Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
Posts: 3876

BROKE BY THE WAR

This is a chilling book. It is subtitled “Letters Of A Slave Trader” and is that pure and simple. It achieves its shock impact on me by its very avoidance of sensationalism. The book is a collection of letters from A. J. McElveen (a slave buying agent) to Z. B. Oakes
(A dealer in slaves at the slave mart in Charleston South Carolina). The letters are all written in the period 1852 to 1857.

The letters are a bare listing of the characteristics, price paid and disposition of slaves bought by McElveen for the account of Oakes and informing Oakes of what train the slaves would be on and when they would arrive in Charleston. Oakes never departs from this bare outline. He does not comment on his health, current events, or the weather. The letters were obviously a mere shipping document or invoice to accompany a group of slaves from where McElveen bought the slaves to Charleston so that Oakes would know what price he must get for the slaves in order to make a profit. There are no letters in reply from Oakes to McElveen even though some such letters are acknowledged in the
text.

Doesn’t sound very gripping does it? No plot, no character development, no sustained suspense---there is nothing here but 652 letters listing what slaves were to arrive, their condition and what price must be asked for each slave to make a profit. But there is a great emotional impact to me at least from reading these letters----it lies in the very cold and unemotional listing of these data. Several times McElveen refers to a slave as “some whipped” judging by the scars, girls as “likely”. He addresses the skills a slave claims such as “blacksmithing”, “cooking”, “stock handling”. There is absolutely no sexual innuendo in the letters but the reader learns after so many references that “likely” is a description only attached to nubile girls and its attachment to a slave bought is noteworthy. The general price paid for the slaves transported to Oakes during this period ranged from $650 to $1850 each with the lower prices generally going to children of 8 to 12 years and the higher prices to beefy male “field hands”.

I can’t say that I would recommend the book for general reading but I found that it made me think a lot.

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oxsan


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