Merchandise Store History

The document “Buying Slaves in 1693” portrays how the process of purchasing and transporting the slaves from the African coastline to the the English ship Hannibal. The document is a section in Captain Thomas Phillips journal dating May 21, 1693. This small section of text shows historically how you would go about purchasing slaves, and it also describes the compounds the slaves were held in. The description lays out a step by step process and side comments on what the captain has learn throughout his career. This text also demonstrates how two different cultures and societies interacted together through a form of trade.

There has been many historians and theorists who have tackled colonial slavery. One of them is Ira Berlin whose book Many Thousands Gone is his take on slavery diversity in American history and how slavery is at the epicenter of economic production, amongst other things. He separates the book into three generations: charter, plantation and revolutionary, across four geographic areas: Chesapeake, New England, the Lower country and the lower Mississippi valley. In this paper, I will discuss the differences between the charter and plantation generations, the changes in work and living conditions, resistance, free blacks and changes in manumission.

The company’s increase in inventory (illustrated on the statement of cash flows) rose after 1970 and culminated by a drastic increase in 1973. This increase in inventory (especially in 1973) appears to be heavily financed by short-term and long-term borrowing rather than the typical accounts payable. This is a bit unusual and in 1973 (when they acquired the greatest amount of debt equity, their accounts payable decreased. Their sales were not sufficient to offset the large outflows of inventory related costs. Furthermore, Grant’s decentralization was also a cause of their financial woes because rather than corporately controlling credit extension and credit terms, they allowed each store manager to set their own policies (and manipulate them as they desired). This disastrous policy imploded in 1975 when the company had to make a $155.7 million provision for bad debt expense. So not only did the company have substantial debt and bad debt to equity ratios, they were forced to write off about 8.8% of their total sales from 1975.

Walter Johnson examines the fluid nature of the domestic slave trade and its role in shaping a culture of slavery. Central to this culture was the fundamental reality that the slave person was a commodity to be bought and sold as the market demanded. Describe the effects of the practice of slave trading on the actors involved. How did the domestic slave trade help create the identities of slave, the slaveholder and the slave trader? How did the activities of the slave pen help “make” race (both white and black) in the antebellum period?

The introduction of Africans to America in 1619 set off an irreversible chain of events that effected the economy of the southern colonies. With a switch from the expensive system of indentured servitude, slavery emerged and grew rapidly for various reasons, consisting of economic, geographic, and social factors. The expansion of slavery in the southern colonies, from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to just before America gained its independence in 1775, had a lasting impact on the development of our nation’s economy, due to the fact that slaves were easy to obtain, provided a life-long workforce, and were a different race than the colonists, making it easier to justify the immoral act.

The author also explores the profitability of slavery as an institution, as while the tendency of slave owners to keep their capital invested in slaves rather than industry resulted in a lack of economic diversification in the South, it also resulted in great profits during times of high demand for agricultural products. Phillips states that more research is required in this area.

work the South’s plantations (“Auction and Negro sales and sale of slaves in New Orleans,”

While other authors focus their attention in regards to Reconstruction in the Southern states after the American Civil War on political matters and the meaning of Reconstruction itself, John Rodrigue ventures into the world of Sugar and the relationships between planters and freedmen to illustrate the creation of a labor system within the world of sugar cane plantations in Louisiana. By concentrating on this specific business and region, the author is able to illustrate the factors that shaped labor during and after the Civil War, while showing how Reconstruction altered life in terms of labor for both whites and African Americans. Rodrigue argues that by focusing on this specific region reveals how blacks were able to gain negotiating power with planters in an effort to support free labor. By utilizing primary and secondary sources, the author frames the narrative and provide the reader with a personal perspective into the free labor system.

In this time period salves was a mistreated, starved, and beaten and furthermore, serves with disease and sickness. Hundreds of runaway advertisements that have been collected it provide us with knowledge about enslaved individuals and the hardship of their struggle. The ads show evidence of slave on going work, struggling by individuals against slavery and allow us the indication into their appearance, skills, personalities and motives of those who chose to run. However, businessmen were pocking goods to trade for slaves. However, slaves were punished, mistreated, misbehaved and starved not knowing that, they had to shipped out and be sold to masters. This post is a broadsides “advertisement that was posted in Charlestown, South Carolina in 1769” This ads was posted by “John Chapman, &Co.” company. As you can see in the document “TO BE SOLD”. Slave was like item. Just like in-store where you see the

The perspectives of African slave merchants, the female slaves, and the plantation workers in the Americans which are missing in this collection might add other dimensions to our understanding of this commerce in people. Knowing the perspective of the African slave merchants who were present during the slave trade in Africa would have

There is no doubt that the United States was built upon the hard work of Black-American slaves, referred to at the time as bondpeople, who were the main labor force in producing important American exports, such as cotton or tobacco, which were, in fact, the backbone of the American economy during that time. Due to bondpeople’s overall importance in keeping the United States the powerhouse that it was, the domestic slave trade was a value market that “‘was roughly three times greater than the total amount of all capital, North and South combined, invested in manufacturing, almost three times the amount invested in railroads, and seven times the amount invested in banks’”(23). In “‘In Pressing Need of Cash,’” Daina Ramey Berry, a professor for the Departments of History and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas, looks at a fifteen year period, from 1850-1865, of the economic factors of the domestic slave trade. Berry uses Steven Deyle’s findings in his study, "Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life” which examined both the "long-distance interstate trade" and the extensive local or "intrastate" trade of enslaved males and females, who were priced differently depending on their perceived market value (23). With Deyle’s findings, Berry specifically discusses the relationships among gender, age, skill, or type of sale and how those factors, generally, determined the priced paid of enslaved workers.

Tobacco became the largest cash crop for the Chesapeake and southern colonies. Tobacco resulted in great wealth for the regions that it was grown. As agriculture became more important in the South; the need for workers became more important, also. Labor shortages were temporarily solved by indentured servants, but the indentured servants weren’t enough. Growers turned to African slaves to meet their need for labor. The slaves impacted the agricultural techniques as well as the social aspects of the Southern society. The presence of slaves created a gap in the economy between the rich and poor farmers in the Chesapeake, with the rich farmers leading the social and political

At this point, plantation owners were more focused on the profits they made then their slaves. Although the author uses the document to discuss slavery on cotton plantations, there were many other industries where slaves were equally badly off. This document directly supports the author’s argument indicating the difficulties that many Americans faced due to the revolutions of the early nineteenth

There was an abundant amount of trading and bartering that happened between white slave owners. “We were not many days in the merchant’s custody before we were sold after their usual manner.”(Page 4) The slaves were thought of and treated

This paper will question the relationship between Slavery and Capitalism, and the extent to how dependent Capitalism was on slavery. Chattel slavery first arrived to America in 1619 and from there the business just kept on growing. It leads to the invention of the cotton gin and helped push forward the young country into the developed powerful nation it is now. This can be gained from the readings from Bailyn, Beverly, the Declaration of Independence, and other works that show not only how profitable slavery was, but also how important it was to the development of America as a country.