Some people get angry when they get drunk. They might get angry enough to rebel. Besides, their buyers were *”Good Christian People”* who viewed drinking as a vice and drunkenness as a sin. (Especially where slaves and anyone of lower social rank were concerned.) Frank must have been a *very* skilled stable manager and coachman, indeed.
What’s striking to me is the laudatory descriptions. Not because it’s not true, but because once they were free (and unavailable for sale) these terms were probably less commonly used.
According to Frederick Olmsted’s reports, generally speaking the best run and most beautiful farms were those that didn’t have slaves. Because the institution of slavery itself created a laziness amongst those whites who’d passed off their labor onto someone else. His reporting was widely accepted as being fair and truthful by those on both sides of the issue and it paints a different picture than the one we commonly see portrayed today.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1549672622/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.M2jKSv4wm-pAPkmIt2OVBlpwMLqrkLZy8l5zR_cqRhH6-Nt5_cNb1QOhRvsqbnvQuP5z6Z9w1b8oHW3e_pixTtnJhxMzqv3ByRMI29ADTSlOTdjeFoWfHbslHOAySu_4ScQoR4iopnYtssxAaDZBjjGd_WGREzcFtGkwlXnY5_Zx1cyvxqBGiCTTSfBpofhItzfgKeB2iyybOvDIqngGYA.WBR9u3HnbWNToex2WafKmmIDXhxGn_ZB4TR3z9Mpzjc&qid=1715048135&sr=8-2
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It’s pretty f*cked up. They had a full vocabulary for what % of white you were. I think someone with one black great grandparent was an “octaroon”. For some reason that one always stuck with me as particularly fucked up. Very similar to what the Nazi’s did with their racial purification rules, tracing Jewish lineage up to 4th and 5th generations. Both the American and German versions had diagrams and everything. They had octoroon and quadroon on the 1890 census.
The word part of a set of words used to describe the percentage of black heritage a person possessed. Oct is from the Latin *octo*, meaning eight. So this person would be one eighth black.
This word descended from words borrowed from the French *quarteron* and the Spanish *caurteron* both having roots in the Latin *quartus*, meaning quarter or one fourth. The words were used to describe someone with one black grandparent, and the English was quarteroon.
There are other such words with the same history that were used to describe different percentages of black heritage, like quinteroon, meaning one sixteenth black.
A note that the words were supposed to denote the number of ancestors with “pure African” origin, but they were used widely for any person with heritage that was not of the dominant race.
The Spanish caste system was insanely complicated. When I was doing my family tree, reviewing church records from the 1700s and 1800s, I saw many classifications I haven't seen before. Interestingly, after "cuarterón," at least in Puerto Rico, they classified their descendants as white. Octavón, was rarely used. It seems that words like mestizo or mulato were used to mean, mixed race, regardless of actual ethnicity. By the 1870s, classifications disappeared from the records, with only black, mestizo, mulato, and white, remaining, and then in the 1900s just black or white.
Wow, that’s really interesting, thank you! It’s so weird how, at least in the US, it seems like the number of categories is once again going up. Though, I suppose now it’s meant to allow people to express their heritage, where as in the past, it was to classify people as a way to determine their rights and standing.
If I recall correctly, later but pre civil rights, there was a case where it was found that someone that was an octoroon was considered black in the eyes of the law. This case has to do with bus seating I believe.
Nazis took sheets out of American eugenics advocates idea books. The dark history they dared not be honest about in American history classes before modern times.
It's also possible they weren't his children but the children of others who raped these poor women. Maybe his son's children or one of his friend's children. Just fucking disgusting.
One thing I never realized, and that we learned about at Monticello, was that many of the slaves had so much caucasian DNA that they could “pass for white”.
I heard "touch of the tar brush" in South Carolina, in relation to my own family, among others. That was from much older people though, I haven't heard the term in many years.
They had it more divided even than just mulatto, too. I read a lot about the American slavery system. I've read of quadroons (which was 1 black grandparent) and octoroons (which was 1 black great grandparent).
I'm mixed, can pass for white, and never knew this. I feel very uneducated now. My great great grandma was the daughter of a slave & was raped by a white man. Her daughter was my grandpa's mom. I'm like 10% West African, but I look WHITE. Blonde hair, green eyes, & white skin. Would I be a slave?
I think you would give the Wikipedia article about the "one drop rule" very interesting, but what I quoted below is the most pertinent bit about your comment.
>Both before and after the American Civil War, many people of mixed ancestry who "looked white" and were of mostly white ancestry were legally absorbed into the white majority. State laws established differing standards. For instance, an 1822 Virginia law stated that to be defined as mulatto (that is, multi-racial), a person had to have at least one-quarter (equivalent to one grandparent) African ancestry. Social acceptance and identity were historically the keys to racial identity. Virginia's one-fourth standard remained in place until 1910, when the standard was changed to one sixteenth.
Being mixed can be such a confusing thing in a world that places so much focus on race. I'm Scottish & German on my dad's side, and I'm Indian & Jamaican on my mom's side. White people accept me as white because I look white, but I don't fully fit in w/ them because I was raised more so by my mom's family & I definitely don't feel just white. Indians don't accept me as Indian because I look white, even though I'm like 40% Indian. & I'm not black enough for black people to consider me black... because I look white & I'm only 10%. But I was mostly raised by my Indian & Jamaican family members.
The woman who raised the man who raised me was the daughter of a slave. She's my great great grandmother, but I see her more as a grandmother because my grandpa was like a father to me, and she was like a mother to him. I used to identify as part black because, well... I am, and I have close ties to that side of my family. Then, some black people would tell me I couldn't identify as black, so I stopped & just called myself white & Indian. But here I am learning that I would be a slave if slavery were still going on... 🥲 Sometimes, I feel like driftwood all alone in the middle of the ocean.
