Articles Sell Best Singly: The Disruption of Slave Families at Court Sales

Court sales of slaves were a material-that is, not merely ideological-manifestation of James Henry Hammond's "mudsill" theory of Southern society. While representing South Carolina in the United States Senate in 1858, Hammond delivered his "Cotton is King" speech. In this speech, Hammond developed the metaphor of slaves as the "mudsill" of South Carolina and Southern society Hammond attributed the stability of Southern social order to the establishment of slaves as a mudsfll. Just as a house must rest upon a sill or ledge in contact with the earth, the edifice of Southern society rested upon the presence of slaves, "a class to do the mean duties, to perform the drudgery of life."