Jim Remsen's Blog: The Slave as "Crushed Vegetable''
October 24, 2015
"The Slave Trail of Tears"
Smithsonian magazine has done a great service to our national self-understanding by publishing an article in its latest edition about what it terms “The Slave Trail of Tears.” Schools today teach about the other, outrageous “Trail of Tears” that Native Americans endured. Now, add to your understanding “the great missing migration,” which author Edward Ball describes as “a thousand-mile-long river of people, all of them black, reaching from Virginia to Louisiana. During the 50 years before the Civil War, about a million enslaved people moved from the Upper South—Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky—to the Deep South—Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. They were made to go, deported, you could say, having been sold.
“This forced resettlement,” Ball tells us, was to stock large plantations in the newly opened states of the Deep South with slave labor. The move “was 20 times larger than Andrew Jackson’s ‘Indian removal’ campaigns of the 1830s, which gave rise to the original Trail of Tears as it drove tribes of Native Americans out of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama. It was bigger than the immigration of Jews into the United States during the 19th century, when some 500,000 arrived from Russia and Eastern Europe. It was bigger than the wagon-train migration to the West, beloved of American lore. This movement lasted longer and grabbed up more people than any other migration in North America before 1900.”
I’m currently hard at work on a book about the fugitive-slave settlement in my hometown, Waverly, Pa., in Northeastern Pennsylvania. At least two of the escaped slaves who landed in Waverly, George Keys and William Diggs, had their chattel families broken up in Maryland and quite probably “sold down the river” as part of that trail. Keys’ story has come down to us through his son, who told a Scranton newspaper years later that Keys had been a favored slave of a Dr. John Hawkins in tidewater Maryland. As I summarize it in my manuscript, “Hawkins ‘mated’ Keys to a slave woman and provided a special cabin. But hard times came and Hawkins summarily sold Keys’ common-law wife and their two infants to a planter somewhere in the Carolinas. Keys was absent at the time and never got to bid his chattel family goodbye. Instead, he was handed some money and a signed travel pass and was told to disappear north. That would have been George Keys’ heart-wrenching testimony, about being used for breeding, then having his loved ones discarded to a new plantation, never to be seen again.”
Smithsonian writer Ball goes into agonizing detail about the forced marches. “The drama of a million individuals going so far from their homes changed the country,” he writes. “It gave the Deep South a character it retains to this day; and it changed the slaves themselves, traumatizing uncountable families.”
You can read the full article at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history...
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"The Slave Trail of Tears"
Smithsonian magazine has done a great service to our national self-understanding by publishing an article in its latest edition about what it terms �The Slave Trail of Tears.� Schools today teach about the other, outrageous �Trail of Tears� that Native Americans endured. Now, add to your understanding �the great missing migration,� which author Edward Ball describes as �a thousand-mile-long river of people, all of them black, reaching from Virginia to Louisiana. During the 50 years before the Civil War, about a million enslaved people moved from the Upper South�Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky�to the Deep South�Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. They were made to go, deported, you could say, having been sold.
�This forced resettlement,� Ball tells us, was to stock large plantations in the newly opened states of the Deep South with slave labor. The move �was 20 times larger than Andrew Jackson�s �Indian removal� campaigns of the 1830s, which gave rise to the original Trail of Tears as it drove tribes of Native Americans out of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama. It was bigger than the immigration of Jews into the United States during the 19th century, when some 500,000 arrived from Russia and Eastern Europe. It was bigger than the wagon-train migration to the West, beloved of American lore. This movement lasted longer and grabbed up more people than any other migration in North America before 1900.�
I�m currently hard at work on a book about the fugitive-slave settlement in my hometown, Waverly, Pa., in Northeastern Pennsylvania. At least two of the escaped slaves who landed in Waverly, George Keys and William Diggs, had their chattel families broken up in Maryland and quite probably �sold down the river� as part of that trail. Keys� story has come down to us through his son, who told a Scranton newspaper years later that Keys had been a favored slave of a Dr. John Hawkins in tidewater Maryland. As I summarize it in my manuscript, �Hawkins �mated� Keys to a slave woman and provided a special cabin. But hard times came and Hawkins summarily sold Keys� common-law wife and their two infants to a planter somewhere in the Carolinas. Keys was absent at the time and never got to bid his chattel family goodbye. Instead, he was handed some money and a signed travel pass and was told to disappear north. That would have been George Keys� heart-wrenching testimony, about being used for breeding, then having his loved ones discarded to a new plantation, never to be seen again.�
Smithsonian writer Ball goes into agonizing detail about the forced marches. �The drama of a million individuals going so far from their homes changed the country,� he writes. �It gave the Deep South a character it retains to this day; and it changed the slaves themselves, traumatizing uncountable families.�
You can read the full article at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history...
