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XVIII. And if any women servant shall be delivered of a bastard child within
the time of her service aforesaid, Be it enacted, by the authority aforesaid, and it is
hereby enacted, That in recompense of the loss and trouble occasioned her master
or mistress thereby, she shall for every such offence, serve her said master or
owner one whole year after her time by indenture, custom, and former order of
court, shall be expired; or pay her said master or owner, one thousand pounds
of tobacco; and the reputed father, if free, shall give security to the church-
wardens of the parish where that child shall be, to maintain the child, and keep
the parish indemnified; or be compelled thereto by order of the county court,
upon the said church-wardens complaint….
And if any woman servant shall be got with child by her master, neither
the said master, nor his executors administrators, nor assigns, shall have any
claim of service against her, for or by reason of such child; but she shall,
when her time due to her said master, by indenture, custom or order of court,
shall be expired, be sold by the church-wardens, for the time being, of the
parish wherein such child shall be born, for one year, or pay one thousand
pounds of tobacco; and the said one thousand pounds of tobacco, or whatever
she shall be sold for, shall be emploied, by the vestry, to the use of the said
parish. And if any woman servant shall have a bastard child by a negro, or
mulatto, over and above the years service due to her master or owner, she
shall immediately, upon the expiration of her time to her then present master
or owner, pay down to the church-wardens of the parish wherein such child
shall be born, for the use of the said parish, fifteen pounds current money of
Virginia, or be by them sold for five years, to the use aforesaid: And if a free
christian white woman shall have such bastard child, by a negro, or mulatto, for
every such offence, she shall, within one month after her delivery of such bastard
child, pay to the church-wardens for the time being, of the parish wherein such
child shall be born, for the use of the said parish fifteen pounds current money of
Virginia, or be by them sold for five years to the use aforesaid: And in both the said
cases, the church-wardens shall bind the said child to be a servant, until it shall be
of thirty one years of age.
XIX. And for a further prevention of that abominable mixture and spurious
issue, which hereafter may increase in this her majesty’s colony and dominion, as
well by English, and other white men and women intermarrying with negros or
mulattos, as by their unlawful coition with them, Be it enacted, by the authority afore-
said, and it is hereby enacted, That whatsoever English, or other white man or woman,
being free, shall intermarry with a negro or mulatto man or woman, bond or free,
shall, by judgment of the county court, be committed to prison, and there remain,
during the space of six months, without bail or mainprize, and shall forfeit and pay
ten pounds current money of Virginia, to the use of the parish, as aforesaid.
XX. And be it further enacted, That no minister of the church of England, or
other minister, or person whatsoever, within this colony and dominion, shall
hereafter wittingly presume to marry a white man with a negro or mulatto
woman; or to marry a white woman with a negro or mulatto man, upon pain
of forfeiting and paying, for every such marriage the sum of ten thousand pounds
of tobacco.
THE SOUTHERN COLONIES IN BRITISH AMERICA 43
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6. Southern Planter William Byrd Describes His Views
Toward Learning and His Slaves, 1709–1710
[February 22, 1709] I rose at 7 o’clock and read a chapter in Hebrew and
200 verses in Homer’s Odyssey. I said my prayers and ate milk for breakfast. I
threatened Anaka with a whipping if she did not confess the intrigues between
Daniel and Nurse, but she prevented by a confession. I chided Nurse severely
about it, but she denied, with an impudent face, protesting that Daniel only lay
on the bed for the sake of the child. I ate nothing but beef for dinner….
[ June 10, 1709] I rose at 5 o’clock this morning but could not read anything
because of Captain Keeling, but I played at billiards with him and won half a
crown of him and the Doctor. George B-th brought home my boy Eugene….
In the evening I took a walk about the plantation. Eugene was whipped for run-
ning away and had the [bit] put on him. I said my prayers and had good health,
good thought, and good humor, thanks be to God Almighty….
[September 6, 1709] … About one o’clock this morning my wife was happily
delivered of a son, thanks be to God Almighty. I was awake in a blink and
rose and my cousin Harrison met me on the stairs and told me it was a boy.
