SLAVERY IN MISSOURI, 1804-1865

CHAPTER I

Missouri Slavery as an Economic System

When Louisiana was purchased in 1803, there were between two and three thousand slaves within the present limits of Missouri, of which only the eastern and southern portions were then settled.¹ By 1860 the State contained 114,931 slaves and 3572 free negroes.² Natural increase was one cause for this increase in the number of slaves, and importations from other slave States represented the other. The relative number of negroes gained from these two sources cannot be learned with any accuracy. The number of slaves born within the State is not given in the Federal census returns. In 1860 of the 1,063,489 whites of Missouri 160,541 were foreign born, and 475,246 were natives of the State. Of the remainder, 273,808 were born south of Mason and Dixon’s line, and 153,894 in the free States and Territories.³ It may fairly be assumed that these slave-state immigrants brought most of the slaves imported. Of these southern settlers 99,814 were from Kentucky, 73,594 from Tennessee, 53,957 from Virginia, and 20,259 from North Carolina. It would perhaps be incorrect to assume that the slaves brought to Missouri were in exact proportion to the whites from the several Southern States, yet one may assert with a fair measure of safety that the imported blacks came from the four slave States named and from

the other slave States in some rough proportion to the whites from those States.⁴

To some counties immigration came in waves. In the thirties Carolinians settled in Pike County with their slaves; later others came from Virginia and Kentucky.⁵ A large body of Union sympathizers from eastern Tennessee took up land in Greene County; Kentuckians and Virginians also settled on the rich soil of this county.⁶ Other counties experienced similar movements. By no means all of the settlers who came from slave States brought negroes or favored slavery, but, as will be learned in another chapter, hundreds of immigrants, especially those coming from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, brought negroes, and some of them considerable bodies of slaves.⁷

The birth-rate was perhaps about the same as it is among the negroes of the State today, but because of the property interest of the master the death-rate may have been lower. For the year ending June 1, 1850, the slave births in Missouri numbered 2699, while the deaths amounted to 1293.⁸ If these figures are correct, the births were double the death toll. It would be unsafe, however, to generalize from these limited data.

The growth of the different classes of the population of Missouri was as follows: —⁹

II

It appears from these figures that the slaves increased in number but at a decreasing ratio to the whites. Between 1810 and 1820 the slave increase was 239.48 per cent, in the next decade 145.46 per cent, in the next 132.11, in the next—1840 to 1850—50.1 per cent, while between 1850 and 1860 the increase was only about 33 per cent.¹⁰ We must not conclude that slavery was declining because the increase was less decade by decade while that of the whites was continually greater. It must be remembered that the land of greatest fertility was naturally occupied first, and as a result there was less and less room for expansion. The back counties were not so rich and were more difficult to reach. By 1840 Texas and other new regions were beginning to divert settlers from Missouri. However, non-slaveholding whites continued to fill the towns and the rougher land which was less adapted to slave labor. Agriculture was the great source of slave profit. The artisan class was white, and the filling up of the country rather increased than decreased their possibilities in developing manufactures. Had slave labor in Missouri been as profitable as was German labor in Illinois, the occupation of the best soils would have limited its growth in time. Increase in population means more intensive agriculture. Slave labor, being largely unintelligent and lacking initiative, is better suited to extensive farming.

The fact that the increase of the slave population of Missouri was limited by the supply of new lands was first noticed in the old Mississippi River settlements. The old French counties along the Mississippi from St. Louis south—Jefferson, St. Genevieve, Cape Girardeau, and so forth—contained 11,647 slaves in 1850 and but 11,528 in 1860.¹¹ Another decrease is found in the counties along the Missouri from its mouth to the boundaries of Callaway and Cole—St. Louis, St. Charles, Franklin, Warren, Montgomery,

Gasconade, and Osage—which in this decade fell from 11,732 to 11,597 slaves. Increases are found in the counties lying on the Mississippi from the mouth of the Missouri to the Iowa line,—St. Charles, Lincoln, Rails, Pike, Marion, Lewis, and Clark. In 1850 these counties contained 13,171 slaves and in 1860 there were 15,618. The slaves in the counties along the Iowa border increased from 897 in 1850 to 1009 in 1860.

To find the real location of the slave increase of the State we must turn to the west. The large and excessively rich Missouri River counties from Callaway and Cole to the Kansas line—Boone, Howard, Chariton, Cooper, Saline, Lafayette, Ray, Clay, Jackson, and Manitou—contained 34,135 slaves in 1850 and 45,530 ten years later.¹² The whole series of counties along the Kansas border from Iowa to Arkansas—Atchison, Buchanan, Platte, Jackson, Cass, Jasper, and the rest—had but 20,805 bondmen in 1850, while in 1860 they contained 29,577.

For two reasons these western counties increased in slave population faster than the eastern. In the first place, the land of the western counties was better, and hemp culture made slave labor profitable. A soil map of Missouri shows that the rich loam along the Missouri River surpassed any other land in the State. Here the slaves increased both in value and in price as in no other section. The eastern region was earlier settled, and as a consequence fewer and fewer slave-owners came from the South to locate there, while to the west settlers were still coming in large numbers when the Civil War opened.

The distribution of the slaves, as well as of the free population of Missouri, was controlled by the same conditions. The French and Spanish located along the Mississippi both because the land was fertile and because the river offered the

only means of communication with the outer world. As the Anglo-Saxons invaded the Territory after the American occupation, they went up the Missouri to the Osage, then to the Bonne Femme, and then on west. Settlements thus followed the great streams and their tributaries. In general the slave-master also followed the streams, this fact being due to the coincidence that the river counties were not only more accessible than the back counties, the products from them being therefore more readily marketed, but were also more productive. It may be said, then, that the slave-holder followed the river because the railroad and the high-way were not yet opening the back country. He remained in these river counties because they contained lands of unsurpassed fertility.

