Enigmatic Pilot_ A Tall Tale Too True - Kris Saknussemm [71]
The event, as usual, was to take place on the steps of the proud domed courthouse on Fourth Street at noon. Typically, the public did not take much overt notice of these occasions, there being studious attention from those informed professionals either bidding or methodically recording the prices submitted by their peers. These seasoned agriculturalists and their entourages had serious business in mind and had come more than a few miles to do it. So the amateurs kept to the fringe.
Slave auctions represented significant investments in new capital equipment—gambles taken on increased productivity. An air of sober deliberation and dispassionate judgment was the rule, and for the most part an auction was no more undignified and violent than a sale of horses or cattle and easier on the nose, since the prize specimens had often been treated to a bath and an improved diet to inspire higher prices. “Beef for muscle, fresh fruit for the teeth and breath, and cod liver oil to put a shine on their hides” was the recommended short-term practice advocated by the trading houses.
No, the systematic brutality of these events was more in the mind, the soul, and heart than in the flesh. But since Negroes were not credited with having minds or souls, any explicit cruelty was considered an unfortunate by-product of what needed doing. Mating a stallion or wringing a chicken’s neck—life was filled with raw necessities, and people were much less squeamish then.
Naturally there were whips and guns on hand, but they were primarily ceremonial and symbolic. And of course the goods to be traded appeared in shackles (the young bucks, at any rate), but that was just common sense and economic prudence: the traders were not immune to the high spirits that some slaves felt at the thought of being separated from their wives and children. Better to secure the chains than to have to raise the whip or, worse still, fire the gun. In fact, there were few fatalities at the auctions—a testament to the efficiency that had been achieved through decades of practice.
And not all the slaves stood defiantly flaring their nostrils and rattling their manacles, dreaming of escape, either. Many of them welcomed the change that new ownership would bring. For some it was a chance to find a new life and the faint hope of security, or to be nearer a loved one who had earlier been prised away and sold downriver. For an attractive female who had been forced to service in unspeakable ways a Missouri master, a plantation owner in the Delta, who was less Christian but perhaps more decent, held some distinct appeal.
The upshot was, every auction was a crossroads. Money, emotions, human dignity, and the very destiny of America were all at stake. So it was no surprise that very often a fringe of loitering onlookers would form into an attempted crowd at a distance that allowed them the benefits of aspect without appearing too suspect.
The gathering that tried to take shape on the day in question was unusually large, and all the more faceless and amorphous for its size and prurient interest. Recalling the catastrophe years later in his privately printed memoir, Brookmire would speculate that it was the very size of the assembled host that so diffused the memory of what transpired (a suggestive observation, given the days of instantaneous mass communication that have followed). Perhaps the more witnesses, the less reliable their testimony—until by extension it becomes possible to deny that there was anything to witness at all. This phenomenon may go a long way toward accounting for why such abrupt and incoherent reportage was provided by the local media. Of the major regional newspapers, including The Bulletin, The Boatman, The Advocate, the Catholic weekly Shepherd of the Valley, and The Missouri Republican, only The Star contained any more than