Walter Johnson’s Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market provides an incredibly in-depth look at the interstices of Antebellum slave pens, mainly those in New Orleans, Louisiana. He examines the daily activity of the slave pens, from the perspective of all participants: the slaves, slave buyers, and slave sellers. Johnson demonstrates how the sale of human beings was a complicated process and he guides readers through the motions of the typical transactions. While many historians focus on the plantations as the center of slave life, Soul by Soul provides a new perspective with the slave pens taking center stage in the history of the antebellum South.
To begin, slave narratives played a dominant role in the evidence used by Johnson to recreate the slave pens. Johnson cited three strategies he employed to decipher the three versions of the slave pens: slave narratives read in tandem with sources produced by slaveholders and visitors to the South; slave narratives read for traces of the experience of slavery antecedent to the ideology of slavery; and the slave narratives read for symbolic truths that stretch beyond the facticity of specific events. In short, Johnson did not solely rely on the words of former slaves themselves, but instead analyzed the slave narratives while fact-checking with other versions of the same story (10). In addition, judicial records were an invaluable source, even though slaves themselves were never allowed to physically testify in a court of law (11). Many slaveholders communicated in letters to family and acquaintances about the intricacies of slavery, and Johnson combed through these for correlations (13). Relying on the most “chillingly economical descriptions of slave sales,” Johnson used the notarized Acts of Sale to reconstruct a historical point of view (14). Truly, no stone is left unturned in Johnson’s rendition of the transaction process within slave pens.
Johnson brings into sharp focus the human reality of the Southern slave trade by explaining the chattel principle. “Any slave’s identity could be disrupted as easily as a price could be set and a piece of paper passed from one hand to another” (19). Slaves were dehumanized based on the price they would bring at a slave sale. These humans had a value that could be abstracted from their bodies and cashed in when the occasion arose (26). Children were not exempt from this facet of chattel-life, either. In fact, Johnson argues that the bodies of slave children were forcibly shaped to their slavery (21). Whippings were designed to correct slave children’s deficits in “character”, or their vices. These slave children would have lived in daily fear of being separated from their families and sent to a slave pen.
One of the most interesting facets of Soul by Soul is Johnson’s claim that antebellum whites used slavery, slave ownership, and slave auctions to assert themselves into Southern society. Undoubtedly, slaveholders were looked upon by their contemporary antebellum counterparts as the elite social class of the time period. In general slaveholders had more money, more property, better housing, more luxury personal items, and more slaves than any other social group. Many slaveholding men and women viewed slave ownership as an indicator of wealth. Johnson’s example of a probable newly-acquired slaveowner aboard the steamship F. W. Downes is a perfect example of slaveholders using slavery as a means to climb the antebellum social ladder. A Mr. J. B. Alexander was witnessed frantically shuttling around the steamship bragging about his recent purchase of “negroes.” Johnson claims that “one of the ways white men made friends with one another was by talking about the slaves they had just bought or sold” (198). White men would also judge other white men on their supposed ability to purchase worthy slaves. Again aboard the F. R. Downes, Mr. Alexander was judged to have made a poor business decision. “When he boarded the F. R. Downes with his new slave, a man he did not know walked up and “remarked to him that he had bought a dead Negro” (201). Slaveholders daily gambled their own fantasies of freedom on the behavior of people whom they could never fully commodify (214).
In addition, slaveholding women were not to be left out of projecting a higher social class based on their ownership of slaves either. One woman had her twelve-year-old slave beaten when his nose dripped blood on dinner napkins (206). A slave’s bloody mess would have been mortifyingly embarrassing for a white woman.
Soul by Soul hits its stride when Johnson explores the various ways in which the slaves themselves were sometimes able to subtly control their own destinies. Historically, slaves in a slave pen have been looked upon as helpless when it came to their sale or salability. Johnson contends that slaves would intentionally try to manipulate slave buyers and sellers. Some slaves used their own skin color to resist slavery. Johnson provides the story of Robert, a light-skinned slave who boarded a steamboat out of New Orleans and escaped slavery. His fellow passengers thought he could have been of Spanish origin. Robert’s skin color, along with his general comportment, allowed him to pass into white society and out of slavery. Another slave, Alexina Morrison, was described as being too white to be a slave. Her blue eyes and blonde hair helped as well. Alexina was able to escape her buyer and sue him for her freedom in the courts of Louisiana. “One after another, her supporters came into court to testify that she was white in ‘her conduct and her actions’ (156).
Furthermore, Johnson points out that slaves were the people with the information. “Slaves were the information brokers in the slave market” (176). Slaves knew what the traders wished them to say and what the holders wished to hear. Sickness would have been the easiest form of resistance many slaves could carry out. Slave buyers had an eye out for even the smallest signs of illness in slaves. “Buyers were searching for vitality and responsiveness” (178). Rather than constant acts of rebellion, slaves used subtle, calculated methods to resist the “peculiar institution.”
Many slaves were bought on a trial basis. This would have provided some with an excellent opportunity to feel their new slave holder out for temperament, anticipated abuse or lack thereof, and general welfare, as well as allowed the buyer to determine if they had made a smart purchase. An advertised cook could have decided to cook poorly. Johnson speculates that one slave, Daniel, may have faked his deafness in order to be brought back from Texas to New Orleans. Johnson also argues that purchasing slaves on a trial basis gave white women an opportunity to participate in the slave trade. Though not able to accompany men to the slave pens, if bought on trial slaves could be brought home and tested out (182).
Soul by Soul brings back to life the New Orleans slave market. As the largest slave market in the South, New Orleans served as the shining example of slave pen life. What Walter Johnson is able to recreate is a testament to his intensive research and his exemplary writing ability. Soul by Soul is a balanced and readable account of America’s most shameful days. I highly recommend!
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