�This forced resettlement,� Ball tells us, was to stock large plantations in the newly opened states of the Deep South with slave labor. The move �was 20 times larger than Andrew Jackson�s �Indian removal� campaigns of the 1830s, which gave rise to the original Trail of Tears as it drove tribes of Native Americans out of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama. It was bigger than the immigration of Jews into the United States during the 19th century, when some 500,000 arrived from Russia and Eastern Europe. It was bigger than the wagon-train migration to the West, beloved of American lore. This movement lasted longer and grabbed up more people than any other migration in North America before 1900.�
I�m currently hard at work on a book about the fugitive-slave settlement in my hometown, Waverly, Pa., in Northeastern Pennsylvania. At least two of the escaped slaves who landed in Waverly, George Keys and William Diggs, had their chattel families broken up in Maryland and quite probably �sold down the river� as part of that trail. Keys� story has come down to us through his son, who told a Scranton newspaper years later that Keys had been a favored slave of a Dr. John Hawkins in tidewater Maryland. As I summarize it in my manuscript, �Hawkins �mated� Keys to a slave woman and provided a special cabin. But hard times came and Hawkins summarily sold Keys� common-law wife and their two infants to a planter somewhere in the Carolinas. Keys was absent at the time and never got to bid his chattel family goodbye. Instead, he was handed some money and a signed travel pass and was told to disappear north. That would have been George Keys� heart-wrenching testimony, about being used for breeding, then having his loved ones discarded to a new plantation, never to be seen again.�
Smithsonian writer Ball goes into agonizing detail about the forced marches. �The drama of a million individuals going so far from their homes changed the country,� he writes. �It gave the Deep South a character it retains to this day; and it changed the slaves themselves, traumatizing uncountable families.�
You can read the full article at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history...
October 2, 2015
"Selling Slaves in Pennsylvania"
If you saw the film Twelve Years a Slave or read the memoir it’s based on, you know that prior to the Civil War, free-born black people in the Northern states were at risk of being kidnapped and illegally sold into Southern bondage. Mercenaries were carrying out the horrific practice throughout the early decades of the 1800s, and they really upped their game once the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850. The new law let slave-catchers come North to capture suspected runaways, with the Northern authorities and public required to cooperate. A quick hearing would be held at which the suspect couldn’t testify. If no one else would pay his bounty, he’d be ordered South with his captors.
This period is included in a Pennsylvania history book I’m currently writing. During my research in the Harrisburg archives, I came upon a powerful article from the Conneautville (Pa.) Courier headlined “Selling Slaves in Pennsylvania.” It drives home just how systematic and conniving the abductions were. Unfortunately, because I have so much other information to use and my primary focus is across the state in Northeastern Pennsylvania, I doubt the article will make it into the book. Still, I’d like to share it because it’s memorable. Here, from April 2, 1851:
"The operation of the Fugitive Slave Law seems to have opened a new market for the slavers of the South. This may sound strangely in the ears of some … A slaveholder wishing to realize a few hundred or a thousand dollars, instead of risking the uncertainties of a Southern market, has only to dispatch some special agent, equipped with a letter of Attorney, executed in due form of law, to the North, authorizing him to seize, apprehend and sell some poor negro, who may be unable to prove his freedom the moment he is arrested.
