The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (86 page)

CHAPTER 1. FEET: 1783–1810

1
. In this book, some of the vignettes told from the perspective of enslaved people incorporate not only the specific content of the historical documents cited, but also details from other sources, as is the custom with evocative history. By drawing upon a wide variety of sources, I attempt to provide a richer depiction of the landscape, work practices, and cultural practices of the time and a more intimate portrait of the enslaved African Americans whose experience is the center of this history. These sources include the testimony of other formerly enslaved people who went through virtually identical experiences. This particular story, for instance, is drawn from Charles Ball,
Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball
. . . (New York, 1837), but it was written in the light of dozens of other accounts, including descriptions of people’s reactions to coffles, descriptions of slavery in early nineteenth-century Piedmont North Carolina, reports of the family demography of enslaved people during the era of the early domestic slave trade, and enslaved people’s stories of their experience during the era of the domestic slave trade. All of these are cited copiously in the coming pages, but for firsthand accounts of enslaved people’s reactions to the slave trade, see Charity Austin, AS, 14.1 (NC), 59; Ben Johnson, AS, 14.1 (NC); Dave Lawson, AS, 15.2 (NC), 49; Lila Nichols, AS, 14.1 (NC), 147–150; Mary Hicks, AS, 14.1 (NC), 184; Josephine Smith, AS (NC); Alex Woods, AS, 15.2, (NC), 416–417; Jeremiah Loguen,
The Rev. J. W. Loguen, As Slave and Free
Man (Syracuse, 1859), 65–67; “Recollections of a Runaway Slave,”
Emancipator
, September 20, 1838; Isaac Williams,
Aunt Sally: The Cross, the Way of Freedom
(Cincinnati, 1858), 10–15; ASAI, 76; and, for rich documentation of enslavement and the domestic slave trade in the area of North Carolina through which Ball was driven in chains, see Tyre Glen Papers, Duke; Jarratt-Puryear Papers, Duke, and Isaac Jarratt Papers, SHC. Unless otherwise noted, italics, underlining, and boldface type within quotations are reproduced from the original.

2
. Edmund Morgan,
American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia
(New York, 1975); Kathy Brown,
Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia
(Chapel Hill, NC, 1996); Lorena Walsh,
Motives of Honor, Pleasure, and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607–1763
(Chapel Hill, NC, 2010).

3
. Again, a few starting points: Philip Curtin,
The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History
(Cambridge, UK, 1990); Richard Dunn,
Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713
(Chapel Hill, NC, 1972); Peter Wood,
Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion
(New York, 1973); Leonardo Marques, “The United States and the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Americas, 1776–1867” (PhD diss., Emory University, 2013).

4
. Robert Olwell,
Masters, Slaves, and Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740–1790
(Ithaca, NY, 1998), 270.

5
. David Brion Davis,
The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1775–1820
(Ithaca, NY, 1975); Donald Robinson,
Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765–1820
(New York, 1970); Christine Heyrman,
Southern Cross: The Beginning of the Bible Belt
(New York, 1997); Thomas Jefferson,
Notes on the State of Virginia
(New York, 1984 [Library of America]), 289.

6
. Rachel Klein,
Unification of a Slave State: The Rise of the Planter Class in the South Carolina Backcountry
(Chapel Hill, NC, 1990); Richard Beeman,
The Evolution of the Southern Backcountry
(Philadelphia, 1984); Allan Gallay,
The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of English Empire in the Colonial South
(New Haven, CT, 2002); James Merrell,
The Indians’ New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact Through the Era of Removal
(Chapel Hill, NC, 1989).

7
. John Filson,
Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone
(Norwich, CT, 1786), and his
Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucky
(New York, 1793), 74; Daniel Blake Smith, “‘This Idea in Heaven’: Image and Reality on the Kentucky Frontier,” in Craig Thompson Friend, ed.,
The Buzzel About Kentuck: Settling the Promised Land
(Lexington, KY, 1998), 78;
Massachusetts Spy
, January 27, 1785;
Philadelphia Gazetteer
, November 27, 1784; Ellen Eslinger, “The Shape of Slavery on the Kentucky Frontier,”
Kentucky Historical Society Register
92 (1994): 1–23, esp. 4; Steven Aron,
How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Borderland to Daniel Boone
(Baltimore, 1996).

8
. Thomas Hart to [N. Hart], August 3, 1780, “Shane Collection, No. 22”;
Philadelphia Gazetteer
, November 27, 1784, May 16, 1788;
Massachusetts Spy
, May 29, 1782;
Connecticut Journal
, November 4, 1789;
New York Packet
, October 22, 1789;
New York Weekly
, June 20, 1792;
Philadelphia Advertiser
, October 4, 1792;
Norwich Western Register
, May 20, 1794.

9
. Abraham Lincoln to Jesse Lincoln, April 1, 1854, in LINCOLN, 2:217; cf. Richard L. Miller,
Lincoln and His World: The Early Years
(Mechanicsburg, PA, 2006), 5n17.

