While American slaves “married” throughout the more than two centuries that slavery existed on the North American mainland, none of those marriages received legal sanction or protection from any colonial, state, or federal governments. The question illustrates the profound truth that “marriage” has never been a simple, self-defining institution in any era of human history.
Africans held as slaves carried a wide variety of marriage customs across the Atlantic, as did white European settlers. Native American inhabitants, some of whom enslaved each other, also experienced several forms of married life, all of which contributed to marriage traditions among slave populations.
Many early modern Africans engaged in the monogamous practice of a single household for husband and wife. In fact, monogamy appears to have been the most common tradition within the regions most affected by the Atlantic slave trade, but there were also numerous African families who experienced different types of plural marriage and domestic life within complicated, extended households.
As slaves in America, Africans were generally encouraged by white masters to live together as nuclear families and to have children, yet they were also denied any legal support for those households. The resulting cultural evolution appeared to reinforce monogamous marriage among slaves, while simultaneously undermining the main elements essential for a fully realized domestic life.
Enslaved couples, especially on larger plantations, were often said to be “taking up” with each other and then allowed to “marry” with permission from their owners. These marriages sometimes resulted in full-fledged wedding ceremonies with pastors or ministers, described in folklore as “jumping the broom.” These might be attended not only by slaves, but also by masters and their families. Slaves within smaller farms or households typically had to marry “abroad,” meaning with spouses owned by different masters and living apart.
Regardless of how they married or the degree to which their marriages had open encouragement from churches or owners, the absence of legal protection meant that all slave marriages were vulnerable. Scholars estimate that in the Upper South, where the domestic slave trade flourished most vigorously before the Civil War, about one third of slave marriages were broken apart by sale and that nearly half of the enslaved children in that region were separated from parents by the human marketplace.
Despite difficult and disruptive circumstances, the persistence of marriage practices during the era of American chattel slavery testifies to the immense power and appeal of this complicated but enduring domestic tradition.
