"Their value is determined by age, health, and capacity. A cooper, indispensable in pitch and tar making, cost his purchaser 250 Pd., and his 15-year old boy, bred to the same work, fetched 150 Pd. The father was put up first; his anxiety lest his son fall to another purchaser and be separated from him was more painful than his fear of getting into the hands of a hard master. “Who buys me,” he was continually calling out, “must buy my son too,” and it happened as he desired, for his purchaser, if not from motives of humanity and pity, was for his own advantage obliged so to do.* An elderly man and his wife were let go at 200 Pd. But these poor creatures are not always so fortunate; often the husband is snatched from his wife, the children from their mother, if this better answers the purpose of buyer or seller, and no heed is given the doleful prayers with which they seek to prevent a separation.

One cannot without pity and sympathy see these poor creatures exposed on a raised platform, to be carefully examined and felt by buyers. Sorrow and despair are discovered in their look, and they must anxiously expect whether they are to fall to a hard-hearted barbarian or a philanthropist. If negresses are put up, scandalous and indecent questions and jests are permitted.** The auctioneer is at pains to enlarge upon the strength, beauty, health, capacity, faithfulness, and sobriety of his wares, so as to obtain prices so much the higher. On the other hand the negroes auctioned zealously contradict everything good that is said about them; complain of their age, long-standing misery or sickness, and declare that purchasers will be selling themselves in buying them, that they are worth no such high bids: because they know well that the dearer their cost, the more work will be required of them.




(*Some slave masters tried to keep families together not because they were virtuous, but because a slave who was separated from his or her family was more likely to run away. If a man or woman had children or a spouse on the plantation, he or she was more likely to stay and work for the master. Most runaways were men who had no children or wives. It was much more difficult for women to run away once they had children.)

(**Enslaved women were purchased not only for their ability to work, but also for their ability to have children. If a woman was sick or past her child-bearing years, she was worth less to the master. An attractive or strong woman was more desirable at an auction because she would find a husband (although not a legal husband, because slaves could not legally marry) and have children. Any children she had would, of course, belong to her master, and so purchasing a young woman was an investment.

Some enslaved women were purchased for sex and kept as mistresses by their masters. A woman’s sexual appeal to her master, therefore, could also be a factor in his decision to purchase her.)"

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newnation/4382

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the untold want by life and land ne'er granted
now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find