Slavery down south
In Kindred we see Wylend/Rufus use the threat of selling a slave to get obedience from their slaves a lot. The threat here being that the sold slave would never see their family again and that slavery worse in the deep south rather than the northern part of the south that the story is set in. So just how much worse was slavery in the deep south and how common was it for slaves to be sold south? According to my research, it was very common. Over 100,000 slaves were sold south per decade in in the early 1800s. A child in Virginia had about a 30% chance of being sold south in their lifetime. Slave traders wanted equal proportions of men and women, but they had no interest in keeping families together. Slaves would either be shipped or forced to walk to reach the South. Like the trans Atlantic slave trade, an industry developed around transporting slaves south, with services like holding facilities and food distribution. Once slaves got to the deep south, the conditions were indeed much ...