Focus 580; Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market

In this second hour of focus 580 will be talking about life inside the antebellum slave market. Our guest for this program is historian Walter Johnson. He's professor of history and American studies at New York University and has authored a book examining the subject the title of his book is soul by soul. It's now available in the paperback edition published by the Harvard University Press and has who want a number of prizes including the John Hope Franklin prize of the American Studies Association as well as the book prize for 2000 of the Society for historians of the early American republic. Our guest Walter Johnson joining us this morning by telephone and as we talk you certainly should feel free to call in if you have questions. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Also we have a toll free line that once you get anywhere that you can hear us. So what would be a long distance call use that number and the call will be on us that's 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 again local 8 3 3 3. W I L L and toll free 800 2

2 2 wy Hello Professor Johnson Hello. Hi how are you. I'm fine thanks and thanks. Talking with us. Well thanks for having me. As as one looks at the map if you were looking for places that you would think would would have been significant in the slave trade a number of places suggest themselves port cities on the coast Charleston Savannah mobile and indeed these these were important markets. But none was bigger. New Orleans apparently was North America's biggest slave market in this time before the Civil War. What was it about New Orleans that that made it so. Well New Orleans is really I do. It's an ideal geographic position as far as a 19th century economy goes in the 19th century. The economy is really an economy that's based on water transport it's difficult to get goods to market otherwise. And so Norman sits at the junction of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. Or you could you could say it's at the junction of the Mississippi River Valley economy

and the Atlantic economy. And so for extorting all of the cotton that's produced out there and what becomes called the cotton Kingdom. Out of New Orleans to places like Liverpool and importing all of the finished goods manufactured goods upon which slaveholders like all other well-to-do Americans rely. New Orleans is in an ideal position and that's no different as far as the slave trade goes that a lot of the business in the slave trade is shipboard business it's people who are being shipped from places like those you mentioned on the eastern seaboard and some a little bit further north like Baltimore or Norfolk in particular. People are being shipped down the Mississippi River. There is you know there's also an overland trade which is people who walk across from a place like North Carolina to a place like Alabama so that certainly the slaves and slavery was very important to the economy of the South in this

period was the slave trade as Bisset when we talk specifically about the economy either in New Orleans or the state of Louisiana. How important was it for for that for that city and for that region. It's hugely important. You can think about it's importance you could measure its importance in number of ways. One way to think about it would be to think about the fact that it's through largely through the slave trade that the economy of slavery moved to the southwest. That's to say that when the land in places like Virginia where there's been a lot of tobacco production starts to run out people start to sell slaves as well as as migrate themselves to places like Alabama Mississippi and Louisiana that over the course of the period between 1820 and 1860 accounts for the movement of amount a million slaves that southwestern trend within slavery. And two thirds of those people the most recent work suggests were shipped through the domestic slave trade so as

far as the macro historical economics of slavery it's very important. Another way to think about it would be to think about the role that slaves play in the daily business of slavery. And one historian who works in Louisiana has estimated that 80 percent of collateralized transactions use slave collateral so they use slave slaves function as the mortgage collateral collateral. The preference for slaves over land in those transactions clearly depends upon their comparative liquidity on the ability of slave owners to sell them and so in that sense the slave trade is crucial to almost all of the transactions that are that are done in the antebellum South. The there was a ban on importation of slaves. You know eight so at that point no new slaves came into the country. All right so after that any slaves that were sold within the United States where were sold from one owner from one one

owner to another. Right. And this was something that one of the realities for that all slaves had to live with was the possibility that their owners would sell them and indeed the owners used that as a threat to try to control them. What what would be some of the reasons that that one that an owner would sell their slaves. Well the slave holders come up with any number of reasons for selling slaves. And they they are mostly reasons which tried to shift the blame away from the slave trade or from the slave seller as a sort of conscience agent responsible for their own actions which is to say they they argue that these things are necessary that there is no other way that they can get out of debt or that they blame the slaves themselves. They say that the slaves have not worked hard enough or that they've behaved badly that sometimes people get sold because. Women get sold because younger men in the White House hold

are after them in the you know the white young white men's parents don't want that that sort of relationship to occur. There's any number of reasons. The way that this ramified for slaves is that they are as you suggest they're constantly under the threat of sale and that that sphere of sale infuses I argue in the book. Many of their family relations their community relations all of the things which make slavery Saval survivable. All of the relationships have within them the threat of their own death the dissolution they have within them the possibility that they could be separated at any moment. Well when slaves. Discovered that or learned that there was a possibility that they would be sold. What did they do. Well some run away there. There is a parent and slave narratives particularly a fantastic collection of narratives now out of

