In the antebellum South, divorce was an explosive issue. As one
lawmaker put it, divorce was to be viewed as a form of "madness,"
and as another asserted, divorce reduced communities to the "lowest
ebb of degeneracy." How was it that in this climate, the number of
divorces rose steadily during the antebellum era? In
Families in
Crisis in the Old South, Loren Schweninger uses previously
unexplored records to argue that the difficulties these divorcing
families faced reveal much about the reality of life in a
slave-holding society as well as the myriad difficulties confronted
by white southern families who chose not to divorce.
Basing his argument on almost 800 divorce cases from the southern
United States, Schweninger explores the impact of divorce and
separation on white families and on the enslaved and provides
insights on issues including domestic violence, interracial
adultery, alcoholism, insanity, and property relations. He examines
how divorce and separation laws changed, how married women's
property rights expanded, how definitions of inhuman treatment of
wives evolved, and how these divorces challenged conventional
mores.