“Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South” by Victoria Bynum is a book about how people lived in the south during the antebellum period. It shows a history of how husbands, masters, and owners treated their wives and slaves. This book tells about women who were th...

The institution of slavery was based on the premise of a distinct racial hierarchy in which blacks were to be considered and treated as the property of whites. A concept alien to us a century and a half hence, the principle of human ownership based upon skin color is a dubious one when one consider...