The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

by Edward E. Baptist

In South Carolina, Charles Ball’s neck and hands were finally freed of the coffle’s chains, but only so his owner could finish the chain’s work of converting Charles and the other remaining Maryland slaves into market goods. Because they had left sweat from pores and pus from blisters on the road, and had drawn down their meager stores of body fat, the Georgia-man rested them for twenty days at a property owned by a cotton farmer. Ball and his companions were given butter to eat so they would become sleek and “fat.” The lice were driven from their bodies and clothes by repeated washing. And soon, white people began to come and examine them, ask them questions, speculate on their bodies. Here, the Georgia-man was among people who respected him, calling him “merchant” instead of “negro driver” or “Georgia trader.” Here he was needed, and not as the scapegoat for other enslavers’ sins.