Preconception: Women and Future Increase PDF

# PRECONCEPTION: WOMEN AND FUTURE INCREASE ## Chapter 1 ### Preconception: Women and Future Increase > I surely would be a prophet, as the Lord had shewn me things that happened before my birth. >> -Attributed to Nat Turner¹ > By American Law the child follows the condition of its mother. >> Mo...

# PRECONCEPTION: WOMEN AND FUTURE INCREASE ## Chapter 1 ### Preconception: Women and Future Increase > I surely would be a prophet, as the Lord had shewn me things that happened before my birth. >> -Attributed to Nat Turner¹ > By American Law the child follows the condition of its mother. >> Mother free, children free; mother slave, slave children. >>> ---James Redpath² Adeline reluctantly stepped up on the block amid a crowd of unfamiliar onlookers. Arms crossed, head covered, she gripped her young son close to her chest to shield him from the spectacle of shame they were about to experience. The audience admired her dark olive skin and her evidence of fecundity. Her ten-week-old son was living proof that she was a child-bearing woman. Adeline had "a very fine forehead, pleasing countenance and mild, lustrous eyes," while her son was a "light-colored, blue eyed, curly-silked-hairied child." Positioned on the Columbia, South Carolina, courthouse steps, the two awaited their fate. "Gentlemen, did you ever see such a face, and head, and form, as that?" the auctioneer inquired, taking off her hood. "She is only 18 years old, and already has a child ... [who] will consequently make a valuable piece of property for someone." The bidder and Adeline struggled with her hood as he praised her skills. "She is a splendid housekeeper and seamstress," he continued. By this time, tears filled her eyes, "and at every licentious allusion she cast a look of pity and woe at the auctioneer, and at the crowd." As the sale continued, the auctioneer took Adeline's hood off three more times to show "her countenance," and every time, she quickly replaced it. When he was exposed, her son "cast a terrified look on the auctioneer and bidders," each time his face was revealed. Perhaps at his young age, he sensed his mother's terror. Within minutes, the sale was complete, and Adeline "descended the courthouse steps, looked at her new master, looked at the audience, looked fondly to her sweet child's face, and pressed it warmly to her bosom," while the auctioneer jeered, "that child wouldn't trouble her purchaser long." The threat of separation followed enslaved people to the auction block. This scene was a common one for childbearing enslaved women in the American South. They went to the market as real and potential mothers. One North Carolina enslaved person, Robert, recalled that his mother "was sold three times before I was born." She was sold "just like a pack of mules," but after Robert was born, and she was separated from her baby, she started having "fits." Her outbursts were so bad that the speculators took her back to the previous enslaver, and the money exchanged was returned. From then on, Robert's mother was able to remain with her children. Enslaved women like her were valued for their potential and projected procreation, and they knew it."I was worth a heap... kaze I had so many chillun," explained Tempe Herndon. "De more chillun a slave had de more dey was worth." The law sanctioned valuing enslaved people before conception and adjusted women's market values accordingly. *Partus Sequitur Ventrem*, the 1662 Virginia legislation that defined slavery based on the condition of the mother, guaranteed enslavement for enslaved women's progeny in all American colonies. Speaking in front of the Virginia legislature in January 1831, Mr. Gholson stated, "Partus sequitur ventrem' is coeval with the existence of the right of property itself and is founded in wisdom and justice." He opposed statements made by Mr. Clay, who was not entirely comfortable with the notion of breeding for sale. In Gholson's estimation, planters were justified in doing so, because women missed work to care for their young and "the value of the property justifies the expense." Adamantly, he continued, "I do not hesitate to say that in its increase consists much of our wealth." Women were valued for their fecundity, and traders made projections based on their "future increase." Their appraisals were linked to their ability to reproduce. Aside from political debates over breeding, the memories of enslaved children are rife with their mother's and grandmother's experiences of being sold. "Grandma was a cook and a breeding woman," Josephine Howell of Arkansas explained, continuing, "She was so very valuable. They prized her high. She was the mother of twenty-one children." Mollie Williams of Mississippi grew up in a household that divided enslaved children between two enslavers. Her parents had different enslavers, so every time her mother gave birth to a sibling, the enslavers would take turns for ownership of the newborn. The language and practices enslavers and traders deployed at auctions defined the boundaries of the commodification of women and children, particularly evident in comparisons made to cattle and other livestock. Viewed as "merchandise" rather than human beings, "when the children of slaves are spoken of prospectively, they are called their 'increase'; which is the same term used for flocks and herds." Enslaved mothers are called "breeders" past their child-bearing years. This systematic naming became part of people's vocabulary and daily references. Both enslaved people and livestock were "levied upon for debt in the same way