Mar 27, 2014 - Sale 2342

Sale 2342 - Lot 70

Price Realized: $ 6,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) PORCHER AND BAYA, Slave Dealers. ESTATE SALE 229 RICE FIELD NEGROES. An uncommonly Prime and Orderly Gang of Two Hundred and Twenty-Nine Negroes. Being two gangs in one, commonly known as the forces of "Tranquility" and "Henrietta" plantations on Santee Rivers. Bi-folium sheet, folded to form four pages, later folded again horizontally; printed on all four sides; some contemporary ink notes; some stains; parted halfway at the folds. (WGC) Charleston, 1859

Additional Details

an exceptionally detailed slave sale broadside/brochure from one of the deep South's major slave dealers. Of the two hundred and twenty-nine slaves, one hundred and forty-seven are identified by first name only. Any special capabilities or faults are cited: "Sandy 45, cook and watchman," or "Simon 30, ruptured." In the main, the citations are for slaves with problems rather than advantages. This sale is significant in that an attempt was made to keep family groups together, their number indicated to the left of their names. It's important to note that these 229 slaves are identified in bold at the top of the broadside as "Rice Field Negroes." The thinking was that these slaves were habituated and thus virtually immune to the fevers and disease common to the planting and cultivation of rice-much the same thinking that went into the use of the so-called "immune" Negro troops in the Spanish American War.