"The summary manner in which cases of this kind are required to be disposed of, almost necessarily prevent investigation into the character of such agent himself as a competent witness, to prove the identity of the fugitive, no difference what his character for truth really may be, for that, from the very nature of the case, cannot be inquired into. Thus is is rendered extremely easy to establish a claim of this kind.
"It is well known that there is strong sympathy here in the North in favor of freedom, and although our citizens are ‘law abiding,’ yet they would pay almost any price rather than see a man dragged from his home into perpetual bondage. In this way it is that those claimed as slaves are sold in Pennsylvania.” The article mentioned a Pittsburgh case in which people paid $800, and said, “Thousands of dollars have already been extorted from the North in this way, and yet this odious law has only been in operation a few months. … If this state of things is to prevail, but a few of our colored citizens are secure in their persons or property for a day, notwithstanding the vaunting boast that America is the asylum for the oppressed and downtrodden of all nations.”
What a racket: black suspects railroaded; slave owners win by getting a new field hand or by extracting a bounty payment instead; mercenaries cash in either way. It was a rotten system that helped turn much of the Northern public against Southern “Slave Power”--and that lurched the nation closer to war.
This period is included in a Pennsylvania history book I’m currently writing. During my research in the Harrisburg archives, I came upon a powerful article from the Conneautville (Pa.) Courier headlined “Selling Slaves in Pennsylvania.” It drives home just how systematic and conniving the abductions were. Unfortunately, because I have so much other information to use and my primary focus is across the state in Northeastern Pennsylvania, I doubt the article will make it into the book. Still, I’d like to share it because it’s memorable. Here, from April 2, 1851:
"The operation of the Fugitive Slave Law seems to have opened a new market for the slavers of the South. This may sound strangely in the ears of some … A slaveholder wishing to realize a few hundred or a thousand dollars, instead of risking the uncertainties of a Southern market, has only to dispatch some special agent, equipped with a letter of Attorney, executed in due form of law, to the North, authorizing him to seize, apprehend and sell some poor negro, who may be unable to prove his freedom the moment he is arrested.
"The summary manner in which cases of this kind are required to be disposed of, almost necessarily prevent investigation into the character of such agent himself as a competent witness, to prove the identity of the fugitive, no difference what his character for truth really may be, for that, from the very nature of the case, cannot be inquired into. Thus is is rendered extremely easy to establish a claim of this kind.
"It is well known that there is strong sympathy here in the North in favor of freedom, and although our citizens are ‘law abiding,’ yet they would pay almost any price rather than see a man dragged from his home into perpetual bondage. In this way it is that those claimed as slaves are sold in Pennsylvania.” The article mentioned a Pittsburgh case in which people paid $800, and said, “Thousands of dollars have already been extorted from the North in this way, and yet this odious law has only been in operation a few months. … If this state of things is to prevail, but a few of our colored citizens are secure in their persons or property for a day, notwithstanding the vaunting boast that America is the asylum for the oppressed and downtrodden of all nations.”
What a racket: black suspects railroaded; slave owners win by getting a new field hand or by extracting a bounty payment instead; mercenaries cash in either way. It was a rotten system that helped turn much of the Northern public against Southern “Slave Power”--and that lurched the nation closer to war.
October 1, 2015
''Selling Slaves in Pennsylvania''
If you saw the film Twelve Years a Slave or read the memoir it’s based on, you know that prior to the Civil War, free-born black people in the Northern states were at risk of being kidnapped and illegally sold into Southern bondage. Mercenaries were carrying out the horrific practice throughout the early decades of the 1800s, and they really upped their game once the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850. The new law let slave-catchers come North to capture suspected runaways, with the Northern authorities and public required to cooperate. A quick hearing would be held at which the suspect couldn’t testify. If no one else would pay his bounty, he’d be ordered South with his captors.
