The Half Has Never Been Told

by Edward E. Baptist

  48. Moniteur, January 17, 1811; Barthelemy compensation list from SCPOA; Samuel Hambleton to David Porter, January 15, 1811, in Stanley Engerman, Seymour Drescher, and Robert L. Paquette, eds., Slavery (New York, 2001), 326.

  49. January 14, 1811, SCPOA: “Amar, chef de brigandes, dénoncé comme tel par tous les autres brigandes, n’a pas peu répondre aux questions quand lui a adressées, parce qu’il l’était bless’e à la gorge, de manière à être pincé de l’usàge de la parole” (Amar, chief of rebels, denounced as such by all the other rebels, was not able to respond to questions when asked, because he had been wounded in the throat, in such a way as to prevent him from speaking.”

  50. SCPOA, “State of the Work Forces”; Thrasher, On to New Orleans, 64–65.

  51. SCPOA Act 2, 3–4.

  52. TP, 9:923, 702; and a key point of Rothman, Slave Country.

  53. Claiborne to Andry, December 24, 1811, WCCC, 6:15; Junius P. Rodriguez, “Always ‘En Garde’: The Effect of Rebellion upon the Louisiana Mentality, 1811–1815,” Louisiana History 33, no. 4 (1992): 399–416. Just to be certain that free people of color could not assist rebellion, Louisiana passed new laws that increased taxes on free men of color and forbade them to carry weapons—even walking sticks, which could hide saber blades.

  54. Matthew Mason, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006); Speech of Josiah Quincy, Annals, 11th Cong., 3rd sess., 525, 540.

  55. Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767–1821 (New York, 1977), 247–250; Alexander Walker, Jackson and New Orleans: An Authentic Narrative of the Memorable Achievements of the American Army (Cincinnati, 1856).

  56. Remini, Jackson and American Empire, 133–216; James Parton, Life of Jackson (New York, 1860), 1:88–94.

  57. Remini, Jackson and American Empire, 246–254.

  58. For Indian slave owners, see, among many other excellent works, Christina Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America (Cambridge, MA, 2010); Tiya Miles, Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom (Berkeley, CA, 2005).

  59. Remini, Jackson and American Empire, 187–233.

  60. Arsène Latour, Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana in 1814–1815, ed. Gene Smith (Gainesville, FL, 1999), 294–297; Caryn Cossé Bell, Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718–1868 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1997), 51–59.

  61. Parton, Life of Jackson, 2:63; CAJ, 2:118–119.

  62. Latour, Historical Memoir, 137–152; Remini, Jackson and American Empire, 276–289.

  CHAPTER 3. RIGHT HAND: 1815–1819

  1. Manifests of the Temperance from Reel 1, Inward Manifests of New Orleans, RG 36, NA; LC, January 25, 1819; for McDonogh being rowed across the river, cf. “McDonogh’s Last Trip,” Lithograph by Dominique Canova, c. 1850, Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans, Louisiana; Ari Kelman, A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans (Berkeley, CA, 2003).

  2. Maspero’s advertisements and announcements were ubiquitous in New Orleans between 1806 and 1833. See John Adems Paxton, The New-Orleans Directory and Register (New Orleans, 1822), frontispiece, and multiple newspapers, e.g., LG, February 10, 1816.

  3. LG, April 2, 1818; Henry C. (Henry Cogswell) Knight, Letters from the South and West (Boston, 1824), 115–124; James Pearse, Narrative of the Life of James Pearse (Rutland, VT, c. 1826), 17; Timothy Flint, Recollections of the Last Ten Years . . . in the Valley of the Mississippi (Boston, 1826), 218; Darla Jean Thompson, “Circuits of Containment: Iron Collars, Incarceration, and the Infrastructure of Slavery” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 2014).

  4. Henry C. Castellanos, New Orleans as It Was (New Orleans, 1978), 146–148; Christian Schultz, Travels on an Inland Voyage (repr. Ridgewood, NJ, 1968), 190–191; Knight, Letters from the South and West, 115–123; Flint, Recollections, 222–223; HALL; New-York Columbia, August 6, 1818; Westchester Herald, August 11, 1818.

