The Ledger and the Chain by Joshua D. Rothman

Author:Joshua D. Rothman [Rothman, Joshua D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-04-20T00:00:00+00:00

~ SIX ~

REPUTATIONS, 1837–1846

BORN IN THE CENTRAL VIRGINIA COUNTRYSIDE WEST OF Fredericksburg, Madison Henderson recalled being no older than fifteen when Asa Brockman sold him to James Blakey in the town of Orange Court House. Henderson remained there for six weeks while Blakey accumulated more enslaved people for his “partners” in the slave trade, whose names Henderson gave as “Samuel Alsop, Mr. Ballard and James Franklin.” Blakey then shackled Henderson and his other prisoners and marched them thirty miles to Alsop’s plantation, where they stayed for another week before continuing to Richmond and ending up “lodged in the negro jail of Mr. Ballard.” About a week after that, Ballard put Henderson and the rest of “the gang” on a steamboat to Norfolk, where they transferred to a waiting ship and sailed for New Orleans. Taking custody of them on their coastal passage was someone Henderson described as “the chief of a company of negro traders” when he told his life story to a newspaper reporter. Henderson was talking about Isaac Franklin.

Henderson claimed he became Franklin’s “body servant” at sea and “remained in his service” for the next three and a half years. He procured “good and kind” treatment by giving Franklin what he wanted, and he learned that “the best means to secure his favor” was “to obey him implicitly, execute his orders literally, and watch carefully over his interests.” But Henderson considered his time with Franklin utterly ruinous. He found himself apprenticed to a con man who led a crime syndicate, and that involved even more than the usual moral compromises entailed by being the enslaved assistant of a slave trader.

Henderson said he attended Franklin in carrying out “operations in selling and occasionally in buying” enslaved people that “extended to all the southern parts.” He reported being with Franklin as he made sales in New Orleans, Natchez, Vicksburg, and Mobile, and accompanying Franklin as he made purchases in Baltimore, the District of Columbia, Richmond, Norfolk, and smaller Virginia towns. And Henderson remembered that under Franklin’s tutelage, he became a liar and a thief. If an enslaved person seemed “unwilling to be sold,” Henderson’s job was “to overcome their objections” with “false tales of what my master would do for them.” If a slaveholder would not part with people Franklin had his eye on, Henderson’s “duty was to coax off, and harbor negroes: in other words, to aid in stealing them.”

Henderson promised the enslaved that Franklin would liberate them in the free states or Canada. He told enslaved men “they would become rich and own plenty of property,” and he told enslaved women they would marry “rich white men” and live “in style and splendor.” They needed only to meet Henderson at an appointed place and time, and he and Franklin would take care of the rest. When the plan worked, Henderson stealthily escorted Franklin’s targets to white accomplices while Franklin negotiated for legal title to the runaways. Franklin aimed for cut-rate prices in exchange for assuming the risks and costs of recapturing them.

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