We drank some French wine and went to bed again and rose at 7 o’clock. I
read a chapter in Hebrew and then drank chocolate with the women for break-
fast. I returned God humble thanks for so great a blessing and recommended my
young son to His Divine protection.
[October 6, 1709] I rose at 6 o’clock and said my prayers and ate milk for break-
fast. Then I proceeded to Williamsburg, where I found all well. I went to the
capitol where I sent for the wench to clean my room and when I came I kissed
her and felt her, for which God forgive me. Then I went to see the President,
whom I found indisposed in his ears. I dined with … on beef. Then we went to
his house and played at piquet where Mr. Clayton came to us. We had much to
do to get a bottle of French wine. About 10 o’clock I went to my lodgings.
I had good health but wicked thoughts, God forgive me….
[December 1, 1709] I rose at 4 o’clock and read two chapters in Hebrew and some
Greek in Cassius. I said my prayers and ate milk for breakfast. I danced my dance.
Eugene was whipped again for pissing in bed and Jenny for concealing it….
[December 3, 1709] I rose at 5 o’clock and read two chapters in Hebrew and
some Greek in Cassius. I said my prayers and ate milk for breakfast. I danced
my dance. Eugene pissed abed again for which I made him drink a pint of piss.
I settled some accounts and read some news….
[March 31, 1710] I rose at 7 o’clock and read some Greek in bed. I said my
prayers and ate milk for breakfast. Then about 8 o’clock we got a-horseback
and rode to Mr. Harrison’s and found him very ill but sensible…. In the morning
Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling, eds., The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709–1712 (Richmond, Va.:
Dietz Press, 1941), 7, 46, 79–80, 90–91, 113, 159, 192.
44 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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early I returned home and went to bed. It is remarkable that Mrs. Burwell
dreamed this night that she saw a person that with money scales weighed
time and declared that there was no more than 18 pennies worth of time to
come, which seems to be a dream with some significance either concerning
the world or a sick person. In my letters from England I learned that the
Bishop of Worcester was of opinion that in the year 1715 the city of Rome
would be burned to the ground, that before the year 1745 the popish religion
would be routed out of the world, that before the year 1790 the Jews and
Gentiles would be converted to the Christianity and then would begin the
millennium.
[June 17, 1710] … I set my closet right. I ate tongue and chicken for dinner. In
the afternoon I caused L-s-n to be whipped for beating his wife and Jenny was
whipped for being his whore. In the evening the sloop came from Appomattox
with tobacco. I took a walk about the plantation. I said my prayers and drank
some new milk from the cow….
7. Illustration of Slaves Cultivating Tobacco, 1738
© World History Archive / Alamy
Scene on an American tobacco plantation From A. Pomet, A Compleat History of Drugs (London, 1725).
THE SOUTHERN COLONIES IN BRITISH AMERICA 45
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8. African Olaudah Equiano Recounts the Horrors
of Enslavement, 1757
One day, when all our people were gone to their works as usual, and only I and
my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our
walls, and seized us both, and they stopped our mouths, and ran off with us into
the nearest wood. Here they tied our hands, and continued to carry us as far as
they could, till night came on, when we reached a small house, where the rob-
bers halted for refreshment, and spent the night. We were then unbound, but
were unable to take any food; and, being quite overpowered by fatigue and
grief, our only relief was some sleep, which allayed our misfortune for a short
time. The next morning we left the house, and continued travelling all the
day….
The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the
sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo.
These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I
was carried on board…. I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of
bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing
so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke, (which was
very different from any I had ever heard) united to confirm me in this belief….
When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace of copper boiling,
and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every
one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted
of my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on
the deck and fainted. When I recovered a little I found some black people about
me, who I believed were some of those who brought me on board, and had
been receiving their pay; they talked to me in order to cheer me, but all in
vain. I asked them if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible
looks, red faces, and loose hair. They told me I was not; … Soon after this the
blacks who brought me on board went off, and left me abandoned to despair. I
now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country, or
even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore, which I now considered as
friendly; and I even wished for my former slavery in preference to my present
situation, which was filled with horrors of every kind, still heightened by my
ignorance of what I was to undergo. I was not long suffered to indulge my grief;
I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in
my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness
of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able
to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing. I now wished for the last
friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered
me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands,
and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged
me severely. I had never experienced any thing of this kind before; and although,
not being used to the water, I naturally feared that element the first time I saw it,
From Olaudah Equiano, The Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789).
