In bondage when cold was king: the frigid terrain of slavery in antebellum Maryland

Abstract

Cold weather remains one of the least explored environmental phenomena in the historiography of American slavery. By detailing the heightened vulnerabilities of the enslaved during the colder portions of the year and then describing the means by which enslaved people leveraged frigid weather against slaveholders, this paper highlights how slave and slaveholder differently mobilized the cold against one another in contests over power. It argues that in the lives of enslaved women and men in antebellum Maryland, cold weather was both an afflicting as well as empowering force.