10
. Joanne Pope Melish,
Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780–1860
(Ithaca, NY, 1998); Arthur Zilversmit,
The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North
(Chicago, 1967); Eva Sheppard Wolf,
Race and Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in Virginia from Jefferson to Nat Turner
(Baton Rouge, LA, 2006); Jefferson,
Notes on the State of Virginia
, 288; cf. Annette Gordon-Reed,
Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy
(Charlottesville, VA, 1997).

11
. Patricia Watlington,
The Partisan Spirit: Kentucky Politics, 1779–1792
(New York, 1972), 17–18; Janet A. Riesman, “Money, Credit, and Federalist Political Economy,” in Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward C. Carter II, eds.,
Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity
(Chapel Hill, NC, 1987), 128–161.

12
. Peter Onuf,
Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance
(Bloomington, IN, 1987); Robinson,
Slavery in American Politics
, 379–380; Malcolm C. Rohrbough,
Land- Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands
(New York, 1968), 8–14.

13
. David Libby,
Slavery and Frontier Mississippi, 1720–1835
(Jackson, MS, 2004); Walter LaFeber,
The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad Since 1750
(New York, 1989), 30–31; Andrew R. L. Cayton, “‘Separate Interests’ and the Nation-State: The Washington Administration and the Origins of Regionalism in the Trans-Mississippi West,”
JAH
79, no. 1 (1992): 39–67; Jefferson to Madison, April 25, 1784,
Jefferson Papers: Digital Edition
, ed. Barbara Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney,
http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN-01–07–02–0129
(accessed February 24, 2014).

14
. Paul S. Finkelman, “Slavery and the Northwest Ordinance: A Study in Ambiguity,”
JER
6, no. 4 (1986): 343–370.

15
. Woody Holton,
Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution
(New York, 2007); Pauline Maier,
Ratification: The People Debate Their Constitution, 1787–1789
(New York, 2010).

16
.
The Founders’ Constitution
, ed. Philip Kurland and Ralph Lerner (Chicago, 1987), 3:280.

17
.
Founders’ Constitution
, 3:279–281. Cf. George Van Cleve,
A Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic
(Chicago, 2010).

18
. Hazel Dicken-Garcia,
To Western Woods: The Breckinridge Family Moves to Kentucky in 1793
(Rutherford, NJ, 1991); 177–178; CHSUS, 1: Aa3644–3744.

19
. Aron,
How the West Was Lost
, 82–95; Frederika Teute, “Land, Liberty, and Labor in the Post-Revolutionary Era: Kentucky as the Promised Land” (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1988), 102–130, 185, 227–275; Watlington,
Partisan Spirit
, 220–222; David Rice,
Slavery Inconsistent with Justice and Good Policy; Proved by a Speech Delivered in the Convention, Held at Danville, Kentucky
(Philadelphia, 1792); John Craig Hammond,
Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West
(Charlottesville, VA, 2007); John Craig Hammond, “Slavery, Settlement, and Empire: The Expansion and Growth of Slavery in the Interior of the North American Continent, 1770–1820,”
JER
32, no. 2 (2012): 175–206.

20
. Dicken-Garcia,
To Western Woods
, 177–178; Marion Nelson Winship, “Kentucky
in
the New Republic: A Study of Distance and Connection,” in Craig Thompson Friend, ed.,
Buzzel About Kentuck: Settling the Promised Land
(Lexington, KY, 1998), 100–123; Gail S. Terry, “Sustaining the Bonds of Kinship in a Trans-Appalachian Migration: The Cabell-Breckinridge Slaves Move West,”
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
102 (1994): 455–476.

21
. Francis Fedric,
Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky, Or, Fifty Years of Slavery
. . . (London, 1853), 15.

22
. Terry, “Sustaining the Bonds of Kinship,” 465–466.

23
. Fedric,
Slave Life
, 15–17; Dicken-Garcia,
To Western Woods
, 116–118, 173; Daniel Drake,
Pioneer Life in Kentucky: A Series of Reminiscential Letters
(Cincinnati, 1870), 176–177.

24
. Fedric,
Slave Life
, 16; Washington (PA)
Herald of Liberty
, September 2, 1799.

25
. Stanley Harrold,
Border War: Fighting over Slavery Before the Civil War
(Chapel Hill, NC, 2010);
Philadelphia Advertiser
, February 17, 1792.

26
. William Hayden,
Narrative of William Hayden, Containing a Faithful Account of His Travels for Many Years Whilst a Slave
(Cincinnati, 1846), 20–26; Teute, “Land, Liberty, and Labor,” 209–210.

27
. Teute, “Land, Liberty, and Labor,” 212; Monica Najar, “‘Meddling with Emancipation’: Baptists, Authority, and the Rift over Slavery in the Upper South,”
JER
25, no. 2 (2005): 157–186.

28
. Barbara Fields,
Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century
(New Haven, CT, 1985); Seth Rockman,
Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore
(Baltimore, 2009); Max Grivno,
Gleanings of Freedom: Free and Slave Labor Along the Mason-Dixon Line, 1790–1860
(Urbana, IL, 2011); Jennifer Hull Dorsey,
Hirelings: African American Workers and Free Labor in Early Maryland
(Ithaca, NY, 2011); US Bureau of the Census,
Negro Population, 1790–1815
(Washington, DC, 1918), 57.