Gender in the Law of Slavery in the Antebellum United States
![handle is hein.journals/cdozo18 and id is 429 raw text is: GENDER IN THE LAW OF SLAVERY IN THE
ANTEBELLUM UNITED STATES
Andrew T. Fede*
INTRODUCTION
In her thought-provoking paper Finding Sojourner's Truth:
Race, Gender, and the Institution of Property,1 Cheryl I. Harris ex-
plores the connections between slavery, race, and gender in the law
of the antebellum United States. Harris acknowledges that slaves
alone were defined as property at law, and, therefore,*the legal sta-
tus of slaves differed from free white women and free black wo-
men. She also acknowledges that white women were allowed
property rights on male-defined terms but asserts, nevertheless,
that free women could be considered as a form of property:
At the same time, white women were also occupied and con-
trolled in a manner not unlike other property, although they
were not subject to legal rules that allowed them to be bought
and sold in the market.
... In critical ways, the subordination of white women-their
purported natural status as inferiors-affirmed the moral valid-
ity of slavery and white male power.2
Thus, Harris finds continuity in the sexual and racial ideologies
that determined the roles of men, both white and Black, and of
white women.'3 She adds:
At the core of those ideologies of dominance were definitions of
difference which relied on opposing images of Black and white
women to define not only differences between women, but dif-
ferences between men, women and the races. These were differ-
ences born in slavery and nurtured in conceptions of property
that were not only racially coded, but gendered as well. Under
slavery, property was predicated on the right to exclude racially
* Partner, Contant, Scherby & Atkins, Hackensack, N.J.; Adjunct Professor, Depart-
ment of Legal Studies, Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, N.J.
1 18 CARDOZO L. REV. 309 (1996) [hereinafter Harris, Finding Sojourner's Truth].
This is the third revised version of the paper presented by Professor Harris on February 19,
1995 at the Cardozo Law School conference Bondage, Freedom & the Constitution. See
Cheryl I. Harris, Sojourner's Truth: Reflections on Slavery, Property, and the Boundaries
of Race and Gender (Feb. 14, 1995, revised April 3, 1995) (on file with author); Cheryl I.
Harris, Finding Sojourner's Truth: 'Between a Hawk and a Buzzard'-Blackwomen, Slav-
ery and Welfare Reform (Oct. 16, 1995) (on file with author).
2 Harris, Finding Sojourner's Truth, supra note 1, at 353.
3 Id. at 389.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/cdozo18&div=24&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Gender in the Law of Slavery in the Antebellum United States
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