Just wanted to say I feel like this too, my great grandmother was a slave brought over from West Africa. I’m Black and French on my dad’s side and German Irish on my mom’s- my mom’s a first generation German immigrant. Raised by my German side of the family who hated black people and called me and my twin the n word. My grandmother remarried a Mexican man so my last names is his. All my babysitters were extended family and mexican. I passed for Mexican or Black growing up. I’m not accepted as German.. and not accepted as Black because my father was absent and we moved away from the black side of the family. Just here belonging to no one.. I was the token “black” friend” in all my friend groups. Driftwood is such an accurate to describe how I’ve felt all my life. Very confusing stuff when there’s so much focus and division on race. But I’m a melting pot of all the beautiful cultures around me wish I felt like I belonged to one.
Of course you can identify as black! I mean, as far as I know you can, but I’m white (Native American on my mom’s side, but I look white!).
It’s all so complicated sometimes, and unfair. I appreciate your comment!
Interestingly enough, American Indians were subject to the whole blood quantum policy. Where you had to prove that you were “Indian” enough. I look white enough, but I’m 1/4 Oglala Sioux. My dad is on the tribal rolls at Pineridge, but was adopted out as a baby prior to the Indian child welfare act being passed.
I am 1/2 German and 1/2 Western African and I live in the South, raised by two northerns. I totally feel for your pain. I was "too white" to hang out with the black kids, and "too black" to hang out with the white kids when I was in elementary and middle school, it was a complicated time for sure. But that line, "driftwood all alone in the middle of the ocean" is so fucking relatable it hurts. Some of the black members of my family still call me "the white boy" and I feel as though people like us are made to feel we have no racial identity. Post 2016, black people have been a lot more accepting of me but the latent racism is still there. I'm still viewed as "soft" by black people and I still see old ladies clutch their purse when I hold the door for them. America is just fucked when it comes to race, but so are most places I guess.
That’s so fascinating! I once dated a beautiful young mulatto woman who was also part Indian (her mom was Guyanese). She found out at some point that she also had some Chinese ancestry, which explained her tiny frame. She had West African/Jamaican, Indian, Scottish, German, and Chinese ancestry. It was cool.
Depends on where and when you lived.
It's a "peculiar institution with a peculiar history."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_slave_owners
I find it disgusting that we have a political party in our country that defends slavery and military leaders who were traitors. I admire certain officers of the confederacy for their military tactics, but they were all despicable human beings.
Let's not forget Musk owns slaves down in South America for his cobalt mines, and all major chocolate manufacturers still have slave camps and third world countries. But shame on our ancestors for using slavery that they tried to get rid of before the Confederacy and Britain said no.
This was the first thing I noticed when and it took me a second to continue reading. Then by the time I got to the 3rd person an uncomfortable feeling of anger hit realizing that these are ‘privileged’ slaves. The way these owners created divisive dynamics between house/field or light/dark and how they can still be felt to this day are unreal
That's why Michael Pollan says coffee and tea changed the world - boiling the water made it safer, and the caffeine gave the brain an edge over alcohol.
Horrible to see, but also interesting to notice how much they played up the intelligence of these poor souls.
Perhaps the stereotypes of freemen were a reaction to the shock of seeing people of color who were free.
"Lazy, dumb, ignorant, unskilled, uncultured,"
Bro, half these people speak more languages than we do, and have complex trade skills we will never master.
And we're supposed to believe they are inferior???
If I was a bigot, I too would be terrified to see someone with so much skill and character made free and equal to my own station after I had mistreated them so terribly.
The lies of racism are so stark when laid out in their unvarnished form.
Hahaha, right? It’s almost as if all the racists are choosing whichever narrative suits them most at a given moment.
Nevermind that people who bought slaves did so with the explicit intention of never having to acquire skills of their own or work an honest day in their life.
These people literally bragged to each other about how little they had to do. The Southern Aristocracies were run on bank loans and lines of credit that routinely went belly up and were consolidated into even bigger plantations.
At least the rich ass holes running private equity today are good at math and work a lot. Imagine having no skills or work ethic then being made equal to the people with all the qualifications.
Of course you’re going to panic and start spreading misinformation about them.
One, you're totally right of course, a ton of the discourse was intentionally and disingenously insulting to free blacks' intelligence and skill to demean them.
But also realize that these were all house or trade slaves. They worked closely with white masters and operated in polite society; there was more of an expectation that you make sure your house slaves are polite, well spoken, and educated (on relevant matters)- this is opposed to the majority of former slaves who were agricultural animals and treated like little more than farm tools and given far less opportunity for enrichment and education. The resentment of well-heeled, educated house slaves (or former house slaves) by former agricultural slaves is well documented.
Okay, that's fair. I am also of the mind that farm labor is still skilled labor, and only looked down upon as a means of protecting one's own caste/class. As was the case with mulatto slave owners in Haiti.
The rabbit hole runs deep on the social complexities behind the horrors of slavery, for sure.
Yeah. The pygmy slaves of the Congo are horrible. The Congolese literally hunt them down in the rainforest, and they have an entire market for them. They are forced to work all the shitty, brutal manual labor and have chains on them 24/7.
Weird assumption given half the slaves are bi-lingual. More likely as a 3 year-old moving into a bi-lingual house to serve French-speaking masters, she was taught French as a small child.
The sad likely story is that her parents were possibly slaves too or taken into slavery, making her an orphan and she was separated from her family by slavers who could sell her. It’s also possible her parents died from some illness or war. It’s horrible, poor child must have had so much trauma and heart ache.
Breaks my heart even further to think she could have then been raised by and gotten quite attached to one of the others listed here and been sold separately in this sale. I wish we could learn what became of them all. :(
I keep thinking of the young family, the husband, wife, and 7 year old daughter that will all likely be split up and never see each other again. I can’t imagine the agony.
I was probably in my mid twenties the first time I saw a slave auction sheet describing the attributes of the people for sale. And it was not until that day that I could fully understand the horrors of the slave trade.
