The Half Has Never Been Told

by Edward E. Baptist

  79. US Congress, “Condition of Banks,” 249, 299, 535; R. T. Hoskins to R. T. Brownrigg, December 19, 1835, Brownrigg Papers, SHC; Thomas Abernethy, “The Early Development of Commerce and Banking in Tennessee,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 14 (1927): 321–322; R. W. Hidy, “The Union Bank Loan of 1832: A Case Study in Marketing,” Journal of Political Economy 47 (1939): 232–352; Miles, Jacksonian Democracy, 140–141; Roeder, “New Orleans Merchants,” 334.

  80. Jane Knodell, “Rethinking the Jacksonian Economy: The Impact of the 1832 Bank Veto on Commercial Banking,” Journal of Economic History 66 (2006): 541–574; Edward E. Baptist, “Borrowed by the Lash: Enslaved People as Collateral in the Great Divergence,” Paper presented at Capitalizing on Finance Conference, Huntington Library, Pasadena, CA, April 13, 2013.

  81. American State Papers: Land, 2:495–497; Claiborne, Mississippi, 411–417; US Congress, “Condition of Banks,” 290, 325–344; Henry Clay to Wm. Mercer, August 13, 1834, William Mercer Papers, Tulane.

  82. Anna Whitteker to Emily Dupuy, May 10, 1835, Emily Dupuy Papers, Mss1D9295b, Sect. 1, VHS.

  83. Miles, Jacksonian Democracy, 118–119; [?] to Thomas Wyche, February 9, 1835, Wyche-Otey Papers, SHC; IF to RB, March 30, 1834, Fol. 13; James Blakey to RB, August 6, 1834, Fol. 15; IF to RB, September 17, 1834, Fol. 15, RCB.

  84. Thomas Dorsey to J. Bieller, April 15, 1835, Fol. 1/7, BIELLER; Isham Harrison to Thomas Harrison, October 14, 1834, Fol. 3, James Harrison Papers, SHC.

  CHAPTER 8. BLOOD: 1836–1844

  1. William Colbert, AS, 6.1 (AL), 81–82.

  2. Lewis Clarke, “Leaves from a Slave’s Journal of Life,” ed. Lydia Maria Child, National Anti-Slavery Standard, October 20, 27, 1842, 78–79, 83; Orlando Patterson, Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries (New York, 1999); S. Ford to Bieller, n.d., Fol. 2/15, BIELLER; Archibald Hyman to L. Thompson, June 30, 1860, Lewis Thompson Papers, SHC.

  3. Ford to Bieller, n.d. Fol. 2/15, BIELLER; Jos. Labrenty to J. Waddill, September 22, 1838, Elijah Fuller Papers, SHC.

  4. Wiley Childress, AS, 16.6 (TN), 9; Martha Bradley, AS, 6.1 (AL), 47; Anthony Abercrombie, AS, 6.1 (AL), 7.

  5. Peter Corn, AS, 11.2 (MO), 87; Henry Waldon, AS, 11.1 (AR), 15–16; Columbus Williams, AS, 11.1 (AR), 155; William Read to Downey, August 18, 1848, S. S. Downey Papers, Duke; cf. Thomas Foster, “The Sexual Abuse of Black Men Under American Slavery,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 20, no. 3 (2011): 445–464.

  6. David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (Boston, 1829), 14–15, 23, 28, 32; 1842 Speech of Lewis Clarke, ST, 152, 157–158; Robert Falls, AS, 16.6 (TN), 16; “Violence, Protest, and Identity: Black Masculinity in Antebellum America,” in James O. Horton, Free People of Color: Inside the African-American Community (Washington, DC, 1993); Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA, 1982); Claude Meillassoux, The Anthropology of Slavery: The Womb of Iron and Gold (Chicago, 1991); Ann Clark, AS, 4.1 (TX), 223–224; George Cato, AS, S2, 11 (SC), 98; AS, 18 (TN), 95; Francis Burdett to R. C. Ballard (RB), July 3, 1848, Fol. 130, RCB.

  7. “Mrs. Webb,” MW, 209; Charity Bowers, ST, 266; Scott Bond, AS, S2, 1 (AR), 33.