included in the same advertisements of public sales," "herded in droves like cattle," and literally driven in the fields by foremen who used whips to control the pace of their labor. Enslaved people were "bought and sold, and separated like cattle." At auction, they were "exposed" to highlight "their good qualities" and "described as jockeys show off the good points of their horses." For example, "their strength, activity, skill, power of endurance" were "lauded and those who bid upon them examine[d] their persons, just as purchasers inspect horses and oxen." Countless descriptions show potential buyers opening enslaved people's "mouths to see if their teeth are sound; strip[ping] their backs to see if they are badly scarred, and handl[ing] their limbs and muscles to see if they are firmly knit." In short, "like horses, they are warranted to be'sound, or to be returned to the owner if'unsound."9 The last four decades of the eighteenth century were crucial years for assessing enslaved women's monetary values, and they set the tone for the years that followed. Black women in early America filled the pages of Northern and Southern newspapers in slave-sale ads, became the subjects of legal proceedings in ownership disputes, served as collateral for loans among debtors and creditors, and commanded strong prices in an evolving domestic market for "sound" human property. Their monetary value was based on their age, skill, and reproductive status. Some enslavers rejected childbearing women; others preferred them. However, women's capacity to bear children, their labor skills, and, in some cases, their (perceived) physical attractiveness remained the primary factors in their inspections, valuations, and sales. But the choice to buy a childbearing, expectant, or current mother depended on the individual buyer's needs and desires. That choice also meant that potential buyers put a price tag on enslaved children before conception. Who determined the cost of an unborn child? What was the fiscal value of enslaved people at preconception and how were childbearing women priced? The answers to these inquiries are linked to a mother's uterus, because the institution of slavery in the United States extended its reach into women's bodies. Enslaved women entered the market as objects and producers of goods; yet, they appeared as assets and as liabilities depending on the perspective of the seller or the needs of a potential buyer. So when K. G. Hall stated, "For Sale: A Young Negro Woman," to advertise an unnamed woman and her two children, he was not doing anything unusual. This woman was a "complete Washer and good ironer," but Hall did "not want a breeding wench." Therefore, he placed the family up for sale. There was no mention of the father, nor any indication of the woman's age, except "young." The record only reveals her status as a "breeding wench" with young children in her care. Despite labor skills, her ability to procreate ultimately led to her sale. On the eve of the American Revolution and the early nineteenth century, many American-born enslaved women shared this experience. They were sold because they gave birth and had young children to nurture. Because procreation and healthy children increased their monetary value, sellers like Hall capitalized by putting enslaved women and their children up for sale. The women's reproductive values were crucial to the expansion of the institution, particularly when the African supply source via transatlantic slave trading was abolished in 1808. This shifted the source to the natural, coerced, encouraged, and forced reproduction of enslaved women in America and other New World slave societies. When the French and Spanish occupied Louisiana, eighteenth-century enslavers had relied on captives directly imported from Caribbean and West African countries. Georgia did the same, despite initially having a ban on slavery for nearly the first two decades of settlement (the ban was lifted in 1751). Across the South, slavery increased rapidly along with technological developments like the 1793 invention of the cotton gin. Responding to these impetuses, planters moved their enslaved people to the Southwest, enticed by lands included in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase." As a result, Louisiana became the slave-trading center of the Deep South in the nineteenth century. 2 Changes in the international slave trade and market innovations affected the domestic traffic in human beings. Given the markup for child-bearing women, it appears that the acquisition of land and technological inventions altered the face of slavery at the turn of the century. Women played an important role, as the shift to import more enslaved women assured enslavers that they could produce additional labor sources on their farms and plantations. They did not have to depend on the market to purchase human property. Instead, by making calculated choices about their enslaved population, they could, in fact, grow their own. Enslaved women's bodies were catalysts of nineteenth-century economic development, distinguishing US slavery from bondage in other parts of the world. Incorporating late-eighteenth-century slave-valuation data into antebellum studies of enslaved prices provides an opportunity to untangle the web of trade relations and explore the fiscal strengths and weaknesses of female slavery. Most scholars interested in the monetary value of the enslaved examine the antebellum prices of prime male field hands, leaving discussions of women to brief summaries or passing footnotes." But studying female price patterns offers