Trading In Children

Summary

A decade of archaeology at Wye House Plantation in Maryland has yielded a multitude of information regarding the institution of slavery and the experiences of enslaved individuals. Whether or not enslaved peoples were deliberately bred systematically to produce children for sale by the master is a topic that has been generally neglected in modern scholarship. This practice demonstrates the inherent inhumanity of slavery and is an example of what the scholar Orlando Patterson describes as "the gendered nature of slavery." Women and children were often the most exploited as a result of their sexuality, a practice that has continued today in the modern era. The Works Progress Administration’s Slave Narratives present multiple firsthand accounts of the prevalence of this abhorrent practice in the United States. There is reason to believe that there may have been a breeding plantation among the properties of the Lloyd family, the owners of Wye House Plantation. This paper will focus on the gendered nature of slavery, the custom of slave breeding, and the possibility of a breeding plantation among the properties of the Lloyd family.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21399