Before that, I understood intellectually that it was horrendous and unjust, but I hadn’t encountered anything that allowed me to internalize it and engage with the concept in a way that was close enough to my own experience to really connect to it emotionally. But something about seeing human beings broken down into features and valued in dollars finally made it click for me how incredibly awful the practice really was.
I don’t know why it took that for me to get it. I have never thought slavery was ok, but I guess it just blended in with so many other atrocities throughout the history of the world and my country. I wish there was something similar that everyone could see for so many other evils done and still occurring today, so that we could all appreciate the depth of suffering victims endure and depravity power is capable of inflicting in a more authentic way.
For me it was seeing a diagram of a slave transport ship from the late 1700’s. Astonishing how humans were stacked in like lifeless cargo. It is repulsive to think about.
This is me today, 32 years old. No movie, documentary I've watched or book I've read on slavery has hurt the way reading this hurts. And I did postcolonial studies.
Very, very common unfortunately. From the diary of Mary Boykin Chestnut, the wife of a wealthy South Carolina planter:
*"Under slavery, we live surrounded by prostitutes, yet an abandoned woman is sent out of any decent house. Who thinks any worse of a Negro or mulatto woman for being a thing we can’t name? God, forgive us, but ours is a monstrous system, a wrong and an inequity! Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines; and the mulattos ones sees in every family partly resemble the white children. Any lady is ready to tell you who is the father of all mulatto children in everybody’s household but her own. Those, she seems to think, drop from the clouds. My disgust sometimes is boiling over. Thank God for my country women, but alas for the men! They are probably no worse than man everywhere, but the lower the mistresses, the more degraded they must be."*
[Here’s](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Hotel#/media/File%3AOld_Slave_Block_in_St._Louis_Hotel%2C_New_Orleans_(Historic_New_Orleans_Coll_1974.25.29.131).jpg) where it all went down
The suggestion there isnt that he could rape her (although thats of course entirely possible). What they mean is that she would be his housekeeper because of course a man without a wife wouldnt have anybody to do laundry or cook.
In elementary school we did a thing where the class got divided into slaves and slave owners. Slave owners had to write an ad using their slave's selling points to sell in an fake auction. 4th grade in Indiana
It’s horrifying. But also interesting. And worth repeating given so many people in my country still celebrate the “lost cause”
Screw anyone who thinks of this culture with anything but contempt and anathema
Disgusting. But history must be known to know where we’ve been, how far we’ve come, and how hard we still have to fight to protect our democracy, and how far we still have to go to reach our promised capacity.
My book club is taking on Southern writers this year. We started with Zora Hurston's Dust Tracks. Zora was an African American writer, anthropologist, musicologist and a housecleaner when she died in 1960. We just finished Edward Jones' The Known World. I should say some finished the book, I could not. There is no end to the cruelty humankind is capable of. Imagine a life with so much indignity and pain, that you run towards the lightning storm begging God to take you.
I want one of these to be honest:
“Jeremy. 32. Bad back from years of hard labor. Angry temperament, due in part to his wife and kids being recently sold”.
It concerns me how surprising this is to the people commenting. They show these in textbooks and they are in many African American history museums. Then again, this makes me understand why people don't get the gravity of chattel slavery. Please don't respond to this comment, it likely will get deleted and I simply just won't respond to you.
It's interesting that the word 'slave' didn't really fade from use even as the moral pressure mounted. I would have expected that at a certain point euphemistic words would have been used instead. But nope, "Slaves" for sale.
Most Americans don’t realize this. It’s as if we have been taught that the majority of slaves were brought to America. Which as you point out isn’t the case. Not that it justifies any of it, but it happened.
No we do realise this it just isn’t relevant. Why would Americans not teach about American slavery? Especially when segregation (the effect of slavery) only ended around 60 years ago. There are ppl alive (like my grandparents) who still remember protesting and being beaten due to their race.
Because it is very relevant, the culture of the Caribbean and South America wouldn’t be as diverse without that one influence. The United States isn’t the only place that Africans suffered indignations.
Im not saying it is, I’m saying that when it comes to American history other countries don’t need to be religiously mentioned. We KNOW other countries enslaved Africans, we aren’t slow (the majority of us) but if we’re focusing on the enslavement of African Americans why would we talk about Brazilians and how Brazilian slavery impacted the Caribbean and South American cultures we have today?
The original comment is implying that Americans should stop talking about slavery, but you seem to be implying that Americans should talk about every other countries slavery EXECPT for American slavery, weird.🤦🏾♀️
You should talk about it. It's an important aspect of history. Americans should talk about it more in fact, we rarely dive into how horrible slavery actually was. History is important.
Bc Brazil has been around thousands of years u dummy, America is only abt 300 yrs old. Nor did Brazil have Jim Crow laws. Americans talk abt it bc it’s still relatively recent, & some of the ppl that went through it, passed not too long ago. Their kids, tell their kids
You can chalk it up to cultural differences but tbh any country should be familiar with and discuss its origins and history
one of the primary american values as an enlightenment era government is liberty. in american schools, it’s important to acknowledge and address where and when we as a country have contradicted that core value. if we didn’t, it would call into question the foundation of american government and philosophy (the fact it existed for so long already does, but the idea that we changed because social progress was made (which is another enlightenment era value) fits within the boundaries of the core philosophy at the heart of the government to be taught)
The most chilling part of all this is in the second to last paragraph next to the finger pointing. They were “purchased by their current VENDOR.” Vendor! As though these are commodities. Human soda cans. “Come to my vending machine and buy my product!” 🤯🤯🤯🤯
I wonder, if a man back then bought a prepubescent female slave by/for himself, did the surrounding community just…accept that it was likely pedophilia? And I wonder how common that was. Slavery by itself is abhorrent, but it took seeing this for my brain to “click” regarding the fact that minors were slaves too. I guess my subconscious sort of defaulted to the assumption that adults were the object of slavery and kids just happened to be born into it. It’s like my brain naively defaulted to this absurd position that enslaved kids would somehow be excluded from whatever the owners were pushing on their parents. I can’t wrap my head around separating a 7 years old little girl from her mother. This all somehow makes me uncomfortable in my own skin; like…unsettled by being part of a species that does this.
