Closer to Freedom

Content Warning: The source material discusses—often in graphic detail—slavery, white supremacy, killing, sexual assault and rape, torture, surveillance, and other forms of violence. Source materials also include racist and sexist language.

The subtitle of Closer to Freedom, “Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South,” defines the historical and geographical context of the book.

“South,” in the context of Stephanie M. H. Camp’s work, refers to the geographical and cultural space of the southern United States, particularly in the early and antebellum 19th century, roughly represented by the Confederacy during the Civil War.

“Plantation” is used in many geographical contexts, however, and is not specific to the South. Unlike the agricultural production on “farms,” which grow and harvest food to be eaten by humans or animals, plantations revolve around monocultures of plants that are not eaten but instead consumed on the market. In the American South, tobacco, cotton, hemp, and indigo were some of these “cash crops” grown on plantations.

By this purely agricultural definition, many Northern agricultural complexes in the 19th century could be considered plantations. By 1800, however, cash crop complexes above the Mason-Dixon line were generally called farms, while those below that line (the Confederacy) were referred to as plantations.