Lucy
Rosenbloom
Due:
November 12, 2015
Slavery
in the United States
Professor
McKinney
Dehumanization vs.
Commodification
The commodification of slaves first
began in Africa due to the dehumanization of blacks. There were many ways in which one could become
a slave. These included, but were not
limited to, being captured as a prisoner of war by a neighboring African tribe,
or simply being kidnapped by slave traders and forced into slavery.[1] While the commodification of slaves occurred
due to the dehumanization of the black race, the economic gain provided by the
slave industry in the United States allowed the institution of slavery to
survive for hundreds of year.
The process of commodification
involves taking something that would not typically be considered a good, and
transforming it into one.[2] While humans are not often though of as a
commodity that possesses a direct monetary value, slaves were thought of as a
commodity that possessed no human resemblance. The dehumanization of slaves was used as a way
to justify their commodification. The
price of slaves can be directly linked to the price of certain crops in the
1800s, such as cotton.[3] Similarly, the economic independence of the
United States can be tied directly to the abolition of the slave industry.
In Soul by Soul, Johnson explains how, “the price of slaves tracked
the price of cotton to such a degree that it was a commonplace in the years
after 1840 that the price of slaves could be determined by multiplying the
price of cotton by ten thousand.”[4] This direct relation between the price of
crops and slaves reinforces the slave’s role as a commodity in American
history. Similarly, as the number of
free blacks in the United States increased, the value of slave labor increased
as well. For example, in 1820, there
were 234,000 free blacks, and by 1860 there were 488,000.[5] When the importation of slave labor to the
United States from Africa was outlawed in 1810, slave owners could not longer
treat their slaves purely as disposable since there was no longer an unlimited
supply of working bodies entering the United States.[6]
Technological advances, such as the
cotton gin, sparked a need for even more slave labor in the South. In 1793, the first cotton gin was invented.[7] Prior to this invention, cotton had to be
hand picked and sorted in order to remove all of the seeds before it could be
spun into a useable product. The
invention of the cotton gin sped up the seed removal process exponentially. As cotton became a more readily available crop,
the demand for cotton began to reach a record high. The invention of the cotton gin increased the
amount of cotton that could be produced by almost 60 over the course of 20
years.[8] As demand increased for cotton and slave labor
increased, so did the need for larger plantations and more slaves. This led to slave owners, as well as slaves,
becoming more conscious of the monetary worth of each slave body.
In relation to cotton plantations
in the Deep South, a slave’s value began to shift from the amount of cotton
they could pick in one day, to the monetary value associated with the sale that
the cotton produced. Peter Bruner, a
former slave, recalls understanding this complex situation from a young as; “I
was just growing up into money, that I would soon be worth a thousand dollars.”[9] Outlawing the importation of slaves from
Africa to America increased slave owners’ awareness of the value of their
slaves. Not only did slave owners begin
to establish a specific worth associated with each slave, but slaves were
taught to view their own bodies in this way as well.
“The idea of a market in slaves,
the idea that people had a value that could be abstracted from their bodies and
cashed in when the occasion arose,”[10]
provided a shift in how currency was viewed in America. The commodification and dehumanization of
slaves permitted slaves to be used as a form of currency. Slaves could be traded in order to repay a
debt, acquire more land, or even in exchange for other goods. However, as blacks became humanized within American
society and slave labor became harder and harder to come by, focused shifted
from the value of slave labor to the value of paper currency.
Banning the importation of slaves
from Africa in 1810 did not stop American slavery. Instead of a gradual extinction of the
industry of slavery, it actually increased the monetary value of slaves making
the masters, as well as the slaves more aware of their worth.[11] Since the creation of the first economic
system, the economy has driven every aspect of life throughout the world. Slavery was not simply abolished because the
majority of society found it to be morally wrong. Instead, slavery was abolished as a tactic to
help gain economic stability within the country.
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