Slavery, legally sanctioned in the south, and for a long time in the north as well, was supported at every turn by legal structures. So, something that I like to use a lot in teaching, just to get students thinking about this, are—these are receipts, these are receipts. And, the one I'm holding right now is dated Norfolk, September 17, 1853. It's a printed receipt that's been filled out. It's something that, it's very similar in a way, to something that you might buy at an office supply store. If you went and needed a book of receipts because, you know, you had a business.

It's got a blank space that you can fill in the place and date. And then it says 18-five and blank.

So just like today in writing a check you might have—or a set of receipts—just to make things easier they might write two-zero-zero and then you can put in 2009, or 2008, or something like that. Just to make it just a little easier in filling out a receipt. It's got this, it's for—it's obviously a book of receipts that you can fill out all through the 1850s. Then it says, "Received of 'blank,' 'blank' dollars, being in full for the purchase of 'blank' Negro slave named 'blank.' The right and title of said slave 'blank' warrant and defend against the claims of all persons whatsoever, and likewise warrant 'blank' sound and healthy, as witness my hand and seal," and then the title of this. And it's a very elegant 19th-century receipt. It's in a nice filigreed kind of handwriting, it's got lovely illustrations on the side that depict kind of the engines of commerce for the time. There's a steamboat and there's a clipper ship and there's a railroad.

And it says, "Murphy and Company, Printers, Baltimore." Thinking about it, how many people are involved in this receipt? It's been printed by a printer in Baltimore, but it's been printed for probably a lot of people. But, this one in particular, it's noted it's sold by a bookseller in Richmond. This particular receipt is dated in Norfolk.

Now, if you were teaching students, using this for the classroom, one of the first things you might want to do is list all of the locations that are on this receipt and any of the other receipts, you know, so that students get a sense of the geography of the place. Like, where is Baltimore in relationship to Richmond? Where is Norfolk and why might this receipt be dated in Norfolk?

The thing, as an historian, that strikes me about these documents is, first, how mundane they are, how banal they are, how similar they are to the kinds of—the book of receipts that you could pick up today. But then, to realize that the people that are kind of in this kind of elegant handwriting, that are signing their names to this receipt, are engaged in the sale of humans.

This particular receipt from Baltimore, dated in 1851, "warrants and defends against the claims of all persons whatsoever and likewise warrants sound and healthy and slaves for life." So, it's almost identical, but it adds the little phrase "and slaves for life," that none of the others do. So, you ask yourself, "Well, what might account for that little bit of fine print, that little legal boilerplate being added to this receipt?"

People keep records of property in a way that they don't keep of people, and they lay—these records stay around with us for a long time.

You often will hear that, well, the Emancipation Proclamation didn't free any slaves really, because it only was under effect for those areas that weren't under the control of the Union Army. But what it did do, was take this huge amount of capital that was vested in slaves and wiped it out. It just erased billions of dollars of capital. It's one of the reasons that New York City was such a hotbed of pro-slavery sentiment, because the banks and the trading houses in New York City were very invested economically.

We know that, in this particular one, "Received of Charles H. Shield, Esquire, 1,000 dollars, being paid in full for the purchase of a Negro slave named Mary and her child, Louisianna. The right and title of said slave, I warrant and defend against the claims of all persons whatsoever," and it's signed by William W. Hall. So, Charles Shield and William Hall are engaged in the transaction of Mary and her child. But this is a legal document. Think about what is the backing? What is the legal claim that this receipt gives to the bearer? So that there's a certain#&8212;in other words, it's kind of to demonstrate that I have the legal right that I've been given by the seller, to the ownership of Mary and her child. The other thing, of course, you keep receipts for, is in case you have to return something.

It's very similar when you think about it, to the kinds of promises that you make when you're buying anything. Here—there's a warrant. In other words, someone is making a kind of authoritative claim and "defend against all claims of all persons whatsoever." So, by that, in other words that, "I have legal title to these people, and I warrant, I signed this in warrant that in fact, I'm transferring that title to the bearer, and I likewise warrant them sound and healthy, as witnessed by hand and seal." So, they're making a claim about these people, and it's not surprising that they make a claim about this. As I said, the law is imbued in every aspect of slavery, including all of these kinds of transfers, these kind of transfers, the sale of slaves. And there's a whole kind of, a set of legal laws about, "Well, what would happen if you sold a slave to someone, and the slave died? What if the person knew that they were ill? So, what does it mean to say that someone is healthy?" and what, what are the kinds of—these things come up. The courts serve the function of making sure that the business of slavery proceeds in an orderly fashion.

This is all about the buying and selling of people. But, there's this huge set of laws that are protecting every transaction. So, a lot of this printed language is what a lot of people, they'll refer to it as "boilerplate." This is the fine print, the fine print of the sale of slaves, that has a special meaning for every jurisdiction that this receipt is made out in.

The state, whether it's Virginia here or elsewhere, does have an interest in knowing about this, in part, just to keep track, but also because these transactions are often—they'll say "paid in full," but they're really also backed by loans. People are buying slaves on credit. It's very speculative. So, there are banks, insurance companies, who also have a stake in the ownership of Mary and her child, Louisiana, that may go far beyond Norfolk and the environs.

Now, one thing that this document won't tell you is, in and of itself, and I can't say that I know the answers to this myself, but who William Hall and Charles Shield are, but you can kind of make some educated guesses. This is happening, the sale is recorded in Norfolk, Virginia. Norfolk is, it's on the coast. It's 1853. Virginia is an old part of the kind of slave south of the Chesapeake [region]. There are hundreds of thousands of enslaved people in Virginia. But, the real money in 1853 to be made in slavery, is not in Virginia. It's in the new southwest. It's in places like Louisiana and Alabama, Mississippi.