In Missouri as in the other border States the slave was put to general farm work rather than to the producing of a staple crop. The great plantation of the Mississippi and Louisiana type with its white overseer and gangs of driven blacks was comparatively uncommon in the State. Very few masters had a hundred slaves, not many had half that number. There were some farmers, however, who employed a considerable body of negroes.

The number of slaves held is most difficult to find with any accuracy. Personal information from contemporaries conflicts with the census reports and the county tax returns. For example, an old boat’s clerk, Mr. Hunter Ben Jenkins of St. Louis, who spent much time in the great Missouri River slave counties, claims that the largest slaveholder of the State was Jabez F. Smith of Jackson County, who owned 165 negroes. In contrast with this statement the Jackson County tax book of 1860 credits Jabez F. Smith with but 42 slaves.¹³ Therefore, Smith either dodged his

taxes enormously or had fewer slaves by far than his neighbors thought.

From the local returns gathered for the Federal census it is found that there were some fairly large slaveholders for a country of diversified agriculture which, as compared with the plantations further south, was a community of small farms. These figures should be more complete than the tax returns, as they were not collected for purposes of taxation. These census reports for 1850 show that in Cooper County John H. Ragland was the leading slave-owner, being credited with 70 negroes, including infants and the aged. He lived on a farm of 1072 acres, 500 of which were under cultivation. Of these 70 slaves 29 were over fifteen years of age. His land was worked by 34 horses, mules, and oxen. His produce in hand was large,—4000 bushels of wheat, the same amount of corn, 400 bushels of oats, and 7000 pounds of tobacco. He had 140 swine and 24 head of cattle besides his oxen.¹⁴

The second largest Cooper County slaveholder was Henry E. Moore, who had 32 negroes, of whom 23 were over fifteen years of age. He possessed 250 acres of improved and 150 acres of unimproved land, 57 work animals, 5000 bushels of corn, 400 of oats, 200 swine, and 32 cattle.¹⁵ These represent the more affluent Missouri farmers who were not engaged in producing a staple crop. An example of a less favored farmer is Joseph Byler, who owned 11 slaves, only 4 of whom were over fifteen years of age—2 men and 2 women. Byler owned 100 acres of improved

and 140 acres of unimproved land, 14 work animals, 32 head of cattle, So sheep, 50 swine, moo bushels of corn, and 200 each of wheat and oats.¹⁶ These examples give an idea of the external economic conditions of the slave society in a rich river county.

If the old French Mississippi River county of St. Genevieve in eastern Missouri is examined, some large holders are found there. In 1860 John Coffman was the chief slave-owner, having 78 negroes living in fourteen cabins. Joseph Coffman, the second largest holder, had 32, and the third, Hiram Blaclege, possessed 27 slaves who were domiciled in eight cabins.¹⁷ Although the tax levies discount slave property, nevertheless in many cases they are the only means of obtaining information. If the tax lists omit the slave children and the wornout blacks, they but fail to include those who did not labor and who had little economic significance save as a burden to the owner. The probate records would be an exact source of knowledge as to the size of slave holdings, but as only those who died in slavery days had their slaves listed in such records, an examination must be made of the assessors’ returns.¹⁸

In Boone County the heirs of R. King were assessed in 1860 with 57 slaves,¹⁹ and W. C. Robinett with 50.²⁰ In the adjoining county of Howard William Swinney paid taxes on 86 slaves valued at $44,800 and on 1369 acres of land.²¹ J. C. Carter of Pike County was assessed in 1859 with 43 slaves,²² and Andrew Ashbaugh with 37.²³ In 1856 Dugan Frouts of Buchanan County was listed as having 28

negroes and 320 acres of land,²⁴ and J. C. Ingram as having 26 slaves and 160 acres.²⁵ The Clay County tax books could not be found entire. However, figures for 1858 are obtainable for the southwestern portion of the county, the section just across the Missouri from Kansas City. Here on the rich riverbottom John Daugherty was assessed with 33 negroes and 2420 acres of land,²⁶ and Michael Arthur with 30 slaves and 1880½ acres.²⁷

In southeast Missouri the records show that in Cape Girardeau County the largest holders were assessed with 40 slaves in 1856.²⁸ In the southwest portion of the State, in the rich county of Greene, Daniel D. Berry was taxed on 37 negroes worth $13,300, 23 horses and mules, and 4320 acres of land worth $33,760, and John Lair and Solomon C. Neville on 24 slaves each, the former’s valued at $16,200 and the latter’s at $10,000.²⁹ In the northern counties of Daviess and Macon the holdings were smaller. In 1854 Alfred Ray of Macon County was taxed on 31 slaves, and the second largest holder, James W. Medley, on 13,³⁰ while in Daviess County Milton N. Moore, the chief owner of slaves, was assessed with but 16.³¹

The Reverend Frederick Starr (“Lynceus”) says that there were some plantations along the Missouri River having from 150 to 400 slaves. From the above figures it appears that a Missouri plantation with as many as 400 slaves must have been extremely rare.³² In fact, the average slave-master had many less than the great holders mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. For instance, in Cooper County in 1850 of the 636 slaveholders 173 had but 1 negro each,

and 102 possessed but 2. The average for the whole county was 4.67 slaves to the master.³³ Just across the Missouri in Boone County the average was almost the same—4.83 per owner in 1860.³⁴ Journeying on west up the Missouri to Jackson County a similar condition is met. Here in 1860 the average was 4.5 slaves to the master.³⁵ To the north of Jackson in Buchanan County the average was considerably less—3.6 in 1856,³⁶ which was a little higher than the average sixteen years previously in the same county, when it was 3.2.³⁷

In looking eastward to the prosperous Mississippi River county of Pike the average is found to be slightly less. In this county in 1859 there were listed on the tax book 3733 slaves owned by 908 masters, or 4.18 negroes to the master.³⁸ To the north of Pike in the extreme northeastern corner of the State is Clark County. The 129 masters of this county averaged 3.14 slaves each in 1860.³⁹ In the old French county of St. Genevieve the average holding in 1860 was 5.16 negroes.⁴⁰

