Saddleback College The Internal Slave Trade Questions Discussion 1) What is the relationship between enslaved women and early gynecology? What are your rea

Saddleback College The Internal Slave Trade Questions Discussion 1) What is the relationship between enslaved women and early gynecology? What are your reactions to Owen’s chapter?

2)How does Camp discuss resistance? What are the three bodies? How did the three bodies circumvent the geographies of containment?

3) How do the primary source readings demonstrate experiences of enslavement and peoples’ resistance to the institution? Give specific examples

Pick 2 only, no refrences or siting required, 100 words for each question minimum. THE INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE: ENSLAVED RESISTANCE AND
CULTURE IN THE ANTEBELLUM ERA
HIST 16, LESSON 8
PROFESSOR CALAHANE’S NOTE ON THE LECTURE:
 This lecture is a lot to process. Take your time.
 Most historians find it impossible to write more than one book about the experience of slavery for enslaved
people because it takes an emotional toll to process and write about the violence of the institution.
 I have tried to cover a lot of topics spanning from the founding of the nation and throughout the 19th century
before the Civil War. It is by no means completely comprehensive, but rather a more general overview.
THE FORMATION OF THE UNITED STATES AND AFRICAN AMERICAN
SLAVERY

During the Revolutionary War the British promised freedom to enslaved blacks who fought on the Loyalist side. At the end of the war nearly
20,000 African Americans from Savannah and Charleston left the newly forming United States with British forces.

In the North, African Americans fought for the Patriot side in the hope their freedom would be guaranteed in the new nation.

By the late 1770s most northern legislatures were debating abolition (or ending slavery). By 1784 all northern states except New York and New
Jersey had agreed to the immediate or gradual abolition of slavery. Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia made manumission easier than it had been
before.

The Massachusetts Constitution—1780 wrote that all men “born free and equal”. The New Hampshire Constitution was amended in 1783— “all
men are born equal and independent”

In Pennsylvania and New Jersey slavery was more entrenched. Quakers began an antislavery campaign in 1750 and at first disowned members
who traded in slaves and then disowned any members who owned slaves—1774 effectively ended slavery. And in 1780 Pennsylvania law ended
slavery

Irony—while slavery ended in the North plantation slavery expanded in the south. There were many more slaves in 1800 than 1776

An effect of the Revolution was that the Free Black Population increased in all colonies. In 1760—few thousand but by 1810—200,000. Maryland
between 1755—1800 (4% are free) but by 1810—34,000 (almost 25% free)

In Virginia before the Revolution it was llegal to free slaves. At the end of the Revolutionary War Virginia legalized private manumission. The Free
black population: 1782—2,000 to 1790—12,000 to 1800—20,000 in Virginia.

And another effect of the Revolution as it related to slavery was that it was the first time the institution of slavery came under attack and slave
masters were forced to defend it.

Jefferson tried to blame the British King for slavery in America, but Jefferson was also a slave master and the man who came up with a formula to
say that if you had even one drop of black blood you would always be black because you would always have at least a fraction of blackness in you.
And Britain offered freedom to any slave that escaped to British lines from Virginia in 1775 during the war.
IMPORTANT REMINDERS: STATE TAX LIABILITY UNDER THE ARTICLES OF
CONFEDERATION
 From the onset of forming a new nation enslaved people were considered as less than a whole person. In creating the
Articles of Confederation Congress went through these 3 formulas in deciding how to raise funds based on population.
 Hypothetical: Congress wished to raise $5 million
 If slaves calculated one for one with free:

Massachusetts—$343,000

South Carolina—$194,000
 If slaves calculated three to one free:

Massachusetts—$396,000

South Carolina—$154,000
 If slaves calculated five to three free:

Massachusetts–$373,000

South Carolina–$165,000
IMPORTANT REMINDERS: DEFENSE OF SLAVERY UNDER THE
CONSTITUTION

The Articles of Confederation set the precedent that enslaved people would not count as a full person.

So under the Constitution an enslaved person came to count as 3/5 of a person when deciding the number of representatives each State
received in Congress with the 3/5 Compromise in 1787.