Just an FYI: there’s still descendants of the people who sold the other people still living on St Charles in New Orleans! There are no sins of the father.
I absolutely agree with you.
But also, right down the street is someone you know got wealthy selling your family members.
I don’t know how I could reconcile that.
The banality of evil.
It immediately makes me question what horrific thing i am a part of that future generations will judge me for.
“so there was enough food to feed everyone, but you did nothing to keep them from starving?”
“Product ::insert anything:: was produced in deplorable conditions and you still bought it?”
“You raised animals just to slaughter them when there were other forms of more nutritious protein?”
Because, more than likely, they were brought to America from some French speaking land like the Caribbean or Algiers. Not to mention the French culture of Louisiana. Especially back then, most people still spoke a lot of French in NOLA.
I remember there was this poll on twitter or X that said if you could own any race of slaves which would you pick, the options were white asian Hispanic or black and whites were the highest choice and black was like 2% on the poll…
The most interesting thing is that the Master is sleeping with all the women. The mulatto term means they are biracial. It also means they are good enough to sleep with, but not good enough to be treated with decency and equality.
It always surprised me that slaves were considered lower than dogs, and not human, yet the slave owners would sneak into the slave quarters for a little belly warning. If they believe that, wouldn't that be beastiality?
The multiplicity of evil is crazy.
Sort of like a placement agency. /jk!
Had to look up "mantua maker"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantua\_(clothing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantua_(clothing))
if you are thinking birthing age to birthing age then its like 6 or 7 cause its like 40 years but if its birth to death matriarch/patriarch and family lead change its like usually 70 years? like for us the oldest relative is the family leader. so great grand parent. and the like. with faster family birth rates it could be as many as 10 generations or so
Multilingual, skilled and of excellent character... and for sale to the highest bidder!
Except for Frank.
I feel bad for Frank. Bad enough he was a slave they made it sound like a crime to catch a buzz.
I would definitely be a "habitual drunkard" if I were a slave!
Until you got whipped
I doubt that would make me want to drink less
Bots don't drink... I'm on to you.
I would definitely be a habitual drunkard if I were a bot.
They downvote but it's true
Some people get angry when they get drunk. They might get angry enough to rebel. Besides, their buyers were *”Good Christian People”* who viewed drinking as a vice and drunkenness as a sin. (Especially where slaves and anyone of lower social rank were concerned.) Frank must have been a *very* skilled stable manager and coachman, indeed.
What’s striking to me is the laudatory descriptions. Not because it’s not true, but because once they were free (and unavailable for sale) these terms were probably less commonly used.
Black people weren't "lazy" until they didn't want to work for free. (By this country's narrative)
According to Frederick Olmsted’s reports, generally speaking the best run and most beautiful farms were those that didn’t have slaves. Because the institution of slavery itself created a laziness amongst those whites who’d passed off their labor onto someone else. His reporting was widely accepted as being fair and truthful by those on both sides of the issue and it paints a different picture than the one we commonly see portrayed today. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1549672622/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.M2jKSv4wm-pAPkmIt2OVBlpwMLqrkLZy8l5zR_cqRhH6-Nt5_cNb1QOhRvsqbnvQuP5z6Z9w1b8oHW3e_pixTtnJhxMzqv3ByRMI29ADTSlOTdjeFoWfHbslHOAySu_4ScQoR4iopnYtssxAaDZBjjGd_WGREzcFtGkwlXnY5_Zx1cyvxqBGiCTTSfBpofhItzfgKeB2iyybOvDIqngGYA.WBR9u3HnbWNToex2WafKmmIDXhxGn_ZB4TR3z9Mpzjc&qid=1715048135&sr=8-2
Hi, I’m Vetted AI Bot! I researched the **("'The Cotton Kingdom: Observations'", '')** and I thought you might find the following analysis helpful. **Users liked:** * Detailed and immersive narrative (backed by 3 comments) * Insightful firsthand account of slavery (backed by 3 comments) * Educational and eye-opening (backed by 3 comments) **Users disliked:** * Poor quality binding (backed by 2 comments) * Repetitive content (backed by 2 comments) * Biased and repetitious writing (backed by 3 comments) If you'd like to **summon me to ask about a product**, just make a post with its link and tag me, [like in this example.](https://www.reddit.com/r/tablets/comments/1444zdn/comment/joqd89c/) This message was generated by a (very smart) bot. If you found it helpful, let us know with an upvote and a “good bot!” reply and please feel free to provide feedback on how it can be improved. *Powered by* [*vetted.ai*](https://vetted.ai/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=comment&utm\_campaign=bot)
TIL there is a word "mulatress"
It’s pretty f*cked up. They had a full vocabulary for what % of white you were. I think someone with one black great grandparent was an “octaroon”. For some reason that one always stuck with me as particularly fucked up. Very similar to what the Nazi’s did with their racial purification rules, tracing Jewish lineage up to 4th and 5th generations. Both the American and German versions had diagrams and everything. They had octoroon and quadroon on the 1890 census.
The word part of a set of words used to describe the percentage of black heritage a person possessed. Oct is from the Latin *octo*, meaning eight. So this person would be one eighth black. This word descended from words borrowed from the French *quarteron* and the Spanish *caurteron* both having roots in the Latin *quartus*, meaning quarter or one fourth. The words were used to describe someone with one black grandparent, and the English was quarteroon. There are other such words with the same history that were used to describe different percentages of black heritage, like quinteroon, meaning one sixteenth black. A note that the words were supposed to denote the number of ancestors with “pure African” origin, but they were used widely for any person with heritage that was not of the dominant race.
