Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (2000)

This work tells the story of slavery in antebellum America by moving away from the cotton plantations and into the slave market itself, the heart of the domestic slave trade. Taking the reader inside the New Orleans slave market, the largest in the nation, where 100,000 men, women, and children were packaged, priced and sold, the author transforms the statistics of this chilling trade into the human drama of traders, buyers, and slaves, negotiating sales that would alter the life of each. What emerges is not only the brutal economics of trading but the vast interdependencies among those involved. Using recently discovered material, Johnson reveals the tenuous shifts of power that occurred in the market's slave coffles and showrooms. Traders packaged their slaves by "feeding them up", dressing them well, and oiling their bodies. Johnson depicts the subtle interrelation of capitalism, paternalism, class consciousness, racism and resistance in the slave market.