Slave Breeding; Fact or Fiction

[Dred]

They treated them like property anyways. Would a horse breeding or dog breeding business be looked upon any worse? They had no qualms about treating slaves inhumanely, they weren't human they were ******s. And that was how it was back then. We look at it form today's perspective and say how awful, they looked at it as a chance to get more slaves, and more money. A horse, a slave, a dog, the pottery in the kitchen. Use it to your best advantage to forward your business plan. It sounds sick coming out of my fingertips, but just because I believe it happened doesn't mean I would condone it now a days. If I was living back then... who knows. Even in the north where I grew up, blacks were hardly recognized as people in 1860. If I wanted to make a quick buck... why not?

As far as the disease, I guess Battalion has a point there, if it was done rampantly. I guess they would have to make sure each couple was only sleeping with each other, or maybe two, any more than that and you are looking for trouble. I'm sure they had ways around that too. Then again, how much did they know about STDs back then?

[ole]

Yes, the child would grow, but it still required a good 10-15 years to produce a good field hand, regardless of the inspiration for the birth.

Fifteen years equals a bit less than a $300 investment in a $1000 piece of property. Although the average annual return is less than attractive, it is still found money.

I'll stand where I am. There was most certainly an eye or three watching over the chilluns produced by one's wenches, but I see no evidence whatsoever that many (or even any) slave-owner considered the rearing of salable property to be any more than incidental to his main business of planting.

I'll go back to the dairy farmer allegory. Every year, the cow has to throw a calf to remain productive. Only a dang fool would ignore the value of the calf.

ole

[cw1865]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magaz...124456,00.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...08/ai_n8981492

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...8NHQRU00.shtml

I came across these links above which some of you may find interesting. While its certainely a 'melting' pot without consent, its still a melting pot. The bottom line is very simple, you can take any group of fertile males and fertile females and before very long sex is going to happen.

Sex is a major human motivation, hardwired into systems.

If slave breeding is occuring for purposes of profit, I believe it to be incidental to an acknowledgment of basic human desires.

The reason is ultimately very simple. On a business time scale, business owners make rational decisions based on the expected net present value of an investment. The problem with the basis of slave breeding for profit is that the payoff comes too far in the future. Essentially any investment that you make today that results in cash flows in the future, you will find that the future cash flows become increasingly less valuable in PRESENT dollars; essentially cash flows that occur after ten years are valueless for purposes of net present value. (a notable exception would be aged liquors)

[unionblue]

Originally Posted by larry_cockerham

The politically correct term would probably be 'management of assets'. The war of 1861-65 must have put a considerable stop to any previous 'management' practices. Thank God for that. There couldn't have been much of a financial turnaround for a child. Yes, the child would grow, but it still required a good 10-15 years to produce a good field hand, regardless of the inspiration for the birth. Humans are by no means humane. Never have been.

"...Children from one year to 18 months old are now worth about $100. That little fellow there", pointing to a boy about 7 or 8 years old, "I gave $400 for. That fellow", pointing to one about 18, "I gave $750 for last night after dark..."

"...The stock-farmer indifferent to enlarging his herd would be no more of an anomaly than was the planter that did not keep close count of his pickaninnies and rejoice in the profit that grew with them. They were his pride and appealed to his imagination. "All the little darkies by natural increase were net profit!" exclaimed an old lawyer in Natchez, the son of a rich ante-bellum planter. This was because on a farm or plantation the necessary outlay for their support (from birth until they reached 6 or 8 years of age, when they began to work and were readily salable or hired out) was hardly appreciable. Their food and scant clothing were the simplest and cheapest possible, and an ample average allowance was one-third as much as was given to a fieldhand, whose entire maintenance, according to liberal estimates, cost not more than $30 per year. In 1823, Madison expressed this opinion: "The annual expense of food and raiment in rearing a child, may be stated at about 8, 9, or 10 dollars; and the age at which it begins to be gainful to its owner, about 9 or 10 years. It was still less on a plantation in the lower South where the children were brooded by an old nurse.

Add to this petty cost the loss because the mother did not work for a month or two on account of child-bearing and there still remained room for an enormous per cent of profit on each child reared under favorable circumstances. Between 1830-1860, according to the year and the region, each babe in arms added from $100 to $200 or more to the value of its slave mother...

...In the spring of 1852, before the excitement over prices was general, an announcement that the slaves of a deceased planter in Wilcox county, Alabama, had been sold at auction for an average cash price of $700 and that an old slave above sixty years of age brought more than $1,000, was capped by this triumphant climax: "N*i*g*g*e*r*s are n*i*g*g*e*r*s now, especially the Atwood n*i*g*g*e*r*s." Two years later the Mongomery Journal reported what it called "the highest prices which we have ever noticed" for common fieldhands and children of the McLemore estate: 18 slaves, ten of whom were children of from 2 months to 7 years of age, sold for $14,195; a boy of 7 brought $760; one of 12, $710; a youth of 17, $1,374, and a woman of 37, with six children, from 2 to 7 years, $5,000...

From the book, Slave-Trading In The Old South, by Bancroft.

Unionblue

[unionblue]

Originally Posted by Battalion

Such a practice would cause a great deal of problems among the slaves. Diseases, demoralization, disharmony...= deaths and runaways...

Even from a cold-hearted business approach this would not be in the best interest of the slaveowner.

Plus there is the social factor. If a slaveowner is suspected of running a 'slave breeding camp'...how will he be treated by society? If he has aims at a political career...where will that go?

"But what did Southerners closely associated with slavery say about slave-rearing? It is their evidence that is decisive.