46 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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yet nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over
the side, but I could not; and, besides, the crew used to watch us very closely
who were not chained down to the decks, lest we should leap into the water:
and I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for
attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. This indeed was often
the case with myself. In a little time after, amongst the poor chained men, I
found some of my own nation, which in a small degree gave ease to my mind.
I inquired of these what was to be done with us; they gave me to understand we
were to be carried to these white people’s country to work for them. I then was
a little revived, and thought, if it were no worse than working, my situation
was not so desperate: but still I feared I should be put to death, the white people
looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner; for I had never seen
among any people such instances of brutal cruelty; and this not only shewn
towards us blacks, but also to some of the whites themselves. One white man
in particular I saw, when we were permitted to be on deck, flogged so unmerci-
fully with a large rope near the foremast that he died in consequence of it; and
they tossed him over the side as they would have done a brute. This made me
fear these people the more; and I expected nothing less than to be treated in the
same manner. I could not help expressing my fears and apprehensions to some of
my countrymen: I asked them if these people had no country, but lived in this
hollow place (the ship): they told me they did not, but came from a distant one.
“Then,” said I, “how comes it in all our country we never heard of them?”
They told me because they lived so very far off. I then asked where were their
women? had they any like themselves? I was told they had “and why,” said I,
“do we not see them?” they answered, because they were left behind. I asked
how the vessel could go? they told me they could not tell; but that there were
cloths put upon the masts by the help of the ropes I saw, and then the vessel
went on and the white men had some spell or magic they put in the water
when they liked in order to stop the vessel. I was exceedingly amazed at this
account, and really thought they were spirits. I therefore wished much to be
from amongst them, for I expected they would sacrifice me: but my wishes were
vain….
… At last we came in sight of the island of Barbadoes, at which the whites
on board gave a great shout, and made many signs of joy to us. We did not
know what to think of this; but as the vessel drew nearer we plainly saw the
harbour, and other ships of different kinds and sizes; and we soon anchored
amongst them off Bridge Town. Many merchants and planters now came on
board, though it was in the evening. They put us in separate parcels, and exam-
ined us attentively. They also made us jump, and pointed to the land, signifying
we were to go there. We thought by this we should be eaten by these ugly men
as they appeared to us; and, when soon after we were all put down under the
deck again, there was much dread and trembling among us, and nothing but
bitter cries to be heard all the night from these apprehensions, insomuch that at
last the white people got some old slaves from the land to pacify us. They told us
we were not to be eaten, but to work, and were soon to go on land, where we
should see many of our country people. This report eased us much; and sure
THE SOUTHERN COLONIES IN BRITISH AMERICA 47
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enough, soon after we were landed, there came to us Africans of all languages.
We were conducted immediately to the merchant’s yard, where we were all
pent up together like so many sheep in a fold, without regard to sex or age. As
every object was new to me everything I saw filled me with surprise. What
struck me first was that the houses were built with stories, and in every other
respect different from those in Africa: but I was still more astonished on seeing
people on horseback. I did not know what this could mean; and indeed I
thought these people were full of nothing but magical arts…. We were not
many days in the merchant’s custody before we were sold after their usual man-
ner, which is this: —On a signal given (as the beat of a drum), the buyers rush at
once into the yard where the slaves are confined, and make choice of that parcel
they like best. The noise and clamour with which this is attended, and the
eagerness visible in the countenances of the buyers, serve not a little to increase
the apprehensions of the terrified Africans, who may well be supposed to con-
sider them as the ministers of that destruction to which they think themselves
devoted. In this manner, without scruple, are relations and friends separated,
most of them never to see each other again. I remember in the vessel in which
I was brought over, in the men’s apartment, there were several brothers, who, in
the sale, were sold in different lots; and it was very moving on this occasion to
see and hear their cries at parting….