another important perspective, particularly when we look at their fiscal values compared to other women. By examining a sample of 4,892 individual female appraisals from 1771 to 1820, one can speculate whether the monetary value of enslaved women during this crucial period of American history relied on their ability to give birth. U. B. Phillips, the first scholar to seriously analyze enslaved people's prices, argued early in the twentieth century that a "fertile woman usually commanded no higher price than a barren one." Further, he believed that "the prospective increment of picaninnies (sic) was offset by the loss of the woman's service during pregnancy and suckling and by the possible loss of either mother or infant during childbirth." In his mind, pregnancy and the high infant mortality rate offset differences in women's prices, supporting his focus on male valuations. If financial values for women did not fluctuate based on the capacity to bear children, then what made one woman more valuable than another? Maintaining women's centrality through comparisons among women enables gendered price studies to stand on their own. Such comparisons highlight the importance of women's role in populating the workforce (intentionally or unintentionally). In earlier studies of antebellum prices, childbearing women had higher monetary values than men. Yet, this trend is much more dynamic when including figures for the colonial and Revolutionary eras.'s We cannot assume a static connection between child-bearing and appraisals because shifts in natural increase, international laws concerning slave trading, and economic currents of supply and demand influenced a woman's value. Childbearing women commanded competitive monetary values in the market under specific circumstances in the early National Era." First, female values were dependent on ethnicity (in this case, African or American born), location (urban or rural), age (childbearing or not), and time period (pre- or post-Revolution), to name just a few factors." Some of the variables included health, skill, and monetary values in five colonies and, later, states: Georgia, (French) Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina, and Virginia. All figures throughout the book except those directly quoted are in US currency based on the consumer price index for 1860 dollars. Given women's childbearing age range as fifteen to thirty-five, women across the South appear to have had higher financial values in all five regions than younger girls and older women, indicating that Phillips's assumption was incorrect. As we shall see in the coming pages and chapters, before 1800, the average age for women at first birth was nineteen. The age of first menarche in the nineteenth century was, in some cases, thirteen or fourteen years old. Yet, we have evidence of women in their thirties having children in the antebellum era as well. Many of these women were known as "breeding wenches."19 Historian Kenneth Morgan noted that the traditional view that male slaves' market values exceeded those of female slaves on the auction block in colonial South Carolina has more "documentary support." He also explained that this male bias stems from "the low ratio of women to men."20 Not all the women I address in this chapter experienced sale through public auctions. Some were sold privately; others were mortgaged, transferred, exchanged, given away, used as collateral, or sold through a legal deed. Because colonial and Revolutionary records rarely contain black women's voices, we must rely on the narratives of their husbands, sons, brothers, uncles, and, most often, their enslavers to shed light on their experiences. Here we learn that not all women wanted to be mothers, and that some had greater attachments to their husbands than to their children. The story of Tamar, an enslaved woman from Camden County, North Carolina, is representative of women's experience with pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood, and multiple sales." Born sometime in the late 1770s or early 1780s, she encountered the auction block because her owner thought she was giving birth too often. In some instances, women who had "chil-dren too fast" were hired out with their progeny to someone willing to "maintain them for the least money," or "benefit [from] whatever work the woman can do."22 However, Tamar's enslaver could not prevent her from living in the "woods" on a parcel of cleared land on which she cultivated corn and flax for sale. She also hired herself out and "obtained corn, herrings, or a piece of meat for a day's work." She raised her young children in this setting, but as soon as they "became big enough," five of her six children were sold away from her. Tamar's "husband" lived on a distant estate, twenty-five miles away, and could do little to prevent the breakup of their family. Tamar, however, responded boldly to her first sale. After being forced to travel more than a hundred miles chained together on the way to an auction block in either Georgia or New Orleans, Tamar fled the coffle and escaped back home to the small plot of land in North Carolina on which she had been living. The risky nature of absconding forced her to leave behind her sixth child, an eighteen-month-old toddler. Apparently she was unable to "obtain" the child and therefore made the difficult decision to travel solo. According to her brother's narrative, Tamar "travelled by night, and hid herself in thick woods by day." During the journey, she experienced "great danger on the road, but in three weeks reached the woods near" her former