self-purchase

Updated: May 25, 2025

That self-hire may often have led to self-purchase is suggested by an illuminating letter of Billy Procter, a slave at Americus, Georgia, in 1854 to Colonel John B. Lamar of whom something has been seen in a foregoing chapter. The letter, presumably in the slave's own hand, runs as follows: "As my owner, Mr.

Ulrich Bonnell Phillips - American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime

Nearly all the provisions of this relatively liberal code were adopted afresh when Louisiana became a territory and then a state of the Union. In assimilation to Anglo-American practice, however, such recognition as had been given to slave peculium was now withdrawn, though on the other hand slaves were granted by implication a legal power to enter contracts for self-purchase.

Ulrich Bonnell Phillips - American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime

The decline of earnings and of slave prices promotes a more drastic oppression, as in Roman Sicily, to reduce the slave's peculium and continue the prevention of his self-purchase.

Ulrich Bonnell Phillips - American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime