title: "... To keep her in the station in which she was raised": spatial and social connections between class and companionate matrimony in the slave South.
abstract: Courtship choices and matrimonial partners remained highly limited and well defined in the late antebellum South but two categories encompassed the bulk of objectionable variables: community ("spatial") and class ("social"). As a general rule, white antebellum southerners seldom married anyone residing outside their own space and rarely married anyone identified outside their own social place. This article examines these socio-spatial boundaries in the rural plantation regions of western Tennessee. Based on a detailed database of 122 new marriages in Madison County (1851-1855), the conclusions of this article reinforce the strength of these geocultural borders. Nine of ten white southerners married within their own class. However, a few notable exceptions complicate efforts to craft a monolithic interpretation, and exceptions are always illuminating. This article encourages reexamination of the subtle interplay between space and place in the slave South -- as evidenced in the universal pursuit of matrimony.
authors.affiliation: Arkansas State Univ., Jonesboro.
authors.forename: Gary T
authors.initials: GT
authors.lastname: Edwards
mesh_terms: D019058:Community Networks / Q000266:history; D003380:Courtship / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology; D005190:Family / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D005191:Family Characteristics / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history; D006608:Hierarchy, Social / Q000266:history; D049672:History, 19th Century; D008393:Marriage / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000523:psychology; D011822:Race Relations / Q000266:history / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000523:psychology; D012919:Social Behavior / Q000266:history; D012933:Social Identification; D013037:Spatial Behavior; D013714:Tennessee / Q000208:ethnology; D014481:United States / Q000208:ethnology