The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 2

Chapters 3-4

Chapter 5-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 3 Summary: “Adolescence, Young Adulthood, and Soul Values”

Chapter 3 examines the valuation and the experience of this valuation during puberty and young adulthood (defined by Berry as ages 11 to 21).

This chapter opens with Joseph, a 17-year-old being sold with 148 other people in New Orleans right before the Civil War. There is no direct testimony available from Joseph, however, whose sale was witnessed and later described in writing by an unnamed abolitionist. Joseph’s enslaver decided to “retire” to pursue a political career, selling all his enslaved people. Berry asks various questions about Joseph’s experience and thoughts while being auctioned, such as whether he was “prepared” and whether the complimentary description of him by the auctioneer might “comfort him, uplift him, or add to the trauma of being sold” (60).

Puberty was “terrifying” for enslaved people. This was the stage of life when enslaved children were often sold away from their parents. Berry contends that it is during this stage that soul values “often escaped calculation and developed” (61). Soul values are felt in childhood but not fully developed until adolescence. While puberty is the period of development of soul values, it is also the period of sexual development, ostensibly making enslaved people more subject to sexual violations and rape.

Some enslaved people remember their parents—both mothers and fathers—attempting to purchase them. Although it was almost impossible for enslaved people to purchase themselves, some succeeded. Berry contends that there is “evidence” that “some enslaved youth recognized that nobody could purchase their soul” (66).

Black abolitionist William Still and white abolitionist Benjamin Drew worked together to collect the stories of enslaved people who escaped slavery and came north in the 19th century. One of the stories Still and Drew collected was of John Hill, who fled slavery in Virginia and whose entire family bought themselves, with Hill recalling that his uncles paid $1,500 each to purchase themselves. They then purchased their mother and Hill, their nephew.

Ratings such as “prime” and “first-rate” were called out by auctioneers to articulate commodified value; enslaved people used the same language to describe their soul value. Physicians were also an integral part of the external valuation and commodification of enslaved people, determining whether they were “sound” or “unsound.” Physicians and other medical staff facilitated enslavers, traders, and insurance companies in valuation. A whole person or even specific body parts could be “warranteed.”

The field of gynecology grew out of slavery and enslaved women’s bodies, often out of cruel curiosity rather than care. Saartjie Baartman was a Khoikhoi born in the 1770s in South Africa and was “exhibited” under the epithet “Hottentot Venus” for five years in Europe due to her breasts, buttocks, and labia being comparatively large. People paid to see and touch her body, and Berry describes her as standing on a “perpetual auction block” (73). A plaster cast of her body as well as her preserved genitalia were on display in Paris’s Museum of Man until 1974, and her remains were not returned to South Africa until 2002, when they were buried.

Gynecological treatment would have often been in the enslaver’s financial interest, but enslavers also went to great expense sometimes, beyond the value of enslaved people, to provide gynecological care. An enslaved woman named Mary was hospitalized for almost two months receiving treatment for an unexplained gynecological condition, which “speaks volumes about how her enslaver must have valued her” (75).

Both women and men were sexually exploited and raped while enslaved. Celia, who was raped by her enslaver for five years, ultimately killed him, was tried for murder, and was executed. Young men were sometimes taken on what was called a “circuit,” where they were forced to have sex with enslaved women. There were not only brothel houses in New Orleans that featured women but also ones specializing in men.

Berry concludes that enslaved people experienced exploitation from “men and women of every rank and class, from the enslaved to the free” (79). By the early 19th century, some states specialized in “breeding” and “producing” for the market. This involved what Berry calls “third-party rape” (79), when enslavers forced enslaved people to have sex against their will. There has been little research done on this subject. The subject of men’s sexual exploitation is particularly understudied, and many enslaved men discuss women’s exploitation, perhaps not because it was more common but because it was less taboo to discuss in comparison to their own sexual exploitation.

The valuation of the dead occurred when there was an insurance claim placed, which required a postmortem evaluation. Some enslaved people received formal burials, with enslaved and enslavers attending, while other enslaved people were simply thrown in rivers after death, often having been murdered by their enslavers.

Chapter 4 Summary: “Midlife and Older Adulthood”

Chapter 4 opens with the auctioning of Fanny, possibly the wife of Nat Turner, her two-year-old daughter, Melissa, and young son, Gilbert. Under her breath, she mutters the same words Nat Turner prayed with his congregation before his rebellion (and also his final words before execution): “Trust in the Lord, And you’ll overcome, Somehow, Somewhere, Someday!” (91).

The chapter examines the valuation of midlife adults (23 to 29 years old) by focusing on the aftermaths of two events: the 1831 Nat Turner uprising and executions and the 1859 John Brown uprising and executions. In particular, the chapter examines the ways that enslaved and criminalized bodies became commodities in death.

The market for dead bodies was directly correlated to the professionalization of medicine. Medical schools, both Southern and Northern, acquired bodies for anatomical dissection at executions as the domestic cadaver trade began to form.

In 1705 the Virginia Court of Oyer and Terminer set a precedent for enslavers’ compensation in the event of a slave’s commitment of a felony. This way, enslavers did not cover up felonies by way of selling enslaved people off. In 1748 Virginia stipulated that convicted enslaved people could be examined and appraised so that their value when they were executed could be compensated by the commonwealth.

Modern anatomical research and dissection began in 15th-century Europe. Before the commodification of bodies for dissection, there was a connection between criminalization and defilement of the body. Dissection was often perceived as a defilement and additional punishment. Federal legislation supported the practice of dissecting those who were executed for murder, regardless of their race. When Nat Turner and his fellow resisters were executed in Jerusalem (now Courtland), Virginia, medical students were ready to take their bodies. There were only two medical schools in Virginia at the time of Turner’s execution: University of Virginia and Winchester Medical School.

Turner’s skull was removed and became a part of the traffic in skulls in the 19th century, with Egyptologist George Robbins Gliddon and craniologist Samuel Morton working together in this trade. Gliddon acquired skulls in Egypt, which he shipped to Morton. Morton paid people in the United States to collect the heads of executed criminals.

Turner allegedly stated on the eve of his execution: “I am here loaded with chains, and willing to suffer that fate that awaits me” (109). Berry contrasts what she calls Turner’s “speaking back” with the inscription medical students made on acquired bodies they dissected, marking these bodies presumptuously as their own by inscribing their name and date into the bone. There is no way to know how many people handled or studied Turner’s body and head. However, the estate of his enslavers, whom he killed, was compensated for Turner’s execution, paid $375 by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Berry notes that compensation after enslaved people’s deaths was not limited to whites. The Creek nation, too, established legislation regarding compensation after enslaved people’s deaths.

Berry also examines the 1859 Harpers Ferry rebellion. John Brown was executed on December 2, 1859, and after he was killed eight members of the Medical College of Virginia requested his body for dissection, and one professor of anatomy stated that he wanted the skull for part of a museum collection. Brown’s body, however, was shipped to his family, with these requests refused. Berry contrasts the situations of John A. Copeland, a free Black man, and Shields Green, a fugitive from slavery from South Carolina, with the treatment of Brown’s body. Like Brown, both Copeland and Green were executed, two weeks after Brown, on December 16, 1859. Unlike Brown, however, their families were not consulted regarding what should be done with their bodies. After the two were hung, they were cut down, and medical students from the University of Virginia and the Medical College of South Carolina fought over their bodies, which were initially buried, only to be dug up later by medical students from Winchester Medical School.

Copeland’s father pleaded with Governor Wise of Virginia for the body of his son and was told that he could secure it if he sent a white man to claim it, which he did. Winchester medical students approached James Monroe of Oberlin College, sent by Copeland’s father, stating that legislation authorized dissection of criminals. The students hid the body from Monroe, though he was given a tour of their labs, where he encountered the body of Shields Green, which had been handled disrespectfully. Monroe returned without Copeland’s body, but 3,000 members of the Oberlin, Ohio community gathered two weeks after the December 16 execution of Copeland and Green for a service and, soon after, the placement of a monument, which remains today.

Dangerfield Newby was the first person to die in the Harpers Ferry raid. Newby had raised around $1,000 to attempt to buy his wife and one of their children after their enslaver told him that he would sell the two at that price. The enslaver then refused to sell, however, and Newby then joined Brown at Harper’s Ferry, possibly hoping to free his family through rebellion. Newby was shot and killed and then his body was stabbed, beaten, dismembered, and displayed. His body was thrown in a pit with others killed at Harper’s Ferry, and it was later disinterred in 1899 and buried on John Brown’s farm in New York.