print called a North Side view of slavery which are interviews with slaves who Fisk it's a can of the interviews in the free black communities in Ontario is done in 1840. Make clear that slaves often have pretty good knowledge of the the moment of the coming moment of sale. Slaves have slave holders talked very freely about their business as if slaves don't listen and so there's a underground network of information that people can use to get information and sometimes they run away. Running away is of course difficult if you have a family or if you have children and sometimes they may argue with their owners and they say you know that you promised me you would sell me or you promise me that you wouldn't divide my my marriage or I served you well and occasionally those those arguments are successful. By and large I mean if you look at. Those statistics two thirds of a million of those arguments are not successful. And so it's it's it's one of the many ways I think that enslaved peoples

efforts to shape their own lives shapes the history that they're involved in. They are often on the losing end of those struggles. Some apparently committed suicide rather than be sold. That's absolutely right it's. There's a series of very startling images that come out of some of the narratives of people who would rather die than go to Louisiana. Louisiana is as the narrator the slave narrative a stick of straw or set it's thought of as a place of death by the slaves. And so in some sense there's it's a choice between death and and it is that this is about more than just. The fact that they're being sold would break off family connections would take them away the life from the life that they had known it also meant going into a different life chances are in some cases maybe becoming field hands doing work that they hadn't done before. Right there in liberty less desire a much

less desirable situation. I think that that's right and I think that the situation in Louisiana is as far as slavery goes quite a bit less desirable. Many of the slaves in Louisiana are put to work cultivating sugar and Louisiana southeastern Louisiana is the only place the United States where sugar is cultivated at all and sugar as one historian is argued is made with blood sugar cultivation is enormously brutal to the harvest time is in the hottest months of the year. And in order to get the sugar out of the fields before its sweetness is exhausted before its sweetness seeps out into the ground. Enslave people were put to work in you know doing put to work in the heat for 16 hours a day so really doing work that was beyond the capacity of any human me. And so the mortality is tremendous and so there's there's that literal death along with what I call the social death. You spoke about about the

the extraction from all of those networks of family and community that make life meaningful as you mentioned and as you discuss in the book important sources for this book and this kind of work. Our slave narratives are all of the records that were left by slave traders. There are many letters and other kinds of writings by people who own slaves that mention the slaves and the relations that they had with them and how they felt about it and so forth. How generally speaking if you can say this did slave owners think about what it was they were doing and how conscious of they were the fact that here they were owning and using it as a tool sometimes almost the way you would use an animal another human being. I'm a lot of people have tried to argue that there's there's a contradiction there that there's a

philosophical contradiction that slaveholders were unable to resolve. And I think I think a bit dimmer view of it than that. Yes I think that that same folders are always intensely aware of the humanity and feelings of their slaves and I think that that's already sort of been apparent in some of the examples you gave as did slave holders use the threat of sale to discipline slaves. They say I will sell you if you don't do what I want you to do. Well what what they're doing then is that they are insinuating themselves into the slaves human connections they are making those connections their own. Another way to think about this would just to be to think about the the physical parameters of the trade physical parameters of the trade involve high walls. They involve chains and they involve whips and that means that there is in the daily practice of the trade there is a recognition of the unwillingness of the enslaved people to participate. And so you could turn that around and you could say that it's actually the unwillingness

of the enslaved people to participate in this that makes it visible the coercion that makes makes it necessary for slave traders to do this in such a obscene fashion and that's something that later on I argue 19th century abolitionists are able to seize on so in that sense the humanity of this through through you know evoking insisting upon their own humanity enslaved people are able to create information. It becomes very useful to both black and white abolitionists in the north as they tried to fight against slavery. I should introduce Again our guest for this hour of focus 580 We're speaking with Walter Johnson he is associate professor of history and American studies at New York University. His book is titled soul by soul a life inside the antebellum slave market and it's published by the Harvard University Press. Questions are welcome three three three. W. Weil or 9 4 5 5 and toll free 800 to 2 2