This period is included in a Pennsylvania history book I’m currently writing. During my research in the Harrisburg archives, I came upon a powerful article from the Conneautville (Pa.) Courier headlined “Selling Slaves in Pennsylvania.” It drives home just how systematic and conniving the abductions were. Unfortunately, because I have so much other information to use and my primary focus is across the state in Northeastern Pennsylvania, I doubt the article will make it into the book. Still, I’d like to share it because it’s memorable. Read More
This period is included in a Pennsylvania history book I’m currently writing. During my research in the Harrisburg archives, I came upon a powerful article from the Conneautville (Pa.) Courier headlined “Selling Slaves in Pennsylvania.” It drives home just how systematic and conniving the abductions were. Unfortunately, because I have so much other information to use and my primary focus is across the state in Northeastern Pennsylvania, I doubt the article will make it into the book. Still, I’d like to share it because it’s memorable. Read More
''Selling Slaves in Pennsylvania''
If you saw the film Twelve Years a Slave or read the memoir it�s based on, you know that prior to the Civil War, free-born black people in the Northern states were at risk of being kidnapped and illegally sold into Southern bondage. Mercenaries were carrying out the horrific practice throughout the early decades of the 1800s, and they really upped their game once the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850. The new law let slave-catchers come North to capture suspected runaways, with the Northern authorities and public required to cooperate. A quick hearing would be held at which the suspect couldn�t testify. If no one else would pay his bounty, he�d be ordered South with his captors.
This period is included in a Pennsylvania history book I�m currently writing. During my research in the Harrisburg archives, I came upon a powerful article from the Conneautville (Pa.) Courier headlined �Selling Slaves in Pennsylvania.� It drives home just how systematic and conniving the abductions were. Unfortunately, because I have so much other information to use and my primary focus is across the state in Northeastern Pennsylvania, I doubt the article will make it into the book. Still, I�d like to share it because it�s memorable.
This period is included in a Pennsylvania history book I�m currently writing. During my research in the Harrisburg archives, I came upon a powerful article from the Conneautville (Pa.) Courier headlined �Selling Slaves in Pennsylvania.� It drives home just how systematic and conniving the abductions were. Unfortunately, because I have so much other information to use and my primary focus is across the state in Northeastern Pennsylvania, I doubt the article will make it into the book. Still, I�d like to share it because it�s memorable.
'Selling Slaves in Pennsylvania'
If you saw the film Twelve Years a Slave or read the memoir it�s based on, you know that prior to the Civil War, free-born black people in the Northern states were at risk of being kidnapped and illegally sold into Southern bondage. Mercenaries were carrying out the horrific practice throughout the early decades of the 1800s, and they really upped their game once the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850. The new law let slave-catchers come North to capture suspected runaways, with the Northern authorities and public required to cooperate. A quick hearing would be held at which the suspect couldn�t testify. If no one else would pay his bounty, he�d be ordered South with his captors.
This period is included in a Pennsylvania history book I�m currently writing. During my research in the Harrisburg archives, I came upon a powerful article from the Conneautville (Pa.) Courier headlined �Selling Slaves in Pennsylvania.� It drives home just how systematic and conniving the abductions were. Unfortunately, because I have so much other information to use and my primary focus is across the state in Northeastern Pennsylvania, I doubt the article will make it into the book. Still, I�d like to share it because it�s memorable. Here, from April 2, 1851:
The operation of the Fugitive Slave Law seems to have opened a new market for the slavers of the South. This may sound strangely in the ears of some � A slaveholder wishing to realize a few hundred or a thousand dollars, instead of risking the uncertainties of a Southern market, has only to dispatch some special agent, equipped with a letter of Attorney, executed in due form of law, to the North, authorizing him to seize, apprehend and sell some poor negro, who may be unable to prove his freedom the moment he is arrested.
