“These people rut like rabbits.”

Anachronistic take on the views of Bryan J. Fischer

AS MORE STATES JOINED the Union as slave states, and new territories were appropriated from Native-Americans, a vast market for slaves opened up. All those states that had matured as slaves-holding veterans became slave exporters to these new territories.

In states like Virginia and several others, agricultural returns plummeted due to soil depletion. No large cotton or sugar plantations could be sustained. As a result, slave labour became unprofitable. States like Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia became net slave exporters. They did this by slave breeding for profit. In this new business female slaves became very valuable.

There was money, lots of money, to be made as slaves were bought and driven down or shipped to the infamous southern markets. It was more agony on the poor descendants of Africans as this meant more separation of fami­lies, and more and harder work in new territories. Slaves ran and left spouses and children under the yoke because of the threat of being sold south.

Just like slave ships lurked on the West African coast collecting slaves, so too did slave traders and their agents lurk around slave-breeding plantations. The traders visited these plantations buying up available slaves. The cargo was then confined in specially constructed pens or in state prisons until departure. At these detention centres, cow-skin hides, hickory switches, thumbscrews, and gags were used to silence the slaves. Once the consignment was complete, the traders would set off to the southern markets in coffles or on ships.380

The breeding of human beings for sale was a serious business and was carried out meticulously and ruthlessly. The manuals said well-fed, well-clothed, and well-housed niggers bred faster. Therefore, female slaves for breeding purposes were well looked after. Mothers whose children died could be punished. Mothers who miscarried could be punished. Females who did not conceive could be whipped. On some plantations, females who did not submit to studs to be impregnated would be punished. Males who objected to their women being raped and impregnated could be punished.

Slave breeders were in a foetid cesspit with another despicable echelon of slavers: children’s speculators. Though not common, this practice involved speculators buying children on the cheap. They would have these children brought up by slave mother-surrogates and sell them when they had grown, at a tidy profit, of course. These children were brought up like animals with no concept of family, and only to do the bidding of their master, whoever it was at the time. That is the pedigree that America imbued in many slaves.

The breeding programme was very psychologically damaging to slaves. The following were the hallmarks of this awful American tradition:

1. Slaves lived in constant fear of being sold.
2. Slaves lived in constant fear of separation.
3. Licentiousness or prurience were encouraged. Overseers would be paid extra for impregnating as many women slaves as possible. Black studs – called stockmen – were also used for breeding purposes. Some plantation owners paid white studs to impregnate their female slaves. This was to increase their stock levels and stock values as pound for pound, mixed-race octoroons were more valuable than quadroons who were more valuable than mulattoes who were, generally, worth more than pure blacks. But in practice, this value depended on the work envisaged for the slave. If the slave woman was for the flesh market in New Orleans, then the lighter the skin colour, the better. If the slave was wanted for hard labour in the fields in the deep south, then darker slaves were favoured as they thought them to be hardier.
4. As this was a business and not a lustful venture, the southern churches were okay with the trade – Hallelujah!
5. Those slaves who could not breed, those who could not be sold due to age or infirmity, and those who could not work for whatever reason were subjected to unimaginable cruelty.
6. Some slaves ran away if they learned of their impending sale and would 381 The Problem of Africanisation

rather face the elements or commit suicide than be sold south by soul drivers.

7. Insurrections were more common, with attendant massacres, in slave breeding states.
8. To the white slave-holder, babies born on his estate where just a means to a better horse-drawn carriage, more Cuban cigars, the perfect wedding for his daughter, the white stallion his son would kill for, the pearl necklace his wife craved for and such like. The poor slave mother would have some or all of her children mercilessly snatched from her bosom and sold to pay for any or all of the above wants of the slaver’s family.
9. Breeding wenches were highly prized. These were women who, by the time they turned 20, would have had 4 to 5 children. If there was a reason for selling these women, they would be sold at a premium. If they reached a milestone of 15 children, some were set free, or were promised to be set free. The odour of money, however, often fouled these promises.

With slave breeding for profit, and the buying and raising clutches of slave children for sale, Anglo-Saxon Americans reached a new nadir in depravity. The southern whites realised the infamy of slave breeding and so were vehement in their denials of the practice. The slave breeders said though they encouraged slave rearing they did not practice slave breeding.