residence.23 Upon her arrival, she notified her brother, mother, and husband and remained in hiding. Sometimes she hid in "a hollow under the floor" of her mother's "hut," while other times she spent the night in the woods with her husband.24 Here, in the woods, she and her husband gave birth to three additional children, of which two survived. After the birth of her ninth child, Tamar was discovered and "taken to the house of her old master," and her sale experience began all over again. Tamar was subjected to multiple sales and several cruel enslavers. At one sale, she was sold along with her two remaining children. The whereabouts of her other offspring are unknown. In addition to being traded by various enslavers three times after her discovery, Tamar's sales brought her across state lines and through various transactions. Her first sale took her from North Carolina to an auction block in Norfolk, Virginia; next she was mortgaged to cover debts and transferred to Elizabeth City, North Carolina; finally she was "taken away in a cart" to an auction block in Georgia. Tamar represents larger trends in trafficking patterns of the enslaved. Excess enslaved people from Maryland and Virginia (Chesapeake region) were sold to markets in Louisiana and other parts of the Deep South. Such trade patterns were true of the domestic slave trade and of slave breeding. 25 As a result, the Low Country had fewer market particularities, except for the types of women placed on the auction block, because of the increased traffic in enslaved bodies in these markets. 26 What can we learn about black women's experiences through Tamar's story? I argue that her nine pregnancies coupled with separations from all but two of her children explain the meaning of "home" and "marriage" under slavery. She ran away, only to return to her previous location, where she and her husband gave birth to more children. Discussions of self-liberated individuals emphasize a gender distinction among runaways, noting that women chose truancy--that is, temporary escape for one to two weeks-as opposed to complete flight, because of their children." Yet, many women ran away in search of their partners who had been traded. Perhaps, like Tamar, they mourned the children lost to the auction block and hoped for more. It is also plausible that they desired intimacy. Pregnancy could have been an unintentional outcome of marital sex. Her story confirms that marital ties created bonds that warrant attention equal to the bonds of motherhood. In the antebellum period, three classifications or groups of women-"breeders"; "fancies," who were high-priced enslaved women recognized for their "beauty" and sometimes exploited for sex; and skilled laborers-appear in the record, and as mentioned, some scholars contend that they often carried higher prices than their prime male counterparts. 28 Few historians explore the specific differences in monetary values based on gender and age. They only acknowledge gendered price patterns in statements such as "these women commanded high prices," but we are left with these questions: Higher prices than what? At what age? Than who? In the few instances when scholars identify the prices for which women were sold, they neglect to contextualize the significance of the financial values at that particular historical moment. Even if we know the prices--for example, $1,500 for a "fancie" and $600 for a "field hand"-the market values of individual women vary according to the buyer's desires, year of sale, and location of the market.29 How typical were these values? Were classifications of enslaved people uniform or did they vary depending on the location? Finally, how did age, complexion, health, and perceived physical attractiveness influence a person's monetary value? Answers to these questions are considered in the chapters that follow. Sale and appraisal data also suggest preferences for women with specific attributes, such as labor skills and evidence of having survived particular diseases. Some traders preferred American-born instead of African-born women, while others overlooked birth origin and/or women's ability to procreate. Enslavers who noted women's skills identified five types of female workers: house servants, field hands, cooks, laundresses, and seamstresses. Only 5 percent of the female laborers displayed evidence of work specialization, and for those who did, nonagricultural laborers such as house servants, cooks, laundresses, and seamstresses were the majority. A total of 214 women in the sample of 4,892 mentioned above have descriptors indicating labor specialization and/or skill. Of this group, 73 worked as house servants, 45 as cooks, 27 as washerwomen, and 18 as seamstresses. Field hands totaled 33, and I woman worked with livestock, 3 served as nurses, 7 worked in the market, 7 worked with farm equipment at the mill, and I worked in the shipyard.30 Late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century newspapers are rich with ads that specify women's various skills and health conditions. In 1798, for example, John Manson of South Carolina advertised two "Negro Wenches." The first was a twenty-eight-year-old "regularly bred" cook described as a "good Washer and Ironer" who had been used for thirteen years for just about "every kind of House Work." According to Manson, the woman was "powerfully capable." He offered an extra incentive for the second woman. She was "about Nineteen years old, brought up in a family to [do] House Service" and child care. The younger woman was an attentive "Breeding Wench" with a "short stature." Because her