Abstract
In his 1988 book, Black Yankees, William Piersen argued that quartering slaves within their owners’ homes led to a mild and paternalistic form of slavery in New England. This article challenges this position by arguing that in Narragansett, Rhode Island, shared domestic space was an important aspect of slave control. Quartering slaves within the main house allowed planters to monitor their actions and led to a form of racial segregation at meals, church, and in burials designed to mark slaves as aliens and teach them “their place.” Slaves responded by circumventing monitored space and turning segregated space to their advantage by using this unsupervised time to socialize among themselves. This conflict between the masters’ desire to monitor their bondsmen—the term used in historical accounts and documents— and the slaves’ attempts to escape this surveillance typified Narragansett master/slave relations. In this manner, slavery in Narragansett, Rhode Island, was strikingly similar to southern slavery.
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