Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. Martha Hodes tells a series of stories about such liaisons in the years before the Civil War, explores the complex ways in which white Southerners tolerated them in the slave South, and shows how and why these responses changed with emancipation. Hodes provides details of the wedding of a white servant-woman and a slave man in , an antebellum rape accusation that uncovered a relationship between an unmarried white woman and a slave, and a divorce plea from a white farmer based on an adulterous affair between his wife and a neighborhood slave.

Since the numbers are even, everyone can find a partner. But what happens if you take away one man? You might not think this would make much difference. With 20 women pursuing 19 men, one woman faces the prospect of spinsterhood. So she ups her game. Perhaps she dresses more seductively. Perhaps she makes an extra effort to be obliging.

Please refresh the page and retry. S he was a divorced white woman in her mid 40s with two young children. She saw me not as a personality, but as a pastime, an object, and did not see her actions as racially insulting in the slightest.

This is a great book for those interested in African American history, women's studies, the Civil War, or the history of race relations in the U. A brilliant work, imaginatively researched and well written. Highly recommended. An enthralling book.