The summary manner in which cases of this kind are required to be disposed of, almost necessarily prevent investigation into the character of such agent himself as a competent witness, to prove the identity of the fugitive, no difference what his character for truth really may be, for that, from the very nature of the case, cannot be inquired into. Thus is is rendered extremely easy to establish a claim of this kind.
It is well known that there is strong sympathy here in the North in favor of freedom, and although our citizens are �law abiding,� yet they would pay almost any price rather than see a man dragged from his home into perpetual bondage. In this way it is that those claimed as slaves are sold in Pennsylvania.� The article mentioned a Pittsburgh case in which people paid $800, and said, �Thousands of dollars have already been extorted from the North in this way, and yet this odious law has only been in operation a few months. � If this state of things is to prevail, but a few of our colored citizens are secure in their persons or property for a day, notwithstanding the vaunting boast that America is the asylum for the oppressed and downtrodden of all nations.�
What a racket: black suspects railroaded; slave owners win by getting a new field hand or by extracting a bounty payment instead; mercenaries cash in either way. It was a rotten system that helped turn much of the Northern public against Southern �Slave Power�--and that lurched the nation closer to war.
This period is included in a Pennsylvania history book I�m currently writing. During my research in the Harrisburg archives, I came upon a powerful article from the Conneautville (Pa.) Courier headlined �Selling Slaves in Pennsylvania.� It drives home just how systematic and conniving the abductions were. Unfortunately, because I have so much other information to use and my primary focus is across the state in Northeastern Pennsylvania, I doubt the article will make it into the book. Still, I�d like to share it because it�s memorable. Here, from April 2, 1851:
The operation of the Fugitive Slave Law seems to have opened a new market for the slavers of the South. This may sound strangely in the ears of some � A slaveholder wishing to realize a few hundred or a thousand dollars, instead of risking the uncertainties of a Southern market, has only to dispatch some special agent, equipped with a letter of Attorney, executed in due form of law, to the North, authorizing him to seize, apprehend and sell some poor negro, who may be unable to prove his freedom the moment he is arrested.
The summary manner in which cases of this kind are required to be disposed of, almost necessarily prevent investigation into the character of such agent himself as a competent witness, to prove the identity of the fugitive, no difference what his character for truth really may be, for that, from the very nature of the case, cannot be inquired into. Thus is is rendered extremely easy to establish a claim of this kind.
It is well known that there is strong sympathy here in the North in favor of freedom, and although our citizens are �law abiding,� yet they would pay almost any price rather than see a man dragged from his home into perpetual bondage. In this way it is that those claimed as slaves are sold in Pennsylvania.� The article mentioned a Pittsburgh case in which people paid $800, and said, �Thousands of dollars have already been extorted from the North in this way, and yet this odious law has only been in operation a few months. � If this state of things is to prevail, but a few of our colored citizens are secure in their persons or property for a day, notwithstanding the vaunting boast that America is the asylum for the oppressed and downtrodden of all nations.�
What a racket: black suspects railroaded; slave owners win by getting a new field hand or by extracting a bounty payment instead; mercenaries cash in either way. It was a rotten system that helped turn much of the Northern public against Southern �Slave Power�--and that lurched the nation closer to war.
September 18, 2015
The Slave As 'Crushed Vegetable'
In researching the Underground Railroad past of my hometown, Waverly, Pa., I came across a fascinating explication of the abolition mission, at least as it was understood by white participants in the 1830s. I’m at the point in my book manuscript when the quote fits in---when white Waverly was helping to set up its own settlement of fugitive slaves—and I recently shared the lengthy quote with a key supporter of my work. I want to share it with you, too.
