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About LinkBacksSurely even the most degenerate slaveowner saw some difference between a cow and a human being. Or maybe not.Originally Posted by bama46
Surely even the most degenerate slaveowner saw some difference between a cow and a human being. Or maybe not.
Virginia is one of the states usually accused of this slave "breeding." Let's check some census records:
Virginia 1850 Census
Free
Females, ages 15-39...............188,962
Children under 1 yr of age..........25,153
Children (Under 1) to Number of Females (15-39) 13.31%
Slave
Females, ages 15-39.................85,873
Children under 1 yr of age..........11,155
Children (Under 1) to Number of Females (15-39) 12.99%
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-l...en.pl?year=850
Virginia 1860 Census
Free
Females, ages 15-39...............220,412
Children under 1 yr of age..........33,128
Children (Under 1) to Number of Females (15-39) 15.03%
Slave
Females, ages 15-39.................91,275
Children under 1 yr of age..........13,850
Children (Under 1) to Number of Females (15-39) 15.17%
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-l...en.pl?year=860
...doesn't look like any slave breeding to me.
POWER & MONEY
"The brokers of the Empire City are furious at the prospect of seeing their lucrative trade diverted to Charleston or New Orleans, and carried on with English capital. The lust of money has had ten times more to do with the sudden patriotism of the North than their love of liberty."
London Morning Herald, 1861
Great list Battalion.
Severon, Civil War Researcher.
What would slave breeding look like?
Regards,
Cash
Do you really want to know?
Severon, Civil War Researcher.
Yes.Do you really want to know?
Regards,
Cash
Really?
Severon, Civil War Researcher.
Yeah, I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn from the census records as far as why the women became pregnant.
Scuzzi, bama, and I'm not making light of your perceptive post, but the image flashed through my deviate mind of the massa taking that attractive heifer into his bed.Think, if you will, of cattle instead of slaves. To the slave holder, the human he held in bondage was property, notining more or less. A cattleman will judge a cow in exactly that manner... be preganant or be gone... why?... because calves, like slave children, are valuable... not necessarily to sell, but to increase the holdings...
Aside from that, I agree. The man who does not seek to expand and improve his herd is a poor husbandman. I'm still not saying that there were or were not actual puppy-farms chuffing out slaves for sale, but it does make monetary sense that that healthy, hardy baby blacks had a value.
Just a thought, my friend.
Ole
Sorry. Couldn't resist. That includes quarter-black, half-black, eighth black, mulattoes, quadroons, octoroons, and anyone with a black somewhere back in their ancestry. Legally, they were black. That is what I find disturbing.hardy baby blacks had a value
I recall reading, and if someone else has read the same thing, it would be helpful if you would provide the source for me, that Spanish slave-owners did exactly the same thing with their slaves. But they didn't sell their mixed-blood children ... that they acknowledged theirs as theirs.
Boggling.
Last edited by ole; 11-09-2009 at 02:43 PM.
A good friend posts your bail. A really good friend sits with you and says, "Dang, that was fun."
A birth rate among the slave population significantly higher than the free.
POWER & MONEY
"The brokers of the Empire City are furious at the prospect of seeing their lucrative trade diverted to Charleston or New Orleans, and carried on with English capital. The lust of money has had ten times more to do with the sudden patriotism of the North than their love of liberty."
London Morning Herald, 1861
Why? If the amount of work available per slave is significantly less than needed to keep the number of slaves available at productive work, and therefore the state has a surplus of slaves, as we know Virginia had, would it necessarily involve a significantly higher birth rate among slaves for there to be slave breeding?
Regards,
Cash
Ole,
I think it is quite reasonable to think that Massa did indeed take a comely "hieffer" into his bead.... or most likely go into her's. She was his property and was required to submit to his demands, sexually or otherwise. Did every Massa do that? I doubt it, but I am certain many did... as did their sons...
It was not a pretty or a genteel system.
IMO that is pretty much spot on, I was once told the only way to look at and understand slavery and not get sick about it was to look at slaves the way we look at our cars today. Property and tools but not people. It had a ring of truth to it.
Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
As for slave breeding not happening as some have claimed in the past. There were a lot of "mullatos" at the time and enough slaves "white as me" for US soldiers to take note.
bama pretty much said it when he noted that a black woman didn't have the right to tell her master no. In fact the list of her rights was pretty short when it comes right down to it. She didn't have the right to choose a husband w/out massa permisison, she didn't have the right to learn to read. The right to tell him of his sons no... or anybody else massa offered her up to. Pretty short in the rights area and pretty despicable in my eyes. But my eyes are looking back through near to 150 years of mist too.
Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
The term is "dehumanize"... I would not be at all surprised to learn that for many slaveholders and their families, the only way to sleep at night was to dehumanize their chattel... they became property instead of people... so many head ... again the cattle analogy
Slave Breeding: Fact or Fiction Blacks were considered to be 'Born to be slaves' by slave owners(in other words 'born to be property of the slave owners').
Simple economics would dictate what one does with excess slaves. For instance over a thirty year span of increasing numbers of slave states, requiring slaves to handle the increasingly profitability of slavey, we see by census figures modest increases in the slave population of the older Eastern seaboard slave states and an explosive increase of slaves in the new slave states in the West.
From where did the rapidly increasing numbers of slaves in the West come From?
P.S. From 1830 to 1860 Va.'s slave population increased 4.5 % while La.'s increased by 202.7 %.
The states they were brought from, maybe? Weren't a lot of southerners moving and settling in the new states?
Slave Breeding: Fact or Fiction How exactly did N.B. Forrest make his fortune? In the slave markets in the towns throughout the south, who were the biggest buyers of slaves?
In the raw, newly settled West, it was mostly hard men, on the make to acquire a quick fortune, like N.B. Forrest, for instance.
The term "sold south" implies that too.
Forrest engaged in a unsavory, tho legal trade... analogy today...pronographager....
The difference between Forrest and his contemporiaries how is that he would not break up families...selling off children.
Question is at what age were the children seperated from their mothers and sold. This could be somewhat a measure of humanity
Last edited by bama46; 11-09-2009 at 05:24 PM.
Slave Breeding: Fact of Fiction The point is, there was a flow of slaves from the older seaboard slave states to the West. The slave owners of the Seaboard states were supplying the impetus to the rapid expansion of slavery in the newer slave states by selling off their excess numbers of slaves.
N.B. Forrest was the necessary middleman, in the selling of slaves 'South'. If there was no profit in moving the slaves 'South' the movement would not have existed.(was there a reciprocal and equal flow of slaves from the West back to the East?)
However the slave population was transferred where is the evidence for slave breeding?
Where is the supposed surplus of new births among slaves showing up at?
They're not in the 1850 census.
15 Southern States
Free
Females, ages 15-39.............1,255,537
Children under 1 yr of age.........186,517
Children (under 1) to Number of Females (ages 15-39) 14.86%
Slave
Females, ages 15-39................641,085
Children under 1 yr of age...........80,538
Children (under 1) to Number of Females (ages 15-39) 12.56%
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-l...en.pl?year=850
POWER & MONEY
"The brokers of the Empire City are furious at the prospect of seeing their lucrative trade diverted to Charleston or New Orleans, and carried on with English capital. The lust of money has had ten times more to do with the sudden patriotism of the North than their love of liberty."
London Morning Herald, 1861
I have never thought about the sale of slaves as having a " directional flow". I know there were auction rings in most towns as well as "slave pens' called other, more degoratory names in most places. My thinking however was that slaves were put on the block for a variety of reasons, usually to raise cash, not to sell off surplus, or the yearly "crop". Said slaves were bought and off they went, but no thoughts as to where..
When you speak of N.B. Forrest, don't forget his brothers John, William, Aaron and Jeffrey. It was a family gig.
Ancestors in US Army: 13th TN Cav; 10th TN Cav; 3rd NC Inf
Ancestors in CSA Army: 48th VA; 63rd VA, 5th NC Cav; 37th NC
Wife and Grandkid's CSA: 15th AL, 51st GA, 41st TN; 36th TN; GA Mil 1197 Dist
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