While I was thus employed by my master I was often a witness to cruelties
of every kind, which were exercised on my unhappy fellow slaves. I used fre-
quently to have different cargoes of new negroes in my care for sale; and it was
almost a constant practice with our clerks, and other whites, to commit violent
depredations on the chastity of the female slaves; and these I was, though with
reluctance, obliged to submit to at all times, being unable to help them. When
we have had some of these slaves on board my master’s vessels to carry them to
other islands, or to America, I have known our mates to commit these acts most
shamefully, to the disgrace, not of Christians only, but of men. I have even
known them gratify their brutal passion with females not ten years old; … And
yet in Montserrat I have seen a negro man staked to the ground, and cut most
shockingly, and then his ears cut off bit by bit, because he had been connected
with a white woman who was a common prostitute: as if it were no crime in the
whites to rob an innocent African girl of her virtue; but most heinous in a black
man only to gratify a passion of nature, where the temptation was offered by one
of a different colour, though the most abandoned woman of her species.
Another negro man was half hanged, and then burnt, for attempting to poison
a cruel overseer. Thus by repeated cruelties are the wretched first urged to despair,
and then murdered, because they still retain so much of human nature about
them as to wish to put an end to their misery, and retaliate on their tyrants!
ESSAYS
Although the system of unfree labor colored all aspects of the colonial South, it
was not a static institution. One issue that has concerned historians for some time
48 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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is the different paths taken by African slaves and European servants. Both entered
the colonies as unfree laborers, but only the Africans ultimately endured perpet-
ual servitude. These two essays grapple with another issue: the changing relation-
ships between slave and slaveholder over the course of the colonial era. Both
argue that the ethos of patriarchalism that dominated in the seventeenth- and
early-eighteenth-century colonial South gave way in the eighteenth century to
a paternalist ethos, yet they differ on causes and outcomes of this shift. Kathleen
M. Brown, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, concentrates
on the anxiety of the planter class and the ways in which enslaved people used
the paternalism that resulted to their own advantage. Philip D. Morgan, who
teaches history at Johns Hopkins University, also considers the transition from
patriarchalism to paternalism and the many-sided relationships between free and
nonfree, black and white. He argues that paternalism was less austere and was
based on a reciprocal relationship of obligation between slave and slaveholder.
Yet he also notes that the transition to paternalism changed the relationships
between poor whites and enslaved blacks, a change that would have critical
implications for the future.
The Anxious World of the Slaveowning Patriarch
KATHLEEN M. BROWN
In 1711, Lucy Parke Byrd argued with her husband, William Byrd II, about her
plan to pluck her eyebrows before their journey to the colonial capital in
Williamsburg. Threatening not to accompany her husband, she attempted to
override his objections to her beauty regimen. That she failed we can glean
from William Byrd’s entry in his secret journal for that day. “I refused, however,
and got the better of her, and maintained my authority,” he noted smugly. The
couple departed from their Westover home later that morning with Lucy Byrd’s
eyebrows unplucked and William Byrd’s position as head of household and mas-
ter over his wife confirmed. Not only had Byrd ’s taste in female fashion held the
day, but his desire to have his wife accompany him during his round of social,
political, and business dealings in Williamsburg prevailed.
For colonial gentlemen like Byrd, authority was a delicate project, much
like a house built upon an unstable foundation. To keep such a structure stand-
ing, the owner had to be extremely sensitive to fine cracks and imperfections,
shoring up the edifice to prevent the entire house from tumbling down. Con-
scious of being colonials whose dependent and marginal relationship to London
diminished their status, Byrd and his peers could never achieve enough success
to reassure themselves that the foundation of their identity would not collapse.
Maintaining authority thus required constant vigilance against even small usur-
pations of power such as the forbidden plucking of eyebrows, for tiny fissures
From Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia by Kathleen M.
Brown. Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. Copyright © 1996 by the
University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher.
THE SOUTHERN COLONIES IN BRITISH AMERICA
49
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not only indicated larger weaknesses in the construction but constituted a nagging
remainder of contradictions inherent in colonial masculinity.