9 4 5 5. If supposing that one was a slave owner and for whatever reason you had debts that had to be settled things weren't going well in your life you had to sell a slave. How how would one go about. When this. Well there is there is in addition to this large interstate slave trade that we've been talking about the two thirds of a million there are millions of more local sales and that would be some money and say if it was say in the neighborhood of New Orleans selling an unsaved person to somebody else in a neighborhood of New Orleans and there about one and a third million of those that occur over the period of the antebellum South. Now a lot of that I argue in the book occurs through brokers. And so what somebody in an urban area wishing to do that would do is go to take the enslaved person to the to the slave dealer and

put them there on a consignment basis so that they would they would get the price when the slave dealer sold the slave the slave dealer would get in that case room and board in a two and a half percent commission slave traders interstate slave traders travel throughout the upper south during the summer months buying slaves in order to to. Ship them south in the fall so they go from small town to small town just trying to drum up business and then alongside those two sort of models. There's a set of models that are very informal just one one person talking to their neighbors talking in saloons talking at hotels and you know finding finding a way to sell their their slaves that way now. The final thing since since you were talking about that that can happen is that their state ordered Slave Sales. When people get into debt their you know their property is often auction off by the state. And slaves are our first and foremost among the property that gets auctioned off.

And I'm sure there also were estate sales that that that a person dies their property is sold and here slaves would be considered to be a piece of property like anything else. Absolutely right and that takes us back again to how integral the fact of the slave trade is to the daily life of the antebellum South is that you can't settle a state without valuing the slaves. The idea that a human being has a cash value has a price attached to them is an idea that depends upon the slave market. We have several callers to bring into the conversation so let's do that will take them in the order they came in. First caller is. In Belgium and that that Linus line number four. Hello. How can you have an approach this part of the topic. Maybe that's not part of your your discussion but when when did an issue enslaved people came from Africa. These. These people the slavers the people who own the ships didn't just go out and grab the shore

you know and surely there was some participation with other tribes or no right direct might. My work is general is about the interstate slave trade and so it's actually about the period in American history after the Atlantic slave trade is closed. I see now. But there's there's no question that there is that societies in Africa in the pre-colonial period are like societies in the rest of the world they are a class society and that there are people who are from the continent of Africa often from different areas of the car. In and of Africa who are involved in the merchant slave trade. So that's it's you know a lot of times when I tell particularly audiences of white students about this that there's this sense of relief like OK well I'm actually afraid it's not our fault. And I think that that's that's not the message of that piece of history the message of the piece of history is that there is an articulation between two sets of two two different really relationships of

slavery that occurs through class domination. And so it's really it's a part of the way in which slavery is a world history that involves Europeans and Africans chemicals. There was a slave trade because back to Biblical times essentially in Africa wasn't there. Well there is you know that I think there's a whole set of very complicated distinctions that we would want to make about the character of African slavery in relationship to the character of slavery in America in many in many cases slavery in Africa is. It's a system of political domination rather than economic exploitation which is to say it's a way of structuring a society. And slaves in Africa can become generals and armies can become placeholders for rulers although you know many many of the rest of them are doing. Agricultural production so it's a different sort of system but absolutely it's an ancient system and the other thing that I would want to add to that is that there is a there's a

slave trade out of Eastern Africa which is 10 to 12 million people so it's a little bit smaller but comparable to the Atlantic slave trade out of western Africa that together those two phenomenon mean that there's basically zero population growth on the continent of Africa between 1750 in 1850. So it's a tremendous depredation. Thank you. All right let's talk next with a caller in Champagne line 1. Hello. Oh yes. Yes Mike. Eric it's a common question. During the slave revolution in Haiti late seventeen hundreds there was clearly a number of. Slaveholders and maybe even free people of color who moved from Haiti to Louisiana you know much about that history. It's not something that I know a good deal about through direct research. Now that is part of it's a sort of an infusion of both