Many of these masters actually held only one or two negroes each. In 1860 Jackson township, St. Genevieve County, contained 32 slaves owned by 10 persons. Of these 10 owners there were three who had but one slave, 2 had 2 negroes, 2 owned 3, 2 had 6, and another 7.⁴¹ In this year there were 497 masters paying taxes on 1383 slaves in St. Louis city. Of these owners 217 were taxed on 1 negro each and 104 on 2 negroes. In other words, 321 of the 497 slaveholders of the city returned less than 3 negroes.⁴² In Greene County in 1858 there were 567 slaves in the district about Springfield. These were owned by 108 persons, of whom 38 held 1 slave each and 31 held 2, 69 of the 108 masters having less than 3 slaves.⁴³ A similar situation is found in the newer county of Audrain in the earlier period, where in 1837 there were 26 masters and 68 taxable slaves. Of these 26 owners 13 were assessed with 1 slave and 8 with 2 each.⁴⁴

From the figures given it appears that Missouri was a State of small slaveholdings. How these slaves were employed will next claim our attention.

The single slave held by so many persons was usually a cook or a personal servant, or perhaps a “boy” for all-round work. Often a slave man and his wife were owned. The probate records are filled with the appraisements of estates holding one or two slaves.⁴⁵ Captain Joseph A. Wilson of

Lexington declared that every decent Missouri family had at least one slave, and usually from two to four, as house servants. So many of the antebellum settlers of the State being from the border and Southern States, the idea of white servants was not congenial, even had there been a supply of them. Many slaves, as in other southern communities, were nurses and acted as maids to the female members of the family. “Slavery in western Missouri,” wrote a contemporary, “was like slavery in northern Kentucky—much more a domestic than a commercial institution. Family servants constituted the bulk of ownership, and few families owned more than one family of blacks. The social habits were those of the farm and not of the plantation. The white owner, with his sons, labored in the same fields with the negroes both old and young. The mistress guided the industries in the house in both colors.”⁴⁶

The fifteen hundred slaves of St. Louis seem to have been quite largely employed as domestics, though as the city grew the German and the Irish immigrant assumed this work. When Anthony Trollope visited St. Louis in 1862, the Civil War and the coming of the alien had nearly driven the household slave from the city.⁴⁷ The further discussion of the slave as a domestic is not necessary, as this function of the negro is a commonplace.

The slave was early put to work at clearing the land, much of which was timbered. Advertisements for such negroes are to be found in the papers of the early period.⁴⁸

The rivers were the great highways for both passenger and freight traffic till the forties and fifties brought the railroads, and they quite largely retained the freight traffic till after slavery days. The boating business being very lucrative, the hire of surplus slave labor for cabin and deck work was very common. As early as 1816 Pierre Chouteau bought a slave who was “a working hand on a keel boat.”⁴⁹ A traveller descending the Mississippi’ in 1858 stated that the crew and stokers on the boats were all slaves.⁵⁰ A Kansas immigrant who ascended the Missouri in 1857 observed that the deck hands were colored,⁵¹ while another contemporary states that the Missouri River boats usually had a cabin crew of about twenty, “generally colored.”⁵²

This use of blacks on the rivers caused race feeling. An old boatman says that there were not enough free negroes, and consequently slaves were used as cabin crews. Therefore the custom developed that whites would not permit negroes to touch the freight. This division of the races seems evident from the following advertisement of 1854: “Wanted to hire by the Year, Ten negro boys, from 15 to 20 years of age—suitable for cabin boys. Also fifteen negro men for firemen, on a steamboat. Smith and Watkins.⁵³ According to an old boatman, these colored river

hands received from twenty to thirty dollars a month and keep.⁵⁴ The employment of free blacks and slaves on the river caused a strong protest on the part of a St. Louis editor in 1841. He asserted that the practice enabled abolitionists to communicate with the slaves of the State, and made them discontented. He spoke of the crews as “the profligate reckless band of slaves and free negroes . . . habitually employed as stewards, firemen, and crews on our steamboats.”⁵⁵

A considerable number of slaves seem to have been worked in the Missouri and Illinois lead mines.⁵⁶ In 1719 Renault brought a few to work the Fort Chartres and later the Missouri lead deposits. Some were seen working at Potosi as miners by Schoolcraft in 1819.⁵⁷ Later travellers, however, do not mention slaves working the mines of that region. Missouri slaves hired to work the saline deposits of the Illinois country provoked much litigation and a careful interpretation of the Ordinance of 1787.⁵⁸

The slave also did general work about town and city as the negroes do today.⁵⁹ The chief interest here, however, following advertisement in the Daily Missourian (St. Louis) of May 7, 1845: “For hire—a woman chambermaid in the city or on the river . . . I. B. Burbbayge.”

lies in the agricultural slave. Whether or not free labor could have been obtained to work the fields of Missouri is a question about which contemporaries still living are not agreed. From their statements it is evident that the supply of free labor varied in the different parts of the State,⁶⁰ but the fact remains that slave labor really did the larger part of the work of the State.

Missouri was a State with a great variety of topography and soils, and a number of products were raised in great abundance.⁶¹ The majority of Missouri bondmen were employed as general field hands. Statements of men who lived in various parts of the State convey the idea that the plantation with its overseer, “task system,” and great negro gangs was not common. Except in hemp culture, where the task system prevailed, the Missouri rural negro is to be considered a general farm hand as he is today. A prominent Kansan who viewed slavery as it existed in western

Missouri states that the slave was an all-round laborer, there being no classification of “domestic servants” and “field hands.”⁶²

The severity of the slave’s labor will be treated in a later chapter of this study, but the nature of his work, especially in the hemp country, deserves attention in this connection. Hemp was the great Missouri staple, although its culture was mostly restricted to the Missouri River counties. Other products were raised in greater abundance, but in some regions hemp was the chief crop. “From the first settlement of the county,” wrote a citizen of Platte County, “hemp was the staple product. We became wealthy by its culture. No soil on earth, whether timber or prairie, is better adapted to hemp than Platte County. . . . But no machinery ever invented superseded the hand-break in cleaning it. . . . Negroes were, therefore, in demand, and stout men sold readily for $1,200 to $1,400.⁶³ As a hemp State Missouri was second only to Kentucky, and the quality of her hemp was said by J. C. Breckinridge to be even superior to that of his own State.⁶⁴ American hemp passed through many vicissitudes because of the tariff, and often met the competition of better hemp from Russia. The market

finally dropped about 1870 when the South substituted iron hoops for hemp rope in baling cotton.⁶⁵

