Husband selling

Last updated

Husband selling was the historical practice of: a wife selling a husband, generally to a new wife; an enslaver or enslaver's estate selling the husband in an enslaved family, generally to a new enslaver; court-sentenced sales of fathers' services for some years, described as sales of fathers (one apparently a husband[ clarification needed ]); sales of a husband as directed by a religious authority.

Contents

Sales by wives

Intermaritally, no more than five or six cases of husbands having been sold by their wives are known in English and English diasporan history, [1] in comparison to approximately 400 reportable cases of wives having been sold by their husbands in the English custom. [2] [3] The known sales of husbands by wives occurred in the 19th century. [4]

In the intermarital context, the practice was somewhat but not entirely parallel to wife selling in the same nation. On the one hand, in both practices, the person was sold by the current spouse to a new spouse, causing a divorce with the seller and creating a new marriage with the buyer. Sales sometimes used a contract but never ritualistically, as far as is known. It is possible that the law and the response of courts to cases were the same regardless of gender. [5] [6]

In the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), Tuân Sắc in 1969 "argued, '[t]here are ... even women who sell their husbands for a little spending money (it's all in the newspapers)'" [7] and posited that such people are not, or are no longer, Vietnamese. [7]

Sales by enslaver and their estates

In the enslaver context, in Philadelphia, in ca. the 18th century, sales often occurred not only by or at the direction of living enslavers but also at the direction of testators. [8] Testators were not known to direct that slave couples be kept together. [9] "Philadelphia newspaper advertisements ... provide evidence that many [slave] owners sold husbands away from wives ...; most indicated no concern about the consequences for the slaves." [8] Some sales of slave husbands without their wives were followed by the masters requiring the wives to take new husbands. [10]

An enslaved woman, according to Daniel Meaders, "married [a slave] ..., but soon after the marriage, the 'husband was sold and sent away. I never saw him afterwards.'". [11]

In Virginia, in 1772–1773, a Baptist church considered a complaint against an individual that the selling of a slave husband, causing separation from his wife, was un-Christian, a matter which the county judiciary would not decide. [12]

One case in Massachusetts was alleged in 1799 against a political candidate but denied by the candidate. [13]

In Haiti, when it was St. Domingue, a law of 1685 on slavery forbade "selling a [slave] husband or wife separately." [14]

In Colombia under Spanish colonial rule, [15] particularly in 1750–1826, [16] according to David L. Chandler, Spanish law "allowed slaves to marry and establish a family even against the master's wishes ... and prohibited ... [the family's] separation through sale.... [S]eparation of the slave family was not very common." [17] If a slave couple was broken up by the sale of one spouse out of an area, Chandler wrote, the other spouse, even after ten years, could petition a court to allow the latter enslaved person to find a buyer so the couple could reunite; [18] such cases, in which the wife was sold first and the husband second, were litigated in 1802 and 1806. [18] In 1808, reported Chandler, an enslaver had sold an enslaved husband to another enslaver; the husband objected to a breakup of his family, and a court ordered visitations; after a subsequent dispute between the enslaved and the selling enslaver, the enslaver who sold the husband "brought suit against the new owner ... to force her either to sell him out of the area or to sell him back to ... [the first master] so he could properly discipline and control" the slave-husband [18] but was ordered by a court to sell the enslaved wife to the other enslaver as well, so the slave family would be able to live together and not merely have visits; and the court order was complied with. [18]

Sales for child support defaults

Fathers were sometimes sold, and in some cases, sales of the fathers' full-time services for terms of years were described as sales of fathers; one said he was a husband, and the result of his case did not necessarily require disputing that. According to Richard B. Morris, "in prosecuting for bastardy it was customary throughout ... [South Carolina] to sell into servitude for a period of four years the putative father upon his defaulting on ... maintenance of the ... child". [19] [lower-alpha 1] [lower-alpha 2] Morris described the "appropriation of the white worker's time" due to the sale as "complete". [20] The maximum term was four years, and less was sometimes imposed, but, according to Morris, one court sentenced one man to a ten-year sale. [21] These fathers were, according to Morris, "indiscreet poor whites". [22] One defendant stated that he was a husband and that someone else caused the out-of-wedlock birth, but he was convicted anyway. [23] These sales were authorized by a statute enacted in 1839 [lower-alpha 3] and repealed in 1847, replaced by handling as misdemeanors. [22]

