Riley L. Shanahan
November 18, 2016
Comp Lit 60AC
The New Orleans Domestic Slave Trade
Because the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 enabled plantation owners to expand in the Deep South and the US federal government banned the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, an entirely new domestic slave market emerged and transformed the organization and economy of slavery. Despite the ban of the international slave trade, plantation owners refused to sacrifice economic potential and discovered a loophole through a domestic slave trade, in which the Upper South (Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina) would deliver and sell hundreds of thousands of slaves to the Lower South (Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana). This provoked a great migration of slaves and their owners to New Orleans, the new capital of the domestic slave trade, where traders would congregate to sell and buy slaves by the thousands. Credited to the domestic slave trade and the two thirds of a million slaves relocated, New Orleans became the fastest growing US city in the early 19th century, even surpassing that of New York City.
Slaves traveled to New Orleans by boat, rail, but most often by walking hundreds of miles in chains and brutal living conditions. Once in New Orleans, they were housed in slave pens, where they were held for sale or until an auction. Each pen could hold between 50 to a 100 slaves, containing a showroom and yards where slaves would sleep, exercise, and cook. The slaves ate well and were offered physical activity because the traders sought to prepare their slaves to a superior physical state and health to sell them at the highest possible profit.
The slave market and trade of New Orleans was devastating to enslaved families, who were rarely sold together in order for traders to maximize profits. As a result, traders sent very few young black children, and a gender imbalance emerged as speculators desired “young and likely Negroes,” who were young men who had the immediate ability to perform hard labor and the potential for a long work career. Records indicate that the trade disrupted one in five marriages of all slaves in the selling states of the South.
Slaves traveled to New Orleans by boat, rail, but most often by walking hundreds of miles in chains and brutal living conditions. Once in New Orleans, they were housed in slave pens, where they were held for sale or until an auction. Each pen could hold between 50 to a 100 slaves, containing a showroom and yards where slaves would sleep, exercise, and cook. The slaves ate well and were offered physical activity because the traders sought to prepare their slaves to a superior physical state and health to sell them at the highest possible profit.
"In the first place we were required to wash thoroughly, and those with beards, to shave. We were then furnished with a new suit each, cheap, but clean. The men had hat, coat, shirt, pants and shoes; the women frocks of calico, and handkerchiefs to bind about their heads. We were now conducted into a large room in the front part of the building to which the yard was attached, in order to be properly trained, before the admission of customers. The men were arranged on one side of the room, the women on the other. The tallest was placed at the head of the row, then the next tallest, and so on in the order of their respective heights. Emily was at the foot of the line of women. Freeman charged us to remember our places; exhorted us to appear smart and lively, - sometimes threatening, and again, holding out various inducements. During the day he exercised us in the art of “looking smart,” and of moving to our places with exact precision." -- Solomon Northup
Additionally, free black men and women of the North were often found victims of the domestic slave trade of New Orleans, as traders would kidnap men and women of the north and force them to migrate South to New Orleans to be sold. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 increased the abduction of free people because slave catchers were allowed to claim fugitives in the North and take them to the South, as long as these victims could not declare their status as free individuals and this was nearly impossible to do so. Solomon Northup, the main character in Twelve Years as a Slave, was a free man kidnapped from his home of Washington DC in 1841 and shuttled to New Orleans where he was sold to a planter from the Deep South.
The slave auctions of New Orlean were most commonly held within the St. Louis and St. Charles hotels (the most luxurious hotels in the South), the exchange on Esplanade Avenue, and the Masonic Temple. The New Orleans slave trade was unique from other slave markets of the South because while many Southern cities confined the slave trade to a single building or street, New Orleans was completely saturated and plagued by the domestic slave trade, and it impacted New Orleans culture in every possible way.
The New Orleans domestic slave trade became an especially lucrative and economically successful business between the 1820s and the 1860s. Created by Isaac Franklin in 1818, the Franklin and Armfield Co is one of the most famous internal slave trading companies. It is famous for sending large cargoes of slaves to New Orleans and selling them at extremely high prices. When Franklin retired, he was the wealthiest man in the south.
The culture of New Orleans that was cultivated by the domestic slave trade of the South had a profound influence on William Faulkner and his writing, as Faulkner moved to New Orleans when he was 28 in 1925. In his novel Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner portrays New Orleans as a very dark and sinister place, where secrets are uncovered and revealed. It is the place where Thomas Sutpen travels to prove that Charles Bon is his son, while Henry Sutpen travels to prove this is a lie. New Orleans functions as a vessel that embodies corruption and an unnatural setting, where men are seductively pulled into the harsh and foreign realm of its secrets.
