I think that white women who owned slaves or whose family owned slaves, were unsure of their stance of the institution of slavery. Women, who were proven to more frequently emancipate their slaves after their own death than men saw slaves as people and in some cases personnel friends, not property as many men did. Some women not only freed their slaves but also arranged for annual payments to be given and educational arrangements made so the freed slaves could live happy and successful lives in the Northern business world. Some accounts report women who, in their will left more to their survived servants than their own children whom they felt didn't need the money and/or property as much as their slaves did. This was all very generous but it didn't prove that white slaveholding women felt that bad about slavery, they waited until they were dead to free their slaves so they couldn't have hated slavery or else they would have freed their slaves while they were still alive. Women slaveholders in my opinion needed slavery and they knew it, they had been accustomed to a lifestyle that's focal point was slavery. The slaveholding women of that time couldn't function on their own without the slaves, who did everything that women without slaves traditionally had done, cook, clean, and other miscellaneous domestic jobs. Women who owned slaves, lives were ones of great leisure and entertainment and roles in the house been reduced to very non-important trophies who had no skills that were of any use in the home. Without the slaves these women would have had to work, a concept that was unacceptable to them their regardless if they were in favor of slavery or not they needed the slaves and would sooner loose all their money than free one of them during their lifetimes. .