Securing human property: Slavery, life insurance, and industrialization in the upper south

Journal of the Early Republic

Volumn 25, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 615-652

  Murphy, Sharon Ann ^a  

^a PROVIDENCE COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 46049101090     PISSN: 02751275     EISSN: 15530620     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jer.2005.0081     Document Type: Article

References (87)

1. Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York, 1989), 29-32, 70;
2. Gavin Wright, The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1978), 11-15.
3. Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, 32-33, 63, 71;
4. Jonathan D. Martin, Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 1-2, 61-62;
5. Charles B. Dew, "Disciplining Slave Iron Workers in the Antebellum South," American Historical Review, 79 (Apr. 1974), 393-418;
6. Marie Tyler-McGraw and Gregg D. Kimball, In Bondage and Freedom: Antebellum Black Life in Richmond, Virginia (Richmond, VA, 1988), 21-27;
7. Michael Tadman, Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South (Madison, WI, 1989);
8. Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619-1877 (New York, 1993), 109-110;
9. Claudia Dale Goldin, Urban Slavery in the American South 1820-1860: A Quantitative History (Chicago, IL, 1976), 36.
10. Robert S. Starobin, Industrial Slavery in the Old South (London, 1970), 3-34.
11. Sharon Ann Murphy, "Security in an Uncertain World: Life Insurance and the Emergence of Modern America" (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 2005);
12. Life Insurance History 1843-1910 (Chicago, IL, and New York, 1911).
13. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime (New York, 1918), 363-64;
14. Frederic Bancroft, Slave Trading in the Old South (1931; rep., New York, 1959), 157;
15. Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York, 1961), 403;
16. Eugene D. Genovese, "The Medical and Insurance Costs of Slaveholding in the Cotton Belt," The Journal of Negro History, 45 (July 1960), 146;
17. Starobin, Industrial Slavery, vii, 71-74;
18. Goldin, Urban Slavery, 38, 143;
19. Todd L. Savitt, "Slave Life Insurance in Virginia and North Carolina," The Journal of Southern History, 43 (Nov. 1977), 585-86.
20. Martin, Divided Mastery, 103;
21. Starobin, Industrial Slavery, 72;
22. Jonathan Daniel Wells, The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004);
23. Ronald L. Lewis, Coal, Iron, and Slaves: Industrial Slavery in Maryland and Virginia, 1715-1865 (Westport, CT, 1979), 95.
24. Life Insurance: Its Principles, Operations and Benefits, as presented by the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company (Raleigh, NC, 1849);
25. George P. Rawick, The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (Westport, CT, 1972), 262;
26. Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974), 27-30. In one particularly interesting request, President Andrew Jackson donated to three Washington orphan asylums a lion he had received from the emperor of Morocco. The asylums wished to insure the lion until they could sell the animal, but the company refused. James H. Causten, Washington agent, to Donaldson, Mar. 18, 1835, BLIC.
27. Dorsey to John M. Speed, Lynchburg, VA, Jan. 26, 1847, BLIC;
28. Dorsey to Sutton, Oct. 20, 1851, BLIC; BLIC Policy Book.
29. Davis to Donaldson, Jan. 15, 1839, BLIC;
30. Kolchin, American Slavery, 130;
31. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 37-43.
32. Martin, Divided Mastery, 19, 100;
33. Causten to Donaldson, Sept. 3, 1833, BLIC;
34. Richard Potts, Frederick, MD, to Dorsey, Sept. 17, 1852, and Oct. 13, 1852, BLIC; BLIC Policy Book;
35. Murphy, "Security in an Uncertain World," 151-55.
36. Causten to Donaldson, July 14, 1836, BLIC; BLIC Policy Book;
37. J. S. Wellford, Fredericksburg, VA, agent, to Donaldson, Dec. 7, 1855, BLIC;
38. Charles Pairo, Washington agent, to Dorsey, Aug. 24, 1852, BLIC; BLIC Policy Book, BLIC.
