Money over Mastery, Family over Freedom: Slavery in the Antebellum Upper South

Money over Mastery, Family over Freedom examines the lives of enslaved people in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C. from 1820 to 1860. Through detailed research and primary sources, Calvin Schermerhorn traces how enslaved individuals navigated the complex economic and social systems of the Upper South. The book focuses on the domestic slave trade and its impact on Black families and communities. Schermerhorn analyzes how enslaved people made strategic choices within severe constraints, often prioritizing family bonds over individual freedom. The narrative follows several enslaved families across multiple generations, documenting their experiences with slave traders, urban labor markets, and the constant threat of sale. These accounts reveal the intersection of capitalism and slavery in the Upper South, where enslaved people's skills and labor became valuable commodities. This work contributes to the understanding of how market forces and family ties shaped the institution of slavery in ways that challenge conventional narratives about resistance and accommodation. The emphasis on economic relationships provides a framework for examining how enslaved people made life-altering decisions under extreme duress.

Readers appreciate the detailed economic analysis and focus on how enslaved people's labor created wealth in the Upper South through forced migration and commodity production. Several reviewers note the book fills a gap by examining slavery's role in early American capitalism. Liked: - Use of primary sources and personal narratives - Clear connections between slavery and banking/commerce - Focus on Baltimore and Upper South rather than Deep South - Explanation of how slave trading networks operated Disliked: - Academic writing style can be dense - Some sections focus heavily on economic data/statistics - Limited discussion of enslaved people's resistance Ratings: Goodreads: 3.8/5 (11 ratings) Amazon: 4.5/5 (5 ratings) H-Net Reviews called it "meticulously researched" but noted it "may prove challenging for undergraduate readers." One Amazon reviewer praised how it shows "the cold calculation of human commodification" while another found the economic focus "enlightening but sometimes dry."

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🔹 The book reveals how slave traders in the Upper South deliberately broke up African American families, sending an estimated one million enslaved people to the Deep South between 1800 and 1860. 🔹 Calvin Schermerhorn teaches at Arizona State University and has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. 🔹 The "Upper South" discussed in the book primarily refers to Virginia and Maryland, which transformed from tobacco-growing economies to become major exporters of enslaved people to cotton plantations. 🔹 The author uses previously unexplored business records, correspondence, and newspaper advertisements to demonstrate how urban merchants turned human beings into financial instruments through mortgages, loans, and insurance policies. 🔹 The book challenges the common narrative that slavery declined in the Upper South, showing instead how it evolved into a sophisticated financial system that treated enslaved people as both laborers and liquid capital.