Ties That Bound: Founding First Ladies and Slaves

Ties That Bound: Founding First Ladies and Slaves * Marie Jenkins Schwartz * Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017 * 420 pp. * $35.00 From the beginning of this fascinating book, Marie Jenkins Schwartz sets the stage for her readers by stating that the "enslaved people who waited on the wo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Virginia magazine of history and biography 2018, Vol.126 (4), p.467-468
Main Author: Conger, Vivian Bruce
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
Adams, Abigail (1744-1818)
Families & family life
First ladies
Madison, Dolley (1768-1849)
Slavery
Washington, Martha (1732-1802)
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Summary:Ties That Bound: Founding First Ladies and Slaves * Marie Jenkins Schwartz * Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017 * 420 pp. * $35.00 From the beginning of this fascinating book, Marie Jenkins Schwartz sets the stage for her readers by stating that the "enslaved people who waited on the women and their families were not incidental to the First Ladies' lives but rather important constituents of their daily experiences and their hopes for the future" (p. 1). Because they lived in the close quarters of households dominated by issues of race and gender, all three First Ladies experienced this give and take on a regular basis, and they, not surprisingly, reacted to these situations in very different ways. [...]this is a thought-provoking explication of the thorny personal relationships between slaveholding and enslaved women, and Schwartz succeeds in depicting these relationships "as a lived experience" (p. 349).
ISSN:0042-6636
2330-1317
1940-4050