French culture and African culture into Louisiana and it's one of the things that makes slavery in Louisiana different from slavery elsewhere in North America it's one of the reasons that you have Dune or voodoo. Yes. In Louisiana to an extent that you don't have in much of the rest of the South and any sense of the numbers that transfer Well I would certainly in the thousands as far as between 5000 and 500000 I'm not certain to be honest. And most of those numbers were where they are late. Well a lot of it is a lot of it in the first census is slaveholder seeking to hold onto their slave property by bringing their slaves to Louisiana. Then as the revolution in Haiti unfolds and different groups and. Top at different times and different alliances are made I think that presumably there's a spectrum of people which is to say

freed former slaves those who in Haiti were cooler free people of color and those who were white slaveholders or white you know non-slave only whites. So I think all of those people come at one time or another. If it's not something that I've done a good deal of work on myself and so I don't think I could give you a detailed answer. How many of each group comes when Ok having lived in the wallets for a while. I read that the population in and around the islands may have doubled in size over a 20 year period possibly due to that. The transfer. Oh yeah that wouldn't surprise me I wouldn't know it's you know. Then we're probably talking twenty forty thousand people something like that wouldn't surprise me at all and I think that there is. It's not something that is in your standard a history book but there's now a slave revolt in St.

John the Baptist Parish Louisiana which is down river from from New Orleans in 1811. It is in fact as far as North America goes in terms of the number of people who come into the field and slay people who come into the field as the largest slave revolt in North America. And there's nobody done it done a whole lot of work on this I'm actually trying to work on it myself and there is a significant Haitian component to that revolt so there is something that's very exciting happening there if if you're interested in the history of black revolution and the modern world. Right. Well okay thank you. I thank you again to another caller here this next person is an herb. And a line to follow. Yes a lot I believe. See our James in the black Jacob and stas talk about the that the migration of slaves but you know I haven't read the book in a while but I believe you also suggests that after the revolution they are suspending or it was a much more desirable place to live in

Louisiana and blacks were actually trying to free Louisiana to move to the free to spend your own. Yeah absolutely right. I have a student actually who's been doing wonderful work on three children of color in New Orleans in the 1850s and she finds that as a school assignment these free children of color are being asked to write letters to imaginary friends in Haiti. And the way that they write to them is the Haiti is is the site of black citizenship it's the site of black political freedom and so I think that Haiti does turn into a beacon of hope for a lot of people and I'm glad you mentioned CSR James because that is I think black Jacobins is is one of the it's one of the greatest history books ever written and it really is you know alongside with my book which I'm I'm here to talk about it. So when everybody goes to the bookstore to buy my book they should they should get them so and it is it's a real class thing. Yes I am. But another question. There was some movement for

our we had a Reno way of slavery too in the 1840s and 50s which was sort of among the liberal Poor been a wrister Kratz who wouldn't sell their slaves and try to get it was passed that would abolish slavery. It's not about the sale of slaves to anybody except to the slaves themselves. And the failure of that of course really fueled the abolitionist movement in the north and it was the one possibility of trying to have a reform of the South rather than the Revolution which was a civil war and I just wonder if you know of any works on that subject. I think the best place to look for things about the history of a free people of color and about the history of manumission efforts which is individuals frankly even emancipation efforts which is states like freeing slaves is Ira Berlin's book which is called Slaves without masters. And that's that's a book that is written some time ago now it's written in 1974 but it's a fantastic

book about all of those. The sorts of impulses there are you know that's one I think in a line of stories about or of political efforts to find a way to get slavery to sort of disappear without directly engaging the question of emancipation. I see you used an expression about the experience of the slaves in New Orleans a quote from was death or drugs. I haven't heard that before what's the origin of that. I'm sorry you've used an expression earlier about that the slaves used in New York neurons if you were if you were a slave and got some new loans it was like Oh right you know I never have heard that one before I was resigned to the question about suicide. So the idea there is that the sleeves imagine SES in a place like Virginia imagine as like I said about George Jacobs Troyer Louisiana as a place of slaughter. Yes yes. So that is why I was saying there's a comparison that they might make about their possibilities.

We have a debate over here. Last question. OK what was the date the West African slave ship landed on the shores of the United States. Well that depends on if you count smuggling or not. I think if you count smuggling it continues to happen probably up through the the Civil War. Legally you know weight is when the slave trade of clothes you know was the way you used to date and what it does for the United States Constitution now. South Carolina leading the way in many things about pro-slavery reopens the Atlantic slave trade. At some point and imports several ships of slave so. So then a big question about whether or not you view that as a a legal action. That's OUTFRONT thank you very much. Thank you. We're a little bit past the midpoint of this hour a focus 580 I should introduce Again our guest. We're speaking with Walter Johnson. He's associate professor of history and American studies at New York University. He's written a book on the subject if you're interested you can look for it it's titled soul by soul life inside the antebellum slave market.

