Casey Joseph- Discussion Paper 3

Casey Joseph

Professor McKinney

Discussion Paper 3

November 13, 2014

The domestic slave trade was a unique institution with endless entry by white males striving to reach the American dream of the Antebellum South. This dream consisted of creating a living by buying slaves and therefore, creating profit through field or skilled labor, or both. The domestic slave trade can be compared to the stock market, in which black slaves were bought and sold by dealers or traders for more or less than what the slave was worth, much like stocks. With this being true, one would understand that the seller of the stock would advertise it to the best of his ability, even if this information were crafted dishonestly. Sellers of the stock would falsify information to gather more attention in hopes of obtaining a higher price. This is exactly what took place in the slave pens, except for one minor difference. Stocks are goods and cannot change their position because stocks have no voice in their own value. However, slaves played a huge role in the domestic slave trade, both positively and negatively through their outlook for eventual freedom. 

The domestic slave trade included more than one million slaves that were bought and sold in the nineteenth century. Many of the traders were white men trying to capture the American dream. Some of the traders had other professions but understood the upside of the trading institution. Full-time traders were professionals in the business, often with many boats and depots throughout the south and along the Mississippi. These traders usually had their own sellers in the North and buyers in the South. Buying slaves was not the only way that traders gained merchandise. Traders would also kidnap free blacks from the North and ship them southwest to be sold in the slave pens. “Eulalie had been living as free for decades when she, her six children, and ten grandchildren were taken by force from their home in Pointe Coupee, Louisiana, sold at auction in New Orleans, and then placed in a slave pen for safe keeping.” ¹. Even though Eulalie had been free for twenty years, no black was completely free during the nineteenth century. People would argue that the laws were on their side if they had white friends, but sometimes the traders would create new identities for the kidnapped. The kidnapped were sometimes pulled in with lies (ex. telling free men they are needed in Washington, and then kidnapping them) or even drugged by the traders. Whites gave blacks no other option when it came to whether the slave would be sold or not. When these slaves were bought or kidnapped, they were forced to take their lives southwest to their new home.

Blacks up for sale were terrified of the unknown once sold. “Sale of any sort was one of the most dreaded events in the life of a slave, but sale to the southwest meant being permanently separated from home, friends, and often environment” ². The journeys to their owner’s land and the slave pens/auctions were often long and physically taxing. “The inland journey could take as long as seven or eight weeks on foot, with the slaves covering about twenty miles a day. Shipboard around the coast from Norfolk to New Orleans the trip required only about three weeks” ³. Slaves on this journey were chained two-by-two, wrist-to-wrist, and ankle-to-ankle. The bigger traders would have yards throughout the trail where the traders would pay to stay overnight with their slaves. The seasonality of the trading institution was important to any trader. In the lower South, for example, slaves could not be purchased until after harvest since this is when buyers had the most money. “The traders coffles became part of the landscape of the Antebellum South, especially in the late summer and early fall” ⁴. Where these coffles were headed was just as unknown to the slaves as their trip across the Atlantic. They knew that they would be asked to work, but where and how?

The life of a trader took an interesting turn when arriving to their final destination. Traders brought their slaves into the auctions and slave pens, splitting them up by gender, and placing them against the walls. “In the daily practice of the slave pens, slaves were treated as physical manifestations of the categories the traders used to select their slaves - No. 1, Second Rate, and so no” ⁵. Buyers would proceed in, and would rub the slave’s bodies down assessing all joints and also by checking teeth and facial features. “Inexperienced buyers would be hurt by the results because they could not see everything. A good slave buyer would look past the fancy clothes, bright faces, and promising futures” ⁶. They have already been commodified, but the process did not end after the Atlantic slave trade. Again, slaves were priced for their attributes and health. “Thus could say slave trader David Wise testify to the value of a human eye: “Being asked if the girl had a filter on her eye if it would impair her value, he says it would impair it’s value from $25 to $40” ⁷. David Wise’s use of the word ‘it’s’ shows the commodification process used in the slave pens. The female slave was no longer a person, but strictly a price given by the buyer. The seller of this girl lost profit from his venture, because of a filtered eye. What would be the response to this type of ordeal in the slave pen by the seller?

In order for the seller to get the best price possible, he would have to manufacture an intricate story for the injury, while convincing the slave to follow through with the lie. The sellers would pitch their slaves to buyers by spinning a detailed fantasy out of a list of supposed skills, “Sarah, a muleteers, aged 45 years, a good cook and accustomed to housework in general, is an excellent and faithful nurse” ⁸. “The daily business of the slave pens, of course, was manipulating buyers. All of the feeding, clothing, caring for, and preparing had that single goal in mind, and slaves in the market were carefully instructed about how to present themselves to buyers- about what would sell and what would not” ⁹. Traders told their slaves that if they were indeed submissive and caused no issues with the trader, the trader would find the slave a nice owner. Knowing this was false, the slaves took things into their own hands and played a colossal role in their life outside of the slave pen and their eventual freedom. 

The buyers would come into the slave pen looking at the slaves’ physical attributes. Some physical impediments could not be hidden, and therefore some were ruled out in the beginning. After the physical examination concluded, questions were directed towards the slaves regarding their skills and attitude. Buyers would carefully distinguish “between what he saw for himself, what the trader had told him, and what he had heard from the slave” ¹⁰. The slaves began to have a voice in their destiny with the questions presented by the buyers. Being able to read the buyer was the strongest attribute used by slaves in the pens. “John Brown said, ‘I was careful, however, to draw out the buyers, in order to learn what they wanted me for; which i judged by the questions they put to me’” ¹¹. When the slaves sensed trouble in buyers, they would quickly answer questions in ways that would turn the buyers away. With this advantage, slaves could keep families together by convincing the buyer that they were loyal and would put forth great effort. “Bibb wrote, ‘When I approached him, I felt much pleased at his eternal appearance…’ He told the man that he was married to a women in the pen and she was also for sale” ¹². Bibb would then tell a couple of lies about him being illiterate and that he had runaway only once. He would be purchased by the buyer with his wife and was taken to his new home. It may have felt like a personal win, but in reality, they were still slaves. This reality hit quick when returning to labor. Slaves would lie in the slave pens (to find the most gracious buyer) about the work they could do, but then face the actual task later. “One morning… Epps appeared at the cabin door and, presenting me a sack, ordered me into the cotton field. At this time I had no experience whatever in cotton picking… When the scale determined its weight to be only 95 pounds, not half the quantity required of the poorest picker, Epps threatened the severest flogging” ¹³. Slaves may have determined their own fate in the auction house and slave pen, but faced the same realities that many of them had even before being sold in the first place. 

In conclusion, the slaves determined their own fate in the slave pen by reversing the judgment and realizing their position. For many slaves, this is their first opportunity to challenge authority and steer their course until the next time they are sold or potentially obtaining freedom.  Slaves humanized themselves by acting on their free will and being able to make sense of their own opportunities. Slaves had an immense role in the domestic slave trade, both positively and negatively through their outlook for consequential freedom.