bought three slaves
theme
An 1852 oil painting depicting the scene of a slave market.
This is the first reference to African Americans in the novel. It's matter-of-fact inclusion in Scout's rambling diatribe on family history partly reflects her childlike naivety on matters of race, as borne out by the rest of the novel, and partly reflects the way in which black slavery is taken for granted in the South. However, Lee purposely includes it not only as an intimate part of Finch family history (a 'heroic history' of the novel's privileged protagonists), but also as an ironic feature of the Methodist Christian Simon Finch's faulty moral scruples: "having forgotten his teacher's dictum on the possession of human chattels".
Thus we are simultaneously introduced to two things: the complex nature and origins of racial prejudice in the South, inextricably bound up with both family and national foundations; and in Simon's character, a moral opposite or contrary to Atticus Finch's far more clear-sighted ethical navigation through the novel's many moral dilemmas.
Thus we are simultaneously introduced to two things: the complex nature and origins of racial prejudice in the South, inextricably bound up with both family and national foundations; and in Simon's character, a moral opposite or contrary to Atticus Finch's far more clear-sighted ethical navigation through the novel's many moral dilemmas.
One of the slave's greatest fears was to be sold off and separated from loved ones. According to Mortimer Thomson, a newspaper correspondent who covered the the largest sale of human beings in the history in the United States (which took place at a racetrack in Savannah, Georgia) "The expression on the faces of all who stepped on the block was always the same, and told of more anguish than it is in the power of words to express."
The owner of the slaves, Pierce Butler, had inherited the family's Georgia plantations some twenty years earlier, along with his brother John. But Pierce had wasted his portion of the inheritance, losing a rumored $700,000; now he was deeply in debt. Management of Pierce Butler's estate was transferred to trustees who sold off his once-grand, now-neglected Philadelphia mansion for $30,000. Other Butler properties were sold as well. But it was not enough to satisfy creditors, much less to ensure that Butler would continue to live in luxury. So the trustees turned to the Georgia plantations and their "moveable" property -- their slaves.
The owner of the slaves, Pierce Butler, had inherited the family's Georgia plantations some twenty years earlier, along with his brother John. But Pierce had wasted his portion of the inheritance, losing a rumored $700,000; now he was deeply in debt. Management of Pierce Butler's estate was transferred to trustees who sold off his once-grand, now-neglected Philadelphia mansion for $30,000. Other Butler properties were sold as well. But it was not enough to satisfy creditors, much less to ensure that Butler would continue to live in luxury. So the trustees turned to the Georgia plantations and their "moveable" property -- their slaves.