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Slave Traders and Planters in the Expanding South: Entrepreneurial Strategies, Business Networks, and Western Migration in the Atlantic World, 1787-1859

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Slave Traders and Planters in the Expanding South: Entrepreneurial Strategies, Business Networks, and Western Migration in the Atlantic World, 1787-1859 SLAVE TRADERS AND PLANTERS IN THE EXPANDING SOUTH: ENTREPRENEURIAL STRATEGIES, BUSINESS NETWORKS, AND WESTERN MIGRATION IN THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1787-1859 Tomoko Yagyu A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2006 Approved by Advisor: Peter A. Coclanis Reader: William L. Barney Reader: Paul W. Rhode Reader: W. Fitzhugh Brundage Reader: Lisa Lindsay © 2006 Tomoko Yagyu ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Tomoko Yagyu: Slave Traders and Planters in the Expanding South: Entrepreneurial Strategies, Business Networks, and Western Migration in the Atlantic World, 1787-1859 (Under the direction of Peter A. Coclanis) This study attempts to analyze the economic effects of the domestic slave trade and the slave traders on the American South in a broader Atlantic context. In so doing, it interprets the trade as a sophisticated business and traders as speculative, entrepreneurial businessmen. The majority of southern planters were involved in the slave trade and relied on it to balance their financial security. They evaluated their slaves in cash terms, and made strategic decisions regarding buying and selling their property to enhance the overall productivity of their plantations in the long run. Slave traders acquired business skills in the same manner as did merchants in other trades, utilizing new forms of financial options in order to maximize their profit and taking advantage of the market revolution in transportation and communication methods in the same ways that contemporary northern entrepreneurs did. They were capable of making rational moves according to the signals of global commodity markets and financial movements. The slave trade eventually played a central role in determining the fate of the South, as a business that created a unified South under proslavery ideology and encouraged western migration to preserve the institution of slavery. In a time of western expansion and the cotton boom, some slave traders were able to accumulate great wealth from the slave-trading business and sought opportunities to acquire higher social status and financial stability. Through the case of Rice C. Ballard, who was able to make the transition from a slave trader in Virginia to a cotton planter in the West, this dissertation will show that skills and networks established from the slave-trading business enabled the traders iii to acquire managerial abilities and the ethos associated with nascent global capitalism. They were able to develop awareness and knowledge of commercial networks beyond the South and operated with an expansive mindset to adapt to the increasingly integrated global economy of the early nineteenth century. iv To Masaru and Teruyo Yagyu, and Akihiko Yagyu v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My interest in U.S. history and particularly in the South originated during the 5 years of my childhood spent in Charlotte, North Carolina. So returning to the same state a decade and a half later to pursue a graduate degree was truly a blessing, and even felt like a homecoming long overdue. The University of North Carolina was the perfect place to satisfy my interests in both southern history and economic history, with its long tradition and distinguished scholars in both fields. I felt extremely fortunate to be a part of such distinguished academia. Various grants and fellowships funded the archival research necessary for the completion of this work. The Fulbright Grant from the Japan-U.S. Educational Commission allowed me to join the circle of Japanese scholars of the past and the present who went to America to pursue their scholarly goals. The Waddell and Mowry fellowships from the Department of History at UNC helped me conduct research in the area and in Virginia. The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship from the Virginia Historical Society funded my summer research of 2003 in Richmond. In 2004, the Gilder Lerhman Fellowship from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History allowed me to make research trips to the archives in New York, and Alfred D. Chandler Travel Fellowship from the Graduate School of Business Administration at Harvard University supported my stay in Boston. I started my training in U.S. economic history as an undergraduate economics major at Keio University, in Tokyo, under the guidance of Professor Yasuo Okada. His admiration of American economic expansion and the Great West along the lines of Frederick Jackson Turner, and his devotion to research inherited from his mentor Paul W. Gates, were both inspiring and invigorating. I will always be grateful and proud that I began my apprenticeship under Professor Okada. vi At UNC, I had the privilege to seek advice from leading historians in the course of completing this dissertation. I am extremely grateful to Professor William