The long distance trade, though open to any who would engage in it, appears to have been conducted mainly by firms plying it steadily. Each of these would have an assembling headquarters with field agents collecting slaves for it, one or more vessels perhaps for the coastwise traffic, and a selling agency at one of the centers of slave demand. The methods followed by some of the purchasing agents, and the local esteem in which they were held, may be gathered by an item written in 1818 at Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley: "Several wretches, whose hearts must be as black as the skins of the unfortunate beings who constitute their inhuman traffic, have for several days been impudently prowling about the streets of this place with labels on their hats exhibiting in conspicuous characters the words 'Cash for negroes,'"[22] That this repugnance was genuine enough to cause local sellers to make large concessions in price in order to keep faithful servants out of the hands of the long-distance traders is evidenced by the following report in 1824 from Hillsborough on the eastern shore of Maryland: "Slaves in this county, and I believe generally on this shore, have always had two prices, viz. a neighbourhood or domestic and a foreign or Southern price. The domestic price has generally been about a third less than the foreign, and sometimes the difference amounts to one half."[23]
[Footnote 22: Virginia Northwestern Gazette, Aug. 15, 1818.]
[Footnote 23: American Historical Review, XIX, 818.]
The slaves of whom their masters were most eager to be rid were the indolent, the unruly, and those under suspicion. A Creole settler at Mobile wrote in 1748, for example, to a friend living on the Mississippi: "I am sending you l'Eveille and his wife, whom I beg you to sell for me at the best price to be had. If however they will not bring 1,500 francs each, please keep them on your land and make them work. What makes me sell them is that l'Eveille is accused of being the head of a plot of some thirty Mobile slaves to run away. He stoutly denies this; but since there is rarely smoke without fire I think it well to take the precaution."[24] The converse of this is a laconic advertisement at Charleston in 1800: "Wanted to purchase one or two negro men whose characters will not be required."[25] It is probable that offers were not lacking in response.
[Footnote 24: MS. in private possession, here translated from the French.]
[Footnote 25: Charleston City Gazette, Jan. 8, 1800.]
Some of the slaves dealt in were actually convicted felons sold by the states in which their crimes had been committed. The purchasers of these were generally required to give bond to transport them beyond the limits of the United States; but some of the traders broke their pledges on the chance that their breaches would not be discovered. One of these, a certain W.H. Williams, when found offering his outlawed merchandize of twenty-four convict slaves at New Orleans in 1841, was prosecuted and convicted. His penalty included the forfeiture of the twenty-four slaves, a fine of $500 to the state of Louisiana for each of the felons introduced, and the forfeiture to the state of Virginia of his bond in the amount of $1,000 per slave. The total was reckoned at $48,000.[26]
[Footnote 26: Niles' Register, LX, 189, quoting the New Orleans Picayune, May 2, 1841.]
The slaves whom the dealers preferred to buy for distant sale were "likely negroes from ten to thirty years old."[27] Faithfulness and skill in husbandry were of minor importance, for the trader could give little proof of them to his patrons. Demonstrable talents in artisanry would of course enhance a man's value; and unusual good looks on the part of a young woman might stimulate the bidding of men interested in concubinage. Episodes of the latter sort were occasionally reported; but in at least one instance inquiry on the spot showed that sex was not involved. This was the case of the girl Sarah, who was sold to the highest bidder on the auction block in the rotunda of the St. Louis Hotel at New Orleans in 1841 at a price of eight thousand dollars. The onlookers were set agog, but a newspaper man promptly found that the sale had been made as a mere form in the course of litigation and that the bidding bore no relation to the money which was to change hands.[28] Among the thousands of bills of sale which the present writer has scanned, in every quarter of the South, many have borne record of exceptional prices for men, mostly artisans and "drivers"; but the few women who brought unusually high prices were described in virtually every case as fine seamstresses, parlor maids, laundresses, hotel cooks, and the like. Another indication against the multiplicity of purchases for concubinage is that the great majority of the women listed in these records were bought in family groups. Concubinage itself was fairly frequent, particularly in southern Louisiana; but no frequency of purchases for it as a predominant purpose can be demonstrated from authentic records.
[Footnote 27: Advertisement in the Western Carolinian (Salisbury, N. C),
July 12, 1834.]