Slave Sales – Resale of existing slavesi
The English colonists who settled South Carolina in 1670 immediately began importing people of African descent to work as enslaved laborers. Their numbers were very small at first, but increased steadily in the ensuing decades until enslaved people formed a majority of the population by the year 1708. Once there was an established population of enslaved people laboring in the South Carolina Lowcountry, the selling and re-selling of these enslaved residents was not far behind. The death and indebtedness of property owners surely triggered the earliest local sales of enslaved people in the 1670s. From the owner’s point of view, the simplest mode of sale was by private contract, in which two or more individuals privately agreed on the price and terms of conveyance. This process often takes time, however, and the financial circumstances associated with estate liquidation and debt relief are not necessarily conducive to the relatively intimate, sometimes open-ended negotiations of a private sale.
The most expeditious mode of liquidating chattel (moveable) property was by public outcry or auction, also known in early South Carolina as vendue. This ancient term, which came to the English lexicon by way of Latin and French, simply denotes the practice of bringing together the goods belonging to a motivated seller (the “vendor”) and an interested public audience with the expectation that the goods on offer would be sold and immediately discharged to the highest bidder. The seller might set a minimum price or “reserve” in an auction, but the financial pressures that motivated the sale often press him or her to accept the highest bid, whatever the price might be.
Sales by public outcry also required the assistance of a third party to act as an auctioneer. It was his duty to inform the audience of the terms of the sales, to verbally conduct the sale of individual lots, and to act as a sort of master-of-ceremonies for the event. In return, the auctioneer earned a small commission from the sale price of each item he sold. At the end of a good day’s work, especially one featuring the sale of numerous enslaved people, the auctioneer’s commission could be quite substantial. Depending on the nature of the sale in question, the auctioneer in colonial-era South Carolina might have been an agent hired by the seller, a licensed and bonded “vendue master,” or a government agent (such as the provost marshal, admiralty marshal, sheriff, or master-in-chancery) who conducted the sale in accordance with a judgement handed down by a court of law.
From the beginning of the colony through the end of the practice of slavery in South Carolina, the most common location for the public sale of enslaved people was the plantation where they resided and worked. It was the cheapest, most efficient, and perhaps safest method of conducting the sale, especially when dealing with large groups of people held in bondage against their will. Property owners would communicate information about the date of the sale to their neighbors by word of mouth, or written notices posted at local landmarks, or in published newspaper advertisements. Interested buyers would travel to the plantation in question on the appointed day, view and inspect the people on offer, and bid on the property that attracted their interest. The highest bidders settled a method of payment with the owner—either cash, credit, or barter—and then departed with the their newly-acquired chattel in tow.
The next best alternative for rural auction sales was to transport enslaved people from their home plantations to a nearby landmark that was well-known within the community. By transporting enslaved people “off the farm,” so to speak, to a nearby crossroads, property owners hoped to attract larger audiences that might engage in more competitive bidding and drive sale prices higher. In the Charleston area, sales of this nature took place at important neighborhood sites like ferry landings and villages. Think of places like Ashley Ferry, Stono Ferry, Codner’s Ferry on the Wando River, Hibben’s Ferry on the Cooper River, Rantowle’s Bridge, Strawberry Ferry, and once-vibrant rural villages like Wiltown, Radnor, Dorchester, and Cainhoy.
The least convenient, but potentially most lucrative alternative for selling chattel goods and enslaved people was to transport them—by boat or over land—to urban Charleston. While its population waxed and waned according to the seasons of the year, as planters moved between their townhouses and plantations, the capital of colonial-era South Carolina hosted the densest and most affluent concentration of white customers in the province. The density of potential customers led, in theory at least, to increased bidding at pubic auctions of all kinds, which usually resulted in higher sale prices than might be achieved at a rural sale. This potential for increased profits created an incentive for sellers to bring their goods to town, and Charleston developed into a significant regional hub for vendue sales. Rural planters in need of laborers might travel to Charleston to purchase new hands, or they might simply send instructions to a “factor”—a commission agent—in town who would purchase people at auction on their behalf and then deliver them to the customer’s rural address.
In urban Charleston circa 1760, enslaved residents being sold in public auction in Charleston were usually sold at public markets selling meat, vegetables, fruit, and fish, was “at or near the Watch House in Charles Town at the end of the Broad ”[3] Finally, we know for certain that slave auctions were commonly held on the north side of the present “Old Exchange Building,” located on the site of the earlier Watch House at the east end of Broad Street, from the time that building opened in 1772 to the early 1850s.
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