Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market

Joseph Holt Ingram’s 1835 The Southwest by a Yankee discourses on topics including “African Inferiority.” Historian Barbara Jeanne Fields argues that racism was a “byproduct” of Southern production. Visual stereotypes were a way of vindicating hierarchies and designating value: “Prime” age for boys and men differed from women and girls. Skin color was interpreted as “a sign of a deeper set of racial qualities” (139). Height, weight, and build were measured and touted. Female slaves were bought as “breeders” (144), while slaves scarred by the whip were considered recalcitrant and fetched a lower price. Violation of black bodies justified veneration of white ones. Pale-skinned male slaves were thus a threat to owners, but light-skinned female slaves were preferred as domestic servants. Their whiteness was presumed to make them unfit for the physical exertions of cotton picking. Whiteness was associated with “interiority,” “intelligence,” and “vulnerability” (155). Physical details were emphasized to mark the boundary between blacks and whites (156). A system of racial signs was developed in the slave markets to facilitate the categorization and sale of human beings.