Sales at religious direction

The hatred of a wife was a ground for forcing a sale of the husband into slavery. In the medieval Christian Church, [24] according to Frederik Pijper in 1909, "if anyone abandoned his wife, and refusing to come to terms with her, permitted himself to be put into prison for debtors, he became a slave forever on the ground of his hatred for his wife. And should he be seen at any time enjoying liberty, he must again be sold." [25]

In the same Church, [24] according to Pijper, "one way [to "become a slave"] was by selling oneself because of poverty. It might so happen that a married pair sank into such need that the husband was compelled to sell himself, and did so with his wife's consent. In this way he secured sustenance for himself, and with the purchase-money he was in a position to keep his wife from starving.... A synod at Paris early in the seventh century ordained that freemen who had sold ... themselves should if they repaid the money at once be restored to their former status. To demand back a greater sum than what had been paid for them, was not allowed." [26]

A church decision at Vermeria in the 8th century, according to Pijper, specified that if an enslaved husband was sold, both spouses should be discouraged from remarrying; "if through sale a slave be separated from his wife, also a slave, each should be urged to remain thus (i. e., not to marry again) in case we cannot reunite them." [27]

If a married enslaved person's freedom was not bought, i.e., the married enslaved person was not sold into freedom, the enslaved person's already-freed spouse could remarry, under permission of the medieval Church, if one enslaver had wedded the former couple; according to Pijper, "if ... two slaves were joined in wedlock by their common master, and one of them was thereafter freed, that one was permitted to marry again, if the freedom of the other could not be bought." [28]

In popular culture, a wife's sale of her husband to a widow is depicted in 1960 in a play by François Billetdoux, Le Comportement des époux Bredburry (sic), [29] and the playwright claimed to have seen such an advertisement in "an American paper". [29] Indigenous Sufi folk-poetry told of "the foolish queen Lila who, for the sake of a fabulous necklace, 'sold' her husband to her maid for a night", [30] thereby requiring purification for the Queen. [30]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ South Carolina, a U.S. state which sold a man into servitude
  2. ↑ Child support or financial maintenance of a child
  3. ↑ Whether an earlier act or other law also permitted such sales is unknown from Morris, Richard B., White Bondage in Ante-Bellum South Carolina, in The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, vol. 49, no. 4 (October, 1948) (in JStor), p. 200 & n. 45, but n. 45 lists cases from earlier.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavery in medieval Europe</span> Slavery in Europe & the Near East, 500 to 1500

Slavery in medieval Europe was widespread. Europe and North Africa were part of a highly interconnected trade network across the Mediterranean Sea, and this included slave trading. During the medieval period (500–1500), wartime captives were commonly forced into slavery. As European kingdoms transitioned to feudal societies, a different legal category of unfree persons—serfdom—began to replace slavery as the main economic and agricultural engine. Throughout medieval Europe, the perspectives and societal roles of enslaved peoples differed greatly, from some being restricted to agricultural labor to others being positioned as trusted political advisors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slave trade in the United States</span>

The internal slave trade in the United States, also known as the domestic slave trade, the Second Middle Passage and the interregional slave trade, was the mercantile trade of enslaved people within the United States. It was most significant after 1808, when the importation of slaves from Africa was prohibited by federal law. Historians estimate that upwards of one million slaves were forcibly relocated from the Upper South, places like Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri, to the territories and then-new states of the Deep South, especially Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Washington and slavery</span> George Washingtons relationship with slavery

The history of George Washington and slavery reflects Washington's changing attitude toward the ownership of human beings. The preeminent Founding Father of the United States and a hereditary slaveowner, Washington became increasingly uneasy with it. Slavery was then a longstanding institution dating back over a century in Virginia where he lived; it was also longstanding in other American colonies and in world history. Washington's will immediately freed one of his slaves, and required his remaining 123 slaves to serve his wife and be freed no later than her death, so they ultimately became free one year after his own death.

<i>Twelve Years a Slave</i> 1853 memoir by Solomon Northup

Twelve Years a Slave is an 1853 memoir and slave narrative by Solomon Northup as told to and written by David Wilson. Northup, a black man who was born free in New York state, details himself being tricked to go to Washington, D.C., where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. He was in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana before he was able to secretly get information to friends and family in New York, who in turn secured his release with the aid of the state. Northup's account provides extensive details on the slave markets in Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, and describes at length cotton and sugar cultivation and slave treatment on major plantations in Louisiana.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of slavery in Kentucky</span>

The history of slavery in Kentucky dates from the earliest permanent European settlements in the state, until the end of the Civil War. In 1830, enslaved African Americans represented 24 percent of Kentucky's population, a share that had declined to 19.5 percent by 1860, on the eve of the Civil War. Most enslaved people were concentrated in the cities of Louisville and Lexington and in the hemp- and tobacco-producing Bluegrass Region and Jackson Purchase. Other enslaved people lived in the Ohio River counties, where they were most often used in skilled trades or as house servants. Relatively few people were held in slavery in the mountainous regions of eastern and southeastern Kentucky; they served primarily as artisans and service workers in towns.