Article 1 Section 2: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this
Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including
those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.


Article 1 Section 8: To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions


Those bound to service = enslaved people
In the late 17th century militias referred to slave patrols.
Article 1 Section 9: The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not
be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such
Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.


Ends the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, but the internal domestic US slave trade was more profitable for US planters than the transatlantic
slave trade. Federal Powers in the Constitution do not extend to local institutions. Slavery was considered a local institution.

Part of the reason the Constitution stipulated that the transatlantic slave trade was to end in1808 was because it put more people into states
which would lead to increased populations, which would increase state representation figures and upset the delicate balance in congress
between free and slave states.
FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE GROWTH OF SLAVERY
 The 3/5 clause in the constitution gave the southern slave holding states great power in the federal government. Even while
the population of southern whites continually decreased as the population of enslaved blacks grew, the 3/5 clause insured
that southern slaveholders saw increased representation within Congress. The South gained a huge political advantage over
the North.
 The increase of cotton production- Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793 meant that seeds in cotton bolls could
be quickly and easily separated. Cotton production quickly rose from 3,000 bales in 1790 to 178,000 bales in 1810. This
made cotton the most lucrative US export. But cotton also depleted soil so there was also an increased need to move West.
Cotton production also fueled the creation of textile mills in northern states. This meant that the industrial revolution was
linked to the production of raw materials by enslaved people; wage laborers in the North would take things like cotton and
produce cloth intertwining the northern and southern economies. Cotton boosted the internal slave trade.
 The Louisiana Purchase offered the opportunity to expand slavery to the West opening up markets for more products made
with slave labor and creating new slave states.
 Declining Revolutionary Fervor- with the French Revolution (1798-1799) and Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) proslavery
sentiment grew because Americans saw these revolutions as a disruption of the social order and they feared the
redistribution of property (which included slaves). This led many Americans to value order and property rights above equal
rights.
 Racism- Race came to justify slavery. Southerners and Northerners argued that black people were unsuited for freedom and
citizenship. This racialized thinking held that blacks were more closely related to apes than white people.
NEW ORLEANS, ST. LOUIS, AND THE INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE
 With the termination of the transatlantic slave trade in
1808 New Orleans and St Louis became the largest slave
markets in the United States.
 The Mississippi River served as main highway
transporting both enslaved people and the goods
produced from the slave economy. In this way the
economies of free and slave states was deeply
intertwined and co-dependent.
ONA JUDGE
 Even thought George Washington emancipated his slaves at his death, more than the majority of slaves at Mount
Vernon were the property of Martha Washington who did not believe in setting slaves free.
 Ona Judge was an enslaved woman who was owned by Martha Washington. Although she ran away to attain her
own freedom she was never really free. The Washington’s and their family never stopped hunting her.
 Life for free blacks and emancipated slaves could never truly be free. The threat of re-enslavement always
lingered. (Like the case of Solomon Northrop, who was born free and captured and sold into slavery for 12 years
in the 1840s).
 As a fugitive she wasn’t free, she was simply never caught. Ona Judge’s life as a fugitive slave living in coastal New
England was modest, and was able to build a family for herself. She was always in the shadows, and constantly
aware that she would be taken into slavery, along with the family and children she may have.
 Upon leaving the presidency George Washington continually attempted to reclaim her until September 1799, just
several months before his death. But even after George and Martha Washington died Ona Judge couldn’t be free
since she had been bequeathed by Martha Washington to the Washington’s granddaughter, Eliza Park Custis.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJUylCBf-n0
SALLY HEMMINGS
 Sally Hemmings was an enslaved woman owned by Thomas Jefferson. They had a decades long relationship. The degree
to which it was a forced relationship is unknown.
 Jefferson was so fond of Hemmings that he took her with him when he traveled to France. She could have escaped
slavery by staying in France, but she would have had to permanently be separated from the rest of her family. She may
have also negotiated her children’s freedom while in France with Jefferson as long as she returned to the US.
 Hemmings was never formally freed, but the 6 children she had with Jefferson were freed when they came of age.
 Hemmings’ room at Monticello was found by archaeologists in 2017 underneath a bathroom that was built for tourists.
Her room had no windows and would have been dark and damp, adjacent to Jefferson’s room, and measured at 14 feet
and 8inches wide by 13 feet long. Even if this was a fully consensual relationship Hemmings was the legal property of
Jefferson, and while her living quarters were much better than a lot of other enslaved people she still lived in a dark wet
room.
 Here is historian Annette Gordon-Reed answering questions about the Hemmings-Jefferson relationship. She was the
first historian to write extensively about Sally Hemmings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7souUfzuvVM
SO WHAT DO ONA JUDGE AND SALLY HEMMINGS TEACH US ABOUT
SLAVERY AND THE FOUNDING OF THE UNITED STATES?
 Women, not just men, practiced running away.
 Enslaved women negotiated sexual coercion, rape, and assault.
 Freedom was not a guaranteed permanent state for African Americans.
 There is a complex and complicated relationship between the Founding Fathers, the nation’s founding
documents, and slavery.
 White women, including those within founding families, were culpable for the violence and continuation of
slavery. They were mistresses, owned their own slaves, and benefited from the institution of slavery.
 Our next lecture will discuss why even non-slave holders were responsible for the continuation of slavery, some
abolitionists included.
THE COTTON KINGDOM