The healthy western Missouri negro must have been a profitable investment as a hemp cutter and breaker if the slave was a paying investment anywhere. “I can remember how twenty or thirty negroes would work in line cutting hemp with sickles. It was then left to rot till January. Then it was broken and the pith removed by means of a heavy crusher which the slave swung up and down. He often received the lash if not breaking his one hundred pounds. I have seen a long line of wagons loaded with hemp extending from the river nearly to the court house.” Thus a citizen of Lexington describes the hemp culture in Lafayette County.⁶⁶ “The farmers of Missouri seldom

stack hemp,” runs a letter of the slavery regime. “They stiffer it to receive enough rain, after cutting, to color it. It is then taken up and shocked without binding. About the middle of October it is spread out to rot. Our winters are so dry that the hemp must receive several rains before it is shocked.”⁶⁷

It was the task of the slave to break one hundred pounds of hemp a day, receiving one cent per pound for all broken in excess of that amount. Many slaves broke from a hundred and seventy-five to two hundred, some as many as three hundred pounds a day. The work seems to have been heavy, but the possibility of making a dollar or more a day made it popular with the ambitious slaves.⁶⁸ Hemp became the staple in western Missouri to such an extent that, according to the statement of an old negro, his master could find no market for his wheat.⁶⁹ Hemp was even

used as a medium of commerce in some cases, like tobacco in old Virginia.⁷⁰

The other staple crops of Missouri were tobacco and cotton. The culture of the latter was restricted to the southern part of the State. Tobacco was raised to a greater or less degree throughout the eastern and central regions. As today, many farmers raised tobacco, not as a staple, but as they did corn or wheat.^{71 “}In the tobacco regions of the State,” says a prominent citizen of Pike County, “there was no task system for the slaves. They were expected, and in many instances required, to do a reasonable day’s work.”⁷²

The slave seems to have been a very slight factor in the cotton culture of the State. The cotton counties ranked as follows in 1860: Stoddard, Shannon, Dunklin, Dallas, Jasper, and Barry.⁷³ Their slave population was very small,—Stoddard 189, Shannon 6, Dunklin 152, Dallas 88, Jasper 317, and Barry 217.⁷⁴ Contemporaries remember few or no slaves in the cotton fields and no task system. As in the tobacco culture, the few slaves employed worked as general field hands.⁷⁵ Outside of the hemp fields the task system was seldom practiced in the State. A negress who was a slave in Madison and St. Francis Counties claims that

she had to weave four yards a day and fill the quills. The spinning of eight “cuts” (one hundred and fifty threads to the “cut”) was a day’s work. Often she wove or spun till dark after working all day in the fields. She worked neither Saturday afternoons nor Sundays.⁷⁶

The Missouri law forbade a master to work his slaves on Sunday, except in regular housework or labor for charity. Field work was thus forbidden on Sunday. The penalty for the master was one dollar for each negro so employed.⁷⁷ This law was enforced in some instances at least, as on February 28, 1853, the Boone County circuit court fined R. R. Rollins five dollars “for working slaves on Sunday.”⁷⁸

As there were few great plantations in the State, the systematic but brutal overseer—that grewsome evil genius of so many slave tales—was not often seen in Missouri. Widows who needed a farm manager at times employed an overseer, and some tobacco and hemp farmers had white managers. Usually a trusted slave, called a “driver,” or one of the sons laid out the work for the slaves, so that the hired white overseer managing great gangs of negroes was not a characteristic Missouri figure. Contemporaries are nearly unanimous on this point.⁷⁹

Without the overseer and the horror of drudgery in pestilent rice and sugar swamps, the despair of the slave could not have been so great as in the far South. As the negroes of Missouri today work about the town or the farm, so they must have labored in slavery days, except that more of them worked than now and the hours of labor were longer. The great slave counties of antebellum days are the great negro counties of today, save where urban attractions have caused the negroes to flock to the cities.

Many slave-owners naturally had more of such labor than they could utilize. Negroes inherited by professional men and other townsmen often had little work except as household servants. The excess hands were therefore hired to those needing their services.⁸⁰ These slave-masters retained their slaves either because they thought the investment was paying, or in order to preserve the family dignity, which was largely based on slave property. Widows were unable to alienate their slaves if there were other heirs, and consequently hired them out as a means of income. The slaves of orphans and of estates in probate were annually hired

out by the court, bond being necessary “for the amount of hire.”⁸¹

As the State developed, the hire of the slave advanced in price approximately in proportion to the increasing value of slave property. Excepting in the earlier part of this period,⁸² negroes seem to have been hired almost entirely by the year, without reference to the busy planting and harvest seasons or to the slack months when their possession must have been a burden. Some were even hired for terms of years.⁸³ This well illustrates the weakness of the entire slavery system. In addition to the cash paid by the hirer, he also furnished the slave with medical attention, food, and a customary amount of clothing. An old slave claims that the hired slave of western Missouri usually received two pairs of trousers, two shirts, and a hat the first summer, a

coat and a pair of trousers in the winter, and two pairs of trousers the second summer.⁸⁴

The yearly hiring price of the slave was of course dependent on the nature of the work and on the character, sex, age, and individual strength of the negro.⁸⁵ The rate steadily increased till the Civil War. A number of figures were obtained by the author from old Missouri masters and slaves which are very similar to those obtained from the county records and other sources.⁸⁶ The market rate for

slave hire is difficult to discover for a certain period because of the individual differences in the negroes. However, two papers found in the probate records of St. Louis show the ratio between the hiring price and the value in the year 1838.⁸⁷ The slaves were all men but one. Their ages, value, and annual hire were as follows:

