They also saw cases where white men were prosecuted for the murder or ill-usage of their own slaves or of other negroes,' but such checks acted slowly and irregularly.

The control of the slaves by any severity necessary to preserve slavery was deeply inwrought into the whole fabric of southern law and society. Its worst features began in colonial times, when like harsh and brutal treatment was accorded to white servants and to negro slaves. The ferocious legal punishments of slaves were not unlike those of the English common law. White convicts were habitually governed by the lash as the slaves were. To the minds of the southern people, therefore, slavery did not present a case of a deliberate building-up of a cruel régime; it was rather a continuance of a state of things not exactly comfortable, but without which slavery could not exist; barbarities, fierce and sanguinary punishments, lynchings, did not seem abnormal to the slave-holders; and if slavery itself was allowable in a Christian and enlightened community, any method necessary to keep it up was justified. The indictment of slavery was that it was a deliberate refusal to go along with the rest of the world in the enjoyment of a more humane spirit than that of the eighteenth century.

1

1 Adams, Southside View, 37-40; Child, Oasis, 242-250.

CHAPTER IX

THE SLAVE-MARKET

(1830-1860)

ITH very small exceptions the negro slave

WITH

was absolutely subject to sale at such times, to such persons, and on such terms as pleased his master. The ownership was as absolute as that of a horse or a watch. Although prosperous masters commonly did not sell slaves, the threat of being "sent down the river" for bad conduct was often realized; and able-bodied slaves who began to lose their vigor and vitality were sometimes sold because no longer profitable as work-hands; or at the death of a master, especially if the estate went to several heirs, among whom the proceeds had to be divided. There was always an undercurrent of feeling that to part with one's slaves was ignoble; hence the most frequent reason for selling was simply that the master was obliged to realize, either to pay for something that he wanted to buy, or because he was in debt.

Was it true, as charged by the abolitionists, that slaves were bred in the border states for no other purpose than to sell them? Probably the truth was

expressed by the Mississippian who said: "A man might not raise a nigger with a well-considered plan to sell him eighteen years after he was born; he might never sell a nigger, but for all that, it was the readiness with which he could command a thousand dollars for every likely boy he had, if he should ever need it, that made him stay here and be bothered with taking care of a gang of niggers who barely earned enough to enable his family to live decently." " The fact that some thousands of negroes every year left the border states for the south seemed to show that there was a profit in keeping them alive; but recent investigations seem to establish that the greater number of these negroes were taken in a body by the men who owned them to settle in other states, and there was no undue proportion of young negroes in the border states such as would have been evident if there had been a definite system of selling the adults.2

In many cases slaves passed simply from vendor to purchaser like fancy stock, but the usual way was to attract buyers by advertisements. Within two weeks there appeared in the columns of sixtyfour southern newspapers advertisements for the sale of forty-one hundred negroes, besides thirty lots to be sold at auction, as, for example: "PRIVATE

1 Olmsted, Back Country, 284.

* Collins, Domestic Slave-Trade, 38, 61; Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, 55-59, 278-283; Rhodes, United States, I., 317; Såxe-Weimar, Travels, II., 63; Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter,

men.

SALES. Excellent Cook. Will be sold at private sale, a Woman, about 22 years of age, an excellent cook, (meat and pastry) Plain Washer, etc. She is sound and healthy and can make herself generally useful."1 The greater part of the traffic was in the hands of dealers and auctioneers, who acted as middleThe common method was for a firm to have a buying-house, with headquarters in the border states, as at Washington or Norfolk; they rode through the country with cash in their pockets, as cattle-buyers rode farther north, and picked up likely negroes wherever they could; the slaves were then brought together in barracoons, or private slave jails, and there kept until a sufficient number, had accumulated for a sale or shipment. The slavetraders had no social reward for this useful service;" a traveller in a steamer noticed "that the planters on board . . . shunned all intercourse with this dealer, as if they regarded his business as scarcely respectable." 2

However despised, the business was profitable. The private sales involved no public exhibition of the merchandise, and in many cases showed some regard to the preference of the slaves. The public sales brought out the worst side of the whole system. The north was shocked by such grouping of human and brute merchandise as: "SHERIFF'S SALE. I will

1 Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, 142; Charleston Mercury, July 6, 1857.

'Lyell, Second Visit, I., 232; cf. Adams, Southside View, 77.

VOL. XVI.-9

sell at Fairfield Court House, 2 Negroes, 2 Horses and I Jennet, I pair of Cart Wheels, i Bedstead, I Riding Saddle. Sheriff's Office, Nov. 19, 1852."1 Nowhere was the repulsiveness of slavery so apparent as in the slave auction-rooms maintained in mostsouthern cities. One spectator saw a woman put upon the block, obviously very ill, who owned to a bad cough and pain in her side, to which the auctioneer replied: "Never mind what she says, gentlemen, I told you she was a shammer. Her health is good enough. Damn her humbug. Give her a touch or two of the cow-hide, and I'll warrant she will do your work. Speak, gentlemen, before I knock her down." Another was shocked at the free-and-easy treatment of women: "There were some very pretty light mulattoes. A gentleman took one of the prettiest of them by the chin, and opened her mouth to see the state of her gums and teeth, with no more ceremony than if she had been a horse." Another was struck by the offer of "a woman still young, and three children, all for $850." Another was startled to see a negro baby sold on the block without its mother, but was preternaturally reassured when told by a slave-holding friend that "nothing of the kind ever took place before to our knowledge."

3

2

1 Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, 134.

2 Hamilton, Men and Manners in America, 317.

3 Bremer, Homes of the New World, II., 204.

4 Chambers, Things as they Are in America, 280; Adams, Southside View, 68.