Know more about William Wells Brown
The trade in enslaved people went beyond taking people from West Africa. In America, as Brown tells us here there was a great deal of trade in enslaved people. Even Brown himself was loaned out by his master to others for payment.
Enslaved people could even be mortgaged. (A loan against that person, so if the slave owner did not repay the loan the enslaved person could be taken from them.)
Sales and auctions were often the most traumatic times as they often meant being separated from family. At times this was done to make money, at others it was a way to punish enslaved people.
As the United States moved westwards so did slavery as plantation owners moved their business, including the enslaved in a westward’s direction. People were also sold in a westwards direction to work on land that had been taken from indigenous people.[1]
Even those who supported slavery often found this business distasteful because of the huge distress it caused. However, it was still a way to make fortunes. Between 1828 and 1836 partners Issac Franklin and John Armfield, from Virginia bought and sold more than one hundred thousand enslaved people per year.[2]
When a person was to be sold or awaiting collection, town jails were used to confine them, showing the use of the state in the sale of people.
Wells Brown was ‘hired out’ numerous times in his early life to other enslavers. This was a common practice to earn the enslaver more money and to also lessen the expense of food and lodging (even though those expenses would be at best minimal.) For the new enslaver it gave them cheap labour without the expense of total ownership.
For Wells Brown this experience took him away from his mother. Writing of his early childhood in St Louis, ‘My mother was hired out in the city, and I was also hired out there to Major Freeland, who kept a public house.’ After six months of ill treatment Wells Brown ran away, to be shortly recaptured using bloodhounds. Shortly after this his mother and siblings were sold and sent away from him. He does not give the reason why in his narrative nor dwells on the huge upset this must have caused.[3] He very quickly goes on to say he was hired out again to a publisher and editor. After this he was a waiter on a steamship. With an increasing set of skills Wells Brown was hired out to an owner of enslaved people. Wells Brown was to sail with them and assist in the sale of them. Here he witnessed the breaking up of families and children taken from mothers.
Wells Brown’s enslaver was a blood relative of his, related to Wells Brown’s father. When Wells Brown was eventually put up for sale (for $500) he made another, and this time successful, bid for escape. He followed, it should be added, the North Star to Freedom in Cincinnati, then through Ohio, Cleveland where he met his wife, Elizabeth Schooner. (Insert link back to main page for more details of his life)
His narrative is a tremendous source of information. For us here, it shows how much the whole economy was reliant on enslavement, not just plantation economies, but a whole range of jobs Wells Brown illuminates for us.
For more on the economics of enslavement click here.
For more on Wells Brown’s link to Ellen and William Craft click here.
[1] American Slavery p98.
[2] American Slavery p96
[3] Greenspan, E. (2008) William Wells Brown a reader. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Pg 17