They are the words of John Mann, president of the Anti-Slavery and Free Discussion Society. On July 4, 1836, Mann gave a keynote holiday address at the Montrose Presbyterian Church. Montrose, thirty miles north of Waverly, was a haven of abolitionism, and its newspaper, The Spectator and Freeman’s Journal, proudly printed the text of Mann’s speech. Here’s his message for you to savor:
Emancipation, Mann said, “is not what many of its enemies would have you believe. It does not mean the uncaging of a menagerie and letting out a force of wild beasts, to ravage the country and commit depradations on society. ... It means to restore the oppressed children of Africa to that niche in the architecture of society Read More
They are the words of John Mann, president of the Anti-Slavery and Free Discussion Society. On July 4, 1836, Mann gave a keynote holiday address at the Montrose Presbyterian Church. Montrose, thirty miles north of Waverly, was a haven of abolitionism, and its newspaper, The Spectator and Freeman’s Journal, proudly printed the text of Mann’s speech. Here’s his message for you to savor:
Emancipation, Mann said, “is not what many of its enemies would have you believe. It does not mean the uncaging of a menagerie and letting out a force of wild beasts, to ravage the country and commit depradations on society. ... It means to restore the oppressed children of Africa to that niche in the architecture of society Read More
The Slave As 'Crushed Vegetable'
In researching the Underground Railroad past of my hometown, Waverly, Pa., I came across a fascinating explication of the abolition mission, at least as it was understood by white participants in the 1830s. I�m at the point in my book manuscript when the quote fits in---when white Waverly was helping to set up its own settlement of fugitive slaves�and I recently shared the lengthy quote with a key supporter of my work. I want to share it with you, too.
They are the words of John Mann, president of the Anti-Slavery and Free Discussion Society. On July 4, 1836, Mann gave a keynote holiday address at the Montrose Presbyterian Church. Montrose, thirty miles north of Waverly, was a haven of abolitionism, and its newspaper, The Spectator and Freeman�s Journal, proudly printed the text of Mann�s speech. Here�s his message for you to savor:
Emancipation, Mann said, �is not what many of its enemies would have you believe. It does not mean the uncaging of a menagerie and letting out a force of wild beasts, to ravage the country and commit depradations on society. ... It means to restore the oppressed children of Africa to that niche in the architecture of society which the Great Founder designed, or in other words, which they are qualified to fill. It means, in short, to make men and women of slaves.
�But, says goggle-eyed prejudice, you cannot do it. They are so degraded they can never rise to your beau of moral excellence and self-respect. To this we reply, that to doubt of success is to distrust the moral government of God. The two and a half millions of slaves in the United States are descendants from the same original stock with ourselves. Climate and local causes have produced the difference of complexion, and circumstances have produced the difference in condition. They have been crushed by the lever of power. Remove the pressure, and they will rise as naturally as the crushed vegetable regains its upright position whenever the rubbish that keeps it down is removed. If, however, the plant may have remained in an unnatural position, so long, as to have acquired a deformity, the careful husbandman will stake it up, and assist it to regain its proper form. If the moral powers of the slaves have been so long and so cruelly crushed that they cannot, unaided, acquire they proper direction, it is our duty to lend the helping hand. We are morally bound, first to remove the burden, and then to assist the crippled sufferer in rising, and to support him in his feet, till he can sustain his own weight.�
So there you have it. Mann knew how to turn a phrase, didn�t he? �Goggle-eyed prejudice� is my favorite. And his imagery about the husbandman carefully staking up a deformed plant was fitting for the farmers of his day. But still, I told the friend with whom I shared Mann�s quote, while the empathy is laudable the ideology behind it is more than a little patronizing. Who wants to be compared to a deformed plant in need of trussing?
My friend wasn�t so bothered by that. He was struck by how Mann was promoting a pseudo-scientific belief that �climate and local causes� affected racial complexion, and doing it decades before Darwin came out with Origin of Species. Also, he was enthralled by Mann�s lofty language, which he said is so beyond the reach of most students today.
What do you think? Patronizing? Laudable? Lofty? Over the top?