  5. Kenneth C. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Berkeley, CA, 2000); Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700–1850 (New Haven, CT, 2009); Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (New York, 1987); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, 3 vols. (Berkeley, CA, 1974–1989); Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, 990–1992 (Cambridge, MA, 1992); C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1789–1915: Global Connections and Comparisons (Malden, MA, 2004).

  6. Thomas R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (London, 1798); Drew McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill, NC, 1980), 108.

  7. D. A. Farnie, The English Cotton Industry and the World Market, 1815–1896 (Oxford, 1979), 3–44.

  8. LC, January 1, 13, 22, 29, 1819, February 10, 15, 18, 22, 1819.

  9. Edwin A. Davis and John C. L. Andreassen, eds., “From Louisville to New Orleans in 1816: Diary of William Newton Mercer,” JSH 2 (1936): 390–402, qu. 396.

  10. W. N. Mercer to J. Ker [1816], Fol. 4, Ker Family Papers, SHC; Robert G. Albion, The Rise of New York Port, 1815–1860 (New York, 1939), 390–391; Pierre-Louis Berquin-Duvallon, trans. John Davis, Travels in Louisiana and Florida in the Year 1802 (New York, 1806), 127–129.

  11. W. Kenner to S. Minor, May 19 and 29, 1815, Wm. Kenner Papers, LLMVC; Barclay, Southeld, to S. Minor, September 14, 1815, Minor Papers, SHC; Albion, Rise of New York Port, 390–391; LG, September 2, 1815, January 1, 1818.

  12. Flint, Recollections, 222; LC, January 29, 1819, February 22, 1819.

  13. Knight, Letters, 117; LC and LG for 1815–1820, passim; Thomas H. Whitney, Whitney’s New-Orleans Directory and Louisiana and Mississippi Almanac for the Year 1811 (New Orleans, 1810), 38; Carol Wilson, The Two Lives of Sally Muller: A Case of Mistaken Racial Identity in Antebellum New Orleans (New Brunswick, NJ, 2007).

  14. William Hayden, Narrative of William Hayden, Containing a Faithful Account of His Travels for Many Years Whilst a Slave (Cincinnati, 1846), 54–58.

  15. Josiah Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave . . . (Boston, 1849), 37–41; William Grimes, Life of William Grimes, Written by Himself (New York, 1825), 22; Hayden, Narrative, 124. The idea that slave traders were anomalous is demolished by Michael Tadman, Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South (Madison, WI, 1989); Frederic Bancroft, Slave Trading in the Old South (Baltimore, 1931), 314–320; and Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA, 1999).

  16. Vincent Nolte, Memoirs of Vincent Nolte (New York, 1934), 86–87; Henry B. Fearon, Sketches of America: A Narrative of a Journey of Five Thousand Miles Through the Eastern and Western States of America (London, 1819), 279; Lewis E. Atherton, “John McDonogh—New Orleans Capitalist,” JSH 7 (1941): 451–481; McDonogh Papers, Tulane.

  17. George Dangerfield, The Era of Good Feelings (New York, 1952), 80–81; Nolte, Memoirs, 268–280; Ralph Hidy, The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance: English Merchant Bankers at Work, 1763–1861 (Cambridge, MA, 1949), 35.

  18. Nolte, Memoirs; Robert Roeder, “New Orleans Merchants, 1790–1837” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1959).

  19. The classic statement of the capitalist-as-Puritan is Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism trans. Talcott Parsons (New York, 1930).

  20. John Cassidy, How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities (New York, 2009); Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York, 1947).

  21. Nolte, Memoirs, 69, 274–275, 311–313; Stephen Palmié, “A Taste for Human Commodities,” in Palmié, ed., Slave Cultures and the Culture of Slavery (Knoxville, TN, 1995), 40–54; Roeder, “New Orleans Merchants.”

