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The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History
In 1859, at the largest recorded slave auction in American history, over 400 men, women, and children were sold by the Butler Plantation estates. This book is one of the first to analyze the operation of this auction and trace the lives of slaves before, during, and after their sale. Immersing herself in the personal papers of the Butlers, accounts from journalists that witnessed the auction, genealogical records, and oral histories, Anne C. Bailey weaves together a narrative that brings the auction to life. Demonstrating the resilience of African American families, she includes interviews from the living descendants of slaves sold on the auction block, showing how the memories of slavery have shaped people's lives today. Using the auction as the focal point, The Weeping Time is a compelling and nuanced narrative of one of the most pivotal eras in American history, and how its legacy persists today.
206 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2017
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607 people want to read
About the author
Anne C. Bailey
3 books14 followersAnne C. Bailey is an Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
November 24, 2017
I don't have time to accept many book review requests, but I was glad that I got the chance to read The Weeping Time by Anne C. Bailey, coming out at the end of this month from Cambridge University Press. The book is a detailed study of the largest slave auction which is recorded in US history: 436 people (including some mothers with infants just a few weeks old) sold off on March 2nd and 3rd, 1859 in the process of liquidating much of the estate of Pierce Butler Jr. of the Butler Plantation.
To be sold at auction, and separated from family and community, was one of the many recurring cruelties of the slave regime in America, but this event stood particularly large in the histories of the people who were put up for auction on those two days because the Butler estate had prior to this been known for never selling its slaves. The same enslaved families had lived on the Georgia sea island estates for generations, and even spoke their own semi-separate dialect infused with words and structures from their native West Africa.
Bailey, a professor of history and Africana studies at Binghamton University SUNY, makes this history all the more fascinating by keeping her focus so close. We meet Jeffrey and Dorcas, a young couple in love. Jeffrey is sold for $1,310 on the first day and tries to persuade his new master to buy Dorcas so that they can stay together. He first makes a personal appeal (that they love each other, will be true servants, and will have many healthy children for him) which gets no traction, then takes another approach telling him of what a prime rice hand she is, easily worth $1,200. His buyer seems persuaded by this approach, but then at the last moment Dorcas is included with a family of four for a single price, and the buyer loses interest. As the auctioneer's hammer falls, separating Dorcas from him forever, Jeffrey pulls off his hat, drops to his knees, and weeps.
Another young couple, Dembo and Frances, aged twenty and nineteen, manage to pull off a coup: finding a minister among the buyers attending the auction they persuade him to marry them. They are then sold as a lot together, for $1,320 each, to a cotton planter from Alabama, separated from their extended families but able to remain together.
We have these details about the auction itself because Mortimer Thompson, a northern reporter, posed as a buyer at the auction and then wrote a detailed account for the New York Tribune. Coming as it did less than three years before the Civil War was to break out and four years before the emancipation proclamation, the story of the slaves put up for auction (some of whom would return to the area of the Butler Estate after the Civil War in order to find loved ones they had been separated from in the auction) is closely entangled with the escalating tensions over slavery in the United States. The sale itself was itself in some ways tied up with the debate over slavery. Pierce Butler Jr. lived in Philadelphia most of his life and lived of the proceeds of the slave plantations he inherited in Georgia. In Philadelphia he gambled and spent away his money, and also married British actress Fanny Kemble. Kemble was strongly anti-slavery and wrote about her visit to Butler's plantation. Her opposition to slavery was one of the several differences cited in their divorce, which was one step on the road to Butler's eventual financial collapse and the sale of his estate.
The Weeping Time provides a ground level view into slavery as it shaped the lives of the specific people on this estate, from their ancestry on the rice coast of Africa, to their generations of enslavement on the Butler estate, to the sudden disruption of their lives due to the financial misfortunes of an absentee owner. It's a fairly quick read at 175 pages, and does an important service of making this history about people rather than just "the peculiar institution" in some abstract sense.
To be sold at auction, and separated from family and community, was one of the many recurring cruelties of the slave regime in America, but this event stood particularly large in the histories of the people who were put up for auction on those two days because the Butler estate had prior to this been known for never selling its slaves. The same enslaved families had lived on the Georgia sea island estates for generations, and even spoke their own semi-separate dialect infused with words and structures from their native West Africa.
Bailey, a professor of history and Africana studies at Binghamton University SUNY, makes this history all the more fascinating by keeping her focus so close. We meet Jeffrey and Dorcas, a young couple in love. Jeffrey is sold for $1,310 on the first day and tries to persuade his new master to buy Dorcas so that they can stay together. He first makes a personal appeal (that they love each other, will be true servants, and will have many healthy children for him) which gets no traction, then takes another approach telling him of what a prime rice hand she is, easily worth $1,200. His buyer seems persuaded by this approach, but then at the last moment Dorcas is included with a family of four for a single price, and the buyer loses interest. As the auctioneer's hammer falls, separating Dorcas from him forever, Jeffrey pulls off his hat, drops to his knees, and weeps.
