The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (94 page)

40
. Eric Lott,
Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class
(New York, 1993); David Roediger,
Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class
(New York, 1991).

41
. Robert Cantwell,
Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound
(Urbana, IL, 1984).

42
. Ball,
Slavery in the United States
, 122–124, 382.

43
. John Hope Franklin and Loren F. Schweniger,
Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation
(New York, 1999), 279.

CHAPTER 6. BREATH: 1824–1835

1
. Hettie Mitchell, AS, 10.5 (AR), 111; Nicey [West?], AS, 6.1 (AL), 324; Foster Weathersby, AS, S1, 10.5 (MS), 2228; Toby James, AS, 4.2 (TX), 250; Smith Wilson, AS, S2, 10.9 (TX), 4239.

2
. Robert Falls, AS, 16.6 (TN), 13; Rezin Williams, AS, 16.3 (MD), 76–77; Marilda Pethy, AS, 11.2 (MO), 277; Nancy East, 16.4 (OH), 35. Here is a crucial point to understand: formerly enslaved people interviewed in the 1930s, most of them illiterate, used the same terminology one finds in pre-emancipation published narratives. Since the former were unlikely to have learned the terminology from narratives to which they did not have access, their words, though chronologically newer, actually transmit an older set of terms and ideas about slavery, one originating prior to the narratives published between the 1830s and 1860s. In fact, the vernacular history of slavery shaped around the fires of the southwestern plantations, and passed on to children who would use such terms in the 1930s interviews, shaped the ideas and expressions used by the fugitive narrators who wrote nineteenth-century autobiographies.

3
. Lawrence J. Kotlikoff, “The Structure of Slave Prices in New Orleans, 1804 to 1862,”
Economic Inquiry
17 (1979): 496–518. By comparison, if we look at the cost of the labor it would have taken to buy a slave, in 2014 dollars the 1820 slave would cost between $230,000 and $500,000, depending on the assumptions and algorithms used. This makes one “hand” the cost-equivalent of an ordinary 2014 American single-family house in the less pricey real-estate markets. See
MeasuringWorth.com
,
www.measuringworth.com/index.php
, accessed December 27, 2013.

4
. BD, #423; Jonathan Pritchett and Herman Freudenberger, “The Domestic United States Slave Trade: New Evidence,”
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
21 (1991): 448;
Richmond Enquirer
, March 26, 1829; US Department of Commerce, US Census Bureau, 1830 US Census of Population, R174/p 217.

5
. Cf. Pritchett and Freudenberger, “Domestic United States Slave Trade.” My database records all 5,500-odd interstate slave sales in New Orleans between the summer of 1829 and the end of 1831, whether or not they are associated with certificates.

6
. HALL; Louis Hughes,
Thirty Years a Slave: The Institution of Slavery as Seen on the Plantation and in the Home of a Planter
(Milwaukee, WI, 1897), 11.

7
. David Hackett Fischer and James Kelly,
Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement
(Richmond, 1993), 137.

8
. Henry C. Knight,
Letters from the South and West
(Boston, 1824), 101–102; Robert Falls, AS, 16.6 (TN), 13.

9
. Jacob D. Green,
Narrative of the Life of J. D. Green
(Huddersfield, UK, 1864), 5; Frederick Douglass,
My Bondage and My Freedom
(New York, 1855), 448;
Easton Star
, November 27, 1827, May 26, 1829.

10
.
Easton Star
, September 27, 1831; cf.
Easton Star
, April 12, 1825, May 8, 1827, November 27, 1827, April 7, 1829, May 28, 1829, September 7, 1830; Stanley Harrold,
The Rise of Aggressive Abolitionism: Addresses to the Slaves
(Lexington, KY, 2004); BD. Not all slaves sold in Kent County were from Kent County: many were like the fourteen-year-old girl named Anne, whom Caleb Dorsey brought across the Chesapeake from Anne Arundel County to sell to John Maydwell in the fall of 1830.

11
. Richard Watson, John Wesley, and John Dixon Long,
Pictures of Slavery in Church and State
(Philadelphia, 1857).

12
. William G. Shade,
Democratizing the Old Dominion: The Second Party System in Virginia, 1824–1861
(Charlottesville, VA, 1996), 22.

13
. Herbert G. Gutman, Richard Sutch, Peter Temin, and Gavin Wright,
Reckoning with Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery
(Oxford, 1976), 109–112; Michael Tadman,
Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South
(Madison, WI, 1989), 301; Moses Grandy,
Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America
(Boston, 1844), 46.

