Reviewed by: Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century by Tera W. Hunter Julie Winch Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century. By Tera W. Hunter. (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017. Pp. viii, 404. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-674-04571-2.) Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century challenges readers to consider what marriage in all its complexities meant for the enslaved and their descendants. In this deftly researched and coherently argued exploration of people determined to take control of their most intimate personal relationships, Tera W. Hunter moves us far beyond simplistic notions that slave unions were fragile and fleeting, that they were formalized after emancipation, and that all ended as well as the racial dynamics of Reconstruction would allow. Hunter reminds us that freedom before the Civil War was a relative term for most black people. "The protracted process of emancipation in the North and [End Page 997] the uneven process of individual and episodic manumission in the . . . South meant that many African-American families were part-slave and part-free for years and even decades on end" (p. 87). Laws were labyrinthine, poorly construed, and subject to change, wreaking havoc on "mixed-status" unions and even inducing free people to opt for enslavement in order to stay with their unfree spouses and children (p. 73). Marriage "under the flag" when the war finally came was fraught with contradictions (chap. 4). Contraband camps witnessed joyous reunions, but they were also sites of trauma and despair. News of a former spouse might be very unwelcome—that the spouse was dead or had another partner. Union army commanders sometimes scoffed at the very idea that slave marriages had any validity; obliged contrabands to wed their current partners, regardless of their own inclinations; and, in some instances, callously drove out of camp dependents they considered a hindrance to military discipline and a drain on precious resources. So much came down to what constituted a marriage in the minds of white people in positions of authority, which was often at variance with how women and men making the transition from slavery to freedom viewed their previous ties and the ones they were entering into. What constituted proof that a marriage existed was a central question in congressional debates in 1862, when it was proposed to free not only former slaves who enlisted in the Union forces but also the members of their immediate families. Eventually, President Abraham Lincoln and enough members of Congress were persuaded that marriages generally recognized as such were valid, even if they lacked documentation. Confederate leaders wrestled with the same question when their desperate need for soldiers prompted them to contemplate recruiting enslaved men and guaranteeing freedom to their spouses and children. The aftermath of the war left the newly liberated trying to remake lives shaped by enslavement while working within the confines imposed by a variety of government agencies as well as by vengeful and profit-hungry former owners. Different states treated ex-slave marriages in different ways. In the case of serial unions, which one took precedence? When was a marriage presumed to have existed? "There was no legislative language that could adequately take into account the convoluted scenarios arising out of bondage," writes Hunter (p. 292). As Hunter explains, slave owners had often welcomed the births of slave children. Things changed dramatically with emancipation. Reproduction was now a positive nuisance for planters, as black women, often with the encouragement of their husbands, withdrew from the workforce to raise their children. Hunter's meticulous exploration of Civil War pension records demonstrates the many accommodations former slaves made when it came to their personal lives. Some reconnected with former spouses, with husband and wife often living under the same roof for the first time and raising their children and each other's children together. Others formed new ties or settled down with their current partners. As Hunter explains, what marriage meant often had to take account of the prejudices of white officials, eager to trim the pension rolls, and the attitudes of neighbors, both black...
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May 27, 2018
Prihartomo Andimarjoko 