  22. George Green to J. Minor, January 15, 1820, Minor Papers, SHC. Instead of offices, many merchants carried commercial paper in wallets. Cf. LC, January 17, 20, 1817, February 28
, 1817, March 14, 1817, March 15, 29, 1819.

  23. J. Wetherstrandt to S. Minor, November 23, 1814, and J. Minor to Kitty, May 24, 1816, Minor Papers, SHC; R. Claque to Dear Major, February 26, 1821, William Kenner Papers, LLMVC; LG, October 23, 1816; Benjamin Latrobe, Impressions Respecting New Orleans: Diary and Sketches, 1818–1820, ed. Samuel Wilson Jr. (New York, 1951), 9–10; LG, September 30, 1815, December 13, 1817, April 28, 1818; W. Flower to J. Vinot, 1818, Flower to Dugue Bros. & Harang, 1820, and Flower to C. Bouchon, 1820, HALL, 85325, 96018–96022, 97346–97348.

  24. LC, October 4, 18, 1819, November 24, 1819; HALL, 93012.

  25. Henson, Life, 41–45; LG, April 28, 1818, May 13, 1818; LC, January 29, 1818. Local slaves were typically sold privately. Cf. LC, January 31, 1817, November 3, 1819.

  26. Slaves “on hand”: J. Garner to A. Cuningham, February 1, 1830, and Brown and Armistead to E. B. Hicks, August 1, 1821, Alexander Cuningham Papers, Duke. Slave-sale money “in hand”: Brown and Armistead to E. B. Hicks, August 1, 1821, Alexander Cuningham Papers, Duke; Kenner & Co. to J. Minor, January 26, 1826, Minor Papers, SHC. “Cotton”: David Ker to Mary Ker, May 7, 1812, Ker Family Papers, SHC. Letter “come to hand”: E. Fraser to M. White, August 28, 1806, Maunsel White Papers, SHC; Fol. 1834–1835, Jarratt-Puryear Papers, Duke. Slaves also “came to hand”: e.g., Tyre Glen to Isaac Jarratt, December 23, 1833, Jarratt-Puryear Papers, Duke; J. Richards to Cashier of Bank of United States, March 14, 1815, Box 2E949, Bank of State of Mississippi Records, Natchez Trace Collection, RASP; Abijah Hunt to R. Sparks, June 14, 1809, Ker Family Papers, SHC.

  27. Robert Farrar Capon, The Parables of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI, 1988).

  28. M. Tournillon to Nicholas Trist, February 28, 1821, Nicholas Trist Papers, SHC.

  29. LC, January 25, 1819, February 10, 15, 1819; Thomas Henderson to Stephen Minor, June 4, 1819, Minor Family Papers, SHC; John Minor in Acct. with Kenner and Henderson, 1816–1818, William Kenner Papers, LLMVC.

  30. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York, 2005), 205–209; W. Meriwether to Brother, September 28, 1814, Meriwether Family Papers, SHC; Daniel Walker Howe, What God Hath Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York, 2007).

  31. Martha Brazy, An American Planter: Stephen Duncan of Antebellum Natchez and New York (Baton Rouge, LA, 2006), 15–16, 21; Collector, Port of New Orleans, 1806–1823, v. 2, Mf #75–109, NOPL; Dangerfield, Era of Good Feelings, 180; Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton, NJ, 1957), 282; New York Courier, September 24, 1816.