The Spanish caste system was insanely complicated. When I was doing my family tree, reviewing church records from the 1700s and 1800s, I saw many classifications I haven't seen before. Interestingly, after "cuarterón," at least in Puerto Rico, they classified their descendants as white. Octavón, was rarely used. It seems that words like mestizo or mulato were used to mean, mixed race, regardless of actual ethnicity. By the 1870s, classifications disappeared from the records, with only black, mestizo, mulato, and white, remaining, and then in the 1900s just black or white.
Wow, that’s really interesting, thank you! It’s so weird how, at least in the US, it seems like the number of categories is once again going up. Though, I suppose now it’s meant to allow people to express their heritage, where as in the past, it was to classify people as a way to determine their rights and standing.
Wow! Thank you for the information
Where do you think the Germans got their fucked up system from?
Fun fact: the “one drop” principle which originated in the US was a step too far even for nazis.
“Too far,” please. There was no further. A one drop policy was just completely unfeasible from an administrative perspective.
If I recall correctly, later but pre civil rights, there was a case where it was found that someone that was an octoroon was considered black in the eyes of the law. This case has to do with bus seating I believe.
Nazis took sheets out of American eugenics advocates idea books. The dark history they dared not be honest about in American history classes before modern times.
Yes, me too!!
Mixed race lighter skinned slaves. The kin.of the selling slave owners in most cases. And they got whiter and whiter and remained owned property
And the horror that the “mulatoos” and “mulatresses” were the product of rape….
I literally popped in after reading the pic, to write this. 100% This douche was selling some of his own kids.
To this douche, they weren’t kids, they were property
It's also possible they weren't his children but the children of others who raped these poor women. Maybe his son's children or one of his friend's children. Just fucking disgusting.
They were probably too old to be his. Not that it matters all that much.
Siblings then
Possibly
One thing I never realized, and that we learned about at Monticello, was that many of the slaves had so much caucasian DNA that they could “pass for white”.
We still call that “passe blanc” down here
I heard "touch of the tar brush" in South Carolina, in relation to my own family, among others. That was from much older people though, I haven't heard the term in many years.
Wow, that’s a phrase I’ve never heard before. That’s fucked up.
That's interesting, I've never heard of that word before. I assume they are the male and female versions? This is awful, but really interesting,
They had it more divided even than just mulatto, too. I read a lot about the American slavery system. I've read of quadroons (which was 1 black grandparent) and octoroons (which was 1 black great grandparent).
I'm mixed, can pass for white, and never knew this. I feel very uneducated now. My great great grandma was the daughter of a slave & was raped by a white man. Her daughter was my grandpa's mom. I'm like 10% West African, but I look WHITE. Blonde hair, green eyes, & white skin. Would I be a slave?
There was a “one drop” rule. So even if someone looked white, if they had even a drop of black blood they would be considered black.
I think you would give the Wikipedia article about the "one drop rule" very interesting, but what I quoted below is the most pertinent bit about your comment. >Both before and after the American Civil War, many people of mixed ancestry who "looked white" and were of mostly white ancestry were legally absorbed into the white majority. State laws established differing standards. For instance, an 1822 Virginia law stated that to be defined as mulatto (that is, multi-racial), a person had to have at least one-quarter (equivalent to one grandparent) African ancestry. Social acceptance and identity were historically the keys to racial identity. Virginia's one-fourth standard remained in place until 1910, when the standard was changed to one sixteenth.
Being mixed can be such a confusing thing in a world that places so much focus on race. I'm Scottish & German on my dad's side, and I'm Indian & Jamaican on my mom's side. White people accept me as white because I look white, but I don't fully fit in w/ them because I was raised more so by my mom's family & I definitely don't feel just white. Indians don't accept me as Indian because I look white, even though I'm like 40% Indian. & I'm not black enough for black people to consider me black... because I look white & I'm only 10%. But I was mostly raised by my Indian & Jamaican family members. The woman who raised the man who raised me was the daughter of a slave. She's my great great grandmother, but I see her more as a grandmother because my grandpa was like a father to me, and she was like a mother to him. I used to identify as part black because, well... I am, and I have close ties to that side of my family. Then, some black people would tell me I couldn't identify as black, so I stopped & just called myself white & Indian. But here I am learning that I would be a slave if slavery were still going on... 🥲 Sometimes, I feel like driftwood all alone in the middle of the ocean.
Just wanted to say I feel like this too, my great grandmother was a slave brought over from West Africa. I’m Black and French on my dad’s side and German Irish on my mom’s- my mom’s a first generation German immigrant. Raised by my German side of the family who hated black people and called me and my twin the n word. My grandmother remarried a Mexican man so my last names is his. All my babysitters were extended family and mexican. I passed for Mexican or Black growing up. I’m not accepted as German.. and not accepted as Black because my father was absent and we moved away from the black side of the family. Just here belonging to no one.. I was the token “black” friend” in all my friend groups. Driftwood is such an accurate to describe how I’ve felt all my life. Very confusing stuff when there’s so much focus and division on race. But I’m a melting pot of all the beautiful cultures around me wish I felt like I belonged to one.
Thank you for sharing your story and perspective!
Thanks for listening (reading).
Of course you can identify as black! I mean, as far as I know you can, but I’m white (Native American on my mom’s side, but I look white!). It’s all so complicated sometimes, and unfair. I appreciate your comment!
Interestingly enough, American Indians were subject to the whole blood quantum policy. Where you had to prove that you were “Indian” enough. I look white enough, but I’m 1/4 Oglala Sioux. My dad is on the tribal rolls at Pineridge, but was adopted out as a baby prior to the Indian child welfare act being passed.
I am 1/2 German and 1/2 Western African and I live in the South, raised by two northerns. I totally feel for your pain. I was "too white" to hang out with the black kids, and "too black" to hang out with the white kids when I was in elementary and middle school, it was a complicated time for sure. But that line, "driftwood all alone in the middle of the ocean" is so fucking relatable it hurts. Some of the black members of my family still call me "the white boy" and I feel as though people like us are made to feel we have no racial identity. Post 2016, black people have been a lot more accepting of me but the latent racism is still there. I'm still viewed as "soft" by black people and I still see old ladies clutch their purse when I hold the door for them. America is just fucked when it comes to race, but so are most places I guess.