<i>The Slave Community</i> 1972 book by John W. Blassingame

The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South is a book written by American historian John W. Blassingame. Published in 1972, it is one of the first historical studies of slavery in the United States to be presented from the perspective of the enslaved. The Slave Community contradicted those historians who had interpreted history to suggest that African-American slaves were docile and submissive "Sambos" who enjoyed the benefits of a paternalistic master–slave relationship on southern plantations. Using psychology, Blassingame analyzes fugitive slave narratives published in the 19th century to conclude that an independent culture developed among the enslaved and that there were a variety of personality types exhibited by slaves.

Slavery in Britain

Slavery in Britain existed before the Roman occupation and endured until the 11th century, when the Norman conquest of England resulted in the gradual merger of the pre-conquest institution of slavery into serfdom. Given the widespread socio-political changes, all slaves were no longer recognised separately in English law or custom. By the middle of the 12th century, the institution of slavery as it had existed prior to the Norman conquest had fully disappeared, but other forms of unfree servitude continued for some centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Bible and slavery</span>

The Bible contains many references to slavery, which was a common practice in antiquity. Biblical texts outline sources and the legal status of slaves, economic roles of slavery, types of slavery, and debt slavery, which thoroughly explain the institution of slavery in Israel in antiquity. The Bible stipulates the treatment of slaves, especially in the Old Testament. There are also references to slavery in the New Testament.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voluntary slavery</span> Consensual entry into slavery

Voluntary slavery, in theory, is the condition of slavery entered into at a point of voluntary consent. It is distinguished from involuntary slavery where an individual is forced to a period of servitude usually as punishment for a crime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slave breeding in the United States</span> Former prevalent economic practice in the US, especially after import of slaves was made illegal

Slave breeding was the practice in slave states of the United States of slave owners systematically forcing slaves to have children to increase their wealth. It included coerced sexual relations between enslaved men and women or girls, forced pregnancies of enslaved women and girls due to forced inter inbreeding with fellow slaves in hopes of producing relatively stronger future slaves. The objective was for enslavers to increase the number of people they enslaved without incurring the cost of purchase, and to fill labor shortages caused by the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wife selling</span> Practice of a husband selling his wife

Wife selling is the practice of a husband selling his wife and may include the sale of a female by a party outside a marriage. Wife selling has had numerous purposes throughout the practice's history; and the term "wife sale" is not defined in all sources relating to the topic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Treatment of slaves in the United States</span>

The treatment of slaves in the United States often included sexual abuse and rape, the denial of education, and punishments like whippings. Families were often split up by the sale of one or more members, usually never to see or hear of each other again.

Child-selling is the practice of selling children, usually by parents, legal guardians, or subsequent custodians, including adoption agencies, orphanages and Mother and Baby Homes. Where the subsequent relationship with the child is essentially non-exploitative, it is usually the case that purpose of child-selling was to permit adoption.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scramble (slave auction)</span> Form of slave auction that took place during the Atlantic Slave Trade

A scramble was a particular form of slave auction that took place during the Atlantic slave trade in the European colonies of the West Indies and the domestic slave trade of the United States. It was called a "scramble" because buyers would run around in an open space all at once to gather as many enslaved people as possible. Another name for a scramble auction is "Grab and go" slave auctions. Slave ship captains would go to great lengths to prepare their captives and set prices for these auctions to make sure they would receive the highest amount of profits possible because it usually did not involve earlier negotiations or bidding.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavery in ancient Greece</span> History of slavery in ancient Greece

Slavery was a widely accepted practice in ancient Greece, as it was in contemporaneous societies. The principal use of slaves was in agriculture, but they were also used in stone quarries or mines, and as domestic servants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of concubinage in the Muslim world</span>

Concubinage in the Muslim world was the practice of Muslim men entering into intimate relationships without marriage, with enslaved women, though in rare, exceptional cases, sometimes with free women. If the concubine gave birth to a child, she attained a higher status known as umm al-walad.