  32. Jesse Hunt to Jeremiah Hunt, April 1, 1815, Folder 4, Ker Papers, SHC; F. E. Rives Ledger, Rives Papers, Duke.

  33. John Read to Josiah Meigs, April 17, 1817; TP, 18:83–84; J. Brahan to J. Meigs, February 18, 1818; TP, 18:260–261; Israel Pickens to W. Lenoir, December 18, 1816, C. S. Howe Papers, SHC; J. W. Walker to L. Newby, February 28, 1817, Larkin Newby Papers, Duke; M. E. Williams to Mary K. Williams, September 10, 1823, Hawkins Family Papers, SHC; New-York Columbian, April 21, 1818; J. Mills Thornton, Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama, 1800–1860 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1978); NSV, 249; Anne Royall, Letters from Alabama (Washington, DC, 1830), 114; J. Campbell to D. Campbell, December 16, 1817, Campbell Papers, Duke; Daniel Dupre, Transforming the Cotton Frontier: Madison County, Alabama, 1800–1840 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1997), 41–86; Carolina Republican, March 8, 1817; cf. Thomas Chase Hagood, “‘I Looked Upon the Long Journey, Through the Wilderness, with Much Pleasure’: Experiencing the Early Republic’s Southern Frontier,” Journal of Backcountry Studies 6, no. 1 (2011), www.partnershipsjournal.org/index.php/jbc/issue/view/25 (accessed December 26, 2013).

  34. See Table 1.1.

  35. Baltimore Patriot, July 16, 1819; LC, April 15, 1817, March 12, 1819; LG, June 14, 1817, June 9, 1818.

  36. Baltimore Patriot, July 16, 1819.

  37. Lawrence J. Kotlikoff, “The Structure of Slave Prices in New Orleans, 1804 to 1862,” Economic Inquiry 17 (1979): 496–518; Jonathan Pritchett, “Quantitative Estimates of the U.S. Interregional Slave Trade, 1820–1860,” Journal of Economic History 61, no. 2 (2001): 467–475; and my analysis (with assistance from Jordan Suter) of slave sales reported in HALL.

  38. Henry Watson, Narrative of Henry Watson: A Fugitive Slave (Boston, 1848), 12; J. Sain to Obadiah Fields, May 25, 1821, O. Fields to Jane Fields, November 29, 1822, Acct. O. Fields, 1822, Obadiah Fields Papers, Duke; Certificate issued to William Haxall, Petersburg Insurance Company, 1823, Mss 1H3203d, Haxall Papers, VHS; Grandmother Trist to Nicholas Trist, April 25, 1822, N. P. Trist Papers, SHC; Adam Hodgson, Remarks During a Journey Through North America in the Years 1819, 1820, 1821 (New York, 1823), 55–56. James Kirke Paulding, in Letters from the South, Written During an Excursion in the Summer of 1816 (New York, 1817), 124–125, reports a trader paying $500 for a mulatto Virginia woman. According to Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman (in Slave Sales and Appraisals, 1775–1865, ICPSR07421-v3 [Rochester, NY: University of Rochester (producer), 1976; Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (producer and distributor)], 2006–10–11, doi:10.3886/ICPSR07421.v3), twenty-three men were sold in Maryland (1815–1819) at a mean price of $220 and a mean age of twenty-one. HALL shows average male price in New Orleans in 1815 to 1819 as $810 (mean age twenty-five). Jonathan Pritchett and Herman Freudenberger, “The Domestic United States Slave Trade: New Evidence,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 21 (1991): 447–477, notes $17 shipping per slave, 1830s, p. 473.

  39. A Narrative of the Life and Labors of the Reverend G. W. Offley (Hartford, CT, 1859), 5–6; W. C. Whitaker to J. Whitaker, January 16, 1835, Coffield-Bellamy Papers, SHC. On competitive bidding, see Ariela J. Gross, Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Courtroom (Princeton, NJ, 2000); Johnson, Soul by Soul.

  40. 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), 7–8.

  41. Watson, Narrative, 12–13; L. M. Mills, ST, 502–503.

  42. ST, 503, 507, 727, 744. Johnson, Soul by Soul, emphasizes give-and-take between slave and buyer.

  43. Delicia Patterson, AS, 11.2 (MO), 270–271; Dickson, ST, 507.

  44. MW, 103; Hodgson, Remarks, 55–56; Maria Clemons, AS, 8.2 (AR), 17; Charlotte Willis, AS, 11.1 (AR), 198; Sella Martin, ST, 727.

  45. Charles L. Perdue Jr., Thomas E. Barden, and Robert K. Phillips, eds., Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves (Charlottesville, VA, 1976), 14–15; Knight, Letters, 78.