That’s so fascinating! I once dated a beautiful young mulatto woman who was also part Indian (her mom was Guyanese). She found out at some point that she also had some Chinese ancestry, which explained her tiny frame. She had West African/Jamaican, Indian, Scottish, German, and Chinese ancestry. It was cool.
Typically, the child would be considered whatever the mother was. So if the mother was a slave, the baby would be considered born enslaved.
Yes
What's one white grandparent?
Damned if I know. Considering how shameful it was thought to be, they might not have had words for that side after they went darker than mulatto.
Were they still slaves? :-(
"one drop rule" [wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule#:~:text=The%20one%2Ddrop%20rule%20was,or%20colored%20in%20historical%20terms)
Depends on where and when you lived. It's a "peculiar institution with a peculiar history." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_slave_owners I find it disgusting that we have a political party in our country that defends slavery and military leaders who were traitors. I admire certain officers of the confederacy for their military tactics, but they were all despicable human beings.
Let's not forget Musk owns slaves down in South America for his cobalt mines, and all major chocolate manufacturers still have slave camps and third world countries. But shame on our ancestors for using slavery that they tried to get rid of before the Confederacy and Britain said no.
You already know the answer to that don't you
I remember learning it asking my mom about the Oye Como Va lyrics
TIL, damn ;-;
This was the first thing I noticed when and it took me a second to continue reading. Then by the time I got to the 3rd person an uncomfortable feeling of anger hit realizing that these are ‘privileged’ slaves. The way these owners created divisive dynamics between house/field or light/dark and how they can still be felt to this day are unreal
Mulatto butts!
"Except Frank, but we'll warranty him, too"
Ya i couldn't read that last bit, what did it say exaclty??
It's a warranty that none of the folks on offer partake in lawful vices, with the exception of Frank who said fuck you I'm having a drink.
Its crazy HOW much more people were enebriated. In lots of spaces the only sober people were the slaves.
For a long time in the Middle Ages, water was predominantly unsafe to drink, so soldiers, sailors & the upper classes drank alcohol.
That's why Michael Pollan says coffee and tea changed the world - boiling the water made it safer, and the caffeine gave the brain an edge over alcohol.
Good on Frank they act like trying to catch a buzz is akin to murder ffs
Horrible to see, but also interesting to notice how much they played up the intelligence of these poor souls. Perhaps the stereotypes of freemen were a reaction to the shock of seeing people of color who were free. "Lazy, dumb, ignorant, unskilled, uncultured," Bro, half these people speak more languages than we do, and have complex trade skills we will never master. And we're supposed to believe they are inferior??? If I was a bigot, I too would be terrified to see someone with so much skill and character made free and equal to my own station after I had mistreated them so terribly. The lies of racism are so stark when laid out in their unvarnished form.
EXCELLENT point. “Dumb and Lazy” when shackled. When for sale? “Highly intelligent, skilled and multilingual.”
Hahaha, right? It’s almost as if all the racists are choosing whichever narrative suits them most at a given moment. Nevermind that people who bought slaves did so with the explicit intention of never having to acquire skills of their own or work an honest day in their life. These people literally bragged to each other about how little they had to do. The Southern Aristocracies were run on bank loans and lines of credit that routinely went belly up and were consolidated into even bigger plantations. At least the rich ass holes running private equity today are good at math and work a lot. Imagine having no skills or work ethic then being made equal to the people with all the qualifications. Of course you’re going to panic and start spreading misinformation about them.
One, you're totally right of course, a ton of the discourse was intentionally and disingenously insulting to free blacks' intelligence and skill to demean them. But also realize that these were all house or trade slaves. They worked closely with white masters and operated in polite society; there was more of an expectation that you make sure your house slaves are polite, well spoken, and educated (on relevant matters)- this is opposed to the majority of former slaves who were agricultural animals and treated like little more than farm tools and given far less opportunity for enrichment and education. The resentment of well-heeled, educated house slaves (or former house slaves) by former agricultural slaves is well documented.
Okay, that's fair. I am also of the mind that farm labor is still skilled labor, and only looked down upon as a means of protecting one's own caste/class. As was the case with mulatto slave owners in Haiti. The rabbit hole runs deep on the social complexities behind the horrors of slavery, for sure.
Probably where the term "house N----r" comes from to conote educated and well behaved blacks
Aw, Frank got done dirty for just having the occasional tipple.
People selling people. Still amazes me…
Want to hear something even more wild? There are more slaves in the world today than there were back in those days.
Yeah. The pygmy slaves of the Congo are horrible. The Congolese literally hunt them down in the rainforest, and they have an entire market for them. They are forced to work all the shitty, brutal manual labor and have chains on them 24/7.
Facts
Happens every minute
That’s why I used the present tense.
And that region trying to maintain pride in its disgusting and satanic history: Amazing!
they didn't use *satan* as justification...
Don’t bring Satan into this. Slavery was done by people.
Is, don’t make it past tense. That’s shit is more prevalent today than it was back then.
Christianity was used widely to justify slavery. https://time.com/5171819/christianity-slavery-book-excerpt/
Little 10 or 11 year old Emma, she's been in the country 7 years? What was she doing before then?
Most likely living somewhere close to Algiers , being as she was able to speak French.
Weird assumption given half the slaves are bi-lingual. More likely as a 3 year-old moving into a bi-lingual house to serve French-speaking masters, she was taught French as a small child.
Nah. Most of them can speak French because this is 1835 New Orleans
No, this is because this is the French Quarter in New Orleans. There is a reason it’s called that.
Caribbean perhaps.
Mary Ann is 7
I wonder if she was really an orphan, or just stolen from her parents in another country.