  8. CHSUS, 3:24, 599.

  9. Andrew V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy (New York, 1984), 3:418–419, 367–368.

  10. Sean P. Kelley, “‘Mexico in His Head’: Slavery and the Texas-Mexico Border, 1810–1860,” Journal of Social History 37 (2004): 709–723; Sean P. Kelley, “Black-birders and Bozales: African-Born Slaves on the Lower Brazos River of Texas in the Nineteenth Century,” Civil War History 54, no. 4 (2008): 406–424; Randolph Campbell, An Empire for Slavery (Baton Rouge, LA, 1989), 54; Dudley G. Wooten, A Comprehensive History of Texas, 1685 to 1897 (Austin, TX, 1986), 1:759; J. F. Perry to Lastraps & Desmare, January 15, 1834, Stephen Austin Papers, 3:39–40; Paul D. Lack, “Slavery and the Texas Revolution,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 89 (1985): 181–202.

  11. Richmond Enquirer, October 27, 1835, January 4, 1836; Ernest Shearer, Robert Potter: Remarkable North Carolinian and Texan (Houston, 1951), 49; Essex Gazette, May 14, 1836; Thomas Hardeman to Polk, March 31, 1836, 3:567–668, JKP. Harrison’s son was released unharmed and died in Ohio, genitalia intact, in 1840. Twenty-five Alamo dead were New Orleans volunteers: Edward L. Miller, New Orleans and the Texas Revolution (College Station, TX, 2004), 154.

  12. Jn. Lockhead to W. H. Hatchett, August 26, 1836, William Hatchett Papers, Duke. White southerners saw Texas as a new empire for slavery; cf. Eugene Barker, Mexico and Texas, 1821–1835 (Dallas, 1928); Alexandria Gazette, May 19, 1836; Wm. Christy to Jos. Ellis, March 22, 1836, Miller, New Orleans and the Texas Revolution; New York Express, April 4, 1837; Washington Intelligencer, April 30, 1836.

  13. Farish Carter and R. S. Patton, April 4, 1835, Fol. 20, Eliz. Talley Papers, SHC; J. G. Johnson to G. W. Haywood, May 18, 1836, Fol. 146, HAY; James Huie, Case File 258, Bankruptcy Act of 1841, RG 21, NA; E. B. Hicks to Alex. Cuningham, March 29, 1838, Texas Land Scrip, Cuningham Papers, Duke; Geo. Johnson to Wm. Johnson, August 22, 1838, Wm. Johnson Papers, SHC; Missi. River Diary, Duke; James D. Cocke, A Glance at the Currency and Resources Generally of the Republic of Texas (Houston, 1838), 7–15.

  14. Campbell, Empire for Slavery, 35; New Hampshire Sentinel, April 21, 1836; Alexandria Gazette, May 10, 1836.

  15. William Lee Miller, Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress (New York, 1996); Joel H. Silbey, Storm over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to the Civil War (Oxford, UK, 2005), 10–14.

  16. Changes to the Treasury’s gold-silver exchange rate, plus overseas sales of slave-backed bonds, attracted specie, while the British trading practices that provoked the 1839–1843 Opium War unlocked Chinese “hoards” of silver. Peter Temin, The Jacksonian Economy (New York, 1969); Silbey, Storm over Texas; Burrell Fox to Elizabeth Neal, September 25, 1835, Neal Papers, SHC; R. T. Hoskins to Richard Brownrigg, December 19, 1835, Brownrigg Papers, SHC; H. P. Watson to A. B. Springs, January 24, 1836, Springs Papers, SHC.

  17. Isham Harrison to Thos. Harrison, June 16, 1834, Thos. Harrison to Jas. Harrison, January 4, 1836, October 20, 1836, August 28, 1836, James Harrison Papers, SHC; R. Hinton to Laurens Hinton, October 16, 1836, Laurens Hinton Papers, SHC; P. A. Bolling to Edm. Hubard, February 24, 1837, Fol. 72, Hubard Papers, SHC; William Ashley to Chester Ashley, April 10, 1836, Chester Ashley Papers, SHC.

  18. Ballard and Franklin to Jacob Bieller, Fol. 2/15, BIELLER; R. H. M. Davidson to Dear Brevard, November 8, 1836, Davidson Papers, SHC.