14
. S. C. Archer to R. T. Archer, July 28, 1833, Box 2E652, Fol. 6, Richard T. Archer Papers, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

15
. Harriet Jacobs,
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
(Boston, 1861); Calvin Schermerhorn,
Money over Mastery, Family over Freedom: Slavery in the Antebellum Upper South
(Baltimore, 2011).

16
. Sarah Byrd, AS, 12.1 (GA), 168; John Majewski,
A House Dividing: Economic Development in Pennsylvania and Virginia Before the Civil War
(Cambridge, UK, 2000); John Bezis Selfa,
Forging America: Ironworkers, Adventurers, and the Industrious Revolution
(Ithaca, NY, 2004); Ledger, 1829–1855, Alfred Rives Papers, Duke.

17
. US Census Bureau, 1830, R54/p429; Robert Falls, AS, 16.6 (TN), 13; Viney Baker, AS, 14.1 (NC), 71; Charley Barbour, AS, 14.1 (NC), 76.

18
. Grandy,
Life
, 44; Steven Deyle,
Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life
(New York, 2005), 98–99; Robert Gudmestad,
A Troublesome Commerce: The Transformation of the Interstate Slave Trade
(Baton Rouge, LA, 2003), 25–30; Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro,”
Selected Addresses of Frederick Douglass
(Lanham, MD, 2013); Rezin Williams, AS, 16.3 (MD), 76–77; Ethan A. Andrews,
Slavery and the Domestic Slave-Trade in the United States
(Boston, 1836), 80–81.

19
. Allen Parker,
Recollections of Slavery Times
(Worcester, MA, 1895), 9; BD.

20
. Robert Falls, AS, 16.6 (TN), 13; B. S. King to Joel King, February 23, 1824, Joel King Papers, Duke.

21
. Christopher Brown,
Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism
(Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), 165–206.

22
. David Brion Davis,
The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1775–1820
(Ithaca, NY, 1975); John C. Hammond and Matthew Mason, eds.,
Contesting Slavery: The Politics of Bondage and Freedom in the New American Nation
(Charlottesville, VA, 2011).

23
. JQA, 9:35; Robert Pierce Forbes,
The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America
(Chapel Hill, NC, 2007); Lacy K. Ford,
Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South
(New York, 2009), 149; cf. Kari J. Winter,
The American Dreams of John B. Prentis, Slave Trader
(Athens, GA, 2011).

24
. Margaret Nickerson, AS, 17 (FL), 251; Jane Sutton, AS, 7.2 (MS), 152; Cora Gillam, AS, S2, 1.3 (AR), 68; Adaline Montgomery, AS, S1, 9.4 (MS), 1514; Lewis Brown, AS, 8.1 (AR), 292; Grandy,
Life
, 10–11.

25
. Jane Sutton, AS, 7.2 (MS), 152; George Ward, AS, S1, 10.5 (MS), 100; Harry Johnson, AS, 4.2 (TX), 212–213; George Fleming, AS, S1, 11 (SC), 127–133; William Wells Brown,
Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave
(Boston, 1849), 13; Edward E. Baptist, “‘Stol’ and Fetched Here’: Enslaved Migration, Ex-Slave Narratives, and Vernacular History,” in Edward E. Baptist and Stephanie M. H. Camp, eds.,
New Studies in the History of American Slavery
(Athens, GA, 2006), 243–274; Charles L. Perdue Jr., Thomas E. Barden, and Robert K. Phillips, eds.,
Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves
(Charlottesville, VA, 1976), 115; Greta Elena Couper,
An American Sculptor on the Grand Tour: The Life and Works of William Couper (1853–1942)
(Los Angeles, 1988).
Weevils in the Wheat
refers to a 1907 statue of a Confederate soldier near the Norfolk docks.

26
. Helen Odom, AS, 10.5 (AR), 227; Lettie Nelson, AS, 10.5 (AR), 209; William Grose, NSV, 83. On slaves’ vernacular storytelling as the root of literary production, see William L. Andrews,
To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760–1865
(Urbana, IL, 1985); Marion W. Starling,
The Slave Narrative: Its Place in American History
(Boston, 1981, repr. of 1946 diss.); Henry Louis Gates,
Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism
(New York, 1988).

