TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2011//
TI  - "… To Keep Her in the Station in Which She Was Raised": Spatial and Social Connections between Class and Companionate Matrimony in the Slave South
JO  - Journal of family history
A1  - Edwards, Gary T.
SP  - 404
EP  - 423
VL  - 36
IS  - 4
N2  - 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.<p /> 
LA  - 
SN  - 0363-1990
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0363199011413363
ID  - ref1
ER  -