A lot of legal cases developed over this because people wanted to make sure they were getting maximized profits for the sale of the estate, including slaves. It was found that "items sell best when sold separately." In other words, given the opportunity to sell a family, self-contained as a lot, to an individual, or to sell them as individuals, more money would be made selling them as individuals.

And, because the courts have a fiduciary responsibility in making sure that the heirs get the best bargain that they can from the estate, they're mandated to sell separately. So, it reminds one that there are hundreds of thousands of families that are being broken up through these types of trade. It's also a good thing to stop and think about how often we talk about the transatlantic slave trade, but to consider the domestic slave trade as well, as being a great tragedy and something that continued to wreak havoc for years and years. Some of the saddest documents that one can find are in African American newspapers and magazines, sometimes 10, 20 years after the Civil War. They're often called "Information Wanted" notices, looking for a mother or a sister or a child, still trying to find their family members.

In Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom, it's the fourth of his autobiographies, and he elaborates upon a story that he tells in his first autobiography, The Life of Frederick Douglass. And it's where he meets up with Sandy, who he knows from the region as an African conjurer. Sandy is also a slave. He is also a slave who has been sent to the region of the Eastern Shore to be broken. But he is known in the slave community for not giving up the customs and traditions of Africa. And Douglass is a Christian, and the scene is, or the setting is that Douglass has just run away from Covey after being beaten by Covey, and he is fearful of who he hears walking in the woods, and it turns out to be Sandy. And he goes home with Sandy, and he is talking with Sandy about his problem about, "I don't want to be beat any more. I don't want to be put in a situation." And Sandy offers him a root as a talisman, he offers him some herbs from the woods, and it's a real symbol to Douglass of traditional African customs of "something from the earth gives you power." And Sandy encourages Douglass to put it in his pocket and assures him that when he goes back to Covey that Covey won't beat him, or if he does he will have the power to overcome Covey, and it works.

Or at least Douglass questions if it works because when he does go back, Covey is not successful in his second attempt to beat Douglass, and Douglass really struggles then with the confrontation of something African, traditional tribal—prevailed over his traditional, his accepted views of Christianity, and that's a real personal conflict for him.

Well, in his first autobiography, The Life of Frederick Douglass, which is probably the most commonly read, it's barely mentioned in passing. It's barely mentioned. He doesn't go into any kind of details about his own personal struggles with the talisman, about how the fact that he had it in his pocket challenges his own Christian beliefs. So he's thinking a little bit more later in life about who Sandy was, what Sandy represented on the Eastern Shore, how dramatically unique Sandy was from all the other slaves that Douglass encountered. Douglass was almost surprised later in life that the extent to which there could be one person who was still so African.

I think it's a great source to start inquiring about "to what extent have African customs survived the middle passage and the horrors of slavery?" I think the conversation is a natural one to have in the early years of slavery, obviously, but by the time Douglass comes around, slavery is already, the transatlantic slavery has already been cut off.

Slaves are not seen as imported any more, but yet it's a testament to the extent to which African customs and traditions and culture survives the institution, the trade, the trafficking, and the attempts, quite literally, to beat the Africans into submission, into slavery. So, it's a good document for asking those kinds of questions about how does this survive? What does its survival mean? What happens when an African American is confronted with African customs that they have rejected? That's a real internal personal struggle for Frederick Douglass, and it tells us a little bit about the character of the community in which African Americans are operating, that there is no one set definition of what slavery was, who was a slave, how did slaves live their lives, and all the facets that go into creating the African American community.

So, I really ask my students to kind of probe it on that particular level and the questions that come out of that document that lead them to discover a new sense and a new understanding of African Americans.

I usually use it with John Hope Franklin's book, In Search of the Promised Land, which is the story of a female slave who's owned by a Virginian but who lives in Nashville. So, she's allowed to live and exist almost as a free black woman with these tenuous connections to slavery, and it really shows in her life then, the kinds of things that can happen in those complex situations. Douglass's life is also very complex, and so I ask the students to think about this little story, this little snippet, in the larger story of his life.

Well, I hope that they'll try to find out the extent to which slaves were, in fact, either dominated by their master and not dominated by their master. Where are the margins within which slaves can control their own lives? I hope that they'll question their monolithic understanding of slavery because it seems to me that a lot of students come with such an understanding that all slaves lived on a large plantation, all slaves picked cotton, all male slaves were in the field, all female slaves were in the house. It's not the kind of story that gives us any kind of agency among the slaves. So, I really want them to examine that.

It's very important for them to read excerpts about the same event across the four different autobiographies of Douglass.

How did he change in the course of his life? Why did he expand upon the story in one of the narratives but not in the other narratives? Is it something he remembered? Is it something that gained greater importance as he went on in his life?

Those are the kinds of questions that you can ask of an individual, and we always need to get past, especially in slavery, we always need to get past the sense that we're looking for consistency and that individuals are not consistent, and we shouldn't expect that of our historical figures. Here's a slave who was taught to read against the law, and it's done openly. Here's a slave who passes through many masters; again, not the perception most students have of slaves. Here's a slave who does the unthinkable. He confronts a slave breaker. And so in that sense it gives them the hero story, but it also, it's building from a story about which they already think they know something, and I think that's real important that we start with things that they think they know and that they can then learn that there's more to that.