The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815 - 1860 by Jack Lawrence Schermerhorn

Author:Jack Lawrence Schermerhorn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300192001
Publisher: Yale University Press

To the captives locked belowdecks as the Orleans sailed down the James River, the ship was a place of confinement rather than a node on a commercial network or a floating firm. The temperate behavior of the captain and crew disarmed Northup. Shipmaster William Wickham was among the few managers in Freeman’s supply chain who used guile to enforce discipline, even though the prerogative to flog insubordinates supported his shipboard authority. Northup recalled Wickham as “a small, genteel man, erect and prompt, with a proud bearing, and looked the personification of courage.” His assessment may reflect traumatic bonding. Whatever the cause, Northup’s characterization is scarcely reminiscent of eighteenth-century transatlantic slave shipmasters, whose well-deserved reputations as demons and sadists were legendary. Wickham must have seemed a gentle soul compared to Birch and his partners. Yet such a shipmaster was willing to participate in slaving and kidnapping in the regular course of business.36

After sailing down the James River, Wickham anchored the Orleans in Hampton Roads, and several more captives were put aboard, including at least one more beaten and confused kidnap victim. At every stop Northup’s coffle picked up another American robbed of legal freedom, a reflection of the terror that radiated through nearly all African-descended neighborhoods and families. The Norfolk trader George Apperson embarked Arthur Curtis, a Norfolk resident, his swollen face “covered with wounds and bruises, and, indeed, one side of it was a complete raw sore,” Northup recalled. Curtis was still defiant as he was forced down into the ship’s hold but “sank into a gloomy and thoughtful mood, and appeared to be counseling with himself,” his face desperate yet determined. The second slave manifest signed in Norfolk lists Curtis as standing five feet ten inches tall and having dark skin. Northup discovered that Curtis had been assaulted and overpowered by several men in a Norfolk city street. Afterward “he was gagged and bound with ropes, and beaten, until he became insensible.” Isolation followed. “For several days they secreted him in the slave pen at Norfolk,” before they forced him to board the ship. His story was startlingly familiar. In Norfolk seven more souls were added to the official record of the Orleans’s human cargo, including Northup’s friend and fellow captive Robert Jones. As it had in Richmond, the radical dislocation affected each differently. Curtis’s attitude contrasted with that of Maria, embarked at the same time.37

Maria McCoy, or Mary McCoy, as she was listed on the manifest, must not have seen the sores on Curtis’s face. She was sauntering into a sea of perils seemingly unaware. Northup recalled that she was “a rather genteel looking colored girl, with a faultless form, but ignorant and extremely vain.” The sixteen-year-old stood five feet one inch tall. “The idea of going to New-Orleans was pleasing to her … [and] she declared to her companions, that immediately on our arrival in New-Orleans, she had no doubt, some wealthy single gentleman of good taste would purchase her at once!” In the ensuing weeks aboard

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