Another young couple, Dembo and Frances, aged twenty and nineteen, manage to pull off a coup: finding a minister among the buyers attending the auction they persuade him to marry them. They are then sold as a lot together, for $1,320 each, to a cotton planter from Alabama, separated from their extended families but able to remain together.
We have these details about the auction itself because Mortimer Thompson, a northern reporter, posed as a buyer at the auction and then wrote a detailed account for the New York Tribune. Coming as it did less than three years before the Civil War was to break out and four years before the emancipation proclamation, the story of the slaves put up for auction (some of whom would return to the area of the Butler Estate after the Civil War in order to find loved ones they had been separated from in the auction) is closely entangled with the escalating tensions over slavery in the United States. The sale itself was itself in some ways tied up with the debate over slavery. Pierce Butler Jr. lived in Philadelphia most of his life and lived of the proceeds of the slave plantations he inherited in Georgia. In Philadelphia he gambled and spent away his money, and also married British actress Fanny Kemble. Kemble was strongly anti-slavery and wrote about her visit to Butler's plantation. Her opposition to slavery was one of the several differences cited in their divorce, which was one step on the road to Butler's eventual financial collapse and the sale of his estate.
The Weeping Time provides a ground level view into slavery as it shaped the lives of the specific people on this estate, from their ancestry on the rice coast of Africa, to their generations of enslavement on the Butler estate, to the sudden disruption of their lives due to the financial misfortunes of an absentee owner. It's a fairly quick read at 175 pages, and does an important service of making this history about people rather than just "the peculiar institution" in some abstract sense.
December 1, 2017
As I read, I felt that I was at the auction. I felt the rain and choked on the tobacco smoke and recoiled from the violent hands that were forced on the men and women being auctioned. I felt heartbroken for the families torn apart because of the debts of their Irish slaveholder. I rejoiced for those who found their families after Emancipation and was heartbroken again for those who spent their lives searching and never found their families. As a genealogy researcher, I believe deeply in the importance of "restoring the breach of kinship ties" It is vital that we say their names and honour them. It is vital that we do not hide from our history. Anne C. Bailey's The Weeping Time is a masterful work. It takes us right into 1859 and beyond any misconceptions we have been taught. It ends with an invitation to each one of us to become one of those who remembers ...and never forgets.
April 10, 2023
A sobering account of a horrors of slavery in the American South, and in the cognitive dissonance that has remained part of America every since: every man is created equal, except many weren't and aren't.
May 15, 2018
This was a harrowing but important read. It focuses on the largest slave auction that took place in America, an event that I was wholly ignorant about. Anne C. Bailey does an incredible job portraying this specific incident and zooming out to provide a thought provoking commentary on the slave experience in America as a whole.
One of the things I found so fascinating was the present day interviews with the actual living descendants of the auctioned slaves. There is a section in the book where Bailey describes memory has something that can be inherited throughout the generations. I have never thought about memory like this so it was an interesting perspective.
One of the things I found so fascinating was the present day interviews with the actual living descendants of the auctioned slaves. There is a section in the book where Bailey describes memory has something that can be inherited throughout the generations. I have never thought about memory like this so it was an interesting perspective.
January 4, 2023
There’s actually a story behind me picking up this book. In 2020 I read an article about a woman who was touring one of the Louisiana plantations and noticed that there wasn’t even a mention of slavery during the entire tour despite the fact that they were touring a plantation which depended on exploited slave labor to develop. She started digging into the history of the specific plantation location she toured and found that it hid an especially dark history that just wasn’t talked about.
I wanted to do some exploring of my own because I know there’s a lot of fucked up history that isn’t talked about and I wanted to learn more about it so that I could know about it and develop a better, more complex understanding of the United States.
This book was really interesting: definitely a traumatic read, especially if this is something that is triggering or personal to you, but I thought the storytelling was both thoughtful and really well researched. I feel like a lot of books forsake one for the other, but this book in my opinion did a masterful job of humanizing the experiences of the many slaves’s lives explored in the work as well as combining elements from memoirs and history to place it in a broader context of American history.
I liked the formatting, too. It was chronological and focused not only on harm but also on repair, the latter of which I think is a crucial piece that many books and pieces of media focusing on slavery overlook. It also focused a lot on the African cultures and languages and faith that the slaves from the Butler plantation inherited from their African ancestors and I really liked tracing those parts of their lives.
Honestly the only reason this book isn’t five stars is because it was a bit hard for me to read. It doesn’t diminish the quality of the book at all, it’s more of a personal-to-me thing.
