The Weeping Time The slave auction in Savannah in March 1859 was one of the largest in U S history It has been called the Weeping Time The auction tore hundreds of slave families apart obey the white buyers and sellers Auctioneers could not sell someone who appeared rowdy or disobedient They were quick to whip anyone who seemed rebellious Sometimes whips were not Potential buyers inspected slaves as they would inspect a horse Slaves had to allow the examination or they would be punished ﱚ6ﱚ
This receipt is for a male slave sold for 250 in 1840 needed Many of the 436 individuals wanted to impress future owners They hoped their new owners would treat them with kindness They desperately wished that their families would not be split apart However they had no control over their futures The slaves only knew that they would always be treated as property In the 1800s and earlier there were many debates about slavery in the United States Slavery was important to the nation’s economy This was especially true in the South There slaves worked on cotton and tobacco plantations Northern factories made cloth from cotton grown by ﱚ7ﱚ
Cruelty for Money A fit able-bodied male slave in his twenties was worth 1,600 in the 1850s This is more than 35,000 in today’s dollars The March 1859 auction brought in 303,850 which is more than 6 million dollars today slaves Slavery was a huge part of the culture in some places There had been slaves in the colonies since the 1600s However some people believed that slavery was wrong They believed that one person should not own another The issue had grown more The Southern economy relied on cotton and slave labor Most slaves worked long hours in the hot fields They lived in poor conditions and were not paid for their work ﱚ8ﱚ
Throughout the 1800s the nation debated whether slavery was right This image appeared with many antislavery writings complicated by the time the Civil War began in 1861 Some people argued that owning another human being and treating that person as property was cruel Unfortunately many slave owners did not consider nonwhites to be human beings ﱚ9ﱚ
