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Soul by Soul : Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market / Walter Johnson.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2009]Copyright date: 2001Description: 1 online resource (320 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780674039155
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 976.33500496
LOC classification:
  • F379.N59
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: A Person with a Price -- Chapter one. The Chattel Principle -- Chapter two. Between the Prices -- Chapter three. Making a World Out of Slaves -- Chapter four. Turning People into Products -- Chapter five. Reading Bodies and Marking Race -- Chapter six. Acts of Sale -- Chapter seven. Life in the Shadow of the Slave Market -- Epilogue. Southern History and the Slave Trade -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index
Summary: Winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner AwardWinner of the John Hope Franklin PrizeWinner of the Avery O. Craven AwardSoul by Soul tells the story of slavery in antebellum America by moving away from the cotton plantations and into the slave market itself, the heart of the domestic slave trade. Taking us inside the New Orleans slave market, the largest in the nation, where 100,000 men, women, and children were packaged, priced, and sold, Walter Johnson transforms the statistics of this chilling trade into the human drama of traders, buyers, and slaves, negotiating sales that would alter the life of each. What emerges is not only the brutal economics of trading but the vast and surprising interdependencies among the actors involved.Using recently discovered court records, slaveholders’ letters, nineteenth-century narratives of former slaves, and the financial documentation of the trade itself, Johnson reveals the tenuous shifts of power that occurred in the market’s slave coffles and showrooms. Traders packaged their slaves by “feeding them up,” dressing them well, and oiling their bodies, but they ultimately relied on the slaves to play their part as valuable commodities. Slave buyers stripped the slaves and questioned their pasts, seeking more honest answers than they could get from the traders. In turn, these examinations provided information that the slaves could utilize, sometimes even shaping a sale to their own advantage.Johnson depicts the subtle interrelation of capitalism, paternalism, class consciousness, racism, and resistance in the slave market, to help us understand the centrality of the “peculiar institution” in the lives of slaves and slaveholders alike. His pioneering history is in no small measure the story of antebellum slavery.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780674039155

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: A Person with a Price -- Chapter one. The Chattel Principle -- Chapter two. Between the Prices -- Chapter three. Making a World Out of Slaves -- Chapter four. Turning People into Products -- Chapter five. Reading Bodies and Marking Race -- Chapter six. Acts of Sale -- Chapter seven. Life in the Shadow of the Slave Market -- Epilogue. Southern History and the Slave Trade -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner AwardWinner of the John Hope Franklin PrizeWinner of the Avery O. Craven AwardSoul by Soul tells the story of slavery in antebellum America by moving away from the cotton plantations and into the slave market itself, the heart of the domestic slave trade. Taking us inside the New Orleans slave market, the largest in the nation, where 100,000 men, women, and children were packaged, priced, and sold, Walter Johnson transforms the statistics of this chilling trade into the human drama of traders, buyers, and slaves, negotiating sales that would alter the life of each. What emerges is not only the brutal economics of trading but the vast and surprising interdependencies among the actors involved.Using recently discovered court records, slaveholders’ letters, nineteenth-century narratives of former slaves, and the financial documentation of the trade itself, Johnson reveals the tenuous shifts of power that occurred in the market’s slave coffles and showrooms. Traders packaged their slaves by “feeding them up,” dressing them well, and oiling their bodies, but they ultimately relied on the slaves to play their part as valuable commodities. Slave buyers stripped the slaves and questioned their pasts, seeking more honest answers than they could get from the traders. In turn, these examinations provided information that the slaves could utilize, sometimes even shaping a sale to their own advantage.Johnson depicts the subtle interrelation of capitalism, paternalism, class consciousness, racism, and resistance in the slave market, to help us understand the centrality of the “peculiar institution” in the lives of slaves and slaveholders alike. His pioneering history is in no small measure the story of antebellum slavery.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Aug 2024)