The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (92 page)

33
. Pomeranz,
Great Divergence
, 274–278; D. A. Farnie,
The English Cotton Industry and the World Market, 1815–1896
(Oxford, 1979), 199. Cf. Seymour Shapiro,
Capital and the Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution
(Ithaca, NY, 1967).

34
. E.g., Levi Woodbury, “Cotton: Cultivation, Manufacture, and Foreign Trade of,”
House Executive Documents
, 24th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 4, no. 146 (Washington, DC, 1836). Sugar mills were the first enterprises to use the conveyor belt, the classic device of twentieth-century factories. Follett,
Sugar Masters;
Daniel Rood, “Plantation Technocrats: A Social History of Knowledge in the Slaveholding Atlantic World, 1830–1865” (PhD diss., University of California at Irvine, 2010).

35
. E. F. Barnes Cotton Book, RASP, Series G, 5/17. Occasionally enslavers held “races” to see who could pick the most cotton in a day: Cull Taylor, AS, 6.1 (AL), 364. Ball, in
Slavery in the United States
, 212, 271–272, mentions pay for overpicking or Sunday picking in two cases.

36
. Mary Younger, NSV, 258; Allan Sidney, ST, 524.

37
. Ball,
Slavery in the United States
, 215–216; Jn. Knight to Wm. Beall, August 12, 1844, Box 2, John Knight Papers, Duke.

38
. Campbell,
Autobiography
, 33–35.

39
. Brown,
Slave Life in Georgia
, 128–132; Anderson,
Life and Narrative
, 19–20; Henry Watson,
Narrative of Henry Watson: A Fugitive Slave
(Boston, 1848), 19–20; ST; Works Progress Administration interviews from the 1930s, e.g., GSMD, 199; Gus Askew, AS, 6.1 (AL), 15; Rufus Dirt, AS, 6.1 (AL), 117; Sarah Wells, AS, 11.1 (AR), 89; Sarah Ashley, S2 2.1 (TX), 87; Jesse Barnes, S2, 2.1 (TX), 175. Also J. Monett, Appendix C, J. W. Ingraham,
The South-West, by a Yankee
(New York, 1836), 2:285–286.

40
. Rules from Box 3, May-–December 1820 Fol., A. P. Walsh Papers, LLMVC; Miller, in “Plantation Labor Organization,” 163–165, points out that some historians have confused cotton minimums with low-country “tasks,” e.g., Moore,
The Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom in the Old Southwest
(Baton Rouge, LA, 1988), 95–96. For ledgers, five good examples: Ballard Papers, SHC; Prudhomme Papers, SHC; U. B. Phillips and James Glunt,
Florida Plantation Records from the Papers of George Noble Jones
(St. Louis, 1927); F. T. Leak Papers, SHC; Edwin Davis, ed.,
Plantation Life in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, 1836–1846, as Reflected in the Diary of Bennett H. Barrow
(New York, 1943). “So many pounds,” ASAI, 96, 98; Ball,
Slavery in the United States
, 216–218; Campbell,
Autobiography
, 33–39; Sarah Wells, AS, 11.1 (AR), 89; Jn. Knight to Wm. Beall, February 10, 1844, April 14, 1844, John Knight Papers, Duke; R. B. Beverley to Robert Beverley, September 3, 1833, August 28, 1842, Sec. 17, Mss1B4678a, Beverley Papers, VHS. Cf. Kelly Houston Jones, “‘A Rough, Saucy Set of Hands to Manage’: Slave Resistance in Arkansas,”
Arkansas Historical Quarterly
71 (2012): 1–21.

41
. Anderson,
Life and Narrative
, 18–19; ASAI, 47; NSV, 140–141; Jn. Haywood to G. W. Haywood, February 5, 1842, March 17, 1839, May 22, 1836, HAY; P. Cameron to D. Cameron, December 2, 1845, Fol. 973, PCC; Betsy Clingman to I. Jarratt, January 8, 1835, Jarratt-Puryear Papers, Duke. Cf. GSMD, 215.