They are the words of John Mann, president of the Anti-Slavery and Free Discussion Society. On July 4, 1836, Mann gave a keynote holiday address at the Montrose Presbyterian Church. Montrose, thirty miles north of Waverly, was a haven of abolitionism, and its newspaper, The Spectator and Freeman�s Journal, proudly printed the text of Mann�s speech. Here�s his message for you to savor:
Emancipation, Mann said, �is not what many of its enemies would have you believe. It does not mean the uncaging of a menagerie and letting out a force of wild beasts, to ravage the country and commit depradations on society. ... It means to restore the oppressed children of Africa to that niche in the architecture of society which the Great Founder designed, or in other words, which they are qualified to fill. It means, in short, to make men and women of slaves.
�But, says goggle-eyed prejudice, you cannot do it. They are so degraded they can never rise to your beau of moral excellence and self-respect. To this we reply, that to doubt of success is to distrust the moral government of God. The two and a half millions of slaves in the United States are descendants from the same original stock with ourselves. Climate and local causes have produced the difference of complexion, and circumstances have produced the difference in condition. They have been crushed by the lever of power. Remove the pressure, and they will rise as naturally as the crushed vegetable regains its upright position whenever the rubbish that keeps it down is removed. If, however, the plant may have remained in an unnatural position, so long, as to have acquired a deformity, the careful husbandman will stake it up, and assist it to regain its proper form. If the moral powers of the slaves have been so long and so cruelly crushed that they cannot, unaided, acquire they proper direction, it is our duty to lend the helping hand. We are morally bound, first to remove the burden, and then to assist the crippled sufferer in rising, and to support him in his feet, till he can sustain his own weight.�
So there you have it. Mann knew how to turn a phrase, didn�t he? �Goggle-eyed prejudice� is my favorite. And his imagery about the husbandman carefully staking up a deformed plant was fitting for the farmers of his day. But still, I told the friend with whom I shared Mann�s quote, while the empathy is laudable the ideology behind it is more than a little patronizing. Who wants to be compared to a deformed plant in need of trussing?
My friend wasn�t so bothered by that. He was struck by how Mann was promoting a pseudo-scientific belief that �climate and local causes� affected racial complexion, and doing it decades before Darwin came out with Origin of Species. Also, he was enthralled by Mann�s lofty language, which he said is so beyond the reach of most students today.
What do you think? Patronizing? Laudable? Lofty? Over the top?
August 31, 2015
A Mass Slave Sale, So Cut-and-Dried
As fresh evidence of the bloodless manner enslaved black people were auctioned in antebellum America, the library system at the University of Pennsylvania has digitized a 1855 sales brochure that a brokerage firm issued to buyers at a New Orleans auction. It’s entitled “178 Sugar and Cotton Plantation Slaves!” Entries describe the individual slaves and family groups, and payment options are spelled out. Very helpful and enticing--as long as the customers remained dead to human compassion.
The brochure hit home because one of the main figures in my research about the fugitive slave settlement in my hometown of Waverly, Pa., was a Maryland runaway who’d seen his master sell off his chattel wife and two youngsters to a slaver in the Carolinas in the early 1840s. The runaway, George Keys, fled north, resettled in Waverly, and later became a Union soldier during the Civil War. I’m writing a book about Waverly’s Underground Railroad era and its dozen unsung black men including Keys who enlisted and fought in the war. Read More
A Mass Slave Sale, So Cut-and-Dried
As fresh evidence of the bloodless manner enslaved black people were auctioned in antebellum America, the library system at the University of Pennsylvania has digitized a 1855 sales brochure that a brokerage firm issued to buyers at a New Orleans auction. It�s entitled �178 Sugar and Cotton Plantation Slaves!� Entries describe the individual slaves and family groups, and payment options are spelled out. Very helpful and enticing--as long as the customers remained dead to human compassion.