Discussion Questions:
- Knowing that William Faulkner was familiar with the culture and domestic slave trade of New Orleans, why did he choose New Orleans as a vessel to uncover secrets of the Sutpen family and how does the introduction of the New Orleans setting propel the novel forward and in turn expose the true nature of the deep south?
- The white men of the deep South, seen especially through Isaac Franklin’s trading company, made a fortune off of the domestic slave trade. Similarly, Thomas Sutpen uses his marriage with Eulalia Bon, a daughter of a plantation owner, to advance financially and socially. However, when he discovers that she has some African ancestry, he abandons both her and their son Charles Bon. Why does Sutpen's plan and desire of establishing a highly esteemed plantation and strong, pure family lineage ultimately fail and how does this failure expose and criticize white men of the deep south who took advantage of African Americans to gain political, social, and economic mobility?
Works Cited:
Abrams, Eve. "Remembering New Orleans' Overlooked Ties To Slavery." NPR. NPR, 18 July 2015. Web. 11
Nov. 2016.
Abrams, Eve. "'Purchased Lives' Exhibit Helps New Orleans Come To Terms With Domestic Slave Trade."
WWNO. N.p., 3 June 2015. Web. 11 Nov. 2016.
Kaplan-Levenson, Laine. "Sighting The Sites Of The New Orleans Slave Trade." WWNO. N.p., n.d. Web. 11
Nov. 2016.
Levinson, Casey. "New Orleans." Yoknapedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2016.
McInnis, Maurie D. "Mapping the Slave Trade in Richmond and New Orleans." University of Minnesota
Press, n.d. Web.
"New Orleans, Louisiana | Slavery and Remembrance." New Orleans, Louisiana | Slavery and Remembrance.
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2016. Web. 11 Nov. 2016.
"Slavery In Louisiana." Slavery In Louisiana. Whitney Plantation, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2016.
In the novel, New Orleans embodies corruption and immorality. One scene from the novel that stands out to me is when Henry visits the mixed-race brothel in New Orleans where the women are bred and groomed to please men. Faulkner uses the city of New Orleans and its sickening racism and sexism as a way to characterize and condemn the South.
ReplyDeleteI think Faulkner uses the city of New Orleans as a way to call out its racism. The novel is about coming to terms with race and the history of race. It is important that Faulkner picked New Orleans to discuss this as it was one of the bigger places in which racism was evident, as you discussed above. I think your post really points out why this decision was important and how its irony allows readers to learn more about race.
ReplyDeleteThis post helps to complete the image of New Orleans that Faulkner cultivates in the novel. Considering the unscrupulous and racist background of the city, it follows that New Orleans serves as the setting for the secrecy surrounding Bon's background. New Orleans embodies a contradiction in the novel as a place where secrets are both created and revealed. Moreover, the city continues to embody contradictions in the modern day as a hub of culture and diversity founded upon a legacy of extreme racism.
ReplyDeleteI thought that this post was very interesting because it provided background on New Orleans that helped explain a lot of what Faulkner described in Absalom.
ReplyDeleteI like how your post talks about the social and economic situations of the deep south to explore how race played into the schemes of avaricious white men, as Faulkner seems to imply through the game plans and tactics Thomas Sutpen employs to gain prosperity and a certain acceptance in society.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found interesting is how the slave trade spread the influence of slave culture throughout the states. Furthermore, the capital of slave trade is now, arguably, one of the epicenters for black American culture.
ReplyDeleteI think your presentation was super relevant to the discourse on race in our current readings. Integral to this I believe is the "balloon" analogy - in that slavery is based on the externality, the FACE of the African American, yet the entire slave trade and all its implementations were ways of make by these individuals into balloons without an identity. Good job!
ReplyDeleteI am really glad that you chose this as your blog post topic because I got a strong sense of HE dark representation of New Orlenes in Faukners novel and this helped illuminate why that might be. It's interesting to me that being an outsider I think of New Orlenes as a fun, loud and inclusive city. I was not aware of the extent of its dark and terrible history. I think that also adds to the novel because it follows the same line as Stupen and Bon who's histories we aren't aware of until later.
ReplyDeleteGreat job with the post and the presentation! I didn't know domestic slave trade occurred in America between the Southern states. I was shocked at the extent that the slave traders viewed the slaves by dressing them up and gives them exercises to look smart and fit before the auction.
ReplyDeleteThank you Riley! Your presentation offers so much valuable insight to the specific role the setting of New Orleans plays in Absalom. It is not a random city, but rather a city famous for racial segregation, racism, and the evils of slavery — making it all the more relevant to the story of race in the text. Here we can imagine what kind of upbringing Charles Bon had and wonder about his mother's role in this city and what kind of exposure to the slave trade Sutpen might have had while he visited here. Sometimes — in this text — more information can lead to even more unanswered questions.
ReplyDelete