It's now available in a paperback edition it's published by the Harvard University Press. Questions are welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5. 5 and toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Another caller here in Crete line number four. Hello I just want to give Johnson the fear of going south southwest of his grade and perhaps suicide increase among the slaves because of that and perhaps violence and murder and crime among the slaves increases because of that. I'd like to see some comments from you on that. But the the slave uprisings you mention 111 that's how because of the earthquake basically you could in the east and you in Carolina and Vesey and profiteer and turn and there was basically nothing except as an invisible one in 1811 How do you explain it. But it's an interesting question. I think that probably I'm

not going to agree with the premise of the question because I think that there are actually quite a few slave revolts that don't happen on the eastern seaboard that that haven't become part of the standard narrative of all of the slave revolts one that I'm very interested in right now is on the slave ship Creole which I haven't seen 1941 and that's the slave ship which is traveling from Virginia to Louisiana there's also a slave revolt on the national road. There's a whole series there's a huge slave revolt convulsion in in Mississippi in 1835. The theme I think but I actually think that I also accept part of the premise of the question which is that there is something very difficult about organizing a slave revolt in a society that is in the slave community that is being disrupted by the domestic slave trade. All of the slave

communities if you think about a place like Louisiana or Mississippi are made up of people who don't know one another. And that's that's the function of the slave trade is that it takes people from all over the eastern seaboard and they have to reshape themselves into collectives in a place like Mississippi so that they may be from North Carolina some from Virginia. And if you're planning a slave revolt you have to trust people with your life. It's a very difficult thing to do I think that the practical political organization of slave revolt is something that historians along aside from see a large James really but in a few other examples haven't thought enough about. And so the way that people come to know one another is is very very complicated. So I think it's actually a really interesting provocative way to try to think about things. After care I think right after that well that's that's the place to go for the the enumeration of all of these these incidents is

what apps actors American negro slave revolts which is I think it's probably published in 1944. And you've got a classic movie of which ones occur east of New Orleans in which you could win and I haven't thought about it that way and I think that's that's a very you know that I think that's a really interesting way to think about it like I say that I think there are plenty of episodes of slave revolts that that occur in the West but to think about migration as one of the one of the real parameters that frame the possibility for slave revolt I think is a really great idea. The last question is there any relationship between that movement to catch in Louisiana and Arkansas and increase suicide among the slaves increase violence directed the enslaved by the math or increase violence within the community based on that migration. Yeah all great questions I think certainly there that that the. I'm

not sure how you would measure increased violence in a sense but there is. Without a doubt the slave trade is runs only through the threat and actualization of slaveholders violence on enslaved people. The slave trade also I think like many experiences of domination can can work itself out through violent resistance. And so I think there are there are plenty of episodes of violent resistance and you know the slaveholders wouldn't have so many whips and chains and high walls if if they weren't aware of that. So I do think that it becomes a fight and absolutely a site for that now. Whether it's more of a site for that than what you might call the sphere of production where people are are working and reproducing and all these things I don't know. I appreciate the question is the cause. Let's continue. It will go. To another person here Rantoul one one.

Hello. Hi. Yes I was not wondering if you studied anything about the seminal black. Yeah very interesting. I mean and then you know the fact is that the seminal there's a huge seminal war this is how Andrew Jackson made his name as a as an Indian fighters fighting the seminal. Well the seminal are mixed a mixed group of Native Americans and and African-Americans and Africans. And so that that question is for me it's not something I've done work on myself but it's a provocation to thinking about how do you think about a slave revolt. And many of the biggest slave revolts have been misnamed as of the things I eve the seminal war which is thought to be an Indian war. But you could equally think about it as a slave revolt. You could think about the American Revolution as one of the greatest slave revolts in in history is that there are you know 20000 slaves who participate both are running away and actually fighting in the American Revolution. Same with the civil war there 200000 formerly enslaved people who fight for the