39. Tadman, Speculators and Slaves, 140, 164-65, 179-80;
40. Kolchin, American Slavery, 59-61, 129, 162;
41. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 3-7, 89-91.
42. J. S. Wellford to Donaldson, Dec. 7, 1855, BLIC.
43. Causten to Donaldson, Mar. 12, 1838, BLIC;
44. Dorsey to Sutton, Dec. 9, 1851, BLIC;
45. Wilson Winfree, Richmond, VA, to Lay, July 27, 1839, BLIC;
46. Dorsey to Henry Stagg, St. Louis, MO, Apr. 14, 1849, BLIC.
47. Gwathmey Pine, St. Louis, MO, to Donaldson, June 22, 1844, and July 31, 1845, BLIC;
48. Franklin A. Slaughter, Fredericksburg, VA, to Donaldson, Jan. 13, 1852, BLIC;
49. F. Johnston, Roanoke, VA, to Dorsey, Dec. 18, 1851, BLIC;
50. Charles E. Beynroth, Louisville, KY, to Dorsey, June 22, 1852, and Aug. 10, 1852, BLIC;
51. Dorsey to Slaughter, Jan. 16, 1852, BLIC.
52. Savitt, "Slave Life Insurance," 587, 594;
53. Genovese, "Medical and Insurance Costs," 146;
54. C. J. Wills, Lynchburg Hose and Fire Company, to John H. McCue, Staunton, VA, Dec. 9, 1853, Papers of the McCue Family, MSS 4406 (Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library, hereafter UVA);
55. Franklin A. Slaughter, Fredericksburg, VA, to Donaldson, Jan. 13, 1852, and Oct. 12, 1853, BLIC;
56. President D. Thompson to Sanford J. Smith, St. Louis, MO, Feb. 4, 1847, New York Life Insurance and Trust Company (Baker Library, Harvard Business School, hereafter NYL&T);
57. Mildred F. Stone, Since 1845: A History of the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company (New Brunswick, NJ, 1957), 19;
58. "Insurance on Negroes," De Bow's Commercial Review, Feb. 1851, 241;
59. Life Insurance History, 81;
60. J. Owen Stalson, Marketing Life Insurance: Its History in America (Cambridge, MA, 1942), 791;
61. The Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation, Division of Insurance, Slavery Era Insurance Policies Registry, http://www.ins.state.il.us/Consumer/SlaveryReporting.nsf (accessed Jan. 2005).
62. Lawrence F. Abbott, The Story of NYLIC: A History of the Origin and Development of the New York Life Insurance Company from 1845 to 1929 (New York, 1930), 36, 46;
63. James M. Hudnut, Semi-Centennial History of the New-York Life Insurance Company, 1845-1895 (New York, 1895), 22-23;
64. Stalson, Marketing Life Insurance, 791-92.
65. California Registry by Name; Martin, Divided Mastery, 1, 61-62.
66. Sutton to Donaldson, Feb. 16, 1852, BLIC;
67. John Darracott, Richmond, VA, agent, to Donaldson, Aug. 5, 1854, BLIC.
68. Dr. Wellford to Donaldson, May 15, 1849; BLIC Policy Book.
69. Life Insurance ... the North Carolina Mutual, 17;
70. Dr. Josiah Clark Nott, "Statistics of Southern Slave Population, with Especial Reference to Life Insurance," De Bow's Commercial Review, Nov. 1847, 275, 286-87;
71. Reginald Horsman, Josiah Nott of Mobile: Southerner, Physician, and Racial Theorist (Baton Rouge, LA, 1987);
72. Charles E. Beynroth, Louisville, KY, to Dorsey, June 22, 1852, BLIC;
73. Goldin, Urban Slavery, 26, 45-46;
74. Loren Schweninger, ed., Race, Slavery, and Free Blacks: Series I, Petitions to Southern Legislatures, 1777-1867 (Bethesda, MD, 1999), 315;
75. Pollard to Donaldson, Oct. 23, 1854, BLIC;
76. Darracott to Donaldson, July 24, 1854, BLIC; BLIC Policy Book.
77. Starobin, Industrial Slavery, 15-17, 28;
78. Scudder v. Woodbridge, 1 Ga. 195 (1846);
79. Paul Finkelman, "Slaves as Fellow Servants: Ideology, Law, and Industrialization," Journal of Legal History, 31 (Oct. 1987), 279;
80. Sean Patrick Adams, Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America (Baltimore, MD, 2004), 45;
81. M. M. Coulter to Lewis, Nov. 19, 1860, BLIC.
82. Tadman, Speculators and Slaves, 289-91.
83. M. M. Coulter to Price, Oct. 30, 1860, BLIC.
84. Darracott to Donaldson, Aug. 5, 1854, BLIC;
85. Donaldson to Pollard, Dec. 8, 1853, BLIC;
86. Pollard to Donaldson, Dec. 5, 1853, BLIC;
87. Lucien Lewis, Richmond, VA, agent, to M. M. Coulter, Dec. 26, 1860, Nov. 12 and 17, 1860, BLIC;