Slave clothing and African-American culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Past & Present, August, 1995 by Shane White, Graham White

Bacchus, the trusted personal servant who escaped from Gabriel Jones's plantation at Augusta, Virginia, in June 1774, was a highly acculturated and politically aware man; Jones labelled him "cunning, artful, sensible" and "very capable of forging a Tale to impose on the Unwary", and surmised that he would probably attempt to pass himself off as a free man, obtain a passage to Great Britain, and try to secure his freedom under the precedent recently established in the Somerset case. Perhaps with these ambitious aims in mind, Bacchus had taken away with him:

two white Russia Drill Coats, one turned up with blue, the other quite plain and new, with white figured Metal Buttons, blue Plush Breeches, a fine Cloth Pompadour Waistcoat, two or three thin or Summer Jackets, sundry Pairs of white Thread Stockings, five or six white Shirts, two of them pretty fine, neat Shoes, Silver Buckles, a fine Hat cut and cocked in the Macaroni Figure, a double-milled Drab Great Coat, and sundry other Wearing Apparel.(12)

If, as Richard Bushman and Jonathan Prude have suggested,(13) the notion of genteel appearance was capable of reasonably precise definition, stylistic infractions by those lower down the social scale must have been apparent. Jones's description of some items of Bacchus's clothing suggests that, however blurred the boundary between elite and non-elite clothing may have become, Bacchus had transgressed it. Of course, his stylish waistcoat and hat may have been well worn, but presumptuous intrusions of the kind he had made into the realm of the elite must still have constituted an affront.

Particularly among house slaves, Bacchus's case was far from unique. After commenting that his female slave Road, who ran away in North Carolina in 1775, "wears her hair combed over a large roll" and "[a]ffected gaiety in dress", Josiah Hall itemized her clothing thus: "a homespun striped jacket, a red quilted petticoat, a black silk hat, a pair of leather shoes, with wooden heals, a chintz gown, and a black cloak". Two years later, Charles Alexander Warfield, of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, offered eighty silver dollars reward for the return of the runaways Dick and Lucy. Dick, Warfield noted, had taken with him:

a green cloth coat, with a crimson velvet cape, a red plush do [i.e., ditto], with blue cuffs and cape, a deep blue camblet jacket, with gold lace at the sleeves, down the breast and round the collar, a pair of Russia drab overalls, a white shirt, two osnabrig do, a pair of pumps and buckles, with sundry other cloaths,

while Lucy:

had with her two calico gowns, one purple and white, the other red and white, a deep blue moreens petticoat, two white country cotton do, a striped do, and jacket, and black silk bonnet, a variety of handkerchiefs and ruffles, two lawn aprons, two Irish linen do, a pair of high heel shoes, a pair of kid gloves and a pair of silk mitts, a blue sarsanet handkerchief, trim'd with gauze, with white ribbon sew'd to it, several white linen shirts, osnabrigs for two do, hempen rolles petticoat, with several other things that she probably will exchange for others if in her power.(14)