Union Army. Now people don't want to call those things slave revolt because they don't look like Nat Turner looks. And while I think it's important not to say that the civil war is the same thing as Nat Turner. It is important to me to think about. Insley people joining in military conflict as a blip bringing an element of slave revolt into these existing conflicts almost every war in American history involves the Americans joining an existing conflict. So if you're going to think about World War 2 as an American war it makes sense in some way to think about the Civil War as partially a slave revolt. Yeah I just got here just recently I've read a little bit about that and I didn't realize that that that really the seminal wars were so much about you know the Indians were trying to protect their land but the blacks were trying to stay free. Absolutely it's Florida in particular like Louisiana at the end of the 18th

century is a fascinating place because you have maroon communities which are communities of runaway slaves Who's Who established societies independent societies hidden from white domination. And that's that does feed into the seminal wars in a really serious way that's very interesting So thank you very much. Thanks. We talked a little bit earlier about the fact that slaves certainly could be and were sold locally or. Generally if an individual an owner wanted to sell a slave they could ask their neighbors. There were brokers that would broker transactions locally but there also were slave traders that would travel around they would put up posters saying that they were interested they were available to buy and so forth and then groups of slaves were put together and transported as a group to New Orleans where they came to the markets and then were housed jailed or kept in groups

when they were sold and what's interesting here is that here we have individuals who certainly have the experience of slavery in common but they don't know each other. They could could be from different places here coming together. And you're right about the fact that within to the extent. That they could in these traveling groups and then when they got to New Orleans there was a kind of community for among these individuals. That's absolutely right and it's it's something that comes through the slave narratives very clearly that as they write their own stories the slave narrative narrator is often introduce other characters and they introduce other characters with full biographies and those biographies are a trace of the conversations that people have in the slave trade of the they tell their lives to one another. And that for me is a trace of their building a network of trust and support that can be simply something that helps them survive what is a terrifying and brutal experience in some cases those those

networks of trust and support actually turned. Turn resistant and in the revolutionary sense they become this. The sight of slave revolts and it is I think it's a very interesting story of how people in the situation of the greatest existence see build a community. That process continues in the new enslaved communities of a place like Louisiana where people are are are born all over the place all over the Eastern Seaboard or the Midwest like Missouri or wherever and and get to know one another and form a community a slave community in Louisiana. Well what was it like there in Louisiana in if if one went down and I understand that this. Hesitate to use the term tourist attraction but apparently people actually did go just to look when they went to New Orleans if you if you went there what would it be like what would you see.

Well it is you know just the image is interesting because one of the ways that people go to see slavery is they go to see the slave market in New Orleans and there are there are really two ways the slaves are sold in New Orleans one is auction those auctions are generally state ordered sales. So those are the estate sales or the debt sales. And they occur in the city in the city's fancy hotels they occur beneath these this huge rotunda in St. Charles Hotel and people line up and they serve free lunches the free lunches are in some sense an indication of the spectacular character of the undertaking the sales and I'm talking about the slave trader sales occur in two different neighborhoods of the city and they occur in fairly standard retail buildings except for the fact that all these retail buildings have high walls and sometimes the slaves are lined up on the street in front. They are dressed up they are dressed up in suits top

hats dresses. Head coverings and for display and so that that's what the travelers seek Now some of the travelers both in a kind of a prince way and in a way. In an activist critical way try to go further into the slave market and they try to talk to the slaves and to to see how their bodies are inspected which is it's the inspections are very minute. And so that's the sort of access that's the access that northern readers have to the slave market. And I'm sure in the popular imagination that people think about the the idea of a slave sale. They probably do think about an auction. They have this picture in their mind of the person standing up on the block and heaven. An open outcry and as you say that did happen but perhaps more common was a different kind of sale a more quiet sort of negotiation perhaps and that the slaves those people who were

being sold to did things tried to do things as much as they could to affect the circumstances of the sale who they would be sold to what they would be sold to do. Absolutely right I mean that the auction is. That's the image that people have of the slave trade and it's a very powerful and useful image the the the interstate slave trade that the slave trade in the proper sense of of slave trade or selling slaves to people does occur in the lower south in terms of these private bargains which can go on for days. And which involves bodily inspections which involve the buyers asking the slaves a lot of questions and in fact which necessarily involve the slaves in the middle of the transaction. Nobody in the antebellum South would trust the slave traders slave traders are notoriously dishonest they notoriously lie about the health the age of origin the history everything about the slaves who they sell so the slave buyers can only get information my information that they think they

might trust by asking the slaves questions. What that does is it. It involves the slaves right in the middle of the process and you find if you look in in slave narratives you find incredible statements you find John Parker's saying I made up my mind to choose my own master. And so Parker is sitting there in the slave market evaluating the slave holders in the same way that they are evaluating him. Now the thing about the slave holders is that they're not all dressed in identical clothes and identical black suits with tie. They are dressed in ways that reveal all kinds of things about them and they ask questions that reveal more things about them that reveal what type of work they're interested in having the slave do that reveal whether or not they're willing to buy the enslaved person with with their family members an endless number of those questions and so enslaved people can gather a lot of information as the process goes on and they do shape their own sales sometimes. Sometimes they undermine sales to buyers who they don't want to be sold to and this

