The Charleston Mercury for April 5th has a notice of an auction sale of negroes, which shows that, though Confederate “shinplasters” pass for only about sixty cents on the dollar down there, yet slaves are selling at what would have been called there two years ago ridiculous low rates:
“Messrs. Wilber & Son sold a woman, 40 years old, with a boy 13 years of age, for $850 - $425 each; a woman 50 years old with a family of five children, aged respectively 22 years, 9 years, 7 years, 5 years and an infant, for $2,130 – averaging $355; a woman 40 years old, with a boy of 10 years and two girls, aged 7 and 9, for $1,800 – averaging $450; a boy 13 years old, $700; another, aged 15, brought $775; and a man 42 years of aged, sold for $625 – all cash transactions.”
Two years ago an able-bodied slave brought in Charleston from $1,250 to $1,500 in such money as would pass at par all over the Union; today the same persons sell for about half as much in money which is rated at a discount of forty per cent., which makes the real sum, got for “a man of forty two years of age,” not $625, but $375, instead of say $1,250, and this when the price of necessaries of life is enormously enhanced, as appears from the following account of another sale in the same number of the Mercury:
“Sugar cured hams sold for 71 cents per lb.; No. 1 mackerel $38.25 per barrel; letter paper 13@14 dollars per ream; kerosene oil $4 12½@ $5.50 per gallon; Gorham cheese 42½@80c. per pound.
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 10, 1862, p. 2
“Messrs. Wilber & Son sold a woman, 40 years old, with a boy 13 years of age, for $850 - $425 each; a woman 50 years old with a family of five children, aged respectively 22 years, 9 years, 7 years, 5 years and an infant, for $2,130 – averaging $355; a woman 40 years old, with a boy of 10 years and two girls, aged 7 and 9, for $1,800 – averaging $450; a boy 13 years old, $700; another, aged 15, brought $775; and a man 42 years of aged, sold for $625 – all cash transactions.”
Two years ago an able-bodied slave brought in Charleston from $1,250 to $1,500 in such money as would pass at par all over the Union; today the same persons sell for about half as much in money which is rated at a discount of forty per cent., which makes the real sum, got for “a man of forty two years of age,” not $625, but $375, instead of say $1,250, and this when the price of necessaries of life is enormously enhanced, as appears from the following account of another sale in the same number of the Mercury:
“Sugar cured hams sold for 71 cents per lb.; No. 1 mackerel $38.25 per barrel; letter paper 13@14 dollars per ream; kerosene oil $4 12½@ $5.50 per gallon; Gorham cheese 42½@80c. per pound.
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 10, 1862, p. 2
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