Celia: a Slave

Celia was a teenage girl slave from Audrain County purchased during the 1850s by wealthy landowner named Robert Newsom to help calm his desire of a female companion. He had set out to find a replacement for his dead wife, rather than find a domestic servant. On his way back to the Callaway County from the purchasing, he raped Celia and increased his sexual addiction to the cause. Life for Celia would continue from there on with consecutive sexual exploitation by her master causing her to feel uncertain about the nature of their relationship. Celia would later become tenser as she would approach confrontations from his new slave lover George, also owned by Newsom, asking her to confront her master for an end to his sexual demands. In an effort to stop Newsom’s sexual advances, secure the lives of her c

White free women, like enslaved black women, were both under the protection of the same man. Black slave females were the property of their master, and married white women where property of their husbands. One of the essential legal differences between slave and free women was that free women were protected from sexual assault by law.

Like Celia’s life, her situation was not any different or uncommon from female-slave daily lives. The literature on slavery makes it abundantly clear that white men regularly abused female slaves sexually, indeed, deemed sexual access their right. Raping of female slaves by their slaveholders occurred frequently in society since such rapes were not considered crimes. Recent historical documents demonstrate that female slaves were raped or at least threatened by rape once in their lives. As many as one in five female slaves experienced sexual exploitation. It was also reported several abolitionist charges that slave women were frequently abused by white men. Others have shown not only that female slaves were frequently raped by masters, but also that white southerners were aware that the sexual abuse of female slaves widespread. White male access to slave women both threatened the stability of the white family and emphasized the fact that in many respects married white women were little more than the property of their husbands. Female slaves were not protected by the law from sexual exploitation by white men, as white women did. The continuing significance of the issue of sexual abuse is evident in the works of some recent historians of slavery.

Although once married white women had no legal protection against sexual advances from their husbands, they remained protected from other men. Married white women were the sexual property of their husbands, with no legal right to refuse their husbands’ sexual demands.

One of the arguments that Jameson (Celia’s trial defendant) focused to defend, was the sexual nature of the relationship between her and Newsom, forcing Jones to admit that Celia had told him that Newsom had raped her on the return trip from Audrain County immediately after his purchase of her, that he had continued to demand sexual favors of her throughout the years she resided on the Newsom farm, and that he had fathered her children. Jameson had established the fact of Newsom’s continuing sexual relations with the defendant, the fact that she did not willingly consent, and the probability that she had been raped as a fourteen year old. He also pressed Jones on Celia’s intent at the time she struck Newsom, forcing him to testify that Celia’s intent at the time she struck Newsom, was not to kill, but only to hurt him. Jameson also mentioned the fact that Celia couldn’t have done the crime on her own. To accomplish his objectives, he put a series of questions: “Could the body of an adult human be destroyed in a common fireplace within six hours?” Jameson had pinpointed the issue most responsible for doubt that Celia alone had murdered Newsom and disposed of his body. The burning of a human body in a cabin fireplace must have been difficult, requiring constant refueling and constant effort to keep the corpse in the flames. How, the question implied, could a single woman have accomplished this in so short a time, only nineteen years of age, who was both sick and pregnant? Shoatman also added that the reason she killed Newsom in her second blow, was because he threw up his hands toward her to catch her. Jameson wanted emphasize to the jury the evidence that Celia had acted in self-defense. The defense’s contention that Newsom’s death was justifiable homicide, that even a slave woman could resist unwanted sexual advances with deadly force, and that the sexua

Some topics in this essay:
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