drives slave traders crazy. Would you would one rather be bought by. One thing I say I'm sure you could tell about a person was how wealthy they were. Right. Perhaps also how well spoken how well educated and so for they were it would one rather be sold to a wealthy person. Well it's interesting that that. I mean I think that there's sort of an assumption that that would be the case. It's not one of the reasons that I've seen the reasons the distinctions that I've seen are between the country and the city. A lot of people want to be sold in the city. Many people have family in the city. Many people think that it's easier to escape from the city. Because you know if you're in New Orleans Well there's steam boats leaving New Orleans every single minute of the day really. And so there's a real possibility of escape there. There's a set of distinctions about what type of work you'll have to do. And but the biggest one is is to be sold with family members I think that's the one that surfaces again and again.

Well I think that it's easy to see the slave in this whole process as completely passive and individual that the whole process is acted upon and it has no power to do any acting themselves and at that I think that's something that you really try to address in your work and say well that's really not the case. Having said that I'm interested. It's very clear the effect that this relationship between the owner and the slave had on the slave. What sort of things can one say about what this relief. Shipment what sort of effect there was upon the owner. Yeah that that's a great question and I think that there's been a lot of energy of sociological historical pop psychological energy devoted to thinking about the psychology of enslavement. There's been considerably less energy devoted to thinking about the psychology of enslaving. And it's it's I argue in the book that it's it's a very destabilizing relationship slaveholders go to the slave

market to reshape themselves in some way if you think about all of the things that we think about when we think about the antebellum south all of the fine dinner parties all of the all of the shiny cufflinks all of the the well tended fields all of the white children raised by by black caretakers all of those things are performed through the direct agency of slaves. So in some sense slaveholder social identities are made by their slaves. And so what happens is when slave holders go to the slave market and buy a slave they often talk about how this is going to change their life and that's what occurs again and again in these letters I've read. They're often disappointed. In fact I would say that they're almost necessarily disappointed that their fantasy can never be identified that the person they buy can never be identical to their fantasy and so it's one of my arguments that that's part of the reason that you see this this extraordinary brutality that you see surrounding slavery is slave

holders. Inability to have their fantasies realized by the people they buy to do it for them. I think it's it's interesting that in clued in the book here in the section where there are illustrations and photographs is a portrait of an obviously wealthy Southern couple this is Colonel and Mrs. James Whiteside. And it's a painting of them pose they're sitting there they're very well dressed and the backdrop is the landscape which undoubtedly were to assume it's theirs. But also interesting in this picture are two slaves there's a baby that's their son. But there are two servants who looks like a boy and a woman who is holding the baby on her lap. Happen I think it's interesting that here in their official portrait and their family picture they should not only show themselves and their child but to slaves. No it is it's quite striking it's actually a fairly common style of a portraiture. And it is it that makes makes the point

and a very. I think striking way is that when they sit down to have themselves represented to have the picture made that represents who these people are. They include their slaves and so that is an index I think of that type of identity dependency that that explodes so often into violence when when the slaves in the picture don't know behave don't pose the way that they're supposed to just do. To finish. Are there some ways in which you think scholarship of this period American history and slavery in America in relatively recent times has has changed our fundamental understanding of that this institution. I know that's an awfully big question. Yeah I know it well I think that there's a more of an emphasis on. And then this for me is a very salutary emphasis on the daily way that enslaved people live their lives and resisted slavery and that comes out of an effort I

think to see the institution from their perspective. And that I think has been you know it's not in some sense brand new. There's been a lot of people who've been doing fantastic work on this for a long time. But it is I think very very vital vital both in the sense of its importance but vital in that it's very alive. And so for me that that's been a conversation is very exciting and one that I really tried to contribute my my little two cents to. Well I want to say to you very much thanks for spending some time and talking with us today. Well thanks for having me it was great. Our guest Walter Johnson he is associate professor of history and American studies at New York University his book if you would like to read it is titled sold by soul life inside the antebellum slave market. It's now available in a paperback edition that's published by the Harvard University Press.