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American Slave, II: S.C. Narr. (Part 1), 231, 39. For post-emancipation “reunions” of married partners living on separate places, see, e.g., II and III: S.C. Narr. (Part 2), 82, (Part 4), 111; IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 158; XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 3), 117, 212; XIV and XV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 286–89, (Part 2), 369; Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 661. The question of where a couple would settle sometimes proved difficult to resolve, with the husband or wife not always willing to leave a “secure” plantation for the uncertainty of the road or the place where the other spouse worked. See, e.g., Rawick (ed.), American Slave, V: Texas Narr. (Part 3), 131, and XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 4), 165, 166.

29. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 213; VII: Miss. Narr., 53–54; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 27, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of the Freedmen’s Bureau [1865–66], 151–52.

30. Rawick, (ed.), American Slave, XVI: Tenn. Narr., 19–21; VII: Miss. Narr., 13–15.

31. Ibid., XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 248–52. See also XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 3), 117, and Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 533.

32. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Miss. Narr., 151–55; VI: Ala. Narr., 176–77; V: Texas Narr. (Part 4), 118–20. See also VI: Ala. Narr., 102.

33. For a discussion of the critical role of kinship and familial patterns in the culture of the slaves, see Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom.

34. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 28–29. On the impact of the various apprenticeship or “binding out” arrangements, see, e.g., Affidavit of Caroline Johnson, April 10, 1866, Freedmen’s Bureau, Georgia, Registers of Letters Received; Wm. H. Beadle to Col. E. Whittlesey, March 10, 1866, and George S. Hawley to Lt. Fred H. Beecher, May 18, 1866, in Records of the Assistant Commissioners, North Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; William Daniel to John A. Needles, May 6, 1865, Papers of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, XI: 1839–1868, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; De Forest, Union Officer in the Reconstruction, 112–13; Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 207–09.

35. Macrae, Americans at Home, 318. For a discussion of how slaveholders tended to regard marital and family ties, see Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 452–58, 475–76, and Stampp, The Peculiar Institution, 341–43.

36. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVIII: Unwritten History, 2.

37. Ibid., XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 423; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 217. For wartime disruptions of families, see Rawick (ed.), American Slave, II: S.C. Narr. (Part 2), 84; XVI: Va. Narr., 14; Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 22–23, 371–75, 583–84; C. Peter Ripley, “The Black Family in Transition: Louisiana, 1860–1865,” Journal of Southern History, XLI (1975), 369–80.

38. WPA, Negro in Virginia, 80; Stampp, The Peculiar Institution, 344; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 118; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, II: S.C. Narr. (Part 2), 235–36.

39. National Freedman, II (May 1866), 143; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 82–63. See also Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 157–58; New York Tribune, April 4, 1865; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVIII: Unwritten History, 58; Reid, After the War, 126–27; Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 415.

40. 38 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 53, Preliminary Report Touching the Condition and Management of Emancipated Refugees … by the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, 3–4; Rev. Joseph Warren, Extracts from Reports of Superintendents of Freedmen …, First Series, May, 1864 (Vicksburg, 1864), 38, 40–41; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVIII: Unwritten History, 124; New York Tribune, Sept. 8, 1865; Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 158. For other examples of mass marriages, see Haviland, A Woman’s Life-Work, 267; New Orleans Tribune, Oct. 5, 1864; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 33n., 121.

41. Grace B. Elmore, Ms. Diary, entry for March 4, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; New York Times, March 2, 1867.

42. Botume, First Days Amongst the