  46. Tabb Gross, Lewis Smith, ST, 347; Paulding, Letters, 1:124–130; Perdue et al., eds., Weevils in the Wheat, 325–326; Henson, Life, 44; Allen Sidney, ST, 522; John Lambert, Travels Through Canada and the United States of America, In the Years 1806, 1807, and 1808 (London, 1816), 1:167–169; William N. Blane, An Excursion Through the United States and Canada During the Years 1822–1823, by an English Gentleman (London, 1824), 226–227; ASAI, 153–155; Bancroft, Slave Trading, 108–112; Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America (Philadelphia, 1843), 347. Knight, in Letters, 101–102, 127, refers to sellers as “slave-jockies.”

  47. Bancroft, Slave Trading, 106; Edward E. Baptist, “‘Cuffy,’ ‘Fancy Maids,’ and ‘One-Eyed Men’: Rape, Commodification, and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States,” AHR 106 (2001): 1619–1650; ST, 503–507, 727, 744; Perdue et al., eds., Weevils in the Wheat, 48–49, 166; Cornelia Andrews, AS, 14.1 (NC), 29.

  48. LG, April 2, 1816, November 20, 1817, June 3, 1818; NR, April 26, 1817, 144; J. Perkins to J. Minor, August 20, 1814, Minor Papers, SHC.

  49. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross (London, 1980), 212; David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (New York, 1984), 25.

  50. Wm. Kenner to J. Minor, March 1, 1816, Wm. Kenner Papers, LLMVC.

  51. J. Knight to Wm. Beall, January 27, 1844, Box 2, John Knight Papers, Duke; E. B. Hicks to John Paup, August 6, 1837, 1830–1846 Folder, E. B. Hi
cks Papers, Duke; Philip Troutman, “Slave Trade and Sentiment in Antebellum Virginia” (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 2000).

  52. J. Knight to Wm. Beall, January 27, 1844, Box 2, John Knight Papers, Duke. French-language advertisements for slave sales in the 1810s did not use main, the translation of the word “hand,” but négres de pioche—“Negroes of the pickaxe,” or, colloquially, “Blacks who sweat”: Vente de l’Encan, LC, June 25, 1817.

  53. HALL; Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Low Country (Chapel Hill, NC, 1999); Dylan Penningroth, Claims of Kinfolk: African-American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South (Chapel Hill, NC, 2003); Roderick A. McDonald, The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves: Goods and Chattels on the Sugar Plantations of Jamaica and Louisiana (Baton Rouge, LA, 1993).

  54. LC, January 1, 1819; bills of sale, Compagnie Assurance de la Nouvelle-Orleans, to multiple purchasers, HALL, 89554–89607, 90226, 90405, 91505, 90046, 927161, 90279, 92761. The Louisiana Courier ad for William and Rachel’s sale listed sixteen of twenty-eight as skilled, but none of the bills of sale identified skills: LC, January 25, 1819.

  55. ST, 695–697; Perdue et al., eds., Weevils in the Wheat, 71; J. Stille to Mrs. Gayoso, August 29, 1805, Fol. 10, R. R. Barrow Papers, Tulane.

  56. LC, January 25, 1819; HALL; Richard H. Steckel, “A Peculiar Population: The Nutrition, Health, and Mortality of U.S. Slaves from Childhood to Maturity,” Journal of Economic History 46, no. 3 (1986): 721–741.

  57. Herbert Gutman and Richard Sutch, in “The Slave Family: Protected Agent of Capitalist Expansion or Victim of the Slave Trade?” in Paul A. David, Reckoning with Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery (New York, 1976), 94–133, esp. 112–120, rely on Fogel and Engerman’s samples of New Orleans notarial records; I rely on HALL’s complete sales through 1820.

  58. LC, January 1, 1819; HALL, 89554–89607; Pearse, Narrative, 85.

  59. Melinda, MW, 167. Cf. Helen Odom, AS, 10.5 (AR), 227; Cora Poche, AS, 9.4 (MS), 1726; Clarissa Scales, AS, 5.4 (TX), 3; Robert Laird, AS, 8.3 (MS), 1292; Milton Ritchie, AS, 10.6 (AR), 271.