The price of freedom and marriage
This source is a part of a cash book detailing the sale of an enslaved woman to a free man of color for the purpose of marriage in 1827. All three people (the free man of color, the enslaved woman, and “Georgia”) in the document are unknown. The anonymity and mystery of this source allows us to dig deeper into the discussion of slave marriage. Marriage during African slavery in the United States was not an easy task, especially considering the dehumanization and inherent commodification of African slaves as they were shipped into the country. How could someone get married when they were not even considered people? Despite the persistence of slavery through generations, some African Americans gained freedom before the civil war and emancipation in the mid-19th century. In a sense, their entire legal status was being free, often labelled “free person of color”. However, in order to gain that status, enslaved African people had to pay large sums of money in order to buy their freedom.
A unique aspect of this source is that the wife who was to be sold was only valued at $1.50. This low value raises some questions. Since the market for slaves was booming during this time, the sale of a slave could not have been this cheap[1], meaning this was more of a donation to help the man buy his wife’s freedom before she was sold off. Since Georgetown has always been a wealthy institution, why did they only offer this amount? What does this signify? Another interesting aspect of this source is the time that it took place, around a decade before the infamous event of 1838, better known as GU272, where 272 slaves in Georgetown were sold off to Louisiana. Despite that, this source seems to be pointing in a different direction, as a free man of color is being aided to buy his wife’s freedom, avoiding that devastating end. Through this, we can gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of slavery within Georgetown.
Through such legal restrictions on marriage and emphasis on legal status, enslaved people often invented customs to celebrate and certify their unofficial marriages. A famous example is the broomstick tradition, where a couple jumps over a broom together to officiate the union. However, slave marriage entailed pain as much as joy; families often suffered heart-wrenching situations, such as being forcefully separated to be sold off in auctions.[2]
[1] Samuel H. Williamson and Louis P. Cain, “Measuring Slavery in 2016 Dollars,” Measuring Worth - Measuring the Value of a Slave, 2020, https://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php.
[2] Tera W. Hunter, Bound in Wedlock Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019).
- Reem Almuraikhi