Family Separation In American Slavery
Family separation in American slavery was extremely common. According to one historian of the slave trade in the United States, "The magnitude of the trade, in terms of the lives it affected and families it destroyed, is without a doubt greater than any American Civil War, Civil War battlefield." There is widespread evidence of the pervasive nature of family separation: "A central feature of virtually every slave autobiography and of many of the slave interviews, for example, is the trauma caused slaves by forced family separation." Historian Calvin Schermerhorn wrote of Franklin and Armfield Office, Franklin & Armfield, entrepreneurs of the 1820s and 1830s, "As it innovated in finance and transportation, Franklin and Armfield became an engine of family wreckage and social disruption. What one contemporary critic called 'the Slave-Factory of Franklin & Armfield' produced captives by disarticulating families." The motivation for this family separation was market forces; Theophilus ...
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