Christina Briden In the southern colonies of the United States, slavery was fundamentally about the buying and selling of African American and indentured servants on the slave market. Slave owners are the main consumers in the marketplace. The market culture shaped personal identities of Southern whites through their ownership of human property. In Soul by Soul: Making a World Out of Slaves, Walter Johnson argues that white people’s “selves were built out of slaves” (p. 115). The slave market motivated the self-definition of Southern whites and was based in fantasy, much like paternalism itself. In the 1830s, slavery was primarily in the south. African Americans were enslaved on farms, plantations, in towns and homes and on the fields. Soul by Soul talks about life inside the trade market, including the buying, selling, and returning of slaves. People including traders and doctors went through the trade market to purchase and sell slaves. The book focuses mostly on how slaves were dehumanized, broken into categories, and how terrible slavery was for them. This part of slavery, (trade markets) which is usually overlooked, basically sums up how life on the plantation was like. Life of a slave started at birth, and slave life may now start from a rupture in the market. In his book, Johnson gives us a point of view from the slaves’ perspective. We discover that the slaves try to shape their future in that they were allowed to communicate with others around them (p.69). Slaves developed a sense of community with each other in the use of song and stories that have been passed down from generation to generation. They formed relationships with those who wouldn’t worsen the scene. The community of slaves in trading purposes provided support and evidence which the slaves use to their advantage to form networks (p. 76-77).
Slave holders always had a reason for selling a