'The parting - "Buy us too"', 1863

Educational value

• This card is a valuable source for the year 9 history depth study elective Movement of peoples (1750-1901), which studies the influence of the industrial revolution on the movement of peoples throughout the world, including the transatlantic slave trade. It shows the internal slave trade in the USA, where more than a million slaves are believed to have been moved west and south to the expanding cotton plantations between 1790 and 1860.
• The internal slave trade was often called 'the second Middle Passage' and represented another trauma in slaves' lives. As seen here, male slaves were the most likely to be separated from their families. They were most valued because of the demand for their labour in the cotton fields. Sales and separations like this one usually occurred without any advance notice being given to the slave family for fear they would try to escape.
• This series of cards was produced primarily to appeal to the mass market in the north. It was also intended to persuade northerners who were fighting the southern states in the American Civil War (1861-65) that their cause was just. Slavery was the 'great evil' and the cards traced the life of a slave through his years of bondage and enforced separation from family, through to his escape and reaching of the Union lines, his joining the Union army and finally dying in the cause of liberty.

Topics Families Cruelty Commerce Slavery