Henry Bibb

Under the watchful eye of masters and overseers, slaves carried on as best they could not only their assigned work but also a personal life of courtship, marriage, and childrearing. But their legal status as personal property brought constant interference from their owners, who assumed the right to decide whom they would marry, when they would be married, and what would be done with their children.

In one famous nineteenth-century slave autobiography, Henry Bibb describes the problems he faced while engaged to his young sweetheart, the property of a different owner, and the anguish of helplessness he suffered while witnessing the abuse of his wife and later his own children.

The circumstances of my courtship and marriage, I consider to be among the most remarkable events of my life while a slave. To think that after I...