40 Bill of sale, dated May 11, 1852, in the writer's collection.
40 Jews and Negro Slavery in the Old South, 1789-1865
number of female slaves and children because the "conduct of said slaves towards their mistress . . . was so very malevolent and very objectionable?"41
Thin though it may have been, there was still a line of demarcation between persons who bought or sold slaves as individuals, and those who dealt in slaves as part of their occupational pursuit. The second group of those who participated in the sale of Negroes were those merchants who dealt in many commodities, including slaves. Philip Sartorius of Louisiana and Mississippi, for instance, recalled the time in 1850 that his partner Sam Rothschild
gambled all our money off and sold [our trading] boat and stock to another flat boat man for a Negro girl, took her to New Orleans and traded her off for tobacco.42
To Sam Rothschild, there was little diff erence between buying and selling a slave girl and any other kind of merchandise.
Sometimes Jewish store-keepers would take a flier at an investment in slaves for purely speculative purposes. An example of this activity was the purchase of three Negro slaves "named Joe William and Friendly" for $4,500, in July, 1863, by Jacob Adler and Herman Cone of Jonesboro, Tennessee. Adler and Cone lost their investment, however; the Union victories deprived them of both capital and property.43
An outstanding example of this kind of speculator was Jacob Barrett, an early merchant in Columbia, South Carolina, and later a resident of Charleston. Barrett was a characteristic store-keeper of the time, who carried a stock which included dry-goods, groceries, provisions, liquor,