Barney, Professor Fitz Brundage, Professor Lisa Lindsay, and Professor Harry Watson for their advices. I was fortunate to meet Professor Paul Rhode in the economics department literally the first day I was on UNC campus in the summer of 2000. His intellect kept me reminded of my respect and admiration to economics and economists, and I truly appreciate his advices in trying to extract the economic aspects of my research. Many colleagues in the department provided me with support and good criticism toward my work over the years. I would like to thank especially Pam Lach, Barbara Hahn, Michael Allsep, Gerardo Gurza-Lavalle, and Philipp Stelzel for being comrades as well as good friends to talk out our anxieties. Maki Takahashi and Tomomi Kaneko took on that role outside of the department, and I thank them for their support. I met Lynn Jerath as a classmate in Charlotte more than 20 years ago, and we have kept in touch ever since. She and her entire family always welcomed me like one of their own, and I thank her for the lasting friendship and kind support. I would also like to thank Ai Kato, Yuki Tanabe, and Setsuko Fukuzawa for cheering me up from Japan for all these years. Most of all, I am deeply indebted to my advisor, Professor Peter Coclanis, without whom I would not have made it through. His limitless breadth of knowledge in global economic and business history has broadened my research interests beyond the U.S. to the Atlantic, and to the world. He helped me through my struggling coursework years and guided my interests to take shape into scholarly work. I was blessed to be under his intellect throughout the years and touched by his personal warmth. There is no one I admire more as a scholar and to have him as mentor was by far the best thing that happened in my graduate career. Finally, my family had the patience to put up with my long years of graduate studies abroad, and they were in my mind every step of the way. My brother Akihiko in Tokyo usually kept up with the results of the UNC basketball team earlier and more precisely than I did. As busy as he is in the world of finance, he understood and supported my passion, and I vii counted on his advice on various occasions. Discussing with him about everything from pop culture to current world affairs gave me considerable comfort, and I thank him for being so reliable. My mother must have always been frustrated and worried that her daughter was so far away, and the fact that my life has become so different from hers probably made it even harder. But she always gave me mental support and encouragement, which I truly appreciated throughout the years. My father is never easily impressed, and I have not found a way to make him proud. For him, who has successfully climbed to the top of the corporate ladder of the company he had worked for nearly forty years, my achievements would never come close to what he has accomplished. In fact, not being able to impress him was one major factor that has driven me to pursue higher goals. I hope he knows that I have been trying, and will keep trying to impress him, and this dissertation is a result of such attempt. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………………………...xii LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………………... xiv Chapter Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………1 1 Early Development of Virginia Economy in Atlantic Context to 1815…………….……..14 Population and Labor ………………………………………………………17 The Early Atlantic Slave Trade to Virginia ……………………………….. 24 The Tobacco Trade and Mercantilism …..………………………………… 33 Growth of Grain Production and the Revolutionary War………………….. 53 Structural Change in British Financial System…………………………….. 59 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………. 62 2 Virginia’s Ordeal: Domestic Slave Trade and Urban Markets……………………......... 64 Estimating the Numbers…………………………………………………… 77 Slave Traders’ Identities and their Professional Activities………………… 81 Buying, Selling and Finance: Inside the Slave Trading Business…………. 97 The Development of Richmond and Alexandria…………………………. 111 3 A Slave Trader in the East: Rice C. Ballard and his Early ix Business Relations …………………………………………………….139 Ballard, Franklin, and their Beginnings………………...…………………...139 The Relation among Franklin, Armfield, and Ballard………………………150 Commanding Sales: Instructions and Guidance from the West to the East…152 In Relation with Crops……………………………………………………... 161 Getting Around the Law in the West……………………………………….. 165 Avoiding Risks Financially………………………………………………… 176 Avoiding Risks and Securing the Slaves…………………………………… 194 To Become a Planter……………………………………………………….. 205 4 From a Trader to a Planter: Transition, the West and the Turmoil, 1836-1840 ……………………………………………………………. 209 The View of the West for Virginians…………………………………......... 211 The Impact of the Panic of 1837………………………………...………… 235 Laying Out his “Garden of Eden”: Ballard in Mississippi, 1837-1840…… 245 5 In the World of Cotton: Plantation Management and the Marketing of a Global Commodity………………………………………………….. 260 The Settlement of Mississippi and Louisiana……………………………… 266 Ballard’s New Business Network and the Cotton Factors: Agents of Interregional and International Trade….…….
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