Sold South Trivia Quiz

Answer: False, because creditors could demand slaves be sold to pay estate debts

Though laws varied among states and over time, enslaved people always had to fear sale and separation, even if their owner requested otherwise. Like any other assets, they could be seized by creditors even during the owner's lifetime, or sold to pay estate debts or for some other legal reasons also, no matter how much a master might try to prevent it. No enslaved person could ever be confident that he or she would always remain at home among family and friends.

Answer: For any reason or no reason, as long as the owner paid the jailer's bill

Private slave jails existed in most large southern cities for the convenience of slave owners, who wanted enslaved people temporarily confined for safe-keeping or punishment. Such jails also sold enslaved people on commission, holding them until a buyer appeared. Unlike public jails which were primarily to punish criminals or hold suspects awaiting trial, private jails would take any enslaved person at the owner's request, no questions asked, no reason necessary.

In this case, the trader may have left the woman there for convenience, while he went to purchase others.

Answer: An auction will be held today

A red flag was a traditional sign for any forthcoming auction of property, but as the interstate slave trade grew and some auctioneers began to specialize in selling only slaves, the red flag came to be an emotional symbol for those who knew it signalled that many lives would be disrupted permanently that day.

Answer: She would be ordered to strip naked for the buyer in a private room

Many commercial sellers did offer guarantees of health to keep buyers happy, but an enslaved person of either sex could be required to strip in a private room for inspection before a sale. This allowed buyers not only to notice health problems, but also to look for scars from punishment which might indicate a rebellious nature. Victorian sensibilities, ironically, made the inspection typically take place in a private room.

Answer: Coffles

Charles Ball described being prepared for a coffle in his 1837 autobiography, "A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball". The men wore iron collars around their necks and handcuffs on their wrists, connected with chains. He wrote, "In this manner we were chained alternately by the right and left hand; and the poor man, to whom I was thus ironed, wept like an infant when the blacksmith, with his heavy hammer, fastened the ends of the bolts that kept the staples from slipping from our arms."

Answer: He's a skilled blacksmith and therefore more of a loss if his health suffers on the trip

More expensive slaves were worth protecting during transportation, rather than being subjected to the fatigue and health risks of a long trek on foot. The main trading season in the Deep South ran from fall to winter, so time would only be a concern in late winter. Though slaves might rebel on land, they had been known to organize and take over ships, including the Amistad along the coast of Cuba in 1839 and, closer to home, the Creole heading from Richmond to New Orleans in 1841 and the Decatur from Baltimore to New Orleans in 1826, so sending them by water was not necessarily the best way to control them.

It was also less private for the shipper, because each captain needed a manifest listing the slaves on board and a customs inspector needed to certify that none was smuggled from Africa. Surviving manifests are invaluable to genealogists and researchers because unlike the US census, they list enslaved people by name, with other descriptive information, sometimes even including last names.

Answer: The Forks of the Road

The Deep South had a love-hate relationship with traders. After Nat Turner's revolt in Virginia, Louisiana instituted a temporary ban on commercial importation of slaves from out of state, for fear that sellers would dump dangerous ones. Though the ban only lasted from 1832 to 1834, traders quickly moved their businesses to Natchez, across the river in the state of Mississippi, but still weren't welcomed there. Fearing a cholera outbreak from so many people crowded together, the city of Nashville forced the traders outside city limits, and The Forks of the Road, at a crossroad about a mile away, got its start. Over the next couple of decades, thousands of enslaved people began their enforced life in the Deep South there. Most sales at The Forks of the Road happened as in a store, rather than at auction.

Answer: Drug slaves with laudanum to make them seem docile

Traders offered sick slaves rudimentary medical care, but there is no evidence they routinely drugged them. They did try to present their slaves to be as clean, well dressed, happy and healthy as possible, even if the enslaved people themselves felt miserable. For punishment, traders might use a paddle, which hurt as much as a whip but left fewer marks.

Answer: There's less chance the man will try to escape on the trip, so it will make guarding him easier

Slave marriages were not recognized legally, but both enslaved people and whites knew they happened. Whites did not need to respect such marriages, but traders realized that people separated from their families were harder to control and therefore traders might buy up a few family members on request. Deep South planters needed young male field hands so women and children sold for less profit, and there was no restriction on the number of males who could be imported alone. Once at their destination, the family still might be split among different buyers.

Answer: They feared the harsher legal restrictions on slaves in Deep South states

Lower-south buyers were willing to pay more for enslaved people than upper-south buyers, because they had ways of extracting more labor and therefore more value from them. Deep South crops like cotton and sugar cane could make planters rich if they pushed enslaved workers to the absolute maximum of their physical ability. Actual laws were similar in all slave states.

James Williams was sold south by his mistress after she discovered him digging poisonous roots, according to Hank Trent, editor, "Narrative of James Williams" (LSU Press, 2013). He finally managed to escape north to freedom from New Orleans, after previously making it to Baltimore before being recaptured. Thousands of others were not so lucky, and spent the rest of their lives enslaved far from where they were born.