height might have dismayed potential buyers, Manson offered her on a trial basis so that trustworthy buyers could make an informed decision. "She can be had on a trial for a short time," he offered, but only "to a person of respectability, who may have a wish to purchase her."32 Both women had labor skills and experience. The latter was recognized as a "breeding wench" and offered for a probationary period, but in what capacity? How did potential buyers utilize breeding women before purchasing them during this time? Did breeding have the same connotations as it did in the antebellum era, when breeders were associated with animal husbandry? Family separation became increasingly common by the late antebellum era, and some enslaved women blamed forced breeding. Fannie Moore explained that breeding women "nebber know how many chillun she hab."33 Such casual references confirm that breeding was a commonplace practice during slavery. For potential buyers on the other hand, increase (natural or forced) became the focus, particularly in the nineteenth century.34 Yet, newspaper advertisements that specified breeding women in the late eighteenth century alluded that the practice was not necessarily related to animal husbandry. Enslavers chose not to have "breeding" women, and their rationale is somewhat confusing. One way to untangle the choices planters made is to begin with clear definitions of breeding with respect to changes over time. The terms breeder and breeding wench had broader, perhaps less offensive meanings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than they did in the antebellum period. Nineteenth-century references often involved deliberate actions by enslavers who forced women to procreate in order to acquire additional sources of labor.35 The use of "breed" or any derivative in the post-Revolutionary and early National Era should be considered a descriptive term applied to the birth of young animals and humans, and the notion of rearing or raising the young (as in teaching a person to have good breeding).36 In most instances, these women were not described as breeders for profit, even though countless nameless women appeared in print because they were "breeding." Upon the death of their enslavers, or because the women fit the description of breeders, women went to the auction block with and without their small children; some were pregnant.3" One "Negro wench & child" were offered "For Sale or Exchange" in Virginia. This "young and Healthy" woman was advertised because "tis not convenient to have a breeding Wench in the Family."38 Why were this woman and child considered an inconvenience? Did the costs associated with providing for them outweigh the benefits of having them in the workforce? Or did the mother-child duo become burdensome because neither could perform the necessary labor due to their delicate health? Young mothers often had their field work disrupted by caring for their children and were seen running back and forth to nurse. That the seller was willing to exchange or sell the mother and child is telling. It suggests that he or she preferred not to care for them at this stage of life. The nature of exchanging enslaved people meant that this seller was open to the idea of getting them back, perhaps after the child reached a certain age and the mother was no longer breastfeeding. Nineteenth-century evidence also suggests that some enslavers felt that mothers of young children were a burden; therefore they hired them out to temporary owners until both could serve as contributing members of the enslaved workforce, if the child survived beyond age five or six.39 Enslaved women in the middle colonies as well as in the North were also advertised for sale or exchange due to breeding. For example, an ad for a twenty-three-year-old "Registered Negro Woman" appeared in a Pennsylvania newspaper in 1784. She was skilled in both "country or town work" and was up for sale because "she has a young Male Child, and a breeding woman does not suit the family she is in." Interested persons could exchange her for "another wench . of equal value."4º Similar advertisements appeared in northern colonies. In New York, "A Likely breeding Negro Wench, who is now big with Child" no longer "suite[d] her Master" and was advertised for sale despite her "satisfactory" work." Apparently her pregnancy was the reason for her sale. Likewise, Patrick Riley offered a "lusty able breeding Negro Wench, of 33 years old" for sale. He reported that she "is a good cook" and "can do any sort of House-Business."42 In 1775, William Tongue, the broker for a deceased enslaver, placed a lengthy ad in the New-York Gazette. He divided the goods he was representing into four sections: human chattel, lands, houses, and goods. Ten enslaved people were listed. Half were women, some listed with their children. For example, "One Negro wench," aged thirty, was offered for sale "with or without her son, 5 years old."43 Likewise, James Glentworth advertised "A Negro Wench, American born," along with her two children, a three-year-old girl and “a male child, at the mother's breast." He stipulated, "The mother and the children are to be sold together in the country." He also added that the woman "is a strong and laborious wench, and well understands the duties of a servant." Finally, and perhaps most importantly, "she is to be sold on account of her breeding fast, which is disagreeable to the small family with which she lives."44 Such ads speak volumes about the historical context in the North and South with respect to the market experiences of enslaved women. Northern