“The Mulatto of the House”

Abstract

This chapter contends that the household needs to be considered as a crucial category of analysis to determine how French New Orleans society became racialized. As censuses demonstrate, the urban milieu brought people of all conditions and backgrounds together within small residential units. This intimate coexistence tempered the slave system which always involved personal interactions in the city. This closeness, however, did not entirely protect urban slaves from exploitation and violence. In both domestic households and residential institutions such as the hospitals and the Ursuline convent, various mechanisms were used to create social distance and maintain the racial divide. As for the soldiers who lived in the only residential institution which did not rely on slave labor—the barracks—they fought hard not to be confused with the enslaved.