  19. Charles P. Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (New York, 1978); John K. Galbraith, A Short History of Financial Euphoria (New York, 1993). Free states also borrowed money to pump into local economies, e.g., Reginald C. McGrane, Foreign Bondholders and American State Debts (New York, 1935), 129.

  20. Byrne Hammond and Co. to Jackson, Riddle, March 26, 1836, JRC; John Cassidy, Why Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities (New York, 2009), 239; Henry Draft to Wm. Miller, June 4, 1835, John Fox Papers, Duke; Samuel Faulkner to Dear Fitz, September 2, 1835, Wm. Powell Papers, Duke.

  21. Henry Watson to Father, December 15, 1836, Henry Watson Papers, Duke; New Orleans Price-Current, August 20, 1836, Fol. 3, JRC; Thomas Harrison to James Harrison, August 28, 1836, Fol. 3, James Harrison Papers, SHC; Robert Carson to Henderson Forsyth, December 3, 1836, N. E. Matthews to H. Forsyth, March 31, 1836, John Forsyth Papers, Duke; Peter Martin to Susan Capehart, December 5, 1836, Capehart Papers, SHC.

  22. With 200,000 slaves at, on average, $1,000 each (sold or moved, they represented investment), $40 million in government land, $75 million in bank investments, plus removals and wars costing $50 million. Production totals from CHSUS, 4:110; T. Bennett to Jackson, Riddle, October 7, 1836, Fol. 7, JRC.

  23. “We had better take the market prices,” instead of holding out for a rise, ruminated a savvy Alabama planter: N.
B. Nolwinther to J. S. Devereux, October 24, 1836, JSD; T. Bennett & Co. to Jackson, Riddle, October 7, 1836, Fol. 7, JRC; L. C. Gray and Esther K. Thompson, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Washington, DC, 1933), 2:1027.

  24. CHSUS, 3:354 (land sales); Temin, Jacksonian Economy, 123; Richard Timberlake, “The Specie Circular and Distribution of the Surplus,” Journal of Political Economy 68 (1960): 109–117. The belief that the Circular was solely responsible for economic troubles was created by Jackson’s Whig opponents. Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York, 2007), 503, presents a fairly undigested Whig version. Bank of England: Ralph Hidy, The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance: English Merchant Bankers at Work, 1763–1861 (Cambridge, MA, 1949), 206–207.

  25. NOP, February 4, 1837, February 9, 1837; S. E. Phillips to J. A. Stevens, February 5, 1837, John A. Stevens Papers, NYHS; John Forsyth to Brother, February 19, 1837, John Forsyth Papers, Duke.

  26. Hidy, House of Baring, 214–219; Vol. 50, Brown Brothers, NYPL. For a recent cultural and political history of the Panic of 1837, see Jessica Lepler, The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis (New York, 2013).

  27. NOP, March 16, 1837, April 20, 1837; John Elliott to Lucy, April 8, 1837, Samuel Bryarly Papers, Duke; D. W. McLaurin to John McLaurin, April 10, 1837, Duncan McLaurin Papers, Duke; Vol. 50, Brown Brothers, NYPL.

  28. Albert Gallatin to J. A. Stevens, May 10, 1837, Fol. April–July 1837, John Stevens Papers, NYHS; “Comparative Statement . . . Banks of New Orleans, 1835 and 1836,” Fol. 5, Citizens’ Bank of Louisiana Records, Tulane; Champ Terry to Nathaniel Jeffries, October 15, 1836, Fol. 345, RCB.

  29. D. W. McKenzie to D. McLaurin, June 18, 1837, November 1, 1837, Duncan McLaurin Papers, Duke; Wm. Southgate to W. P. Smith, May 17, 1837, Wm. Smith Papers, Duke; J. Rowe to J. Cole, February 8, 1837, Cole-Taylor Papers, SHC.

  30. In April, New Orleans banks allowed some commercial debtors to renew debts every sixty days until November, with a 10 percent fee, but required most individual borrowers to make regular payments on mortgage loans: City Bank Resolution, April 1, 1837; A. Beauvais to Pres. C.A.P.L., April 6, 1837, Fol. 7/47B, C.A.P.L. Papers, Louisiana State University; J. R. Miller to William Miller, July 19, 1837, John Fox Papers, Duke; James Harrison to [?], July 12, 1837, James Harrison Papers, SHC; Joseph Amis to [?], May 6, 1837, S. S. Downey Papers, Duke; K. M. King to Uncle, November 1, 1837, Duncan McLaurin Papers, Duke; Stephen Duncan to W. Mercer, August 7, 1837, William Mercer Papers, Tulane.