communities had little need for surplus laborers. They did not have the plantation community to support them. However, the use of the term "breeding" in these advertisements indicates that enslavers were not involved in a profit-making venture in the post-Revolutionary and early years of the nineteenth century. Instead, some enslavers were not prepared or willing to handle multiple pregnancies. Ads such as these suggest that enslaved women in Northern communities experienced both separation from their children and sales with them, because they were breeding. Producing additional sources of labor outside plantation settings led to excess enslaved offspring. Selling the mother and children represented one solution to this labor problem, and by the nineteenth century, the domestic slave trade served as another. Thus, "breeding" in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries defined pregnant or nursing women, unlike the reference in the mid- to late nineteenth century, which regarded breeding as reproduction for profit. Some women dreaded having children. They knew that they might be separated and could not bear such grief. When asked if "she could turn out a child a year," one woman replied, "No masa, I never have any more, and I sorry I got these." 45 This woman likely understood the connection between her body as a source of physical and reproductive labor. Her statement should not be read as a rejection of motherhood, but rather an assertion of her own (unfree) will. Hannah Jones of Missouri had vivid memories of breeding. "When dey want to raise certain kind of a breed of chillun or certain color," she explained, "dey just mixed us up to suit dat taste."46 What these women felt about motherhood did not matter, because the power over and control of their "increase" was not theirs. Antislavery literature from the antebellum era capitalized on the plight of enslaved mothers. Activists and artists published narratives, articles, images, and poems on the topic. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, an African American poet, as well as John Collins, a Quaker artist and author, wrote about enslaved mothers. Harper and Collins both published poems entitled "The Slave Mother" in 1854 and 1855, respectively. In Harper's poem, reproduced here in its entirety, an enslaved mother calls out to God, looking for answers to cope with separation. > Heard you that shriek? It rose > So wildly on the air, > It seem'd as if a burden'd heart > Was breaking in despair. > > Saw you those hands so sadly clasped- > The bowed and feeble head- > The shuddering of that fragile form- > That look of grief and dread? > > Saw you the sad, imploring eye? > Its every glance was pain, > As if a storm of agony > Were sweeping through the brain. She is a mother pale with fear, Her boy clings to her side, And in her kyrtle vainly tries His trembling form to hide. He is not hers, although she bore For him a mother's pains; He is not hers, although her blood Is coursing through his veins! He is not hers, for cruel hands May rudely tear apart The only wreath of household That binds her breaking heart. His love has been a joyous light That o'er her pathway smiled, A fountain gushing ever new, Amid life's desert wild. His lightest word has been a tone Of music round her heart, Their lives a streamlet blent in one-- Oh, Father! must they part? They tear him from her circling arms, Her last and fond embrace. Oh! never more may her sad eyes Gaze on his mournful face. No marvel, then, these bitter shrieks Disturb the listening air: She is a mother, and her heart Is breaking in despair. This image of a child being torn from his mother's arms is reminiscent of the auction experience of Adeline and her ten-week-old son. On the other hand, in Collins's poem, excerpted here, the fugitive mother chooses to leave her child during part of her journey to freedom. > With one long, sad, despairing cry, > Her babe upon the ground she flung, > And, as her heart were turned to stone, > With madness flashing from her eye, > Refused the helpless one to wone, > Or listen to its moaning cry. In the end, the mother and child in Collins's poem are reunited and successfully escape to Canada. No matter how women responded to their enslavement, antislavery literature of the time clearly recognized the health and humanity of the enslaved. Health also influenced some buyers' decisions in purchasing enslaved women. People lived in fear of widespread epidemics such as smallpox, cholera, yellow fever, and malaria, and wanted a healthy workforce. Three percent of the women in this sample had perceived disabilities and were listed as "crippled," "blind and deaf," "diseased," "superannuated," or mentally ill. In this group, 164 women had health information: 4 were listed with "disease" (nonspecific descriptor); 11 were blind or deaf; 15 had mental illness; 32 were crippled (nonspecific descriptor); 33 were superannuated; and 69 were sick, ill, or infirm.49 One nameless woman, aged twenty-two, had already had smallpox and received the description "useful domestic" next to her age and skills. A similar ad appeared in a Virginia newspaper. "TO BE SOLD A HEALTHY strong young Negro Wench," according to the first lines of the ad. This unnamed woman was twenty-four years old and offered with her "male child, one year old." More important, "The Wench has had the smallpox and measles and can be recommended for her honesty and sobriety." She was a "plain cook." Any interested buyers were instructed to "apply to the Printer."5º John Walters Gills advertised a twenty-one-year-old woman