‘I Felt All This’ : Enslaved People's Emotional Lives in the Antebellum US South

Showing how emotion was used to maintain, survive and resist slavery, this book significantly expands our knowledge of enslaved people's lives in the US South. It will interest students and scholars of African American history, Atlantic history, and the history of emotions.

Drawing on methods from the history of emotions to study enslaved people's lives, Beth R. Wilson exposes the social, cultural and political role that emotion played in the US South. Exploring both individual and collective emotions, Wilson shows how enslaved people resisted white people's attempts to restrict their feelings and expressions by developing their own emotional ideals and expectations. Moving through case studies that examine a range of underexplored forms of testimony, the book introduces readers to slave narratives, letters, written interviews and recorded testimony to show that emotion was central to how enslaved people resisted, survived and remembered the system of slavery. Enslaved people's descriptions of their individual experiences of love, pain, grief and joy are woven throughout this study, which provides a framework that historians can use to paint a nuanced, detailed and empathetic picture of the complex emotional impact of slavery.