![]() ![]() In many cases slaves were more constant companions to the white women of the household than were their husbands and sons, who often traveled or were at war. For elite women and their families, slaves were more than an agricultural workforce slavery was an entire domestic way of life that reflected and reinforced their status. ![]() Unlike other histories that treat the stories of the First Ladies’ slaves as separate from the lives of their mistresses, Ties That Bound closely examines the relationships that developed between the First Ladies and their slaves. See More day-to-day managers of their households, dealt with the realities of a slaveholding culture directly and continually, even in the most intimate of spaces. And as Marie Jenkins Schwartz uncovers in Ties That Bound, these women, as the American icons like Martha Washington, Martha Jefferson, and Dolley Madison were all slaveholders. ![]() Or so it was in the households of the Founding Fathers from Virginia, where slaves worked and suffered throughout the domestic environments of the era, from Mount Vernon, Monticello, and Montpelier to the nation’s capital. And behind that great woman stands a slave. Behind every great man stands a great woman. ![]()
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