An advertisement in Charleston, SC, in 1796, offering fifty prime negroes for sale contained these sentences:

"...they are not Negroes selected out of a larger gang for the purpose of a sale, but are prime, their present Owner, with great trouble and expense, selected them out of many for several years past. They were purchased for stock and breeding Negroes, and to any Planter a very choice and desirable gang." (U. B. Phillips (editior), 2 Plantation and Frontier, pg. 57)

At all times "breeding slaves," "child-bearing women," "breeding period," "too old to breed," etc., were familiar terms.

Slave-rearing early became the source of the largest and often the only regular profit of nearly all slaveholding farmers and of many planters in the upper South. Especially in Virginia, as Francis Corbin wrote in 1819, "miserabile dictu our principal profit depends" on the increase of our slaves. In a Virginia case in 1848, the Court said that "the scantiness of net profit from slave labor has become proverbial, and that nothing is more common than actual loss, or a benefit merely in the slow increase of capital from propagation..."

...From the Charleston Mercury of May 16, 1838, contained an advertisement the main features of which were as follows:

"A GIRL about 20 years of age (raised in Virginia, and her two female children, one 4 and the other 2 years old.) She is *** remarkably strong and healthy, never having had a day's sickness, with the exception of the small pox, in her life. The children are fine and healthy. She is very prolific in her generating qualities, and affords a rare opportunity for any person who wishes to raise a family of strong and healthy servants for their [his] own use. Sold at no fault"

A newspaper of high standing would not have accepted such an advertisement if there had been much sentiment against slave-breeding for profit...

Source: Slave-Trading In The Old South, by Bancroft.

Unionblue

[DHPatrick]

Originally Posted by unionblue

A newspaper of high standing would not have accepted such an advertisement if there had been much sentiment against slave-breeding for profit...

Source: Slave-Trading In The Old South, by Bancroft.

Unionblue

I submit this is a simple matter of sensationalism. I do not see how you can use advertisements as a source document. If you want to see how much the population of a slave owner's slaves grew, it is a matter of comparing their Federal Census Records from one census to the next. Census records are source documents.

It wouldn't necessarily delinate between those imported and those born, but I would doubt that the number of those imported jumped that much either.

[larry_cockerham]

Originally Posted by Dred

Then again, how much did they know about STDs back then?

I thought you'd never ask, or at least I hoped so. Gen. Hooker did much to forward medical knowledge by his thoughtful introduction of ladies of entertainment to the camps at Nashville, which subsequently became the syphilis center of America. (Youall thought it was just music city.) Because of that, much scramble was made to experiment with sulpha and other remedies that led to antibiotics. In every cloud, perhaps a silver lining. They knew what STD was, just not too much about it's cure. Alas, prevention hasn't changed much, but that's another discussion.

[larry_cockerham]

Originally Posted by unionblue

"But what did Southerners closely associated with slavery say about slave-rearing? It is their evidence that is decisive.

An advertisement in Charleston, SC, in 1796, offering fifty prime negroes for sale contained these sentences:

"...they are not Negroes selected out of a larger gang for the purpose of a sale, but are prime, their present Owner, with great trouble and expense, selected them out of many for several years past. They were purchased for stock and breeding Negroes, and to any Planter a very choice and desirable gang." (U. B. Phillips (editior), 2 Plantation and Frontier, pg. 57)

At all times "breeding slaves," "child-bearing women," "breeding period," "too old to breed," etc., were familiar terms.

Slave-rearing early became the source of the largest and often the only regular profit of nearly all slaveholding farmers and of many planters in the upper South. Especially in Virginia, as Francis Corbin wrote in 1819, "miserabile dictu our principal profit depends" on the increase of our slaves. In a Virginia case in 1848, the Court said that "the scantiness of net profit from slave labor has become proverbial, and that nothing is more common than actual loss, or a benefit merely in the slow increase of capital from propagation..."

...From the Charleston Mercury of May 16, 1838, contained an advertisement the main features of which were as follows:

"A GIRL about 20 years of age (raised in Virginia, and her two female children, one 4 and the other 2 years old.) She is *** remarkably strong and healthy, never having had a day's sickness, with the exception of the small pox, in her life. The children are fine and healthy. She is very prolific in her generating qualities, and affords a rare opportunity for any person who wishes to raise a family of strong and healthy servants for their [his] own use. Sold at no fault"

A newspaper of high standing would not have accepted such an advertisement if there had been much sentiment against slave-breeding for profit...

Source: Slave-Trading In The Old South, by Bancroft.

Unionblue

Please take note my old friend, that what you have described here is a description of the community made up of wealthy planters. That word is used several times. It has long been and continues to be my contention that these were the boys who started the civil war along with a bit of assist from 'honest' Abe.

The Confederate soldier, the one ducking the bullets, was not among this crowd. Many times he did his own labor on his own land. When the fighting started, he had little choice except to participate or die.
Pardon for the interruption, but this seemed like the time to attempt my point once again.

[cw1865]

Originally Posted by unionblue

"...Children from one year to 18 months old are now worth about $100. That little fellow there", pointing to a boy about 7 or 8 years old, "I gave $400 for. That fellow", pointing to one about 18, "I gave $750 for last night after dark..."

This quote here completely changes my hypothesis...and the following of course.

[ole]

I submit this is a simple matter of sensationalism. I do not see how you can use advertisements as a source document.

Period newspapers are source documents, Don. Although one can't take editorials and news stories as literal fact, one can see in the pages -- and advertisements -- an indication of the times.

The Mercury was one of the most important newspapers in the south. I doubt the ad in question was spurious or sensational in nature; just a man wanting a good price for a young mother.

She is very prolific in her generating qualities, and affords a rare opportunity for any person who wishes to raise a family of strong and healthy servants for their [his] own use. Sold at no fault.

This doesn't look sensational. It does, however, give no hint that the girl's "product" would be ideal for a source of income; only that she was prime breeding stock.

ole