual exploitation on the part of slave women to spousal murders, from interpreting women's expressions of religious ecstasy to a pastor's sermons about depraved sinners and graphic depictions of carnage, all in the name of "exposing" evil, and from a case of infanticide to the practice of state-mandated castration. Several of the authors pay close attention to the social and personal dynamics of interracial women's networks and relationships across place and time. The Devil's Lane illuminates early forms of sexual oppression, inviting comparative questions about authority and violence, social attitudes and sexual tensions, the impact of slavery as well as the twisted course of race relations among blacks, whites, and Indians. Several scholars look particularly at the Gulf South, myopically neglected in traditional literature, and an outstanding feature of this collection. These eighteen original essays reveal why the intersection of sex and race marks an essential point of departure for understanding southern social relations, and a turning point for the field of colonial history. The rich, varied and distinctive experiences showcased in The Devil's Lane provides an extraordinary opportunity for readers interested in women's history, African American history, southern history, and especially colonial history to explore a wide range of exciting issues.

Table of Contents

Contributors	ix
Introduction: Reflections on Sex, Race, and Region	xiii
Part I BROAD STROKES
``The Facts Speak Loudly Enough''	3	(12)
Peter H. Wood
Exploring Early Southern Black History
Clio's Daughters	15	(9)
Carol Berkin
Southern Colonial Women and Their Historians
Wallowing in a Swamp of Sin	24	(15)
Catherine Clinton
Parson Weems, Sex, and Murder in Early South Carolina
Part II THE UPPER SOUTH
``Changed ... Into The Fashion of Man''	39	(18)
Kathleen M. Brown
The Politics of Sexual Difference in a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Settlement
Indian Foremothers	57	(17)
Peter Wallenstein
Race, Sex, Slavery, and Freedom in Early Virginia
Rape, Race, and Castration in Slave Law in the Colonial and Early South	74	(16)
Diane Miller Sommerville
Kith and Kin	90	(19)
Joan R. Gundersen
Women's Networks in Colonial Virginia
``For Their Satisfaction or Redress''	109	(15)
Betty Wood
African Americans and Church Discipline in the Early South
Crimes Of Love, Misdemeanors Of Passion	124	(15)
Paul Finkelman
The Regulation of Race and Sex in the Colonial South
Part III THE LOWER SOUTH
``False, Feigned, and Scandalous Words''	139	(15)
Kirsten Fischer
Sexual Slander and Racial Ideology Among Whites in Colonial North Carolina
Interracial Sects	154	(14)
Jon F. Sensbach
Religion, Race, and Gender Among Early North Carolina Moravians
Passion, Desire, and Ecstasy	168	(19)
Cynthia Lynn Lyerly
The Experiential Religion of Southern Methodist Women, 1770--1810
The Sexual Politics of Race and Gender	187	(18)
Michele Gillespie
Mary Musgrove and the Georgia Trustees
Part IV THE GULF SOUTH
``In Consideration Of Her Enormous Crime''	205	(13)
Jane Landers
Rape and Infanticide in Spanish St. Augustine
Coping In a Complex World	218	(14)
Kimberly S. Hanger
Free Black Women in Colonial New Orleans
``A Chaos Of Iniquity and Discord''	232	(15)
Virginia Meacham Gould
Slave and Free Women of Color in the Spanish Ports of New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola
African Women In French and Spanish Louisiana	247	(16)
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall
Origins, Roles, Family, Work, Treatment
Epilogue	263	(4)
Suggested Reading	267