42
. These lists of pounds picked would not help scholars to identify best seed types. They were offshoots of a slate or memory system designed to carry numbers for individual slaves: Charles Thompson,
Biography of a Slave
(Dayton, OH, 1875), 41–42; Brown,
Slave Life in Georgia
, 128–129; Campbell,
Autobiography
, 33–35.

43
. Ball,
Slavery in the United States
, 186–187, 212. Early daily totals are from
American Farmer
, December 14, 1821, 298; August 31, 1838, Magnolia Pltn. Jnl., Fol. 429, RCB. “Bresh heap” from B. Fox to Eliza Neal, September 25, 1835. For 100–130 lbs./day, see R. and M. Timberlake to Mother, December 26, 1829, Neal Papers, SHC; cf. Phanor Prudhomme Cotton Books, 1836 and 1852, Prudhomme Papers, SHC; “Dunk,” D. W. McKenzie to D. McLaurin, September 26, 1840, Fol. 1838–1840, Duncan McLaurin Papers, Duke; J. F. Thompson Diary, July 6, 1841, [51], Benson-Thompson Papers, Duke; R. B. Beverley to R. Beverley, September 3, 1833, Sec. 13, and August 28, 1842, Sec. 41, Beverley Papers, VHS; Northup,
Twelve Years a Slave
, 125, 135. By 1860, Paul Cameron expected two hundred pounds per hand per day in the Mississippi delta: W. T. Lamb to P. Cameron, September 16, 1860, Fol. 1210, PCC. For increased southwestern extraction of labor, L. A. Finley to Caroline Gordon, February 17, 1853, Gordon-Hackett Papers, SHC; T. J. Brownrigg to R. Brownrigg, January 29, 1836, Brownrigg Papers, SHC; A. K. Barlow to J. J. Philips, April 23, 1849, Ivan Battle Papers, SHC; J. S. Haywood to G. W. Haywood, April 4, 1835, Fol. 144, and J. S. Haywood to Sister, May 3, 1839, Fol. 156, HAY; A. P. Cameron to D. Cameron, December 13, 1845, Fol. 974; W. T. Lamb to P. Cameron, December 1, 1860, PCC.

44
.
Farmers’ Register
, June 1836, 114–116, and November 1934, 353–363; cf. James Pearse,
Narrative of the Life of James Pearse
(Rutland, VT, c. 1826), 24–37; Philip Younger, NSV, 249.

45
. Northup,
Twelve Years a Slave
, 159; John Haywood to G. W. Haywood, February 5, 1842, HAY; Ingraham,
The South-West
, 2:286.

46
. Campbell,
Autobiography
, 36–39.

47
. Martha Bradley, AS, 6.1 (AL), 47; Northup,
Twelve Years a Slave
, 134, 142–143.

48
. I. C. McManus,
Right Hand, Left Hand: The Origins of Asymmetry in Brains, Bodies, Atoms, and Cultures
(Cambridge, MA, 2002).

49
. ASAI, 69; Ball,
Slavery in the United States
, 215; Northup,
Twelve Years a Slave
, 188–189.

50
. ASAI, 69; Ball,
Slavery in the United States
, 218; Anderson,
Life and Narrative
, 29; William Wells Brown,
Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave
(Boston, 1849), 20; GSMD, 199.

51
. Adeline, AS, 6.1 (AL), 181; Frank Hawkins to Wm. Hawkins, August 29, 1849, Fol. 84, Hawkins Papers, SHC; Araby Journal, Haller Nutt Papers, Duke; Magnolia Journal, 1848–1851, Fol. 442, RCB; Gray and Thompson,
History of Agriculture
, 2:702–703.

52
. AS, v. 18, GSMD, 199; cf. B. L. C. Wailes,
Report on the Agriculture and Geology of Mississippi
(Philadelphia, 1854), 154. Historians argue that the acceptability and practice of torture declined in the Western world after the mid-eighteenth century: Foucault,
Discipline and Punish;
Elizabeth Clark, “‘The Sacred Rights of the Weak’: Pain, Sympathy and the Culture of Individual Rights in Antebellum America,”
JAH
82 (1995), 463–493. But if the whippings common on southwestern plantations were torture, then in the United States, white people inflicted torture far more often than in almost any human society that ever existed. Meanwhile, though, a late-antebellum “paternalistic” move made it a crime to kill a slave: Peter Kolchin,
American Slavery, 1619–1877
(New York, 1993), 130–131. Ariela J. Gross, in
Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Courtroom
(Princeton, NJ, 2000), 105–120, finds that defendants presented themselves as using torture for the “rational” purpose of compelling labor. Thomas R.R. Cobb, in
An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery
(Philadelphia, 1858), argues that non-“wanton” violence can enforce “subordination” (90–99).

