The Chattel Principle

Internal Slave Trades in the Americas

Walter Johnson

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9780300129472
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This wide-ranging book presents the first comprehensive and comparative account of the slave tradewithinthe nations and colonial systems of the Americas. While most scholarly attention to slavery in the Americas has concentrated on international transatlantic trade, the essays in this volume focus on the slave trades within Brazil, the West Indies, and the Southern states of the United States after the closing of the Atlantic slave trade.

The contributors cast new light upon questions that have framed the study of slavery in the Americas for decades. The book investigates such topics as the illegal slave trade in Cuba, the Creole slave revolt in the U.S., and the debate between pro- and antislavery factions over the interstate slave trade in the South. Together, the authors offer fresh and provocative insights into the interrelations of capitalism, sovereignty, and slavery.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Domestication of the Slave Trade in the United States
• 3. ‘‘We’m Fus’ Rate Bargain’’
• 4. Slave Resistance, Coffles, and the Debates over Slavery in the Nation’s Capital
• 5. The Domestic Slave Trade in America
• 6. The Interregional Slave Trade in the History and Myth-Making of the U.S. South
• 7. Reconsidering the Internal Slave Trade
• 8. ‘‘Cuffy,’’ ‘‘Fancy Maids,’’ and ‘‘One-Eyed Men’’
• 9. Grapevine in the Slave Market
• 10. The Fragmentation of Atlantic Slavery and the British Intercolonial Slave Trade
• 11. ‘‘An Unfeeling Traffick’’
• 12. The Kelsall Affair
• 13. Another Middle Passage?
• 14. The Brazilian Internal Slave Trade, 1850–1888
• Contributors
• Index