27
. John Brown,
Slave Life in Georgia
(London, 1855), 18–19. For claims that ancestors were kidnapped free people, see Spence Johnson, AS, 4.2 (TX), 228–229; Clayton Holbrooke, AS, S2, 1 (KS), 286; Carey Davenport, AS, 4.1 (TX), 284; Ann Clark, AS, 4.1 (TX), 223; Ambrose Douglass, AS, 17 (FL), 101; Samuel Smalls, AS, 17 (FL), 300–301; Douglas Dorsey, AS, 17 (FL), 93; Florida Clayton, AS, S1, 6.1 (MS), 143; Mary Reynolds, S2, 8.7 (TX), 3284, and 5.3 (TX), 236; Julia Blanks, 4.1 (TX), 93. Philadelphia cases: Joseph Watson Papers, Louisiana State University; cf.
Freedom’s Journal
, June 22, 1827, September 14, 1827, January 18, 1828; Jonathan Evans et al. May 30, 1825, and Th. Kennedy to Geo. Swain, September 11, 1826, Manumission Society Papers, Duke;
John (a negro) vs. George Williams
, 1821, Box 6/101, Adams Co. [MS] Court Files, one of eighteen cases from the 1820s in the Natchez Historical Collection. Cf. Carol Wilson,
Freedom at Risk: The Kidnapping of Free Blacks in America, 1780–1865
(Lexington, KY, 1995); James Gigantino II, “Trading in New Jersey Souls: New Jersey and the Interstate Slave Trade,”
Pennsylvania History
77, no. 3 (2010): 281–302.

28
. Evie Herrin, AS, 8.3 (MS), 988; Sim Greeley, AS, 2.2 (SC), 190; J. Green, AS, 4.2 (TX), 87, and S2, 5.4 (TX), 1577–1583.

29
. Shang Harris, AS, 12.2 (GA), 119; Josephine Hubbard, AS, 4.2 (TX), 163; Henry Benjamin Whipple,
Bishop Whipple’s Southern Diary, 1843–1844
, ed. Lester B. Shippee (Minneapolis, 1937), 17. Uses of “stole” to describe the Middle Passage: John Jea,
The Life and Unparalleled Sufferings of John Jea, the African Preacher
(Portsea, UK, 1811), 3; Martin Diagney, MW, 62; Carlyle Stewart, MW, 206; Victor Duhon, AS, 4.1 (TX), 307, and 18 (TN), 152, 198; Charley Barbour, AS, 2.1 (SC), 30–31; Susan Snow, AS, 7.2 (MS), 136; Brown,
Narrative of William Wells Brown
, 1, 64; John Andrew Jackson,
The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina
(London, 1862), 7; Frederick Douglass,
Narrative of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
(Boston, 1845), 40; Henry C. Bruce,
The New Man: Twenty-Nine Years the Slave, Twenty-Nine Years the Free Man
(York, PA, 1895), 129–131; Francis Fedric,
Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky, Or, Fifty Years of Slavery
. . . (London, 1853), 4.

30
. Charley Barbour, AS, 2.1 (SC), 30–31; Venus in Emma Hurley, AS, 12.2 (GA), 274; Mariah Snyder, AS, 5.4 (TX), 53. A few of the endless references to stealing and sale in Works Progress Administration interviews include: Jake Terriel, AS, 5.4 (TX), 79; Mary Thompson, AS, 5.4 (TX), 101; William Rooks, AS, 10.6 (AR), 76–77; J. T. Travis, AS, 10.6 (AR), 336; Mollie Barber, AS, S1, 12 (OK), 29–30; Amy Chapman, AS, 6.1 (AL), 58; Nelson Cameron, AS, 2.1 (SC), 173; “Mrs. Sutton,” AS, 18 (TN), 31, 81, 105, 204–205, 216, 298–299; Jim Allen, AS, 7.2 (MS), 1; Maria Clemmons, AS, 8.2 (AR), 15; Wash Allen, AS, 12.1 (GA), 10; Lucretia Hayward, AS, 2.2 (SC), 280; Amanda Jackson, AS, 12.2 (GA), 292. See also Perdue et al.,
Weevils in the Wheat
, 161 (Katie Johnson), 185 (Louise Jones), 211, 250 (Sis Shackelford), 318 (Nancy Williams). Cf. Mia Bay,
The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas About White People, 1830–1925
(New York, 2000), 117–149.