Marriage, parenthood, slaveownership, and electoral politics all tested a man,
requiring him to behave with equanimity in a variety of social contexts. A man
who was simultaneously a husband, father, slaveowner, and Council member
needed to respond appropriately to the different challenges inherent in each
relationship. Ultimately, each tried the same quality: his ability to communicate
power over others by appearing to have power over himself. Authority derived
not simply from a man’s power over his wife, children, slaves, and lesser men but
also from his ability to subdue within himself those qualities he attributed to sub-
ordinates: passion, weakness, and dependence.
By the mid-eighteenth century, elite male identity in Virginia had a com-
plex historical, political, and emotional architecture. From the outset, the project
of establishing colonies emerged from a gendered context of imperial rivalry,
debates about woman’s nature, and desires for far-off lands. English explorers
became English men through encounters with Indians in which differences
between English and Indian gender performances provided a language of self-
definition and a means of expressing struggles for power. When English settlers
began importing Africans to produce tobacco, gender figured prominently in the
legal and political language used to distinguish slaves from free people, reflecting
the importance of relationships between enslaved women and their masters to
definitions of slavery. It was not until Bacon’s challenge to Berkeley in 1676,
however, that questions about what it meant to be a Virginian and to constitute
political authority in a colonial society came to a head. The reaction against
white women and the repudiation of black masculinity provided the basis for a
fragile alliance of white men and the assertion of an authentic colonial identity.
In this sense, Bacon’s Rebellion was the crucible for colonial masculinity.
Eighteenth-century planters gentrified Bacon’s legacy of masculinity, incor-
porating it into their mimicry of the material and emotional world of the English
gentry. Domestic tranquillity became the ideal of planters who dreamed of
hegemonic authority over compliant wives, children, and slaves and of unques-
tioned political leadership over less privileged men. An appropriate emotional
lexicon for men aspiring to self-mastery, domestic tranquillity also promised to
detach power from coercion, delivering authority on a silver platter to men
who need never raise their voices in anger or lift the lash to inflict punishment.
Self-mastery and harmonious, if not affectionate, familial relations thus went
hand in hand, swathing the violent history of planter power in an insulating layer
of emotional serenity.
Virginia planters, however, were perhaps more successful politically than
they were domestically. Compared to the political leadership of other British
colonies, the Old Dominion’s elite enjoyed a relatively stable tenure throughout
most of the eighteenth century. Both the political legacy of Nathaniel Bacon and
the state’s implication in slavery provided the colony’s gentry with a firm foun-
dation for political dominance that was not easily challenged.
At the root of planter domestic authority and political success lay slavery, the
most difficult relationship for planters to translate into an English idiom. Slaves
50 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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intermittently threatened to disturb gentry equanimity, forcing planters to
respond as either a “fool or a fury,” as Byrd once observed. Coercion thus per-
meated master-slave relations to a much greater degree than it did other social
relations, offering a graphically violent showcase for planter authority and state
power. Dismemberments, hangings, and burnings of slaves provided planters
with a foundation for authority rooted in the infliction of pain. As long as plan-
ters could exercise power over slave bodies, other domestic and political relation-
ships need not be regularly disrupted by violence.
Historians usually discuss the authority exercised by elite white men over
their wives, children, slaves, and social and economic inferiors as if each relation-
ship existed in isolation from the others. The terms describing authority are fre-
quently defined imprecisely, if at all, and often assume completely different
meanings for scholars investigating the history of different social relations. To
those explicating political theory, “patriarchy” connotes state power under the
rule of an absolute monarchy, whereas “paternalism” signifies reciprocal yet still
deferential social relations under a weaker crown. To historians of the family,
“patriarchy” means the rule of the father over his wife, children, and dependent
household members but is often used interchangeably with “paternalism,” by
which is meant a softer, more affectionate familial system. For feminist scholars,
however, “patriarchy” and “paternalism” both describe a male-dominated politi-
cal and economic order, with the latter appearing, at least on the surface, to be
characterized by greater mutuality and reciprocity in domestic relationships
between men and women. Studies of slavery have provided perhaps the most
sophisticated explanation for paternalism, yet scholars still disagree about the spe-
cific connotations of each term.