For the closing years of the slavery period when negroes were considered gilt-edged property there are the following comparisons of the value and the hiring price in the rich river county of Boone. In 1858 a body of slaves were valued and hired as follows by the probate court of that county:—⁸⁸

From the above figures it will be seen that in the case of the men the rate was between one seventh and one eighth of the valuation, or about fourteen per cent. The hire of the women averaged only about one sixteenth of the value. This difference was caused largely by the fact that in three cases the children were taken with the mothers; these, unless they were fairly large, would be an expense to the hirer and would demand some of the mother’s time. Roughly, the hiring price was in proportion to the valuation. Fourteen per cent hardly seems an excessive rate for a developing country famous for its fertility when we consider that the owner must subtract taxes, wear and tear, risk of escape, and permanent injury if received through no fault of the hirer. He had also to figure on the deterioration in value and the approaching old age of the slave, whom he must support when past working.⁸⁹

In Saline County a slave named Cooper was hired for $231 in 1857, the following year for $200, and again in 1859 for $190.⁹⁰ Cooper was a valuable negro and Saline a rich county.⁹¹ For the above three years Cooper’s hire

averaged $207, or $17.25 per month. In comparison with this figure, it is found that in the adjoining river county of Cooper the average monthly wage of a white farm hand with board was $10 in 1849-50,⁹² and in St. Genevieve the average was $12 a month in 1859-60.⁹³ Even admitting that the above-named slave lived in a very wealthy county, his hire seems liberal, especially so when it is remembered that in addition he was fed, clothed, and given medical attention. Except for the ever-threatening danger of escape, the western Missouri slaveholder must have had a good investment in the ownership of a slave like Cooper from his fifteenth to his fiftieth year, yet the cost of his raising must have been heavy. The risk of absconding, injury, and future decrepitude of a slave were stalking menaces which the easy-going slaveholder could not escape but apparently did not always consider.

The hiring price of female slaves has been referred to in the preceding pages. It was considerably less than that of the men because their labor was less productive. The loss of time resulting from the birth and rearing of children was also an item which was not overlooked. The German traveller, Graf Adelbert Baudissin, claims that in the early fifties a negress was worth from $500 to $700 and was hired for from $40 to $60.⁹⁴ In some cases a high price was paid for a negress who was competent. Just before the Civil War a former citizen of Franklin County hired a negress as cook and housekeeper for $150.⁹⁵

A contract for slave hire was protected on both sides by the law. If a slave was hired for a year and died within that time, the hirer was bound for payment only to the time of the slave’s death.⁹⁶ If the hirer caused the slave’s death by his cruelty, he was responsible to the owner for the value of the negro and was subject to criminal prosecution as well.⁹⁷ Should a slave, hired without the owner’s consent, be killed while so employed, though by no act of the employer, the latter was responsible.⁹⁸ It was held as early as 1827 that “the law is that if the . . . covenanter disable himself by his own act [in injuring a hired slave] to perform his covenant . . . this shall not excuse his own performance” to pay for the hire of the slave.⁹⁹ The sickness of a hired slave might cause trouble. One case was found in which the hirer attempted to return the negro to the owner before the contract had expired.¹⁰⁰

The hirer was bound to take reasonable care that the slave did not escape. He was honestly to endeavor to recapture a fugitive whom he had hired.¹⁰¹ Because of the precarious position of Missouri’s slave property the owner took considerable risk in hiring his negro as a hand on a Mississippi River boat.¹⁰² Concerning such a case the supreme court in 1847 instructed a jury as follows: “The jury is authorized

to consider the peculiar circumstances of the country, the vicinity of the city of St. Louis . . . and Missouri to free States, the difficulties of retaining negroes in slavery, the age, character, sagacity, color and general appearance of the negro. . . . Where a slave is hired as a boathand, we must presume that the owner is fully aware, that every facility for escape is afforded by the very nature of the service. . . . Does the owner expect, that in case his slave escapes, whilst, the boat is . . . putting off freight . . . the captain and crew will relinquish the boat, or abandon the trip for the purpose of hunting up the slave?”¹⁰³

There were apparently many careless masters and numerous wandering slaves in the State at times, despite the laws passed to prevent the practice mentioned above. The Code of 1804 provided that an owner should be fined thirty dollars for allowing his slave to go about as a free man and hire himself out. If a negro was permitted to so hire his own time, he could be sold by the sheriff at the next term of court, after being advertised at the court-house for twenty days.¹⁰⁴ The Code of 1835 fined an owner from twenty to one hundred dollars for hiring a slave to another slave or suffering him to go at large and hire himself out.¹⁰⁵

Cases occurred where persons were fined for violating this law. In 1860 one R. Schooling was fined twenty dollars in Boone County for “hiring a slave his time.”¹⁰⁶ The following entry appears in the circuit court records of St. Louis for 1832: “Sam a Negro Man Slave who is in the custody of the sheriff on charge of having hired himself out contrary to the statute in such cases made and provided, being now brought before the court . . . it is ordered by the court that therefore said slave Sam be discharged from custody on the charge aforesaid and that the court do further order that Smith the person in whose service he

now is do pay the costs of this proceeding and those incurred in consequence of his arrest and imprisonment.”¹⁰⁷

From an early date this law seems to have been hard to enforce. The press and the public continually complained of its non-enforcement to the detriment of the negro and the danger of the community.¹⁰⁸ A St. Louis editorial of 1824, after quoting the law, explains the real or supposed seriousness of this custom as follows: “The reasons for this enactment are obvious: and the reasons resulting from the neglect to enforce it are already severely felt. Slaves hiring their own time of their masters, as is the case in numerous instances, take upon themselves at once the airs of freemen and often resort to very illicit modes to meet their monthly payments. . . . They become unsteady and vicious, and corrupt their associates, and perhaps at length resort to theft as an easier mode of paying their masters. This practice, is in fact, one principal source of the irregularity and crimes of slaves in this place.”¹⁰⁹

