Papers presented by Sharon Murphy since 2019

2020 Charlotte, North Carolina

"Gone to Texas: Deadbeat Debtors and Their Enslaved Property"

Abstract:

Southern commercial banks regularly accepted enslaved people as collateral for loans, and willingly sold the enslaved as part of foreclosure proceedings. Banks often preferred slaves over real estate, because they were easier to sell than a piece of land. But a major problem of slave collateral was the ease with which bondspeople could be conveyed to another owner or physically removed from the claims of creditors – a problem which could not occur with land titles. While this became a particular problem after the Panic of 1837 when many debtors took their families and slaves and fled their creditors by going to the independent republic of Texas, the possibility of fleeing with slave collateral existed throughout the antebellum period. This paper examines the efforts of the Bank of the State of Alabama to retrieve the enslaved property of several absconding debtors during the 1840s. Unlike many individual creditors, the bank had greater access to resources and personnel to engage in the active pursuit of these debtors. It effectively used the court systems of several states, as well as experienced lawyers and hired agents, to recover the bondspeople. Meanwhile, the enslaved were uprooted from their homes and sometimes dispersed along the way to help finance the debtor’s journey. They were then seized by bank agents and brought back to Alabama where the bank placed them on the auction block and sold them – often in smaller lots that broke up families and communities – in repayment of the debt. This placed southern banking institutions at the heart of the buying and selling of enslaved property, one of the most reviled aspects of the slave system.

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