  31. Leland Jenks, Migration of British Capital to 1875 (New York, 1927), 90–92; John Niven, Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics (New York, 1983).

  32. S. Duncan to W. Mercer, August 7, 1837, William Mercer Papers, Tulane; US Congress, House of Representatives, “Condition of Banks, 1840,” 26th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. 111 (Serial 385), 1441; W. Bailey to Washington Jackson, June 4, 1838, Fol. 10, JRC; John J. Wallis, “What Caused the Crisis of 1839,” NBER Historical Paper no. 133, April 2001, National Bureau of Economic Research, www.nber.org/papers/h0133.pdf; C. L. Hinton to Laurens Hinton, April 17, 1839, Laurens Hinton Papers, SHC; Bacon Tait to RB, Fol. 24, RCB.

  33. J. A. Stevens to T. W. Ward, August 5, 1837, September 15, 1837; T. W. Ward to H. Lavergne, December 1837, T. W. Ward to J. A. Stevens, December 8, 1837, December 16, 1837, John Stevens Papers, NYHS; W. W. Rives to Thomas Smith, June 15, 1837, Wm. Smith Papers, Duke; R. Hinton to Laurens Hinton, July 23, 1837, Laurens Hinton Papers, SHC; E. B. Hicks to A. Cuningham, January 10, 1838, Cuningham Papers, Duke.

  34. John Killick, “The Cotton Operations of Alexander Brown and Sons in the Deep South, 1820–1860,” JSH 43 (1977): 185; H. H. G. to J. A. Stevens, February 16, 1838, Baring Brothers to J. A. Stevens, March 14, 1838 (I), March 14, 1838 (II), T. W. Ward to G. B. Milligan, March 11, 1838, John Stevens Papers, NYHS; Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton, NJ, 1957), 467–477; W. Bailey to Washington Jackson, June 4, 1838, JRC; Bennett Ferriday & Co. to Jackson, Riddle, January 24, 1838, JRC; Joseph Eaton to Thomas Jeffrey, May 20, 1838, Bank of State of Georgia Papers, Duke.

  35. J. Knight to Wm. Beall, October 21, 1838, February 10, 1839, John Knight Papers, Duke; J. S. Haywood to G. W. Haywood, November 25, 1838, Fol. 155, HAY; W. R. Rives to J. Harris, March 18, 1838, Fol. 22, RCB; A. Cuningham to E. B. Hicks, May 14, 1838, Cuningham Papers, Duke; J. S. Haywood to G. W. Haywood, March 17, 1839, Fol. 155, HAY.

  36. A. G. Alsworth to J. S. Copes, September 10, 1839, Box 1, Fol. 64, Copes Papers, Tulane; R. C. O. Matthews, A Study in Trade-Cycle History: Economic Fluctuations in Great Britain, 1833 to 1842 (Cambridge, UK, 2011), 65–68; Wallis, “What Caused the Crisis of 1839,” 40.

  37. Edward E. Baptist, Creating an Old South: Middle Florida’s Plantation Frontier Before the Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), 154–155; Tallahassee Floridian, March 20, 1841; Robert Carson to Dear Sir, August 30, 1839, John Forsyth Papers, Duke; Rich. Faulkner to Wm. Powell, May 8, 1839, William Powell Papers, Duke.

  38. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York, 2005), 502–510.

  39. Rowland Bryarly to S. Bryarly, May 5, 1838, Bryarly Papers, Duke; Edward Balleisen, “Vulture Capitalism in Antebellum America: The 1841 Federal Bankruptcy Act and the Exploitation of Financial Distress,” Business History Review 70 (1996): 473–516; S. Thompson, Case 12, 1841 Bankruptcy Case Files, ELA37; 1841 Bankruptcy Sales Book 1, p. 93, E39, RG 21, NA.

