Brooding Over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women’s Lethal Resistance

“Enslaved women were not always willing to resist slavery covertly or nonviolently,” according to this intriguing compendium of “lethal slave resistance.” Howard University historian Taylor (Driven Toward Madness) spotlights women throughout colonial and antebellum America who were both willing and able to murder their enslavers, either on their own or as leaders of an insurrection plot. According to one historian Taylor cites, “enslaved men who murdered acted out of impulse or momentary anger,” while women “used a higher degree of premeditation, which made them more effective resistors ultimately.” Drawing on legal records and newspaper coverage, Taylor unearths the stories of Phillis and Phoebe, who slowly poisoned their owner in Charlestown, Mass., in the 1750s; Rose Butler, who led a conspiracy to burn down her master’s house in 1818 Manhattan; Richmonder Jane Williams, who used a hatchet to dispatch her mistress and mistress’s baby in 1852; and Nelly, who acted in conjunction with her daughter and grandchildren to kill their rural Virginian enslaver on Christmas Eve 1856. In rigorous detail, Taylor documents the privations that enslaved women endured, from hunger to sexual abuse, and theorizes on the motivations of those who committed acts of violence. The result is a cogent reconsideration of long-held assumptions about the gendered experience of American slavery. (July)