Chapters 3-4 Analysis

Berry draws attention to the specific terrors of prepubescence and adolescence in slavery, a life stage when children were often separated from their parents along with becoming increasingly vulnerable to rape and sexual violence. She also importantly stresses that it was not only girls but also boys who experienced sexual violence.

One of the structural patterns in Berry’s writing is the interjection of questions regarding the state of mind of enslaved people; one can understand this as a key aspect of Berry’s attempt at Foregrounding the Manifestation of Soul Value and Enslaved Intellectual Life. The quality of these strings of questions varies, however, with Berry sometimes asking questions that feel more rhetorical than inquisitive. Sometimes, however, Berry asks probing questions that are necessarily risky, as in Chapter 3 in the auctioning of a young man, Joseph, who had a very high external value. She very briefly invites consideration about his thoughts in hearing himself praised directly by the auctioneer and upon hearing his extremely high price: Did these “complimentary adjectives […] comfort him, uplift him, or add to the trauma of being sold?” (60). Considering the possibility of a positive experience while being auctioned is controversial. It is much less contentious to assume that this experience was entirely negative, and this is one of the more challenging and thought-provoking moments in the book, though Berry does not pursue this line of questioning.

In continuing to consider sexual violence, Berry also asks difficult and important questions about what she has coined “third-party rape” (79), about which she has previously published. She asks about the experience of sexual assault and rape not only for women but also for men, moving into questions about the experiences and thoughts, as well as the physicality, of third-party rape for men. She asks, “How did he respond to the ‘sex on demand’ nature of forced couplings? How did he become aroused enough to perform for his enslavers? What did he do when they wanted to watch?” (80). Berry presents no answers for these questions but importantly draws attention to the need to ask these questions to begin to consider the thoughts of enslaved people and complicating conventional understandings of a binary dynamic of rape between an oppressor and a victim.

Continuing with this line of inquiry, Berry points to broad gaps in scholarship regarding the sexual exploitation of men, also beginning to raise questions about whether the writing of enslaved men, which often represents the sexual abuse of women, elides sexual violence against men themselves. If this is the case, the question of how to move into the intellectual worlds of men experiencing third-party rape is particularly difficult since they do not describe their own exploitation.

Berry also links the sexual and reproductive exploitation of women directly to the sciences, highlighting the theme of The Relation Between Medicine and Slavery. Gynecology as a discipline within medicine was born out of the exploitation of enslaved women, and both male curiosity regarding the female body as well as the desire to control and profit off women’s reproduction helped to create this medical field.

While Berry pays particular attention to the sexual abuses of both men and women and raises risky and necessarily challenging questions about their experiences and thinking, she also sometimes skips over the difficulties of enslaved and formerly enslaved lives. She writes, for example, that “upon their arrival in free places, formerly enslaved young women and men worked for themselves, acquired land, and spent time with their families” (67), as if escape to the north was merely a matter of relocation. Here she does not ask about the difficulties of escape or life within relative freedom and thus the difficulties of living out of one’s soul value.

In line with the theme of External Valuation (Commodification) and Internal Valuation (Soul Value) Within Slavery, the thrust of Berry’s scholarship is on this soul value or internal valuation, and she asserts that enslaved people “rejected their status in many ways,” including

hiding out, feigning ignorance, destroying crops, murdering enslavers and overseers, suing for freedom, learning to read and write, and running away. In certain instances of that push for freedom and self-liberation, clear expressions of their soul value appear (67).

Berry’s framing of soul value invites questions about whether an expression of soul value is tantamount to the “rejection of enslaved status” and whether there are expressions of soul value that exist within this status.

Berry begins to move into her discussion of the commodification of the dead in Chapter 4. Her focus on the extension of exploitation through death is one of the more challenging parts of her research, as Berry attempts to pay as much attention to deaths as lives, insisting that what happens to the body after death matters. This kind of research is difficult, as the damage done to the dead in the commodification of their bodies is a subject of much debate.

Berry highlights the unacknowledged losses that enslaved people experienced in the midst of the compensation that enslavers received for their financial loss when insurance was claimed after the death of an enslaved person. The dead, then, remained commodities, with “loss” being assessed monetarily, and with the grievability of the dead refused by the entire infrastructure of slavery.