Soul By Soul: Life Inside The Antebellum Slave Market

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Pages: 4
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Rachel Vecchio
Meredith May
Soul By Soul: Life Inside The Antebellum Slave Market
By: Walter Johnson
The novel Soul by Soul: Life inside the antebellum slave market, by Walter Johnson, explains the slave trade market in tremendous detail. Walter Johnson elaboration of the Antebellum, meaning before the civil war, period allows the reader to explore the depths of the slave trade and have a grasp on how intense and dependent people of the nineteenth century were on the slave market. This book reveals the economic process, the relationships of master to slave, and the cruelty behind this disgraceful market. The Antebellum slave trade was not only a way of life but quickly became the only way of life among the south in North America. The owners …show more content…
The fact that the owner can completely dismiss their slaves as human beings and view them as merchandise but at the same time value them and the work they will accomplish for them is extremely ironic. Masters selling and buying slaves always have their own way of justifying their sinful actions; it is simply easier to dismiss slave’s humanity and label them as “merchandise” and “property” to compensate for the extremely cruel and inhuman way of life the elite white men have created and brought upon themselves. Through the extreme dominance and oppression of the African Americans this market has become an acceptable and extremely valuable economy. The labeling of slaves creates superiority and allows for these white men to completely avoid responsibility for their evil actions. Every action and slave sold would constantly have to be justified in order to make sense of the slave trade in general, when in fact nothing was justifiable about the slave …show more content…
In advanced to auctions beginning, the slaves were kept in “slave pins” where they were constantly overseen by other elites to keep them in check. This is where the buyers selected their slave which would officially become their property. The slaves began to understand the process and would figure out ways to manipulate the system in order to avoid being sold. Instead of resisting the slave trade with violence, they changed their mannerisms and were extremely careful when answering questions the buyers would ask them. This technique was called the chattel principle; the slave’s price could be changed within a matter of seconds and the slave’s identity could also be changed in a matter of seconds. Masters coached and brainwashed their slaves to identify themselves as property or merchandise with a certain value but no particular price. The author explains that without the commercial aspect of the salve trade a slave’s value would not exist and the price of the slave would have no worth. The idea of paternalism was huge among the slave trade. Paternalism is defined as the practice of dominance and oppression of freedom on an “inferior” group of peoples in the interest and benefit of those who are “superior”. In order for the salve trade to operate on terms of the paternalists, the use of violence
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