53
. Many historians of torture hold this definition: Page DuBois,
Torture and Truth
(New York, 1991); John Langbein,
Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Regime
(Chicago, 1977); Edward Peters,
Torture
, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 1996); Foucault,
Discipline and Punish.
But by the United Nations Convention Against Torture, deliberate violence against an imprisoned and/or bound individual becomes torture when it is designed to extract information or a confession, to serve as a punishment, or to inflict intimidation, or is based on discrimination. Cf. William F. Schulz, ed.,
The Phenomenon of Torture: Readings and Commentary
(Philadelphia, 2007).

54
. Herbert Gutman,
Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of Time on the Cross
(Urbana, IL, 1975), 17–35; Davis, ed.,
Plantation Life.
Barrow’s journal also reveals that he whipped 75 percent of the sixty-six working “hands” at one point or another, and Patsey’s skills did not save her from being beaten: Northup,
Twelve Years a Slave
, 142–143, 196–199; Ball,
Slavery in the United States
, 217–218; Brown,
Slave Life in Georgia
, 150.

55
. R. B. Beverley to R. Beverley, September 3, 1833, Sec. 13, August 28, 1842, Sec. 41, Beverley Papers, VHS; Frederick Law Olmsted,
A Journey in the Back Country
(New York, 1860), 1:44, 83–84; Ball,
Slavery in the United States
, 59; Bibb,
Narrative
, 115.

56
. Thomas Jefferson,
Notes on the State of Virginia
(New York, 1984 [Library of America]), 288–289; Nancy Howard, NSV, 50; cf. NSV, 54, 132, 158, 225–227, 243; James Fisher, ST, 236; Brown,
Slave Life in Georgia
, 230–240.

57
. Lavinia Bell, ST, 342–345; cf. ST, 180, 433; NSV, 382; Anderson,
Life and Narrative
, 16; S. Haywood to G. W. Haywood, December 1, 1837, Fol. 151, HAY; Themy to T. Harriss, May [1846], Undated Fol., Thomas Harriss Papers, Duke; W. H. Fox to J. Fox, September 9, 1856, John Fox Papers, Duke; Johnson, NSV, 383–384; Gowens, NSV, 140–141; Brown,
Slave Life in Georgia
, 28–30. For a failed-overseer counter-example, see Pearse,
Narrative
, 35–37.

58
. Henry Clay, AS, S1, 12 (OK), 111–112.

59
. D. Jordan to Malvina, August 3, 1833, D. Jordan Papers, Duke; ST, 435; NSV, 78; Robert W. Fogel and Stanley Engerman, “Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South,” 241–265, and Fogel and Engerman, “Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South: Reply,” in
Without Consent or Contract: Technical Papers
, vol. 1; Stuart W. Bruchey,
Cotton and the Growth of the American Economy, 1790–1860: Sources and Readings
(New York, 1967), 7–21; S. Duncan to J. Ker, n.d., Fol. 12, Ker Papers, SHC;
Farmers’ Register
, November 1834, 353–363; James L. Huston,
Calculating the Value of Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War
(Chapel Hill, NC, 2003).

60
. Ball,
Slavery in the United States
, 216–217.

61
. Wm. Kenner to J. Minor, August 23, 1819, William Kenner Papers, LLMVC.

CHAPTER 5. TONGUES: 1819–1824

1
. Lucy Thurston, AS, S1, 10.5 (MS), 2113.

2
. Sophia Word, AS, 16.2 (KY), 67; Silas Jackson, AS, 16.3 (MD); Ank Bishop, 6.1 (AL), 37; Lucinda Washington, 6.1 (AL), 410; cf. Vincent Brown,
The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery
(Cambridge, MA, 2008).