Although Merovingian Francia is not considered a slave society, slaves were, nonetheless, present throughout the entirety of the dynasty and well into the Carolingian period and beyond. In the 7th century, however, the sale and trade of Christians within Frankish borders was abolished by Queen Balthild, herself a former slave.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slave marriages in the United States</span> Generally not legal before the American Civil War

Slave marriages in the United States were typically illegal before the American Civil War abolished slavery in the US. Enslaved African Americans were legally considered chattel, and they were denied civil and political rights until the United States abolished slavery with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Both state and federal laws denied, or rarely defined, rights for enslaved people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ziba B. Oakes</span> American slave trader (1807–1871)

Ziba Burrill Oakes was a broker of slaves and real estate in Charleston, South Carolina. Oakes is significant in the history of American slavery in part due to his construction of what he called a "shed" at 6 Chalmers Street. The shed still stands and is now Charleston's Old Slave Mart Museum. The site as a whole, once a much larger assemblage of buildings and pens, was generally known as Ryan's mart or Ryan's nigger-jail, and shut down in late 1864 or early 1865, supposedly "when owners Thomas Ryan and Z.B. Oakes went off to fight in the war." Come the end of the American Civil War, writer and abolitionist James Redpath took it upon himself to visit Charleston's negro mart and liberate the slavery-related business documents that remained therein. The 652 letters to Z.B. Oakes looted by Redpath were eventually turned over to abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and in 1891 became a part of the anti-slavery special collections at the Boston Public Library. The letters remain a significant primary source in the study of the 19th-century American slave trade.