Enslaved black people cleared forests and drained swamps to make lands fit for cotton cultivation from the Atlantic coast to Texas.

The expansion of cotton culture also led to the removal and genocide of Native Americans so that slaveholders could inhabit fertile Native lands.

During the 1830s and 1840s the U.S. Army forced the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and most Seminole Indians to leave their ancestral
lands for Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. For the Cherokee this is remembered as “The Trail of Tears.”

As the population of slaves increased, the population of slaveholders decreased. In 1830, 1,314,272 white southerners owned slaves (36% of the
total southern white population). In 1860, 383,673 white southerners owned slaves (4.7% of the total white southern population). Part of this
change was the fact that a slave was expensive to purchase (as we saw last time).

Lines of credit and insurance companies grew to help people afford buying slaves, but even so it quite an expensive purchase.

Almost half of the South’s slaveholders owned fewer than 5 slaves, only 12% owned more than 20 slaves, and just 1% owned more than 50
slaves. Yet more than half of enslaved people belonged to masters who had 20 or more slaves. So, although the typical slaveholder owned few
slaves, the typical slave lived on a sizeable plantation.

75% of enslaved people worked as agricultural laborers. About 55% cultivated cotton, 10% produced sugar, rice or hemp. About 15% of enslaved
people were domestic workers, and the other 10% of enslaved people worked in trades and industries.

Tobacco remained important in Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and parts of North Carolina and Missouri. But these old tobacco producing states
also moved into the business of producing enslaved people for sale because tobacco cultivation was a long process that also depleted soil so it
became more lucrative for states like Virginia to become a main supplier of new slaves for slave labor in the US.
COTTON EXPORTS
 Cotton was the South’s and the country’s most significant staple crop.
 By 1860 on the eve of the Civil War cotton exports amounted to more than 50% of the annual dollar value of all US
exports.
 Cotton’s cultivation was not as intensive as tobacco, rice, or sugar.
 Cotton culture was o extensive that cotton planters as a group employed the most slave labor.
 Cotton drove the South’s economy and its westward expansion.
 By 1860 the states of Mississippi and Alabama led in cotton production. They also had the greatest concentration of
plantations with 100 or more slaves. 24 of Mississippi’s slaveholders each owned between 308-899 slaves.
 Even though new technologies were emerging in the 1840s to aid in cotton cultivation slaveholders preferred to invest in
slaves and land rather than technology- 19th century mechanical harvesters couldn’t distinguish between plants ready to
harvest and plants that weren’t ripened.
 By the 1820s about 150,000 slavers per decade moved toward the southwest either with their masters or traders.
Between 1820 and 1850 an estimated 50% of slaves from the Upper South were moved involuntarily to the Southwest.
FORMS OF VIOLENCE

Bodily violence was frequently enacted on enslaved people to make
them work faster and/or exact punishment for running away, doing a
chore incorrectly, talking back to masters, overseers, and mistresses etc.

