Slave Bill of Sale District of Columbia Negro Boy Named Maui $450 April 12 1834

Slave Bill of Sale District of Columbia Negro Boy Named Maui $450 April 12 1834
Slave Bill of Sale District of Columbia Negro Boy Named Maui $450 April 12 1834

Slave Bill of Sale District of Columbia Negro Boy Named Maui $450 April 12 1834

Slave bill of sale, April 12, 1834, for Negro slave boy named Manu (Maui)? District of Columbia bills of sale are not seen often, this one is a about 6x7 inches, very fine with two vertical and one horizontal fold, docketed on the back. Quite rare bill of sale from the City of Washington that I have not seen available very often. On October 6, 1862, in the nation's capital, two families appeared before a federally appointed board of commissioners that administered all business relating to the April 16 Emancipation Act that abolished slavery in the District of Columbia.

Alice Addison, the head of a formerly enslaved African American family, was accompanied by her two adult daughters, Rachel and Mary Ann, along with Mary Ann's three children, George, Alice, and James. The other family, their former white owners, was headed by Teresa Soffell, a widow. Her three sons, Richard, John, and James, and her two daughters, Mary and Ann Young, accompanied her. A mutual desire to officially register the Addison family's new status as freed persons prompted their joint appearance. The Soffells hoped to gain the financial compensation promised by Congress to all former slaveholders in the District who had remained loyal to the Union; the Addisons simply desired the comfort and security of having an official record certifying their freedom. The Soffells had missed the July 15, 1862, compensation deadline mandated under the terms of the April 16 act.

The Soffells explained to the commissioners that they failed to petition by the deadline because the Addisons were no longer residing on their property at the time the act went into effect. The Addisons had fled the city three days earlier on April 13, fearing that President Abraham Lincoln and the federal government planned to forcibly deport themalong with all other ex-slavesto Africa. The report noted that the Addisons had fled to their father's residence (the father of the two adult daughters) who lived in Montgomery County, Maryland, and was a slave owned by a Harry Cook. Slavery existed in the nation's capital from the very beginning of the city's history in 1790, when Congress created the federal territory from lands formerly held by the slave states of Virginia and Maryland.

Because of its advantageous location between these two states, Washington became a center of the domestic slave trade in the 19th century and was home of one of the most active slave depots in the nation. The rapid expansion of cotton as the primary cash crop for states throughout the Deep South generated a renewed demand for slave labor. As one historian notes, Washington offered dealers a convenient transportation nexus between the Upper and Lower South, as the city connected to southern markets via waterways, overland roads, and later rail. This glimpse into the lives of two Washington area familiesformer slaves and slaveholdersis preserved in federal records that relate to slavery and emancipation in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia before and during the Civil War era. These records contain personal information such as names, ages, physical descriptions, and places of residence, as well as collateral information casually provided in recorded testimonies. As shown in the Addison family's case, information concerning the daughter's enslaved fatherincluding details concerning his residence in Montgomery County and the full name of his owneris found in their testimony explaining their flight. Within the District of Columbia, slave dealers housed the slaves in crowded pens and prisons as they waited to sell them. "Slave-coffles, " long lines of shackled blacks marching from one site to another, gradually generated controversy throughout the nation. As Washington became the focus of abolitionism in the decades before the Civil War, antislavery activists argued that such scenes in the nation's capital disgraced the nation as a whole and its ideals.

Abolished active slave trading within the boundaries of the District, but the trade continued to flourish in Maryland and Virginia. As tensions increased nationally in the years leading up to the Civil War, slavery in the nation's capital continued to be a subject of special focus, activism, and compromise.

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The item "Slave Bill of Sale District of Columbia Negro Boy Named Maui $450 April 12 1834" is in sale since Sunday, July 29, 2018. This item is in the category "Collectibles\Cultures & Ethnicities\Black Americana\Paper". The seller is "antebellumcovers" and is located in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

This item can be shipped worldwide.


Slave Bill of Sale District of Columbia Negro Boy Named Maui $450 April 12 1834


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