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This chapter describes the slave–master relations in the Northwest Coast. It defines a slave as a person over whom all the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised and examines whether war captives were considered slaves. The chapter discusses character and behavior of slaves, describing the slave owners as well as their attitudes toward their slaves, and also highlights the paths out of slavery.

This book deals with slavery in West Africa and the trajectories followed by slave descendants, as well as the transformations in how slavery has been perceived and experienced by different categories of actors under various circumstances. Such trajectories reconfigure slavery into new meanings and practices, resulting in a new kind of enslavement that is embedded in new processes and institutions. The book looks at the persistence of pre-colonial forms of enslavement such as the resilience of old hierarchies in hinterland areas and the voluntary retention of slave–master relations. It also discusses strategies of upward mobility of former slaves trying to hide their own and their children's slave origins, including migration and the reinvention of history. The book discusses manifestations of ‘slavery’ in West Africa under four different rubrics: the circumscribed resilience of historical forms of enslavement (slavery); forms of exploitation reminiscent of slavery (metaphorical slavery); stigmatisation based on inherited or putative slave status (categorical slavery); and exogenous discourses opening up new fields of thought and action based on the notion of slavery (extraverted slavery).

This chapter draws on county records, personal letters, and the Leaf River Baptist Church minutes, 1829-1861, to demonstrate the influence of religious schisms, personal feuds, and local violence on the inner civil war that later erupted in Jones County. In addition to analyzing the church’s doctrinal conflicts, this chapter studies the nature of discipline imposed on unruly men, women, and slaves; it finds that many of the accused (including Newt Knight’s father and grandfather) were from families that later opposed Confederate authority. In contrast, Rev. Asaph Robertson, son of Rev. Norvell Robertson, led the Leaf River Church to support the cause of secession. Antebellum disputes over church reform, punishment of unruly behaviour, and race and gender-based discipline anticipated divisions among the same families during the Civil War.