{"id":43394,"date":"2015-10-22T00:02:22","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T00:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=43394"},"modified":"2017-05-14T19:34:39","modified_gmt":"2017-05-14T19:34:39","slug":"retracing-slaverys-trail-of-tears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=43394","title":{"rendered":"Retracing Slavery’s Trail of Tears"},"content":{"rendered":"

Retracing Slavery’s Trail of Tears<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Smithsonian Magazine<\/a>
\nNovember 2015<\/p>\n

Edward Ball<\/b><\/a><\/strong>, Lecturer in English
\nYale University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nA coffle<\/a> of slaves being marched from Virginia<\/a> west into Tennessee<\/a>, c. 1850. (Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia)<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Edward Ball is the author of five books of nonfiction and a lecturer in English at Yale University. His book, <\/em>Slaves in the Family<\/a> (1998) won the National Book Award and was a New York Times bestseller.<\/em><\/p>\n

America’s forgotten migration \u2013 the journeys of a million African-Americans from the tobacco South to the cotton South<\/em><\/p>\n

When Delores McQuinn was growing up, her father told her a story about a search for the family\u2019s roots.<\/p>\n

He said his own father knew the name of the people who had enslaved their family in Virginia<\/a>, knew where they lived\u2014in the same house and on the same land\u2014in Hanover County<\/a>, among the rumpled hills north of Richmond<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy grandfather went to the folks who had owned our family and asked, \u2018Do you have any documentation about our history during the slave days? We would like to see it, if possible.\u2019 The man at the door, who I have to assume was from the slaveholding side, said, \u2018Sure, we\u2019ll give it to you.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe man went into his house and came back out with some papers in his hands. Now, whether the papers were trivial or actual plantation records, who knows? But he stood in the door, in front of my grandfather, and lit a match to the papers. \u2018You want your history?\u2019 he said. \u2018Here it is.\u2019 Watching the things burn. \u2018Take the ashes and get off my land.\u2019…<\/p>\n

…New Orleans<\/a>, the biggest slave market in the country, had about 50 people-selling companies in the 1840s. Some whites went to the slave auctions for entertainment. Especially for travelers, the markets were a rival to the French Opera House and the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre d\u2019Orl\u00e9ans.<\/p>\n

Today in New Orleans, the number of monuments, markers and historic sites that refer in some way to the domestic slave trade is quite small. I make a first estimate: zero.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, that\u2019s not true,\u201d says Erin Greenwald<\/a>, a curator at the Historic New Orleans Collection<\/a>. \u201cThere is one marker on a wall outside a restaurant called Maspero\u2019s. But what it says is wrong. The slave-trade site it mentions, Maspero\u2019s Exchange, was diagonally across the street from the sandwich place.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…Developing the exhibit, Greenwald and her team created a database of names of the enslaved who were shipped from the Eastern states to New Orleans. William Waller and his gang, and other hundreds of thousands arriving by foot, did not leave traces in government records. But people who arrived by ship did.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe studied hundreds of shipping manifests and compiled data on 70,000 individuals. Of course, that is only some.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1820, the number of ships carrying slaves from Eastern ports into New Orleans was 604. In 1827, it was 1,359. In 1835, it was 4,723. Each carried 5 to 50 slaves.<\/p>\n

The auction advertisements at the end of the Slave Trail always said, \u201cVirginia and Maryland Negroes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe words \u2018Virginia Negroes\u2019 signaled a kind of brand,\u201d Greenwald says. \u201cIt meant compliant, gentle and not broken by overwork.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that is hard to document but impossible to ignore is the \u2018fancy trade.\u2019 New Orleans had a niche market. The \u2018fancy trade\u2019 meant women sold as forcible sex partners. They were women of mixed race, invariably. So-called mulatresses<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isaac Franklin was all over this market. In 1833, he wrote the office back in Virginia about \u201cfancy girls\u201d he had on hand, and about one in particular whom he wanted. \u201cI sold your fancy girl Alice for $800,\u201d Franklin wrote to Rice Ballard, a partner then in Richmond. \u201cThere is great demand for fancy maids, [but] I was disappointed in not finding your Charlottes\u00adville<\/a> maid that you promised me.\u201d Franklin told the Virginia office to send the \u201cCharlottesville maid\u201d right away by ship. \u201cWill you send her out or shall I charge you $1,100 for her?\u201d<\/p>\n

To maximize her price, Franklin might have sold the \u201cCharlottesville maid\u201d at one of the public auctions in the city. \u201cAnd the auction setting of choice was a place called the St. Louis Hotel,\u201d Greenwald says, \u201ca block from here.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

America’s forgotten migration \u2013 the journeys of a million African-Americans from the tobacco South to the cotton South<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,369,8,6940,20,693],"tags":[21522,2882,21520,21521,20005,21523,1438,10478,21519],"class_list":["post-43394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","category-virginia","tag-delores-mcquinn","tag-edward-ball","tag-erin-greenwald","tag-erin-m-greenwald","tag-isaac-franklin","tag-john-armfield","tag-new-orleans","tag-smithsonian-magazine","tag-william-waller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43394"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53905,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43394\/revisions\/53905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}