with "her two children, one about five years, and the other about seven months." However, he added, "she has a fine breast of milk and is good temper'd," indicating that the only reason for her sale was that she would make a better field hand. In addition, "her present owner dislikes breeding wenches about the house." This evidence confirms preferences for breeding women or not, as well as detailed descriptions of their health condition. As the supporters of the domestic slave trade strengthened their foundation, enslaved men and women experienced family separation quite often. Isaac Griffin, born around the closing of the slave trade, witnessed the sale of a "yellow girl with child" on board a flatboat on the Mississippi River. "At Natchez, a man came on board who wanted to buy a yellow girl without children," he recalled. "Her master told her to say she had no one." Soon after, he said, "the man bought her, and the trader gave her child, six weeks old, to a white woman."52 Griffin's story indicates that babies only a few weeks old were separated from their mothers (and fathers) and sold. Brian Cape of Charleston, South Carolina, placed a "family of field Negroes" up for sale, indicating that they were sold for "no fault." The husband, described as "a stout negro man in the prime of life," appeared in the press, along with his wife, "a fine breeding wench, [and] her child, about 3 years old." The couple also had "a young girl, about 10 years old" that Cape promised would "be a useful servant" one day, who is "to be sold separate from the family."53 Cape made a calculated decision to separate a young girl on the eve of puberty from her family. The ten-year-old daughter would soon be available for breeding. Born around 1800, Gilbert Dickey witnessed mother and child separations firsthand. He saw one woman who was "chained and handcuffed in the gangs, leaving a child only nine days old: the child raised by hand, and when a woman nearly grown, she was sold."54 These recollections confirm the deep pain that separation and sale caused enslaved people. Betty Cofer of North Carolina remembered seeing"some slaves sold away from the plantation." She saw "four men and two women, both of 'em with little babies."ss Brothers witnessed their sisters being sold, along with their nieces and nephews. Bill Simms of Missouri remembered seeing his "old-est sister sold on the block with her children." His sister "was sold for eleven hundred dollars, a baby in her arms sold for three hundred dollars. Another sold for six hundred dollars and the other for a little less than that."56 Such recollections tell us a great deal about the monetary value of bodies. Lydia Adams from Fairfax County, Virginia, provides additional insight into how black women were affected by separation and sale in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Adams was born sometime between 1775 and 1785.57 Like Tamar, she had a "husband," but Adams had a smaller family (four children). Reflecting on the separation from her children and her move to Missouri, she explained, "One by one they sent four of my children away from me, and sent them to the South: and four of my grandchildren all to the South but one."58 When her daughter Esther was taken away, another enslaved woman offered the following words: "It's no use to cry about it... she's got to go."59 Despite her reluctance, Adams understood that she had to comply. However, she had questioned her enslaved status since childhood, remarking, "I didn't believe God ever meant me to be a slave, if my skin was black-at any rate not all my lifetime."60 Instead, she pondered the difference between slavery and indentured servitude, wishing that she could "have it as in old times" and work like "seven's years' servants." s." Adams found some rationale for temporary enslavement but not slavery for life. Similar to Tamar, she lost all of her children to the domestic market at a time when the transatlantic supply had not been officially eliminated. Such evidence supports the quantitative record; women of childbearing age held financial value in the market and experienced separation and sale from their children. Nearly two decades later, the case of an enslaved woman named Dinah from Prince George's County, Maryland, filled the pages of a lengthy trial proceeding in the Maryland Court of Appeals regarding ownership rights over her and her offspring after the death of Jane Fishwick, her alleged owner. Dinah appears in the historical record with seventeen others, listed as her children and grandchildren.2 From 1812 until 1821, when the case was finally settled, legal officials in Maryland used state funds to depose seventeen individuals in order to determine Dinah's monetary value and that of her offspring. Local residents testified about her whereabouts, labor patterns, and progeny. All agreed that Dinah "was the mother or grand-mother of all the others claimed." In order to figure out her birth history, one deposition noted that Dinah "had seven children" and that the other ten were her grandchildren. Another believed that Dinah had poor labor skills, inferring "her work has not been equal to the charge of maintaining four small children."63 Such testimony suggests that some believed childrearing prevented women from doing quality labor. Thus, in order to establish Dinah's fiscal value, the court requested the administrators of Fishwick's estate to provide the records from a Dr. Digges, the physician who attended the enslaved and free families in the county. According to notations in the account, Dr. Digges visited Fishwick's residence in