ABSTRACT
The emergence of independent cotton production also reduced the liberating quality of slave's market-oriented work. As cotton growers slaves no longer enjoyed the sense of freedom that Charles Ball associated with participation in the Sunday labour market, simply because their work occurred on their masters plantation. But in order to reduce the subversive impact of slave's market-related activities, these planters exerted greater control over the entire range of slave's independent production, selling and buying activities. As a result, the social, psychological and other non-economic rewards of slave's market-oriented activities narrowed considerably in the late antebellum period. The cumulative experience of slaves living in the cotton regions of the South Carolina upcountry supports this view in part. Participation in the market economy enabled upcountry slaves to better themselves materially, possess and assert greater control and independence in their lives, create and strengthen social relationships among themselves as well as with non-slaveholding white people, and challenge the interests and power of slaveholders.