Despite different usage, most analysts share the assumption the paternalism
represents a qualitative improvement in human relationships over patriarchy,
gradually displacing more coercive social relations sometime during the late eigh-
teenth century. Historians use the words “warm,”“soft,”“mellow,”“affection-
ate,”“companionate,” and “face-to-face” to describe a paternalistic world of
heightened intimacy and emotion in which the crasser, sharper edges of patriar-
chy have been smoothed or “domesticated,” and the “impersonal” relations of a
class society have not yet taken hold. The unstated assumption behind this use of
language is that paternalistic social relations accompany a flowering of domestic
life and emotional intimacy characterized by face-to-face contact. This view both
celebrates “modern” family relations and is nostalgic for the lost intimacy of pre-
industrial society. It is also based upon generalizations inappropriate for female
slaves, for whom paternalism’s face-to-face style presented graver dangers than
less intimate relations with masters.
An eighteenth-century planter’s authority cannot be easily described using
either of these terms exclusively. Before 1750, it would not be unusual for the
same individual to court a woman with tender words, threaten to disinherit his
child, whip a slave, and offer rum to social subordinates at a militia muster. Was
such a man a patriarch or a paternalist? If we were to examine only his relationship
with his wife-to-be, we might conclude that harmonious domestic relations had
supplanted crude patriarchal authority. Similarly, if we noted only the whipping
THE SOUTHERN COLONIES IN BRITISH AMERICA 51
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or the disi nheritance, we might come to a very different conclusion. In the
instance o f our fictional planter, the coexistence of paternalistic language and
patriarchal tactics suggests a more complicated relationship between styles of
authority often taken to be distinct.
The overlapping of different kinds of authoritative relations within the life of
a single individual complicates matters further. Within the plantation house, for
example, a man frequently shifted his primary identity from father to husband,
master to gentry patron, host to plantation manager. Ideally, he strove to move
from role to role effortlessly, conducting himself so that each identity comple-
mented the others and augmented his authority. Although elite men enjoyed
some separation of roles—the long ride to Williamsburg undoubtedly provided
some men with the opportunity to don their political faces—their authority
sprang from the accumulated clout of being husband and father, landowner and
slaveholder, planter and politician. It is tempting to conclude that Virginia’s elite
planters wore many different hats, but it is perhaps more accurate to say that they
wore one, appropriate for many different occasions.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century …, Virginia’s planter class had
reason to consider themselves patriarchs. Planter power coalesced in 1705 with
the reorganization of the colony ’s law codes. In that year, legislators rewrote
Virginia’s statutes to create a comprehensive body of slave laws that reiterated
and extended the master’s powers over his slaves. Within five years, lawmakers
reinforced a statute forbidding infanticide by threatening severe punishments to
those who concealed the death of a bastard child. The consolidation of the
power of the father with that of political patron and slaveholder launched
Virginia’s elite planters on a nearly fifty-year reign of social and economic
supremacy.
During this high-water mark of planter authority, elite men derived their
power from five main sources: landownership, control over sexual access to
women, rights to the labor of slaves and servants, formal access to political life,
and the ability to create and manipulate symbols signifying these other sources of
power. Planters such as William Byrd and Landon Carter, who kept extensive
diaries, depicted their daily exertions of authority in graphic physical terms.
Slaves could be whipped, shackled, or medicated; wives and enslaved women
could be compelled to engage in sexual intercourse; children’s diets and bodily
functions required careful monitoring. Although men like Byrd and Carter
tended to write self-consciously about their authority as being public and politi-
cal, their management of the bodies in their households was perhaps the most
vivid expression of their power.
If ever Virginia gentlemen were patriarchs, it was between 1700 and 1750.
Yet, even at the peak of their power, planters compared themselves unfavourably
to their English counterparts and worried that their domestic authority was being
usurped. Some of their anxiety was a consequence of unrealistic expectations for
hegemonic power, the tortured perfectionism of colonials who could never
achieve enough of an English inflection. They were, after all, more successful
as a ruling class than almost any other colonial elite, although they seemed to
take little comfort in this achievement. Perhaps the collective disappointments
52 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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