At a mass-meeting of St. Louis citizens, held October 31, 1835, there were drawn up a series of resolutions which show the magnitude of the problem as contemporaries viewed it. “Resolved, That no slave should be suffered to live or dwell in this city or county at any place other than the same lot or parcel of ground on which his owner . . . shall reside. . . . Resolved, That this meeting view the practice of slaveholders hiring their slaves their time, one of the greatest evils that can be inflicted on a community in a slave State.” The committee on abolition was given power to see that the practice was stopped.¹¹⁰ A Columbia

editor in 1856 complained that the law covering this point was “frequently violated.” Its enforcement was demanded.¹¹¹

It is quite evident that the Missouri slave-master indulged his bondman in many ways. It would have been a hardship to the negro to have hired him at a distance from his family. The hirer often allowed him to return to his owner’s plantation at night, but if working at some distance the slave was able to return home only over Sunday.¹¹² A traveller states that a slave was often given a horse on which to visit his family and in some cases his prospective wife.¹¹³ These favors could but have made the lot of the slave easier and his contentment and faithfulness more assured.

No question concerning slavery is more difficult to handle than the value of slave property. The selling price of individual negroes and of lots of them can be found in the county records and in the newspapers, but to generalize on these figures for any one period or to compare values in different periods would be most misleading. For example, if a male slave twenty years of age sold for $500 in 1820 and another of the same age sold for $1400 in 1860, little is learned. The first negro may have been less healthy, less tractable, and less intelligent than the other. Therefore the difference of $900 could not represent the general rise in prices or the increased value of slave labor. To illustrate this point concretely, two slaves were sold in Ray County in 1854; both were twenty-six years of age, yet one brought $1295 and the other $670.¹¹⁴ This shows how unsafe it is to compare specific sales.

On the other hand, by comparing the prices brought by bodies of negroes about the same age and in the same

locality an approximately sound conclusion is reached. In general it can be said that there was a gradual rise in slave values up to the Civil War. It was exceptional indeed when a negro brought over $500 before 1830.¹¹⁵ A prime male servant from eighteen to thirty-five years of age was in this early period worth from $450 to $500, and a woman about a fourth less.¹¹⁶ When Auguste Chouteau’s negroes were appraised in 1829, the eleven men among them who were between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five averaged $486.35 each, the highest being valued at $500 and the lowest at $300. The eleven women between the ages of sixteen and thirty-nine averaged $316.35, the highest valuation being $350 and the lowest $130.¹¹⁷

From the third decade of the century on there is an increase in value. Men brought considerably more by the late thirties. In 1838 prime hands were bringing from $600 to

$900 in St. Louis.”¹¹⁸ Up to 1840 female slaves were worth from $300 to $350 when men were bringing from $500 to $600. Children from two to five years of age were sold for from $100 to $200. In St. Louis, Thomas Withington’s slave children were appraised as follows in 1838: Frank, aged 14, $350; Lucy, aged to, $300; Sophia, aged 5, $200; Charlotte, aged 3, $100; Harriet and Jane, aged 2, $75 and $100 respectively.¹¹⁹ In the same year W. H. Ashley’s women and children were valued as follows: Berril (boy), aged 12, $350; Celia, aged 9, $250; Lucy, aged 9, $250; Catherine, aged 7, $200; and Betsy, aged 30, and her infant son, $500.¹²⁰ The above are representative prices for the forties. At Marshall, Thomas Smith’s women and children were valued as follows in 1844: Harriet, aged 32, $300; Patsy, aged 22, $350; Wilson, aged 8, $200; Lizzy, aged 3, $125; Betty, aged 2, $150; Emiline, aged 1, $75, and Leah, aged ten months, $75.¹²¹

The golden age of slave values is the fifties. The prime male slave of Missouri in 1860 was worth about $1300 and the negresses about $1000. The fabled $2000 negro is found more often in story than in record. “Uncle” Eph Sanders of Platte City, still a very intelligent and powerful negro, claims that his master refused $2000 for him in 1859 when he was twenty-three.¹²² Contemporaries, however, place the normal limit at about $1500. Mr. Paxton says that stout hemp-breaking negroes “sold readily for from $1200

to $1400” in the heyday of Platte County hemp culture.¹²³ Dr. John Doy asserts that one sold in Weston in the late fifties for $1800.¹²⁴

Although the above figures may be exceptional, there is plenty of evidence that negroes were very valuable in these years. In 1854 the slaves of Thomas Reeves were sold in Richmond for fine prices. The ages and prices of these negroes were as follows:—¹²⁵

In the same issue of the Richmond Weekly Mirror which published the above items there is an account of the disposal of the negroes of Charity Creason, which were sold on January 1, 1855. They brought the following prices: a man aged 23, $1439; another aged 38, $1031; a woman aged 26 and her 18-months child, $1102.50; a girl of 3, $400, and a woman of 59, $1.

During the middle and late fifties all classes of negroes were priced high. In 1856 a lot of children was sold as follows: a boy of nine for $550, one of seven for $500, and another of five for $300.¹²⁶ A Saline County inventory of 1859 shows what good prices negroes in general were commanding in the closing years of the slavery regime:—¹²⁷

Top prices are found in Boone County, where in 1860

George W. Gordon’s blacks received the following valuations:—¹²⁸

It appears from the foregoing pages that the highest official value placed upon a negro man was $1600, and upon a woman $1300. A difficulty in finding the exact price of slave women is that the small children are often included with them.

