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In November 1841, the U.S. slaver Creole transporting 135 slaves from Richmond to New Orleans was seized by nineteen slave rebels who steered the ship to the British Bahamas, where all secured their liberation. Drawing from this well-known story as a point of departure, this chapter examines the understudied maritime dimensions of British free soil policies in the nineteenth century, with a particular emphasis on how such policies affected the U.S. domestic slave trade and slave revolts at sea. In contrast to the more familiar narrative of south-to-north fugitive slave migration, this chapter sheds light on international south-to-south migration routes from the U.S. South to the circum-Caribbean.

Probably at all times, a large proportion of slaves was employed in the domestic service, ‘for, by and large, personal servants were always slaves’. The number of domestic slaves employed in a household depended on the householder's wealth. While rich Greeks and Romans had hundreds or even thousands of household slaves, smaller numbers of servants were probably found in the houses of the less well-to-do as well. Especially in late antiquity, when the employment of slaves in agriculture seems to have declined, slaves were still found in the domestic sphere, where they remain predominant. In Roman-Byzantine times, from the second to the 5th century CE, slaves are mostly represented in the epigraphy of the cities and were employed in the domestic service, in crafts, and in administrative positions.

Although all slaves were affected by the general aspects of slavery (denationalisation, identification with chattel, total dependency on the master), in reality there were great differences among slaves as far as their actual status within the household and in society at large was concerned. Household slaves were generally better off than farmhands, well-educated and skilled slaves were more valuable for their masters than the rest of the familia, and slaves of prominent masters were both respected and feared within society. Altogether, slaves' roles and functions were very diverse and the boundaries between slaves' and free men's work and lifestyle were blurred. Female slaves were probably sexually exploited to a greater extent than male slaves were.

The complexities of Harriet Beecher Stowe's response to slavery and “the negro problem”—embroiled with racial prejudice for even ardent abolitionists—may be laid in part to these entangled domestic relations. During the formative period of the 1830s her consciousness was divided between that of republican defender of free speech and that of middle-class, white, household mistress. That she was herself trying to escape being a “mere household drudge” and “domestic slave” intensified the contradictions; she turned to her writing to make money that would enable her to hire household help—and she was dependent on household help to relieve her of duties so that she was free to write. The political economy of the household was intimately connected with the political economy of slavery. Both were patriarchal institutions that subordinated the labor of one group of people to the leisure and well-being of another. As a woman, Stowe's own labor was a commodity in this exchange.

This chapter addresses the problems posed by the domestic slave trade due to its curious place within southern history. This problem is especially apparent to those seeking to portray slavery as a benign and paternal institution. In antebellum polemics about the slavery controversy, white southern propagandists pretended that the trade was of only marginal importance and that slave traders were social outcasts: in the post-slavery years, the hiding of the slave trader became a compulsory ingredient in the promotion of the plantation legend. This chapter looks beyond these rationalizations and tries to discover how it was possible for the slaveholding society of the South to maintain its benevolent self-image and at the same time take part in a massive slave traffic that terrified slaves and destroyed many of their families.

This chapter examines the import of slaves through the third and final phase of the Atlantic human manufacturing process: product delivery. It first considers the complexities of domestic slave markets to determine how slaves were transported through the Middle Passage, arrived into New World slave societies, and immediately forced into arranged auction sales. It broadens the categorical view of newly arrived Africans beyond the general rubric of prime, young, male, and presumably healthy in order to emphasize the diversity of human commodities made available within the Atlantic slave trade during the eighteenth century. It also explores how factors such as gender, age, trauma, diseases, and disabilities influenced local markets and in some cases prompted planters to forgo filial slave auctions. The chapter highlights the importation of bruised, diseased, scarred, disabled, and, most of all, manufactured black bodies shaped and refined by their seaborne experiences.

This chapter tells the history of Sarah Conner, an enslaved woman sold through the domestic slave trade from Virginia to New Orleans, Louisiana. Conner used money earned through socially reproductive labor to purchase her freedom. Her emancipation was complicated, however, by the man with whom she lived and who legally enslaved her, Theophilus Freeman. Freeman failed to properly register Conner's freedom with the city courts. When Freeman filed for bankruptcy, his creditors attempted to claim Conner's body for payment of his debts, illustrating the ways in which women of African descent, enslaved and free, could be trapped within the sexual economy of slavery. Chapter three also considers the experiences of enslaved concubines more broadly, challenging a sharp divide between accommodation and resistance in their actions and focusing instead on the impossible position in which they found themselves.

The prologue introduces Natchez, Mississippi, and the principals involved in a murder that made national headlines. It provides the history of the planter aristocracy, explains perceptions of the South in the 1930s, the Natchez pilgrimage, the domestic slave trade, the national media attention, and attempts by earlier writers to document the story. Well known families include the Merrills, the Minors, and the Danas. There is also some discussion of Mississippi during the Civil War and the Cotton Kingdom.

The conclusion revisits the main findings of each chapter and each of the themes explored during the analysis of Guadeloupe's ceramic culture. This approach underlines the importance of domestic water management in the past and helps us understand the feasting practices of Guadeloupeans. It also highlights the roles of domestic slaves, in particular of enslaved women, in the creation of the local Creole culture. These women were so much involved and so essential in the daily lives of their masters that they might have derived from their work a form of unacknowledged, but nonetheless real, social power.

This chapter introduces the African American principals in the book, Emily Burns and George Pearls a.k.a. Lawrence Williams. The history of the African American experience in Natchez, from slavery through Reconstruction and Jim Crow, is discussed. George lived in Chicago and when he came to Natchez in 1932 he introduced himself to Emily as Pinkney. He was called “Pink” and she was known in the community as “Sister.” Emily’s mother Nellie Black is introduced, as is their boarder, Edgar Allen Poe Newell or “Poe.” Both Emily and her mother were widows and domestics. All suffered from poverty, particularly in the depths of the Great Depression.