I wanted to do some exploring of my own because I know there’s a lot of fucked up history that isn’t talked about and I wanted to learn more about it so that I could know about it and develop a better, more complex understanding of the United States.
This book was really interesting: definitely a traumatic read, especially if this is something that is triggering or personal to you, but I thought the storytelling was both thoughtful and really well researched. I feel like a lot of books forsake one for the other, but this book in my opinion did a masterful job of humanizing the experiences of the many slaves’s lives explored in the work as well as combining elements from memoirs and history to place it in a broader context of American history.
I liked the formatting, too. It was chronological and focused not only on harm but also on repair, the latter of which I think is a crucial piece that many books and pieces of media focusing on slavery overlook. It also focused a lot on the African cultures and languages and faith that the slaves from the Butler plantation inherited from their African ancestors and I really liked tracing those parts of their lives.
Honestly the only reason this book isn’t five stars is because it was a bit hard for me to read. It doesn’t diminish the quality of the book at all, it’s more of a personal-to-me thing.
November 23, 2017
This is a great book with masses of detailed scholarship presented in a readable format. This should be basic reading for anyone interested in American history. Fundamental to the experience of America's development into a modern nation was slavery. This book gets at the nature of being a commodity and chattel as a human being, a sencient individual and one that has family that you are being seperated from. How can a family be sold?
This book is excellent. The author does wish you to suffer and her constant repetitions leave you a little sad for her. This is a subject that she is objective enough to present as a clear and comprehensive account of the implications of the slave auction, but not one that she can or would separate her obvious trauma in dealing with this material. Perhaps she is right to do so. This is not a subject you can ever deal with in a cold and logical way. You have to feel how traumatic this is through the generations to gain any insight as to why it is relevant now.
On the other hand you might feel the author is not quite aware of how she is presenting this, as she is so caught up in the emotions. Also her idea that one way of healing is for America to be more Christian. This seems somewhat paradoxical not only biblical precedents and acceptance of slavery but also the history of the USA as being deeply religious since its inception until today.
Anne C. Bailey must be congratulated as a brilliant scholar who makes history matter, and matter in a fundamental way. She is also hopeful of a way to reconcile a society so divided by its history, even if she is not clear how.
This book is excellent. The author does wish you to suffer and her constant repetitions leave you a little sad for her. This is a subject that she is objective enough to present as a clear and comprehensive account of the implications of the slave auction, but not one that she can or would separate her obvious trauma in dealing with this material. Perhaps she is right to do so. This is not a subject you can ever deal with in a cold and logical way. You have to feel how traumatic this is through the generations to gain any insight as to why it is relevant now.
On the other hand you might feel the author is not quite aware of how she is presenting this, as she is so caught up in the emotions. Also her idea that one way of healing is for America to be more Christian. This seems somewhat paradoxical not only biblical precedents and acceptance of slavery but also the history of the USA as being deeply religious since its inception until today.
Anne C. Bailey must be congratulated as a brilliant scholar who makes history matter, and matter in a fundamental way. She is also hopeful of a way to reconcile a society so divided by its history, even if she is not clear how.
August 25, 2019
Watch out. This looks like an easy read but it is dense on facts and research. The tale isn't bogged down in mistreatment of slaves; the very fact that they are treated as property not people is mistreatment enough. And it brings up many side issues such as the fact that northerners benefited from the slave trade and in fact even the British who had outlawed slavery expected to get cotton from their labor for their cotton mills. The loss of family is the most interesting aspect of the situation and how hard people fought to find family and are still trying to find family. An interesting look at a wedge of American history.
February 28, 2023
The story and history found in the book was very engaging and informative. It lost one star because I found the writing to be very dry at times and caused me to lose interest in the book after about 10 minutes even though I wanted to continue reading.
May 20, 2020
An amazing book on one of the most profound, yet underreported events in American history. It explores the Butler plantation of Georgia and the largest slave auction in U.S. history that took place in 1859.
The vestiges of this event still exist today through broken black families and racial trauma. Many thanks to author Anne C. Bailey for chronicling this important yet tragic piece of our nation’s history.
The vestiges of this event still exist today through broken black families and racial trauma. Many thanks to author Anne C. Bailey for chronicling this important yet tragic piece of our nation’s history.
April 19, 2022
I really like how the author goes in to how family reunions came about among black people in general due to slavery. Also, this author discusses diaspora which deals with the historical and physically encoded stress (P. 172) that is past from one family generation to another. Also known as stress imprints. I have always believed in this phenomenon. A really good book.
November 3, 2019
A beautiful, lucid, and moving work. It rests on creative and thorough research, and presents an evocative narrative as well as a compelling thesis.
March 25, 2021
This is an excellent book describing the destructive legacy of slavery and the link between Black and White families.
The author, a meticulous researcher, describes how Black families struggled to stay together in spite of the odds during and after slavery. She uncovers the humanity of the people who were sold and bought.