References

  1. ↑ Thompson, Edward Palmer, Customs in Common (N.Y.: New Press, 1st American ed. 1993 ( ISBN   1-56584-074-7)), p. 459 & n. 3 (author historian & social critic).
  2. ↑ Thompson, Edward Palmer, Customs in Common, op. cit., p. 408.
  3. ↑ Rarity in general: Thompson, E. P., Folklore, Anthropology, and Social History, in The Indian Historical Review, vol. III, no. 2, p. 253, January, 1977 (author apparently historian).
  4. ↑ Menefee, Samuel Pyeatt, Wives for Sale: An Ethnographic Study of British Popular Divorce (N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, 1981 ( ISBN   0-312-88629-2)), pp. 160–163 & nn. 16–18 & p. 249 case 294 & p. 255 case 353 (appx. (Wife-Sale Cases and References)) (author anthropologist).
  5. ↑ Menefee, Samuel Pyeatt, Wives for Sale, op. cit., pp. 160–163 & nn. 16–18.
  6. ↑ Thompson, Edward Palmer, Customs in Common, op. cit., p. 459 n. 3.
  7. 1 2 Tran, Nu-Anh, South Vietnamese Identity, American Intervention, and the Newspaper Chính Luận[Political Discussion], 1965–1969, in Journal of Vietnamese Studies, vol. 1, no. 1–2 (February/August, 2006), as accessed October 28, 2012, 1:05 p.m., p. 190 & n. 96 (n. omitted) (DOI 10.1525/vs.2006.1.1-2.169) (author PhD student, history dep't, Univ. of Calif., Berkeley) (Tuân Sắc's qualifications & sourcing unspecified, thus Tuân Sắc's statement probably tertiary as a source for Wikipedia) (in JStor (database) (subscription may be required)).
  8. 1 2 Soderlund, Jean R., Black Women in Colonial Pennsylvania, in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 107, no. 1 (January, 1983), p. 56.
  9. ↑ Soderlund, Jean R., Black Women in Colonial Pennsylvania, op. cit., p. 56 & n. 20.
  10. ↑ Bardolph, Richard, Social Origins of Distinguished Negroes, 1770–1865, in The Journal of Negro History, vol. 40, no. 3 (July, 1955), p. 214 n. 4 (author was of Woman's Coll., Univ. of N. Car.).
  11. ↑ Meaders, Daniel, Kidnapping Blacks in Philadelphia: Isaac Hopper's Tales of Oppression, in The Journal of Negro History, vol. 80, no. 2 (Spring, 1995), as accessed June 13, 2012, 10:47 a.m., p. 52 & n. 24 (n. omitted) (author asst. prof. history, Coll. of Wm. Patterson, Wayne, N.J.) (in JStor (database) (subscription may be required)), quoting Hopper, Isaac, Patriarchal System (Tale No. LXVII), in Tales of Oppression (column) (1840–), in National Anti-Slavery Standard, December 27, 1842, p. 118.
  12. ↑ Beeman, Richard R., Social Change and Cultural Conflict in Virginia: Lunenburg County, 1746 to 1774, in The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., vol. 35, no. 3 (July, 1978), p. 470 & nn. 40–41 (author was of history dep't, Univ. of Penna.).
  13. ↑ Anderson, Frank Maloy, Contemporary Opinion of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, in The American Historical Review, vol. 5, no. 2 (December, 1899), p. 229 & n. 1 & possibly n. 2.
  14. ↑ Code Noir (short name), article 47, as cited in Stein, Robert, Revolution, Land Reform, and Plantation Discipline in Saint Domingue, in Revista de Historia de América, no. 96 (July–December, 1983), p. 175 and passim. Slavery ended in 1793–1794. Stein, Robert, Revolution, Land Reform, and Plantation Discipline in Saint Domingue, op. cit., pp. 179–180 and see p. 173 (abstract).
  15. ↑ Chandler, David L., Family Bonds and the Bondsman: The Slave Family in Colonial Colombia, in Latin American Research Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (1981) ([§]Research Reports and Notes)), as accessed June 13, 2012, 11:01 a.m., p. 107 (author Chandler of Brigham Young Univ.) (in JStor (database) (subscription may be required)).
  16. ↑ Chandler, David L., Family Bonds and the Bondsman, op. cit., p. 110.
  17. ↑ Chandler, David L., Family Bonds and the Bondsman, op. cit., p. 122.
  18. 1 2 3 4 Chandler, David L., Family Bonds and the Bondsman, op. cit., p. 126.
  19. ↑ Morris, Richard B., White Bondage in Ante-Bellum South Carolina, op. cit., p. 200 & n. 45 (n. omitted) and see pp. 201–202 & nn. 50–51.
  20. ↑ Morris, Richard B., White Bondage in Ante-Bellum South Carolina, op. cit., p. 202.
  21. ↑ Morris, Richard B., White Bondage in Ante-Bellum South Carolina, op. cit., p. 200 & nn. 46–49 (nn. omitted).
  22. 1 2 Morris, Richard B., White Bondage in Ante-Bellum South Carolina, op. cit., p. 201.
  23. ↑ Morris, Richard B., White Bondage in Ante-Bellum South Carolina, op. cit., p. 201 & n. 52 (n. omitted).
  24. 1 2 Pijper, Frederik, The Christian Church and Slavery in the Middle Ages, in The American Historical Review, vol. XIV, no. 4 (July, 1909), as accessed October 28, 2012, 12:38 p.m., p. 676 & passim (author Pijper of Univ. of Leyden) (article read in 1908, per p. 675 n. 1) (in JStor (database) (subscription may be required)).
  25. ↑ Pijper, Frederik, The Christian Church and Slavery in the Middle Ages, op. cit. (1909), p. 691 & n. 112 (n. omitted).
  26. ↑ Pijper, Frederik, The Christian Church and Slavery in the Middle Ages, op. cit. (1909), p. 679 & nn. 20–21 (nn. omitted) (line break in "one-"/"self") (Pijper also wrote at the same page, "in such cases the marriage was usually dissolved; to be sure the Church opposed this, but could not prevent and therefore yielded to it", but it is not clear whether Pijper meant only when wives sold themselves into slavery or when either spouse did so).
  27. ↑ Pijper, Frederik, The Christian Church and Slavery in the Middle Ages, op. cit. (1909), p. 695 & n. 155 (n. omitted) (Pijper quoting (after presumably translating) source).
  28. ↑ Pijper, Frederik, The Christian Church and Slavery in the Middle Ages, op. cit. (1909), p. 695 & n. 157 (n. omitted).
  29. 1 2 Mankin, Paul, Blue Note from Billetdoux, in Yale French Studies, no. 29 (issue The New Dramatists) (1962), p. 123.
    See also Lamont, Rosette C., The Nouvelle Vague in French Theatre, in The Massachusetts Review, vol. 5, no. 2 (Winter, 1964), p. 392.
  30. 1 2 Asani, Alan S., Sufi Poetry in the Folk Tradition of Indo-Pakistan, in Religion & Literature, vol. 20, no. 1 (issue The Literature of Islam) (Spring, 1988), p. 87 (author was of Harvard Univ.).
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.