Bodily violence could include dismemberment, piking of heads, having
lovers/family members enact whippings on each other at the command
of masters.

Slave labor by definition is forced labor based on threat of punishment.

It is commonly reported that mistresses were even more violent than
their husbands. It was reported that one mistress would punish their
female slaves by pinning them to the ground and forcing salt and
whatever else they could grab nearby into their eyelids, forcing enslaved
women blind. Mistresses were supposed to keep a well managed home
as part of 19th century womanhood; part of managing their homes
involved dominating the enslaved people working within the home.

This image circulated widely with the abolition movement in the 19th
century.
THE AUCTION BLOCK

The auction block was a place of torture and terror. It is
estimated that from 1820-1860 about 50% of slaves in the
Upper South were sold into the Deep South and Southwest.

Enslaved people could be kept in slave prisons or slave pens to
await sale, and would be marched chained together to get to
auction. By the 1840s some enslaved people were transported
to auction via the railroads.

Enslaved people were usually naked on display at auction.

Potential buyers would inspect every crevice of the enslaved
person’s body publicly before deciding whether or not to bid.
This included the mouth, anus, penis, and vagina.

Sexual assault for both black men and women was
commonplace on the auction block.

Enslaved people were sold at auction alongside livestock,
household goods, and other farming supplies.

How does this song communicate the trauma of auction and
the spirit of resistance to enslavement?

SEPARATING FAMILIES
 Families were frequently separated by masters,
sometimes as a purposeful form of punishment, and
at other times because master’s had a specific
coupling in mind for breeding more enslaved people.
 There are accounts of families standing on the
auction block together, which would be the last time
they would see each other.
 Motherhood was a complicated decision for
enslaved women. Some enslaved women sought out
their own consensual relationships to experience
intimacy of their choosing. Others preferred to not
seek intimate relations because they did not want to
be touched given the typical violence of day to day
life. Some others still practiced abortion and
infanticide after rape by masters, overseers, or
forced couplings to avoid birthing children into
slavery.
GYNECOLOGY
 Modern gynecology as we know it emerged from
experimentation on enslaved women.
 Doctor J. Marion Sims, considered the father of
Gynecology, assisted slaveholders in pioneering the
practice of gynecology to try to maximize the
number of births enslaved women could manage
throughout their lifetimes.
 Enslaved women were experimented on without
their consent, because they had no legal right to
make those decisions. Owners decided what medical
experiments would be tried on female slaves, usually
without any form of pain relief.
SEXUAL ABUSE OF ENSLAVED WOMEN
 White Southerners justified the sexual abuse of enslaved women in several ways.
 They maintained that black women were naturally promiscuous and seduced white men.
 Some pro-slavery advocates argued that the sexual exploitation of black women by white men reduced
prostitution and promoted purity among white women.
 But the abuse of black women also served to punish black men who couldn’t protect their wives and daughters
from masters, overseers, and traders.
CLOTHING
 Enslaved people were usually only given clothing twice a year.
 Women would get two simple calico or homespun dresses, and in the winter might use a cape for warmth. In the
winter men would get a jacket and a wool cap with two sets of pants/shirts. In the spring men would get two
cotton outfits.

The clothing allotment was never enough to make it to the new set of clothes. So tattered clothing and nakedness
predominated.
 Small children often went naked without clothing from the master.
 Women demonstrated individualism and resistance by dying their clothing with roots, berries, leaves, and indigo.
They even wove in threads of different colors into their garments to create patterns.
THE VIOLENCE OF AFFIXING INSURANCE, APPRAISAL, AND SALE PRICES TO
ENSLAVED PEOPLE
 Historian Daina Ramey Berry detailed the insurance,
appraisal, and sale prices of enslaved people in her
2016 book.
 Consider the violence involved in affixing prices to
people. Also consider the face that enslaved people
understood that they were seen as a commodity
with a price tag from very early ages.
 From Infancy and Childhood (0-10):
 Average Appraised Values verses Sale Price (Daina
Ramey Berry, Price For Their Pound of Flesh, p…
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