The brochure hit home because one of the main figures in my research about the fugitive slave settlement in my hometown of Waverly, Pa., was a Maryland runaway who�d seen his master sell off his chattel wife and two youngsters to a slaver in the Carolinas in the early 1840s. The runaway, George Keys, fled north, resettled in Waverly, and later became a Union soldier during the Civil War. I�m writing a book about Waverly�s Underground Railroad era and its dozen unsung black men including Keys who enlisted and fought in the war. His heart must have ached for his vanished wife and children, who were among the thousands �sold down the river� to new plantations being developed in places like Louisiana. Might his chattel family have been r e-sold at the New Orleans auction? It�s possible.
As part of my research I�ve been following the fine Slate Academy podcast series, �The History of Slavery in America.� My wife has been listening to the series as well, and she sent me the Slate article about the 1855 brochure. In the article, historian and podcast host Rebecca Onion writes that the brochure�s sales terms �show how the financial structure around purchasing enslaved people had evolved by the middle of the 1850s.� Customers of the Beard & May sales firm �had to provide a down payment of one-third of the price, and could pay the remainder on credit; the seller would earn 8% interest �in case of non-payment at maturity.� For buyers who weren't wealthy enough to buy people outright, an investment in enslaved property was a financial commitment.�
Louisiana, Onion notes, was one of the only slave states �that had laws against selling very young children separately from their mothers�as historian Heather Williams writes, �the vast majority of enslaved children [in the United States] belonged to people who had complete discretion to sell them or give them away at will.� Even when an advertisement like this one stipulated that families were to be sold together, Williams writes, �the purchaser usually stood to make the final decision as to whether to take the whole group or only part.� �
It was a jolt to notice that many of the 178 slaves listed in the brochure were being sold off from someplace called The Waverly Plantation. What a horrible counterpart to the Waverly in Northeastern Pennsylvania, which not only assisted fugitives passing through but was so supportive that dozens of them decided to make their new homes there.
You can read the Slate article and see images of the brochure at this link: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/...
The brochure hit home because one of the main figures in my research about the fugitive slave settlement in my hometown of Waverly, Pa., was a Maryland runaway who�d seen his master sell off his chattel wife and two youngsters to a slaver in the Carolinas in the early 1840s. The runaway, George Keys, fled north, resettled in Waverly, and later became a Union soldier during the Civil War. I�m writing a book about Waverly�s Underground Railroad era and its dozen unsung black men including Keys who enlisted and fought in the war. His heart must have ached for his vanished wife and children, who were among the thousands �sold down the river� to new plantations being developed in places like Louisiana. Might his chattel family have been r e-sold at the New Orleans auction? It�s possible.
As part of my research I�ve been following the fine Slate Academy podcast series, �The History of Slavery in America.� My wife has been listening to the series as well, and she sent me the Slate article about the 1855 brochure. In the article, historian and podcast host Rebecca Onion writes that the brochure�s sales terms �show how the financial structure around purchasing enslaved people had evolved by the middle of the 1850s.� Customers of the Beard & May sales firm �had to provide a down payment of one-third of the price, and could pay the remainder on credit; the seller would earn 8% interest �in case of non-payment at maturity.� For buyers who weren't wealthy enough to buy people outright, an investment in enslaved property was a financial commitment.�
Louisiana, Onion notes, was one of the only slave states �that had laws against selling very young children separately from their mothers�as historian Heather Williams writes, �the vast majority of enslaved children [in the United States] belonged to people who had complete discretion to sell them or give them away at will.� Even when an advertisement like this one stipulated that families were to be sold together, Williams writes, �the purchaser usually stood to make the final decision as to whether to take the whole group or only part.� �
It was a jolt to notice that many of the 178 slaves listed in the brochure were being sold off from someplace called The Waverly Plantation. What a horrible counterpart to the Waverly in Northeastern Pennsylvania, which not only assisted fugitives passing through but was so supportive that dozens of them decided to make their new homes there.
You can read the Slate article and see images of the brochure at this link: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/...
The Slave as "Crushed Vegetable''
In researching the Underground Railroad past of my hometown, Waverly, Pa., I came across a fascinating explication of the abolition mission, at least as it was understood by white participants in the
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