The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation

This brief chapter focuses on enslaved people 40 and over. The opening auction scene begins with Ponto, an enslaved man claiming to be much older than the 32 years his auctioneer claims he is. It is unknown how often enslaved people interrupted their own sale in an attempt to influence it.

The average life expectancy for an enslaved person was 25, while the average white person lived to 39. Most studies of market prices do not consider enslaved people beyond the age of 35. Enslavers, however, often did monetarily value what they referred to as “superannuated” enslaved person.

Berry argues that there are generally two ways that enslavers thought about older enslaved people: They were either highly regarded or disregarded. When disregarded, they are often described as being “turned out,” as Moses Grandy describes. When monetary values decrease to the point where enslaved people cannot be sold on the market for profit, however, they are sometimes able to secure manumission or buy themselves. In these cases, Berry contends that the external value “converged with the internal” (132): “[B]ecause their financial value was so low, enslaved people did not have to compete against the price tag on their bodies” (132).