A hard fight for we
Subtitle: women's transition from slavery to freedom in South Carolina
By: Leslie A. Schwalm.
Series: Women in American history
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Urbana
Language: eng
Number of pages: 394
Subjects: Women slaves -- South Carolina -- History -- 19th century; Plantation life -- South Carolina -- History -- 19th century; Slaves -- Emancipation -- South Carolina; African American women -- South Carolina -- History -- 19th century; Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877) -- South Carolina; South Carolina -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
Description: Focusing on slave women on the rice plantations of low-country South Carolina, Leslie Schwalm offers a thoroughly researched account of their vital roles in antebellum plantation life and in the wartime collapse of slavery, and their efforts as freedwomen to recover from the impact of war while redefining life and labor in the postbellum period.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 363-382) and index.
Table of contents: title: "Women always did this work" : slave women and plantation labor; title: "Ties to bind them all together" : the social and reproductive labor of slave women; title: "A hard fight for we" : slave women and the Civil War; title: "Without mercy" : the end of war and the final destruction of lowcountry slavery; title: "The simple act of emancipation : the first year of freedom; title: "In their own way"; title: women and work in the postbellum South; title: "And so to establish family relations" : race, gender, and family in the postbellum crisis of free labor.