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The narratives of slaves, wives, and servants who resisted social
and domestic violence in the nineteenth century In the early
nineteenth century, Peter Wheeler, a slave to Gideon Morehouse in
New York, protested, “Master, I won’t stand this,” after
Morehouse beat Wheeler’s hands with a whip. Wheeler ran for
safety, but Morehouse followed him with a shotgun and fired several
times. Wheeler sought help from people in the town, but his
eventual escape from slavery was the only way to fully secure his
safety. Everyday Crimes tells the story of legally and socially
dependent people like Wheeler—free and enslaved African
Americans, married white women, and servants—who resisted
violence in Massachusetts and New York despite lacking formal
protection through the legal system. These “dependents” found
ways to fight back against their abusers through various resistance
strategies. Individuals made it clear that they wouldn’t stand
the abuse. Developing relationships with neighbors and justices of
the peace, making their complaints known within their communities,
and, occasionally, resorting to violence, were among their tactics.
In bearing their scars and telling their stories, these victims of
abuse put a human face on the civil rights issues related to legal
and social dependency, and claimed the rights of individuals to
live without fear of violence.
Sexuality was a critical factor that influenced the ways
individuals experienced, learned and contested their place in early
Massachusetts history. Sexual regulation and derisive sexual
characterizations were tools in maintaining the wealth, race, and
gender based hierarchy. In the colonial era, a reputation for
sexual virtue was most easily maintained by elites, who had the
means to avoid sexual regulation. They enacted public and private
sexual regulation through the patriarchal household, as well as
government and religious institutions. Elites designed laws,
judicial and religious practices, institutions, and sermons that
betrayed their sense that some groups of persons were criminal, the
cause of sexual vice, and in need of supervision, while others were
chaste and above reproach in their sexual behavior. Women, African
Americans, Indians, and the poor often resisted the efforts of
elites and established their own code of sexual conduct that
combatted ideas about what constituted sexual virtue and who the
proper leaders in society were. After the American Revolution
elites were forced to vacate direct sexual regulation, but they
sustained a vision of themselves as leaders and superior to others.
During the nineteenth century, sexual reputation grew in importance
in sustaining hierarchy by solidifying the sexual identities of
poor, wealthy, whites, and men and women of color. A new culture of
sexual virtue emerged that was a project of the majority of
individuals in society as they segregated themselves, read
literature, reported aberrant behavior to JPs, and interceded with
family and friends to promote sexual morality. The standards that
dictated the cultural of sexual virtue included sentimentalism, the
marital monopoly on sex, and adherence to patriarchal gendered
codes of behavior. Sexual mores remained essential to the project
of differentiating between the virtue of citizens and contesting
power structures.
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