How Enslaved People Were “Bred”

The enslaved woman was young and strong. For three days, she and her husband were freed from all work.

On this plantation in South Carolina, weddings happened almost every day. Mr. Crouch was interested in seeing more families appear on his land.

Barry Crouch had built a separate small house for the “married couples.” It stood away from prying eyes and had everything necessary inside. Mrs. Crouch even gathered flowers herself to place in vases. She was also the one who insisted that the house should have rugs and curtains, bedspreads and coffee cups, all the necessary attributes of domestic comfort.

At first, she disliked her husband’s idea. Mrs. Sarah Crouch considered herself a good Christian, but the prospect of profit eventually drew her in as well. After all, she had four children of her own growing up. They would all need to inherit something.

How did this idea arise?

Very simply: it began with a supposedly “good” purpose.

In 1808, the United States officially banned the importation of enslaved people from Africa. Naturally, the price of labor rose sharply. That was when some planters realized that the only way to obtain new workers was to make sure they were born inside the country.

This phenomenon was even given a separate name: “slave breeding.”

It became most widespread and well-documented in the American South, as well as on plantations in Brazil, where conditions were often far worse, and on the estates of the wealthy in the Caribbean islands.

Those who engaged in this practice began to prosper.

Many God-fearing owners arranged marriages, especially on plantations belonging to American Catholics. At his wife’s insistence, Barry Crouch did exactly that: he recorded the names of enslaved men and women who entered marriage and blessed them.

On his plantation, the conditions of enslaved people were relatively bearable. So many inhabitants of the estate soon wished to end up in that cozy little house, spared from bending their backs in the fields.

Crouch turned the matter into a system.

Maintaining an enslaved person was cheap. Thanks to the warm climate, they lived in simple huts with reed-covered roofs. Clothing was sewn on the plantation from fabric they wove themselves. The harvest made it possible to feed several dozen people without a serious blow to the owner’s wallet.

And each enslaved person brought in far more money.

The South grew rich on cotton, which was regularly shipped to English factories. And cotton grew on those very plantations. It was even called “white gold.”

The most famous example of the breeding of enslaved people is the story of Pata Seca, who is said to have fathered more than two hundred surviving children.

Pata Seca had his own house, a horse, and the ability to leave the plantation freely and regularly go into town. His owners were sure he would not run away. Nowhere else, they believed, would he be offered better conditions.

Incidentally, Pata Seca lived to see the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888. Later, he acquired his own plot of land and even married a woman named Palmira. It was claimed that his strong health allowed him to live for more than a hundred years.

Enslaved women who gave birth to many children were often freed from field labor. They were frequently moved into domestic work or assigned to sewing clothing and raising their own children and the children of others.

Their living conditions were noticeably improved. They were fed better, and some women were even granted freedom.

But they left without their sons and daughters.

Women who could not become pregnant might be sold off more quickly, forever separated from their families.

At the time, a child’s legal status was determined by the status of the mother. So if a woman was enslaved, all of her descendants were automatically considered the property of the planter.

That is why the breeding of enslaved people was so profitable for owners. Children born within the boundaries of the estate could be raised for the owner’s own needs, including work in the fields. Any surplus could later be sold.

Were there cases where such “producers” escaped?

Yes.

Some ran away, and then everything depended on luck. If an enslaved person had even the slightest connection in the North, they could hope for freedom. But very often, fugitives were caught, returned to their owners, and punished.

Still, freedom remained illegal.

As with serfs in Russia, the search for fugitives in America had no time limit. Even twenty years after escaping, an enslaved person was still considered someone else’s property. If they were found, they could be returned to their former owner.

Under the Fugitive Slave Laws in the United States, a runaway did not become free simply by stepping onto the soil of a free state where slavery was not widespread.

Things were very different in Europe.

Once on the territory of England or France, an enslaved person automatically obtained freedom. One famous example is the Somerset v. Stewart case of 1772, when a runaway enslaved man belonging to an Englishman was recognized as free.

But how could an ordinary man from a plantation cross the ocean?

It was practically impossible.

Too expensive. Too far.

The history of slavery in the United States officially ended in 1865.

By the way, the last country in the world to officially abolish slavery was Mauritania. This happened on August 5, 1981, under Decree №81–234. Before that, Mauritania had already abolished the use of enslaved labor twice, but the phenomenon had still not been fully eradicated.

And in 2007, the country even introduced a special law providing punishment for one person owning another person.

Because even the measures of 1981 had not worked completely.

Mauritania

Barry Crouch eventually went bankrupt.

First, some illness spread across his estate and devastated nearly everyone. Then an old unpaid debt was remembered. Because of this, the greedy planter had to sell everything he owned to the owner of a neighboring plot of land.

Crouch, his wife, and their only surviving son moved to New Orleans. The last mention of them dates to 1847, when Mr. Crouch purchased a small plot of land on one of the city’s outskirts.

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