ABSTRACT
At one level, this study is concerned with the practical character of the slave trade between the states of the Old South, that is, with the scale of that traffic, the extent of the forcible separations it produced, and with the circumstances which led masters to sell to the trader (or, as contemporaries called him, the ‘negro speculator’). At another level, however, examination of the structure of the trade raises issues fundamental to the whole character of slavery. By examining slave holders' attitudes towards selling and slave reactions to sale and separation, the overall purpose of the paper is to suggest, for the ante-bellum period, a general theory of master and slave mentalities and interrelationships. Indeed, the family and separations seem to be such central reference points that any general model of antebellum slavery must either pay close attention to these issues or risk serious error. 1