When the Civil War opened and escapes became more numerous, the values of slave property began to decline. Compared with the above figures there is the following appraisement of the estate of Lawson Calvin of Saline County, filed July 11, 1861, after the War had engulfed the State in a torrent of strife:—¹²⁹

Nevertheless, it is surprising to note how slave values persisted during the Civil War. The prices kept fairly high, as the probate records of Lafayette, Missouri’s greatest slave county, bear witness. Two men were actually appraised at $1100 and $800 respectively, and a woman at $1000, in November, 1861.¹³⁰ In January, 1862, one woman was inventoried

at $650 and another at $550, and a boy of seventeen at $650, while one of eleven was rated at $500.¹³¹ By the last of July, 1863, the price had further decreased, but although Gettysburg had been fought and Missouri was overrun by bushwhackers, values did not fall as much as one conversant with conditions in the border States might expect. In the above month two women aged twenty-three and sixteen were appraised at $300 each, and a boy of eighteen at $400.¹³² Slave property was not merely appraised this late. On June 3, 1863, the negroes of Samuel F. Taylor of Lafayette County were actually sold as follows: Amanda, $380; Milky (girl), $370; Jack, $305; Georgetta, $300; William, $250; Ennis, $200; and Sam, $200.¹³³ There was an appraisal of an estate in Lafayette County made on October 2, 1863, but the slaves were not assigned value.¹³⁴ Over a month later, on November 5, 1863, negroes were still appraised, but this is the last official valuation of slave property in Lafayette County records. On that date a “boy” named Charles was appraised at $300 and a girl of fourteen at $200.¹³⁵

The total value of slave property is of course very difficult to estimate. Contemporaries were far from agreeing on this point. For instance, in 1854 John Hogan of the Republican, in an article which was intended to boom St. Louis and Missouri, placed the average value at $300.¹³⁶ In contrast with this low estimate, the “Address to the People of the United States,” prepared by a committee of the Lexington Pro-Slavery Convention of 1855, valued the 50,000 slaves of western Missouri at $25,000,000, or $500.

each.¹³⁷ Governor Jackson in his inaugural address of January 3, 1861, estimated the 114,931 slaves of the State to be worth $100,000,000.¹³⁸ Of course the governor was speaking in general terms, but his average would be nearly $700 a slave.

The above figures are in excess of those given by the county assessors of the period. Tax values are usually considered lower than market values. The Jackson County tax average for 1860 was $438.05 per slave,¹³⁹ and that of Boone County $372.30.¹⁴⁰ The average in Pike County in 1859 was $434.78.¹⁴¹ In 1856 in Buchanan County it was $450.92,¹⁴² and that of the 170 slaves of its county seat, St. Joseph, was $434.70.¹⁴³ Evidently the assessors of the various counties had no uniform standard in rating negroes, but despite the fact that the figures vary they show at least that slave property was increasing in price. In 1828 the 239 slaves of Lafayette County were taxed at an average of $249.68.¹⁴⁴ This is at least a third less than the average rate in the counties above mentioned in the years around 1860. At the same time, in comparing these values the decreasing purchasing power of money should be taken into consideration.

A very bitter experience which the slave might at any time be forced to undergo was his removal to a strange region far from his wife or children or old associations.

This disruption of the negro family was entirely dependant upon the humanity of the individual owner. The sale of the slave to be taken south was known in Missouri as in the other border States, but the Missourians deny that it was ever practised save where financial reverses, an excess of hands, or a chronic spirit of viciousness or of absconding on the part of the slave made it necessary.¹⁴⁵ Whether to mollify the new antislavery party which developed during the Compromise struggle, or whether through pure conviction, the constitution of 1820 provided that the legislature might pass laws to prohibit the introduction of slaves into the State as “an article of commerce.”¹⁴⁶ The provision was not taken seriously, and the General Assembly never acted upon the suggestion.

The slave-trader is generally pictured as the brutal, conscienceless, evil genius of the slavery system, detested even by those with whom he dealt. In Missouri he held no very enviable position. “Slavetraders and whiskey-sellers were equally hated by many,” wrote one antislavery clergyman of St. Louis,¹⁴⁷ while another maintained that “large fortunes were made by the trade; and some of those who made them were held as fit associates for the best men on ‘change’.”¹⁴⁸ Dr. John Doy, the Kansas abolitionist, who had a personal grievance against the Missouri slaveholder, claimed that General Dorris, whom he described as a brutal dealer, was highly respected and “belonged to the aristocracy of Platte county.”¹⁴⁹ Some of the slaveholders who. were interviewed

declared that the slave-trader and the saloon-keeper were tolerated as necessary evils, but that they were personally loathed and socially ostracised. Others, however, stated that it was a question of the individual trader, some being liked and some disliked.¹⁵⁰

If the slave-trader was a hard man and detested, he at least had the satisfaction of knowing that the wisest and gentlest of men would be hated by many if plying his trade. The very nature of the business made it contemptible. If the Missouri system was as patriarchal and the tie between master and man as close as one is led to believe they were, the dealer who higgled and bargained even for the most unruly servant must have been disliked. This feeling would naturally be enhanced if financial reverses compelled the sale of family slaves.¹⁵¹

In addition to the vicious, the runaway, and the slave of the financially depressed owner, there was a surplus from the natural increase, and consequently a considerable amount of business in the local exchange of negroes existed. Besides this there was the itinerant buyer for the southern markets. The smaller towns seem to have been regularly visited, while the larger centers had permanent dealers. There were two such in Lexington in 1861, but they are said to have had difficulty in getting sufficiently large gangs to make the business pay.¹⁵² There was at least one permanent firm of dealers in St. Joseph in 1856.¹⁵³ John Doy asserts that while he was imprisoned in St. Joseph many negroes were shipped from there to Bernard Lynch, Corbin Thompson, and other large St. Louis buyers.¹⁵⁴ Columbia and Marshall were regularly visited, and Platte City had quite a thriving trade.¹⁵⁵ John R. White of Howard County was a wealthy planter of good repute who dealt in slaves. He lived on a farm of 1053 acres and was taxed with 46 negroes in 1856.¹⁵⁶ The slave-trader, like the stock dealer, undoubtedly plied his trade wherever he could obtain his commodity.

