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Adam Rothman, Daina Ramey Berry. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation., The American Historical Review, Volume 123, Issue 1, February 2018, Pages 226–227, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/123.1.226
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John Hill was about to be sold on the auction block on New Year’s Day in Richmond, Virginia, in 1853 when he broke free from his captors and escaped, making his way to Canada nine months later. Once free to speak his mind, Hill wrote letters back to William Still, the conductor of the Underground Railroad through Philadelphia, that raged against his enslavers: “If my master had allowed me to have an education I would make them American Slave-holders feel me, Yeas I would make them tremble when I spoke” (William Still, The Underground Rail Road [1872], 193).
In The Price for Their Pound of Flesh, Daina Ramey Berry gives Hill’s inner strength and sense of self-worth a name: “soul value” (6). Has any historian coined a better figure of speech for the indomitable spirit of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Americas? It sure beats “agency.” Soul value is the pride that slaves took in their work, the love they had for their families, the creativity of their food and music and clothing, their religious devotion, and the ingenuity and determination of their resistance to bondage. Their sense of self-worth did not come from the auction block and was not extinguished there.
