The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (99 page)

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); Angela 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).

46
. Charles Ball,
Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball
. . . (New York, 1837), 263–265, 275; cf. Dickson D. Bruce,
The Origins of African-American Literature
(Charlottesville, VA, 2001).

47
. Nettie Henry, AS, S.1, 8.3 (MS), 975–976; Jack Hannibal to Dear Mistress, August 9, 1878, Jack Hannibal Letter, Duke.

48
. Eliz. Koonce to Eliz. Franck, December 18, 1849, Cox and Koonce Papers, SHC.

49
. E.g., Notice to Sampson Lanier, JD, and Wildredge Thompson, January 11, 1838, JSD; Memo of Debts, JSD; John Devereux to JD, January 26, 1839, JSD; Bank of Milledgeville to JD, February 14, 1840, JSD; Notice of Protest, April 24, 1840, JSD; S. Grantland to JD, September 14, 1840, JSD;
Executions v. JD
, Macon County, Alabama, October 24, 1840, JSD.

50
. Petition of JD, February 10, 1843, and Deposition JD, JSD.

51
. J. S. Short to T. P. Westray, August 1, 1838, Battle Papers, SHC; John Roberts to John Bacon et al., December 13, 1841, and John Roberts to H. D. Mandeville, January 3, 1842, both in Bank U.S. of Penna. Papers, LLMVC. I thank Richard Kilbourne for generously sharing his transcription of this difficult collection.

52
. Fol.: Papers: 1839, JSD (passim); Rich. Faulkner to Wm. Powell, May 8, 1839, William Powell Papers, Duke; John Roberts to Bacon et al., April 12, 1842, and John Roberts to Geo. Connelly, February 26, 1843, both in Bank of U.S. of Penna. Papers, LLMVC; Joseph Baldwin,
The Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi
(New York, 1854).

53
. R. W. Cook to J. S. Copes, July 5, 1840, Joseph Copes Papers, Tulane; Wm. Thompson to John Bassett, July 19, 1839, Fol. 3, Indiana Thompson, 1842, Fol. 4, John Bassett Papers, SHC.

54
. Jacob Bieller Will, December 1835, Fol. 1/15, BIELLER.

55
. Louisiana Supreme Court,
Bieller v. Bieller
, 1845; Jacob Bieller Will, December 1835, Fol. 1/15, BIELLER. However, Nancy Bieller, at least, did not get to divide and monetize people whom she had claimed. When the divorce case finally made it to the state supreme court, Jacob was dead, as was his son, whose heirs successfully argued that Jacob’s
earlier
divorce from his son’s South Carolina mother in 1808 was never legally completed. Hence Nancy was never really married and her daughter was illegitimate, so Jacob’s white son’s heirs were his legitimate legatees.

56
. “N.B.N.” [?] to JD, July 14, 1841, JSD; Andrew Scott to JD, June 22, 1841, JSD; Wm. Bond to JD, October 22, 1841, JSD; “Memo” [210], Diary 1833–1846, JSD.

57
.
Irish v. Wright
, 8. Rob. La. 428, July 1844 [431], 3:561;
Pleasants v. Glasscock
, Ch. 17, December 1843 [21], 3:297;
Cawthorn v. McDonald
, 1 Rob. La. 55, October 1841 [56], 3:541;
Tuggle v. Barclay
, 6 Ala. 407, January 1844 [408], 3:561, 297, 541, 153, all CATTERALL; Campbell,
Empire for Slavery
, 55.