  40. Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York, 1999), 122–161; James Donnelly to J. S. Devereux, 1839, JSD; Rich. Faulkner to Wm. Powell, May 8, 1839, Wm. Powell Papers, Duke; Robert Carson to Dear Sir, August 30, 1839, John Forsyth Papers, Duke. For prices, cf. Carson v. Dwight [LA, 1843]; Erwin v. Lowry [LA, 1849]; Stacy v. Barber [MS, 1843]; all CATTERALL, 3:554, 595, 297–298; IF to RB, May 23, 1838, Fol. 22, RCB; Jos. Alsop to RB, January 18, 1839, Fol. 24, Bacon Tait to RB, May 1, 1838, RCB; IF to RB, May 23, 1838, both Fol. 22, RCB; “Memo. of . . . Debts Due in Ala,” Tyre Glen Papers, Duke.

  41. Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 (New York, 1976); Anthony G. Kaye, Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South (Chapel Hill, NC, 2007), 74; Ann P. Malone, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana (Chapel Hill, NC, 1992); Dep. Victoria Burrell, 455.869, Union Veterans’ Pension Files, NA; George Jones, #1184, Register of Signatures of Depositors, Tallahassee Branch of Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, National Archives Microfilm M816, Roll 5.

  42. Wm. C. Bryarly to S. Bryarly, February 17, 1848, Bryarly Papers, Duke; Richard Trexler, Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas (Ithaca, NY, 1995); Amy Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (Cambridge, UK, 2005), 1–16.

  43. ST, 152; Jim Cullen, “‘I’s a Man Now’: Gender and African-American Men,” in Darlene Clark Hine and Earnestine Jenkins, eds., A Question of Manhood (Bloomington, IN, 1999), 489–501; Walter Johnson, “On Agency,” Journal of Social History 37, no. 1 (2003): 113–124; James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT, 1990); François Furstenberg, “Beyond Freedom and Slavery: Autonomy, Virtue, and Resistance in Early American Political Discourse,” JAH 89, no. 4 (2003): 1295–1330; Edward E. Baptist, “The Absent Subject: African-American Masculinity and Forced Migration to the Antebellum Plantation Frontier,” in Craig T. Friend and Lorri Glover, eds., Southern Manhood: Perspectives on Manhood in the Old South (Athens, GA, 2004).

  44. Tzvetan Todorov, Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps, (New York, 1996). Pioneering works on the history of women in American slavery include the following: Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South, 2nd ed. (New York, 1999); Ang
ela Davis, Women, Race and Class (New York, 1981), 3–29; Brenda Stevenson, Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South (New York, 1996); Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” Diacritics 17 (1987): 65–81; Catherine Clinton, “Caught in the Web of the Big House: Women and Slavery,” in Walter J. Fraser Jr., R. Frank Saunders Jr., and Jon L. Wakelyn, eds., The Web of Southern Social Relations: Women, Family, and Education (Athens, GA, 1985), 19–34; Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York, 1985); Thelma Jennings, “‘Us Colored Women Had to Go Through a Plenty,’” Journal of Women’s History 1 (1990); Nell Irvin Painter, “Soul Murder and Slavery: Toward a Fully Loaded Cost Accounting,” in Linda K. Kerber, Alica Kessler-Harris, and Kathryn Kish Sklar, eds., U.S. History as Women’s History: New Feminist Essays (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995), 125–146; David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine, More Than Chattel: Black Women in the Americas (Bloomington, IN, 1996); Stephanie M. H. Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004); Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia, 2004); Thavolia Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household (Cambridge, UK, 2008); Daina Ramey Berry, Swing the Sickle for the Harvest Is Ripe: Gender and Slavery in Antebellum Georgia (Urbana, IL, 2007).

  45. Magnolia, 1838–1840, Fol. 429, RCB; Richard S. Dunn, A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life at Mesopotamia in Jamaica & Mount Airy in Virginia, 1762–1865 (New York, 2014); Gutman, Black Family; Peter Carter, Register of Signatures, #359; for conundrums of remarriage, see Jeff Forret, “Slaves, Sex, and Sin: Adultery, Forced Separation and Baptist Church Discipline in Middle Georgia,” Slavery and Abolition 33, no. 3 (2012): 337–358, also cf. Damian Alan Pargas, The Quarters and the Fields: Slave Families in the Non-Cotton South (Gainesville, FL, 2010).