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• 1 2021-12-01T18:27:53+00:00 Earth-Family-Threat of Sale as a Control Mechanism and the Control Game 1 plain 2021-12-01T18:27:53+00:00

  Losing family was a more painful punishment than the whip. The pain and scars of the lash did not compare to the heartbreak of losing family. The number of tears sheds by enslaved mothers and fathers losing their children could fill the great lakes. The following is an extract that hurts parents and the process of taking children:
  After nine years on the pass, Thomas was sold

  "to Mr. Jones, of Wilmington, N. C., distant forty-five miles from Hawes' plantation. Mr. Jones sent his slave driver, a colored man named Abraham, to conduct me to my new home in Wilmington. I was at home with my mother when he came. He looked in at the door, and called to me, "Tom, you must go with me." His looks were ugly, and his voice was savage. I was very much afraid, and began to cry, holding on to my mother's clothes, and begging her to protect me, and not let the man take me away. Mother wept bitterly, and in the midst of her loud sobbings, cried out in broken words, "I can't save you, Tommy; master has sold you, you must go." She threw her arms around me, and while the hot tears fell on my face, she strained me to her heart. There she held me, sobbing and mourning, till the brutal Abraham came in, snatched me away, hurried me out of the house where I was born, my only home, and tore me away from the dear mother who loved me as no other friend could do. She followed him, imploring a moment's delay, and weeping aloud to the road, where he turned around, and striking at her with his heavy cowhide, fiercely ordered her to stop bawling, and go back into the house." 

  When an enslaved person was sold away, they did not merely leave their family but also the land. The land was born upon, possibly bore children upon, and had family members buried. Thus, enslaved people were not simply sold away and separated from family but places of memory.

  A sale could kill the spirit of the enslaved, for it was often the children that enhanced and gave meaning to the lives of older slaves. Parents rested most of their hopes on children. Moreover, parenting for many enslaved people was a critical component of living. As historian Marcus Allen said, "parents looked to their children because of their freshness. A baby and small children without the emotional and physical scars of slavery offered hope to a future where scars from a whip would be no more." Moreover, he noted that enslaved parents also loved their children because they saw their ancestors in their children—be it a hand, a smile, a particular laugh, or a look or a walk. Thus, when children were sold away, some parents died from actual heartbreak. Family connections sustained the slave life, and, when robbed of family, not even the coping mechanism provided by slave culture could ease the mind. 
  

  Some parents went so far as to hide their children to prevent sales. Moses Grandy noted how his mother hid her children in the woods to avoid them being sold. He said, 

  "I remember well my mother often hid us all in the woods, to prevent the master selling us. When we wanted water, she sought for it in any hole or puddle formed by falling trees or otherwise: it was often full of tadpoles and insects: she strained it, and gave it round to each of us in the hollow of her hand. For food, she gathered berries in the woods, got potatoes, raw corn, &c. After a time the master would send word to her to come in, promising, he would not sell us." 

  However, this tactic of hiding did not work for long for Grandy, as eventually, his brothers were sold. His mother tried to fight off the sale physically,

   "resisted their taking her child away: she was beaten and held down: she fainted; and when she came to herself, her boy was gone. She made much outcry, for which the master tied her up to a peach tree in the yard, and flogged her."

  The fear that one's child would be sold to a terrible owner was a major fear, and Grandy's brother was an example, as highlighted in the following passage: 

  "Mr. Tyler, Dewan's Neck, Pasquotank County; this man very much ill-treated many coloured boys. One very cold day he sent my brother out, naked and hungry, to find a yoke of steers: the boy returned without finding them, when his master flogged him, and sent him out again; a white lady who lived near, gave him food, and advised him to try again: he did so, but it seems again without success. He piled up a heap of leaves, and laid himself down in them, and died there. He was found through a flock of turkey buzzards hovering over him; these birds had pulled his eyes out."