One Saturday night in May 1851, a group of slaves gathered in a cabin on Simpson’s plantation in Anderson District, South Carolina. Eager to earn some extra cash, Joe planned to steal, then sell, a few turkeys from James Gray’s farm and tried to enlist his fellow slaves to go along with him. Despite concerns by Leah and Henry that the would-be thieves would “get into a scrape,” Sam agreed to join Joe in the heist. As they watched the two men slip into the woods, Henry turned to Leah and asked, “Joe loves money don’t he?”

Why wouldn’t Joe love money? Having property and cash presented Joe with opportunities ostensibly denied to slaves of the antebellum South. He could purchase food and tobacco as supplement to weekly rations, drink and gamble, or participate in a wider consumer market, purchasing manufactured goods such as hats, dresses, umbrellas, and watches. Joe may have even derived a sense of empowerment from the jingle of silver in his pocket and the sight and feel of banknotes held securely in his own pocketbook. Leah, however, interpreted the situation differently. In response to Henry’s assessment of Joe, she commented, “Joe is like the rest ... but that he was not to be depended on.” Even though Leah probably had benefited materially from the availability of cash among her fellows, her remark reveals a mindful ambivalence toward the role of the market and the availability of cash within the slave community. Perhaps she was wary of temptations and tensions that market activity could engender or, maybe, Joe’s desire for money served as an all too stark reminder of her master’s own avarice, a characteristic that could only find fulfillment through the exploitation of the labor of, or equity in, her and her family.

Commenting on eighteenth-century probate inventories, Ann Smart Martin has characterized the furniture, silverware, candlesticks, bedding, and other material goods represented therein, not as a snapshot of spending and acquisition, but rather as a representation of a lifetime of consumption. Although she does not provide a clear timeline of purchase, through her 1873 petition, Annie Smith relayed a similar story to members of the Southern Claims Commission in Stafford, Virginia. The purchase of herself, her husband, and her daughter surely involved careful planning and, likely, material sacrifice.

What were some of these sacrifices? Smith did not elaborate, but the foregoing chapters indicate that a vast array of material goods were available to slaves looking to spend their money on more immediate needs and desires, essentially creating a material image of themselves and their surroundings, however temporary, that was markedly different from the ones prescribed by their masters. Harriet Jacobs, a woman who eventually would appropriate her body through theft rather than purchase, commented on the drab clothing provisioned by her master. Regarding the “linsey-woolsey dress” supplied to her and her fellow bondwomen every winter, she exclaimed, “How I hated it! It was one of the badges of slavery.” As we have seen, through engagement in the internal economy, enslaved men and women could replace material “badges of slavery” with, presumably, markers of freedom – a gold watch, a silk vest, a dram of liquor drunk in a tavern with local white and black men. They may have dreamed of one day purchasing themselves or their families, but the risks, limitations, or simple impracticalities of the marketplace for slave bodies often made more immediate material spending more gratifying.