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8UCIVIL WAR HISTORY Aptheker has kept up with the literature, but he incorrectly identifies Dorothy Porter as the "late distinguished librarian." I am happy to report that Dorothy Porter is alive, well, and active in writing black history. Melvin Drimmer Cleveland State University Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South. By Michael Tadman. (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. Pp. xviii, 317. $27.75.) Monographs that make use of new sources to shed light on important but time-worn topics are always welcomed by both the historian and the general reader. Such is the case with this study by Michael Tadman. The author's purpose was two-fold. His first goal was to examine the interstate slave trade in terms of its scale and organization in the antebellum South from the late eighteenth century to the time of the Civil War. Building on this, his second objective was to analyze the results of this trade in terms of its social effect on the planters, the traders, and the slaves themselves. In developing these themes, the author has effectively updated the quantitative features of Frederic Bancroft's 1930 study of Slave Trading in the Old South. Bancroft's work came into question when analytical studies of trading, on the state level, suggested that his estimates of the volume of interstate trade (derived by means of faulty deductive reasoning) were greatly exaggerated. Tadman, by contrast, has supported the Bancroft thesis, showing that the trade was quite substantial after all. Tadman's conclusions are based on three areas of analysis: the New Orleans trade and the coastal manifest lists that tie in with it; the age distribution of slaves in the deep South matched against the age-level listings found in trader and planter lists of slave shipments; and an indepth study of the ramifications of this trade in the state of South Carolina in the 185Os. The results of his analysis, Tadman notes, reflect a move southward of large numbers of slaves, a move dominated not by migrating planters taking their chattel with them, but by traders, and a move that stressed shipment overland rather than by coastal waters. A special feature of Tadman's study, and a highlight of his monograph, is his use of new source material—the business and personal records of a number of major traders. Such information is particularly helpful where the in-state sales of slaves were never recorded in any standardized way, and contributes significantly to the author's well-researched analysis of the entire trade in the state of South Carolina. Once he has determined the scope of interstate trade in the South, the author then turns to his second, and more important, theme, and presents a detailed view of the BOOK REVIEWS81 consequences of this trade on antebellum society, stressing here the dissolution of the slave family. In spite of the outstanding depth of his research and a well-argued thesis, the author's conclusions regarding the interstate trade are subject to debate for several reasons. First, the only finite way to arrive at the precise number of slaves traded south would be to count the number of people sold in each bill of sale in every exporting state in the sixty or more years before 1861. Unfortunately, only Maryland and Delaware have such complete records. Thus, for the remaining states, the historian has to make thoughtful estimates, as Tadman has done. Second, as to the size of the overland movement, because these figures, unlike those of the coastal trade, were never officially tabulated, historians can again only estimate the volume of slaves transported. Third, the same problem applies to the migration of planters taking their own slaves. Tadman's study, stressing South Carolina, suggests that it was modest compared to that of the traders, but other studies (of Maryland, for example) suggest that the slaves of migrating planters greatly outnumbered those of the traders. Finally, the validity of the author's use of census figures over several decades that reflect dramatic changes in the number of slaves of different age groups—and in turn reveal the degree of outmigration (selling states) and in-migration (importing states)—may...

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