Shadow family

"[1] In 1834, abolitionist George Bourne wrote, "In the houses of slave-holders, you behold young ladies elegantly attired and attended by their coloured sisters, children of the same father, and yet slaves.

You recognise the driver of the carriage, the footman, and other domestics as manifestly the planter's own offspring...Two ladies of the first rank in Virginia affirmed, that the Northern citizens were totally incompetent to form any correct idea of a slave plantation.

"[5] Secrecy was of the utmost, for reasons both social and economic: "Sometimes, members of shadow families were abandoned or mistreated, either by the man or by his legitimate white heirs.

By confronting George in front of William Brown, by drawing a guest's attention to mulatto children in her household, she humiliated her husband, damaging his community standing.

"It is evident, from the tenor of the will of Carter, and of the contract, and the evasive statements in the answer to the petition, that...Harriet is the offspring of...Fanny, by testator...No court certainly would lend its aid to enforce rights predicated upon immorality of the grossest and most dangerous kind—dangerous, because the example of a negress, or mulatto, brought up in the style specified...would necessarily exert a most baleful influence upon the surrounding negro population.