Just a really incredible exploration of enslaved women and their relationship to white women enslavers; Glymph just bulldozes the hell out of all historiography that tries to claim white women enslavers were somehow more sympathetic or not as deeply entwined in slavery, and also manages to explore this deeply fascinating moment where slavery is falling away and waged labor is beginning to take its place, and what that means for each of the actors involved--how Black women were actually more capable than white women at negotiating wages, etc., because they had a sense of what work looked like per day than white women did. Just super fascinating, really accessible, and didn't feel repetitive. Strongly, strongly recommend. ( )

Another book from the Less Stupid Civil War Reading Group -- and probably my favorite. Mostly because it covered an area that I knew the least about -- the day-to-day lives of women -- both slaveholder and slave -- in the South -- before, during, and after the Civil War. Richly documented and compiled from mostly first-hand sources -- it is filled with diary accounts of white women bitching about their slaves, then complaining about having to do without them, or starting to fear them during the war, then grappling with the new realities of having to do business with them after the war. There are slave narratives, too -- some written at the time, some recollected decades after, of beatings, of ill-treatment at the hands of the wives (not just the husbands) in slave-owning households, stories of running off, of setting up households after the war and fighting for their dignity.

I have spent hours discussing this book and could go on and on about it -- but I want to mention two things in particular. First -- I appreciated Glymph's insistence on slave women's "recalcitrance" as explicit political resistance to the system of slavery, and how that shaped post-war race relations. Second -- that the ideal of domesticity that Southern white women were held to was one that was impossible -- and (this is me reading in, here) how that is something that has always been true -- and an effective way to control women.

Finally, this book had me thinking about the psychology of power -- that put in an unjustifiable situation -- the power to beat, kill, remove children and families from slaves -- the brain will work hard to invent justifications so that it can continue thinking of itself as a good person. Perhaps even a righteous, beleaguered one. Maybe even the real victim here! And whether it is possible to structure society in a way that will encourage the perpetuation of justice, rather than injustice.

A sometimes difficult, but rich and rewarding read. I am grateful for the discovery. ( )