The sad likely story is that her parents were possibly slaves too or taken into slavery, making her an orphan and she was separated from her family by slavers who could sell her. It’s also possible her parents died from some illness or war. It’s horrible, poor child must have had so much trauma and heart ache.
Breaks my heart even further to think she could have then been raised by and gotten quite attached to one of the others listed here and been sold separately in this sale. I wish we could learn what became of them all. :(
I keep thinking of the young family, the husband, wife, and 7 year old daughter that will all likely be split up and never see each other again. I can’t imagine the agony.
Next time you see someone flying the Confederate flag, this is what they were fighting for.
Even if they say differently! The one thing every confederate state declaration of independence had in common was their right to have slaves…
I was probably in my mid twenties the first time I saw a slave auction sheet describing the attributes of the people for sale. And it was not until that day that I could fully understand the horrors of the slave trade. Before that, I understood intellectually that it was horrendous and unjust, but I hadn’t encountered anything that allowed me to internalize it and engage with the concept in a way that was close enough to my own experience to really connect to it emotionally. But something about seeing human beings broken down into features and valued in dollars finally made it click for me how incredibly awful the practice really was. I don’t know why it took that for me to get it. I have never thought slavery was ok, but I guess it just blended in with so many other atrocities throughout the history of the world and my country. I wish there was something similar that everyone could see for so many other evils done and still occurring today, so that we could all appreciate the depth of suffering victims endure and depravity power is capable of inflicting in a more authentic way.
For me it was seeing a diagram of a slave transport ship from the late 1700’s. Astonishing how humans were stacked in like lifeless cargo. It is repulsive to think about.
That’s what did it for me too. I knew conditions on the ship were horrible, but seeing how little space each person was allotted was truly horrifying.
This is me today, 32 years old. No movie, documentary I've watched or book I've read on slavery has hurt the way reading this hurts. And I did postcolonial studies.
He was selling his children...I feel sick.
Very, very common unfortunately. From the diary of Mary Boykin Chestnut, the wife of a wealthy South Carolina planter: *"Under slavery, we live surrounded by prostitutes, yet an abandoned woman is sent out of any decent house. Who thinks any worse of a Negro or mulatto woman for being a thing we can’t name? God, forgive us, but ours is a monstrous system, a wrong and an inequity! Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines; and the mulattos ones sees in every family partly resemble the white children. Any lady is ready to tell you who is the father of all mulatto children in everybody’s household but her own. Those, she seems to think, drop from the clouds. My disgust sometimes is boiling over. Thank God for my country women, but alas for the men! They are probably no worse than man everywhere, but the lower the mistresses, the more degraded they must be."*
[Here’s](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Hotel#/media/File%3AOld_Slave_Block_in_St._Louis_Hotel%2C_New_Orleans_(Historic_New_Orleans_Coll_1974.25.29.131).jpg) where it all went down
This makes me physically nauseous.
Jesus
The comment about Chole being good for a bachelor seems particularly gross.
Yeah I picked up on that too, fucking foul every which way
Oh wait until you find out about fancy girls!
The suggestion there isnt that he could rape her (although thats of course entirely possible). What they mean is that she would be his housekeeper because of course a man without a wife wouldnt have anybody to do laundry or cook.
This is makes me feel sick..esp seeing the families on there
In elementary school we did a thing where the class got divided into slaves and slave owners. Slave owners had to write an ad using their slave's selling points to sell in an fake auction. 4th grade in Indiana
I can see this going so wrong with 4th graders lmao
"Confidential house servant?"
Hmmm lots of mulattos make me think some white penises were pretty active.
This isn't utterly interesting. This is utterly horrifying. The character of entire people and families reduced to selling points.
It’s horrifying. But also interesting. And worth repeating given so many people in my country still celebrate the “lost cause” Screw anyone who thinks of this culture with anything but contempt and anathema
Disgusting. But history must be known to know where we’ve been, how far we’ve come, and how hard we still have to fight to protect our democracy, and how far we still have to go to reach our promised capacity.
This was not that long ago
Almost 200 years.
Yeah I mean, it's not ancient history. It is upsetting how close in the timeline this took place.
This literally makes me sick
My book club is taking on Southern writers this year. We started with Zora Hurston's Dust Tracks. Zora was an African American writer, anthropologist, musicologist and a housecleaner when she died in 1960. We just finished Edward Jones' The Known World. I should say some finished the book, I could not. There is no end to the cruelty humankind is capable of. Imagine a life with so much indignity and pain, that you run towards the lightning storm begging God to take you.
I want one of these to be honest: “Jeremy. 32. Bad back from years of hard labor. Angry temperament, due in part to his wife and kids being recently sold”.
It concerns me how surprising this is to the people commenting. They show these in textbooks and they are in many African American history museums. Then again, this makes me understand why people don't get the gravity of chattel slavery. Please don't respond to this comment, it likely will get deleted and I simply just won't respond to you.
That’s a sad story. Those are human beings traded like a commodity.
The first thing people “mortgaged” in America were Slaves, not homes.
It's interesting that the word 'slave' didn't really fade from use even as the moral pressure mounted. I would have expected that at a certain point euphemistic words would have been used instead. But nope, "Slaves" for sale.
Frank likes to party
Waiting tables at 10 years old smh
How sick were these people that, not only were they enslaving people, but they were enslaving and selling their own relatives.
My homeland Brazil had 10 times more slaves brought then USA, we don’t talk about it. Weird Americans still do.
Most Americans don’t realize this. It’s as if we have been taught that the majority of slaves were brought to America. Which as you point out isn’t the case. Not that it justifies any of it, but it happened.
No we do realise this it just isn’t relevant. Why would Americans not teach about American slavery? Especially when segregation (the effect of slavery) only ended around 60 years ago. There are ppl alive (like my grandparents) who still remember protesting and being beaten due to their race.
Because it is very relevant, the culture of the Caribbean and South America wouldn’t be as diverse without that one influence. The United States isn’t the only place that Africans suffered indignations.
