Social Shocks and Slave Social Mobility: Manumission in Brunswick County, Virginia, 1782–1862

Abstract

What factors raised or lowered manumission rates in the U.S. South? Prior considerations of this question possess three weaknesses: underdeveloped theories with limited causes of liberations, impressionistic empirical analysis, and neglect of rural liberations. The author links two types of social shocks to liberations through quantitative analysis of all liberations granted by masters in Brunswick County, Virginia, from 1782 to 1862. Manumission deterrents and generators explain the rates at which manumission documents were written and chattels were freed. The antebellum pattern of white domination and black subordination disclosed in this research sheds light on the role racial ideologies have played in black‐white relations during the postbellum era and the social conditions under which whites have acceded to blacks’ demands for improvements in their status.