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Dressed for Sale

Maurie D. McInnis

in Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade

This chapter discusses the spaces, places, and mechanics of the slave trade. These include the enslaved assistants of slave traders; slave auctions as public spectacles in Charleston, South Carolina; ... More

This chapter discusses the spaces, places, and mechanics of the slave trade. These include the enslaved assistants of slave traders; slave auctions as public spectacles in Charleston, South Carolina; the degrading physical inspection of slaves by traders; artists’ attempts to capture the sense of visual drama generated at auctions; and costuming as an essential part of the theater of the slave auction.Less

Going South

Maurie D. McInnis

in Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade

This chapter analyzes Eyre Crowe’s painting, Going South: A Sketch from Life in America, the first in his series about American slavery. The Going South movement begins on the left, as slaves are ... More

This chapter analyzes Eyre Crowe’s painting, Going South: A Sketch from Life in America, the first in his series about American slavery. The Going South movement begins on the left, as slaves are marched from their jails after being purchased at auction, and continues with the railroad car that will take them far away from the city.Less

The Red Flag

Maurie D. McInnis

in Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade

This chapter discusses the spaces, places, and mechanics of the slave trade. These include the use of red flags upon which are pinned small manuscript descriptions of slaves to be sold off; family ... More

This chapter discusses the spaces, places, and mechanics of the slave trade. These include the use of red flags upon which are pinned small manuscript descriptions of slaves to be sold off; family separations caused by the interstate slave trade; the use of slaves to pay debts; descriptions of slave traders and slave jails; and the story of Anthony Burns, a former slave who successfully escaped from slavery in Richmond in 1854 but was captured in Boston.Less

A Tide of Bodies

Sowande' M. Mustakeem

in Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage

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 ... More

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.Less

Introduction

in Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade

This introductory chapter begins with an analysis of Eyre Crowe’s painting, Slaves Waiting for Sale, Richmond, Virginia. It argues that Crowe sought to convey the depth and complexity of the horrors ... More

This introductory chapter begins with an analysis of Eyre Crowe’s painting, Slaves Waiting for Sale, Richmond, Virginia. It argues that Crowe sought to convey the depth and complexity of the horrors of slavery by presenting an entirely different scene: not the moment of the auction, by now so well rehearsed in the minds of viewers, but the moments before. The shift in timing alone forced viewers to consider the topic anew. Instead of drawing attention to the auctioneer and the buyers, Crowe focused primarily on the enslaved. The chapter then sets out the book’s purpose, which is to capture the context needed in order to understand Crowe’s images today. In exploring the images created by Crowe and other artists, the chapters that follow explain how those works helped viewers to see the American slave trade and to understand slavery in new ways.Less

Epilogue

Maurie D. McInnis

in Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade

This chapter focuses on remembrances of the slave trade. Artistic representations of the slave trade largely disappeared after the Civil War. Among the few who used their art to continue to question ... More

This chapter focuses on remembrances of the slave trade. Artistic representations of the slave trade largely disappeared after the Civil War. Among the few who used their art to continue to question the impact of slavery and the slave trade for African Americans in the post-war war era was the Southerner Thomas Satterwhite Noble, who painted two works immediately connected to the slave trade in the years following the war: The American Slave Mart (1865) and The Price of Blood. Around the turn of the century, a new form of public remembrance also arose. Largely connected to the growth in middle-class white tourism, this new form was nostalgia for an imagined idea of the South, a land of leisure and romance, a simpler place than the rapidly industrializing North. Central to that vision of the South was a benign view of slavery, one that imagined a harmonious relationship between masters and slaves, a natural hierarchy.Less

“To Do Good in This World We Must Have Money”: The Kingsley Legacy

Daniel L. Schafer

in Zephaniah Kingsley Jr. and the Atlantic World: Slave Trader, Plantation Owner, Emancipator

This chapter looks at the families of Kingsley’s daughters, Martha K. Baxter and Mary K. Sammis, and their mother Anna Jai Kingsley, as well as their cousin Charles J. McNeill, in the years after ... More

This chapter looks at the families of Kingsley’s daughters, Martha K. Baxter and Mary K. Sammis, and their mother Anna Jai Kingsley, as well as their cousin Charles J. McNeill, in the years after Kingsley’s death. The chapter begins with a provision in Kingsley’s Will regarding the sanctity of slave families and their right to self-purchase of freedom, and discusses the legal challenge to his Will by his sister, Martha K. McNeill. Also discussed are the fates of the families of slaves owned by Kingsley at the time of his death. Prior to his death in 1846, George Kingsley honoured his father’s promise of self-purchase of freedom for several slaves he inherited, as did Anna Kingsley and the families of Martha Baxter, Mary Sammis, and Charles J. McNeill. In the years that followed many of these liberated families settled in the rural enclave known today as Arlington, in homes near Kingsley’s legatees. For other slaves owned by Kingsley, families were divided by the inevitable auctions that settled the estate.Less

Slaves: African and Indian

Carl J. Ekberg and Sharon K. Person

in St. Louis Rising: The French Regime of Louis St. Ange de Bellerive

This chapter examines the role played by African and Indian slaves in early St. Louis. Indians had practiced slavery long before European explorers, traders, and colonizers arrived on North American ... More

This chapter examines the role played by African and Indian slaves in early St. Louis. Indians had practiced slavery long before European explorers, traders, and colonizers arrived on North American shores. Profitable, market-oriented agriculture developed in the Illinois Country as early as the 1720s, and slaves (especially Africans) were used as field hands. In French Illinois, Indian as well as African slaves had been present since the early eighteenth century, and especially at the founding of St. Louis in 1764. Slaves appear only marginally in most studies of colonial St. Louis, which tend to dwell on the fur trade and commercial relations with Missouri Valley Indians. This chapter looks at the village's slave population during the first decade of the settlement's existence. In particular, it considers how slaves became integrated into the life of the growing village. It also describes public auctions of slaves in the Illinois Country and the lives of early St. Louis slaves. Finally, it discusses the Grotton–St. Ange family's firsthand experience with the Indian slave trade.Less