Fearful Practices: The Disruption of African American Families by Slave Trade During the Second Middle Passage.

 

Fearful Practices:

The Disruption of African American Families by Slave Trade During the Second Middle Passage.

J.M. Rogers

. . .

 

       On the afternoon of “Monday, September 22^nd, 1852,” an estate sale was held at the Savannah, Georgia fairgrounds. This sale, which listed “negroes and stock” in “Prime Lot,” was advertised by way of a flier, which included the date, time, location, and an itemized display of Luther McGowan’s personal property. The prevailing hegemony of the South’s “peculiar institution” made such sales a commonality in slave-holding states, as African Americans had virtually no rights, neither to marry nor to family.[1] By reducing the humanity of slaves to the level of livestock, the practice of human trafficking, family disruption, and inhumane treatment expanded in the Southern United States, condemning African American slaves to lives of harsh labor, brutal punishment, and constant fear of familial separation. [2] With little to no regard given to the organization of African American families, plantation owners auctioned off slaves “separate or in lots as best suited the purchaser,” as specified in the flier for the McGowan estate sale. The ages of the slaves listed for sale range from one to sixty-nine, and each slave bears little description aside from the brief words afforded livestock: the age of the livestock, the quality of the livestock, the task the livestock is best suited for, and the price of the livestock. This inability to recognize human suffering and the designation of the African American familial organization as an inferior domestic unit allowed for the continued practice of slave trade throughout the Southern states into the 1850s.

     Between 1820 and 1860, more than 2 million slaves were purchased, sold, and redistributed, from estates like those of Luther McGowan’s to plantations and farms throughout the South.[3] The development of such a large market was driven by the national internalization of the slave trade, which had risen to prominence following Congress’s prohibition on the international slave trade in 1808.[4] Adding potency to the slave trade, the African American population soared in this time period, with natural reproduction pushing their numbers to a full third of the Southern population.[5] In states located along the Cotton Belt stretching from East Texas to South Carolina slave populations swelled to fifty percent of the regional population, providing Southern plantation owners with a seemingly endless supply of slave labor.[6] “Prime” slaves, ranging between the ages of fourteen to fifty-five, were the most sought-after members of this growing population. As evidenced by the aforementioned estate-sale flier, these individuals sold for prices ranging from 700 dollars for a “Prime Cotton Boy,” being 15 years of age, to 1275 dollars for a “Prime Rice Planter,” who at the age of 27, would have been in his physical prime; destined to become a taskmaster in the rice fields of South Carolina [7]. This also highlights a trend of higher purchase prices for rice and cotton workers, which would have been necessary due to the harsh, demanding nature of crop cultivation. Being organized in swampy areas, rice farmers would have had a great need for slaves due to the threat of malaria to whites and the cost of cultivation. This increase in demand for a highly energetic workforce increased rice and cotton laborers' economic value compared to “houseworkers” or “handy boys.”[8]

            Despite the ever-present threat of malaria in the South Carolina rice fields, the strenuous nature of the work required to cultivate sugar cane in Louisiana, or the backbreaking labor required to cull cotton throughout the heartland of Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, it was the threat of being sold that slaves most feared.[9] Listed as “stock” for sale, “strong likely boys,”  were merely suckling infants, “handy boys” were seven-year-old sons and brothers, “Prime Women” were mothers and wives, “Prime Men” were husbands and fathers, and “infirmed” seamstresses were elderly grandmothers. All of them were reduced to a few brief words and a price point to market them more effectively to potential purchasers. However, little thought was given to the actual personal qualities or affiliations of these people. In such cases, as the expediated sale of Luther McGowan’s estate, these family members would be “taken to custody” by their new owners, sometimes only “hours after sale,” and then transported to their new working locations, oftentimes landing in states far removed from their previous homes and family members. This constant disruption of family, via the slave trade, led to the dissolution of 1-in-3 marriages among African Americans living in slave states, and by extension, the dissolution of 1-in-3 families. [10]

            The interstate slave trade prospered in the American South for over fifty years after Congress prohibited international slave purchases in 1808. “Monday, September 22^nd, 1852,” proceeds this date by forty-four years, and yet, the words upon the estate-sale fliers for, “The Late Luther McGowan,” boldly offer the opportunity for the purchase of “prime” slaves and “stock,” without fear of public rebuke. By 1860, roughly eight years after the sale of “Lunesta,” “Noble,” “Bessie,” “Mowden,” “Callie Mae,” and “Infant,” the cumulative economic investment in slavery in the United States exceeded its total investment in factories, banks, and railroads combined.[11] That economic investment, while a monetary figure, was also a sum of human suffering, and it ultimately highlighted the persistence of familial separation and African American dehumanization at the hands of Southern slave traders well into the 1850s.

 

 

 

 

Bibliography:

Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty. 5th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

Karras, Alan L. The Atlantic World as a Unit of Study. EBSCO. Accessed June 18, 2020.

Sale of Slaves and Stock. Estate of Luther McGowan, September, 1852.