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Born in Bondage: Growing Up Enslaved in the Antebellum South. By Marie Jenkins Schwartz. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. Pp. ix, 272. Illustrations, maps. $35.00.)
One of the more striking statistics about slave life in the American South is that half of all slaves in 1860 were under fifteen years of age. Within the only slave population in the western hemisphere whose propagation was entirely dependent on natural increase, birth and childhood were central not only to the system's economic viability but also to the dynamics of the slave community and master-slave relationships. Marie Jenkins Schwartz provides a masterful analysis of the complex dimensions of both as she traces slaves' experiences from infancy and childhood through adolescence and into parenthood. In so doing, she adds to our understanding of the subtle power plays involved in plantation life and the extent to which children often became pawns in ongoing struggles over authority and identity. As such, this is as much a study about slave parents, families, and...