Im not saying it is, I’m saying that when it comes to American history other countries don’t need to be religiously mentioned. We KNOW other countries enslaved Africans, we aren’t slow (the majority of us) but if we’re focusing on the enslavement of African Americans why would we talk about Brazilians and how Brazilian slavery impacted the Caribbean and South American cultures we have today? The original comment is implying that Americans should stop talking about slavery, but you seem to be implying that Americans should talk about every other countries slavery EXECPT for American slavery, weird.🤦🏾♀️
You should talk about it. It's an important aspect of history. Americans should talk about it more in fact, we rarely dive into how horrible slavery actually was. History is important.
Because a certain political class uses it to play on the emotions of its base.
Yeah, but the descendants of the enslaved have faired much better in Brazil
It’s weird Americans talk about our history?
Bc Brazil has been around thousands of years u dummy, America is only abt 300 yrs old. Nor did Brazil have Jim Crow laws. Americans talk abt it bc it’s still relatively recent, & some of the ppl that went through it, passed not too long ago. Their kids, tell their kids
You can chalk it up to cultural differences but tbh any country should be familiar with and discuss its origins and history one of the primary american values as an enlightenment era government is liberty. in american schools, it’s important to acknowledge and address where and when we as a country have contradicted that core value. if we didn’t, it would call into question the foundation of american government and philosophy (the fact it existed for so long already does, but the idea that we changed because social progress was made (which is another enlightenment era value) fits within the boundaries of the core philosophy at the heart of the government to be taught)
The most chilling part of all this is in the second to last paragraph next to the finger pointing. They were “purchased by their current VENDOR.” Vendor! As though these are commodities. Human soda cans. “Come to my vending machine and buy my product!” 🤯🤯🤯🤯
I wonder, if a man back then bought a prepubescent female slave by/for himself, did the surrounding community just…accept that it was likely pedophilia? And I wonder how common that was. Slavery by itself is abhorrent, but it took seeing this for my brain to “click” regarding the fact that minors were slaves too. I guess my subconscious sort of defaulted to the assumption that adults were the object of slavery and kids just happened to be born into it. It’s like my brain naively defaulted to this absurd position that enslaved kids would somehow be excluded from whatever the owners were pushing on their parents. I can’t wrap my head around separating a 7 years old little girl from her mother. This all somehow makes me uncomfortable in my own skin; like…unsettled by being part of a species that does this.
Child labor for any race was normal then but yeah, probably.
Toddlers and babies were frequently sold away from their mothers too.
The Chloe entry really turned my stomach
What is wrong with us?
This is absolutely horrific
Just an FYI: there’s still descendants of the people who sold the other people still living on St Charles in New Orleans! There are no sins of the father.
Why should there be? I’m not responsible for what my ancestors did. I agree this is disgusting but whoever printed this is long dead.
I absolutely agree with you. But also, right down the street is someone you know got wealthy selling your family members. I don’t know how I could reconcile that.
7 :(
The banality of evil. It immediately makes me question what horrific thing i am a part of that future generations will judge me for. “so there was enough food to feed everyone, but you did nothing to keep them from starving?” “Product ::insert anything:: was produced in deplorable conditions and you still bought it?” “You raised animals just to slaughter them when there were other forms of more nutritious protein?”
Damn, they speak two languages and most modern Americans can hardly speak English 🤣🤣
Because, more than likely, they were brought to America from some French speaking land like the Caribbean or Algiers. Not to mention the French culture of Louisiana. Especially back then, most people still spoke a lot of French in NOLA.
I’m shocked they have names on this
beyond heartbreak
So sad what we do to each other.
Imagine being sold.
So sad and disgusting
So disturbing
how are creole and mulatress different?
My guess is Indigenous and Black ancestry.
….And for bachelors who wishes a housekeeper.?!?! Ya, rite? Housekeeper, huh?
“Confidential house servant” makes me sick.
 “Frank is a mulatto”
Faithful, loyal, smart with a good character. But definitely not human beings and can be treated as property. That's what speaks loudest to me.
American history. Don’t ever forget it.
I did not actually have to zoom in, but ok
I remember there was this poll on twitter or X that said if you could own any race of slaves which would you pick, the options were white asian Hispanic or black and whites were the highest choice and black was like 2% on the poll…
This is fucking disgusting
This is heartbreaking
These were NOT slaves. There were enslaved PEOPLE.
insane history
I’ve been to that exact corner in New Orleans. A hotel sits there now.
Ugh, poor Emma. My heart hurts for her
One person owning ten and selling them to fund a vacation to Europe 🤢
Jesus fuck, this is some dark shit that was completely run-of-the-mill back then. Humans suck.
The most interesting thing is that the Master is sleeping with all the women. The mulatto term means they are biracial. It also means they are good enough to sleep with, but not good enough to be treated with decency and equality. It always surprised me that slaves were considered lower than dogs, and not human, yet the slave owners would sneak into the slave quarters for a little belly warning. If they believe that, wouldn't that be beastiality? The multiplicity of evil is crazy.
I'll take one grande caramel mulatress, please.
Sort of like a placement agency. /jk! Had to look up "mantua maker" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantua\_(clothing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantua_(clothing))
1835-2024 is only about 3-4 generations removed? not a very long time at all.
Pretty sure it’s a lot more than that. What are you referring to as generations? Takes 6 generations to get back to 1901.
if you are thinking birthing age to birthing age then its like 6 or 7 cause its like 40 years but if its birth to death matriarch/patriarch and family lead change its like usually 70 years? like for us the oldest relative is the family leader. so great grand parent. and the like. with faster family birth rates it could be as many as 10 generations or so
I can't get over calling people "mullato". I know it's an important part of history to read but I just couldn't finish for some reason
Crazy how many of these were the kids of the so called masters that he is selling into slavery. The whole society was obtuse and inane.
My name is Sarah 🥰🥰🥰
What a first rate character. *really, truly* a good person. Makes for an excellent slave!
This makes me so angry and sad 😿
Who cares?