ABOUT THIS BOOK

In this groundbreaking work, Michael Tadman establishes that all levels of white society in the antebellum South were deeply involved in a massive interregional trade in slaves. Using countless previously untapped manuscript sources, he documents black resilience in the face of the pervasive indifference of slaveholders toward slaves and their families. This new paperback edition of Speculators and Slaves offers a substantial new Introduction that advances a major thesis of master-slave relationships. By exploring the gulf between the slaveholders’ self-image as benevolent paternalists and their actual behavior, Tadman critiques the theories of close accommodation and paternalistic hegemony that are currently influential.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Michael Tadman is lecturer in economic and social history at the University of Liverpool. His other published work includes a new edition of Frederic Bancroft’s 1931 classic, Slave Trading in the Old South.

REVIEWS

“This detailed, meticulously researched and documented analysis of the internal slave trade represents historical scholarship at its best. This study is must reading for all those interested in African-American history.”—Robert R. Davis, The American Historical Review

“Amid the steady stream of new books on the various aspects of antebellum history, here is one that makes a real difference.”—Gavin Wright, Journal of American History

“A model of demographic, social, and cultural history . . . tightly argued, beautifully written, and imaginatively proved.”—Laurence A. Glasco, The Historian

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Illustrations

Figures

Tables

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction: Key Slaves and the Poverty of Paternalism

Part One:
An Almost Endless Outgoing of Slaves: The Extent and Character of the Trading Business

1.
Masters, Traders, and Slaves: An Introduction

2.
The Scale of Negro Speculation

3.
Slave Buying in the Upper South

4.
The “Fatigues and Troubles” of the Selling Season

Part Two:
Slave Trading and the Values of Masters and Slaves

5.
Planter Speculation and the Myth of the Reluctant Master

6.
Family Separations and the Lives of Slaves and Masters

7.
The Question of Status: Traders in White Society and Southern Mythology

8.
Speculation and Its Impact: The Flawed Mystique of Antebellum Paternalism

Appendix 1. Estimating Interregional Slave Movements for 1790–1819

Appendix 2. The Structure of Planter Migrations

Appendix 3. Calculating the Structure of the Interregional Movement

Appendix 4. South Carolina Slave Traders of the 1850s: A Digest of Evidence

Appendix 5. Slave Selling and Staple-Crop Production in the Economy of the Upper South

Appendix 6. Evidence on Slave Prices

Appendix 7. Estimating the Profits of the Trade

Appendix 8. Calculating the Proportions of Upper South Slaves Forcibly Separated from Parents or Spouse

Primary Sources

Index

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