St. Louis became a considerable center for shipping gangs down the Mississippi. One Reuben Bartlett openly advertised for negroes for the “Memphis and Louisiana Markets.”¹⁵⁷ St. Louis was “fast becoming a slave market,” wrote the Reverend W. G. Eliot, an antislavery clergyman, “and the supply was increasing with the demand. Often have I seen gangs of negroes handcuffed together, two and two, going through the open street like dumb cattle, on the way to the steamboat for the South. Large fortunes were made by the trade.”¹⁵⁸ “I had to prepare the old slaves for the market,” stated William Brown, a slave who worked for a trader on a boat from St. Louis south on the Mississippi; “I was ordered to have the old men’s whiskers shaved off, and the grey hairs plucked out where they were not too numerous, in which case he [the trader] had a preparation of blacking to color it, and with a blacking brush we put it on. These slaves were then taught how old they were . . . after going through the blacking process they looked fifteen years younger.”¹⁵⁹ In one issue of the Republican three firms, perhaps to imply great prosperity or to outdo one another, advertised for five hundred, one thousand, and twenty-five hundred slaves respectively.¹⁶⁰

The St. Louis Directory of 1859 lists two “Slave Dealers” among the classified businesses. These were Bernard M. Lynch, 100 Locust Street, and Corbin Thompson, 3 South Sixth Street.¹⁶¹ The former may be taken as a

type of the great Missouri slave-dealer, who had his correspondents in the outlying parts of the State. His historic slave-pen in St. Louis was afterward used as a military prison.¹⁶² Like other dealers, Lynch advertised his business in the newspapers, and posted in his office the rates and the conditions under which he handled negroes. This latter broadside placard read as follows:¹⁶³

“RULES

No charge less than one Dollar
All Negroes entrusted to my care for sale or otherwise must be at the Risk of the Owners,—
A charge of 37½ cents will be made per Day for board of negroes & 2% per cent on all Sales of Slaves,
My usual care will be taken to avoid escape, or, accidents, but will not be made Responsible should they occur,—
I only promise to give the same protection to other negroes that I do to my own, I bar all pretexts to want of diligence.
These must be the acknowledged terms of all Negroes found in my care, as they will not be received on any other—
As these Rules will be placed in my Office, so ‘That all can see that will see.’ The pretence of ignorance shall not be a plea.

1st January 1858

B. M. Lynch No. 100 Locust St.”

Lynch could not have been the terror-inspiring ogre that the slave-dealer is usually pictured to be. On two different occasions slaves ran for refuge to his door.¹⁶⁴ Statistics of his business are also uncertain, for he was evidently clever enough to empty his “pen” on tax assessment day. In 1852

Lynch was taxed on three slaves,¹⁶⁵ on the same number in 1857,¹⁶⁶ and on four in 1860.¹⁶⁷

The slave-dealer had his own difficulties, and was perhaps a little prone to “horse-swapping” methods. His commodity at times fell back upon his hands. “I received your letter yesterday,” runs a note from John S. Bishop to S. P. Sublette in 1854,” in reference to the negro Girl I sold you. I will be on my way South by the last of October . . . and will take the negro and pay you the money—Or if you should see my Bro. G. B. Bishop . . . he perhaps will pay you the money, and request him if he does to leave the girl at Mullhalls at the Stock Yards.”¹⁶⁸ In February, 1855, Bishop again wrote Sublette: “I received yours of Feb 8 & was rather surprised . . . times is hard & money scares. I would of taken her as I was going South but do not want her now in hard times as Negroes have fallen. I bought her above here & Paid $600 for her as a Sound Negro & a very good one & will have My recorse where I bought her so you will know how to pro sede according to law.”¹⁶⁹

In some respects the slave-trade was unique. In the earlier days of the State the negro was frequently used as a medium of exchange in the purchase of land.¹⁷⁰ Some dealers bought both horses and slaves.¹⁷¹ Others handled

negroes, real estate, and loans.¹⁷² In some cases slaves were taken on trial.¹⁷³ Some dealers sold negroes on commission, boarding them till sold at the owner’s risk and at his expense.¹⁷⁴

Many sorrows were undoubtedly borne by bereaved slave families and much misery was suffered by negroes at the hands of traders, but the master at times endeavored to make his departing bondman comfortable. In the Republican of January 7, 1854, may be read the following: “For Sale; A good negro man, 32 years old, and not to be taken from the city.” In the same issue a dealer offered to find homes for negroes within the city or the State if requested. These provisions were either to prevent the separation of slave families or to insure the master that his negro would not be sold south.

The official negro auction block of St. Louis was the eastern door of the court-house.¹⁷⁵ Some of these sales, especially when negresses were on the block, may have been accompanied by obscene jibes and comment. The frequency of this is denied by contemporaries. “I have often,” said a citizen of Lexington, “heard the auctioneer cry, ‘A good sound wench, sixteen years old, good to cook, bake, iron, and work. Warranted a slave for life.’ Crowds would flock to the court house to see the sight. I never heard or saw any indecency on such an occasion!”¹⁷⁶ William Brown stated that it was not uncommon in St.

Louis to hear a negress on the block thus described: “How much is offered for this woman? She is a good cook, good washer, a good obedient servant. She has got religion!”¹⁷⁷ Nevertheless, the slave traffic at its best was perhaps the worst feature of the system. Unruly slaves were continually threatened with being “sold south” as a means of encouraging industry or of enforcing discipline. Families were actually separated and obedient slaves often sold into a life of misery “down the river,” either because of callousness on the part of the owner or because financial straits demanded it.¹⁷⁸ Many sad incidents occurred at the block. Children were at times wrung from their parents. Professor Peter H. Clark of St. Louis remembers a house on the southwest corner of Morgan and Garrison Streets in which lived a woman who bought up infants from the mothers’ arms at the slave-markets of St. Louis and raised them for profit.

On the other hand, a little good was inadvertently done by some dealers. The story of the finding of Wharton Blanton’s slave-pen near Wright City, Warren County, is most interesting. Certain mounds in that vicinity, some two score in number, were supposed to mark the resting-place of the members of some ill-fated Spanish expedition, or of an Indian tribe. Investigation was started and the mounds were opened, but the bodies encountered were found to be those of negroes Eventually it was learned that one