Mr. Butler, a signer of the constitution, owned and sold the slaves featured in this book. His White family was torn apart by the institution of slavery.
“The Weeping Time” is the tragic time of the devastating effects of slavery and the Civil War.
The author, a meticulous researcher, describes how Black families struggled to stay together in spite of the odds during and after slavery. She uncovers the humanity of the people who were sold and bought.
Mr. Butler, a signer of the constitution, owned and sold the slaves featured in this book. His White family was torn apart by the institution of slavery.
“The Weeping Time” is the tragic time of the devastating effects of slavery and the Civil War.
June 7, 2018
Informative read especially for readers unfamiliar with slavery in the lowcountry, the domestic slave trade, and African American culture.
April 13, 2023
This is an excellent look at the largest slave auction held in the US, the Butler Auction of 1859 in which over 400 individuals were sold. It's a harrowing account, and Bailey does an excellent job of analysis of this auction and its impact on both the white and black individuals involved with the auction. I feel that this book is an excellent look at a single auction event, and is a necessary examination of the auction and its legacy - following in the legacy of the work of Walter Johnson and Frederic Bancroft but with a more harrowing approach. This monograph is very approachable, and that is its greatest strength beyond merely the strength of Bailey's analysis of one auction event and the community it impacted. There is also an excellent analysis of the Civil War's impact on this community, but I feel the best parts examined the auction and the descendants of those sold on that auction block and their efforts to maintain the memory of their ancestors.
EDIT: I've revisited some of the text and realized that there are some historical inaccuracies, which, in a historical text, is extremely alarming. Most of these inaccuracies are related to the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation and Reconstruction. I've changed my star rating to reflect the fact that I consider historical inaccuracies in a history monograph to be a significant issue.
EDIT: I've revisited some of the text and realized that there are some historical inaccuracies, which, in a historical text, is extremely alarming. Most of these inaccuracies are related to the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation and Reconstruction. I've changed my star rating to reflect the fact that I consider historical inaccuracies in a history monograph to be a significant issue.
February 5, 2023
The largest slave auction in history took place on March 2nd and 3rd, in 1859, at the Tenbroeck Racetrack near Savannah, Georgia. Four hundred and thirty-six slaves were sold to the highest bidder, some bringing as much as $1500. Married couples were separated and sold to bidders throughout the South. At least thirty babies, some as young as three months, were included in the sale.
The auction took place to settle the debts of Pierce Butler, owner of rice and cotton plantations on St. Simons Island and the Georgia mainland. Butler pocketed over $300K, but it was not enough to settle his debts.
Many of the slaves had been born on Butler land and lived their entire lives there. When they were sold away, they were forced to leave parents, children, siblings, friends, loved ones. They spent the rest of their lives yearning for, and in many cases, searching for their lost loved ones. For most of them, it was a hopeless quest.
It’s a shameful story in our history, but one that should never be forgotten.
The auction took place to settle the debts of Pierce Butler, owner of rice and cotton plantations on St. Simons Island and the Georgia mainland. Butler pocketed over $300K, but it was not enough to settle his debts.
Many of the slaves had been born on Butler land and lived their entire lives there. When they were sold away, they were forced to leave parents, children, siblings, friends, loved ones. They spent the rest of their lives yearning for, and in many cases, searching for their lost loved ones. For most of them, it was a hopeless quest.
It’s a shameful story in our history, but one that should never be forgotten.
September 20, 2023
The Weeping Time is another name for the largest slave auction in US history, taking place in Savannah, Georgia, and selling over 400 slaves of the Butler Plantations on present day Butler and Sea Islands. Anne C. Bailey does a good job including as many names and stories of the enslaved people as possible. I think hearing their names, ages, and how they were described is important to honoring them today in a way that they were not honored while living. She uses as many first-hand accounts as possible, including a detailed article by a northern reporter who was at the auction disguised as a potential buyer.
This book isn’t that long but it is dense in information before, during, and after the auction and Civil War. I found the info about separating families and the long term effects of a fragmented family and past to be really interesting, and how memory of these events still effects out society today. She gives a lot nuance to the ideas, people, and times she discusses, which I appreciate.
This book isn’t that long but it is dense in information before, during, and after the auction and Civil War. I found the info about separating families and the long term effects of a fragmented family and past to be really interesting, and how memory of these events still effects out society today. She gives a lot nuance to the ideas, people, and times she discusses, which I appreciate.
July 12, 2023
Really important points about America's economy. Good read on a tough subject. Highly recommend.
February 1, 2024
Very well done and researched! An emotional historical account of slavery and slave auctions that emphasizes the importance of memory and how the past affects the present. Amazing text!
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May 22, 2024I’m getting ready for a trip to Georgia so trying to review history.
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