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MISSISSIPPI RIVER

April 1841

Nights on the flatboat are both quiet and tense for the man on watch. Tonight it's Roy, who puffs on a cigar to stay alert. His ears strain for any noise in the darkness: telltale splashes of incoming pirate boats, clicks of firearms being readied, the scrape of metal blades being pulled from scabbards. Amid the din of frogs, birds, and other riverside animals, anyone could be mustering for an attack.

But the rifles, knives, and pistols the crew carry are not just meant to repel river pirates. Roy considers their cargo, chained together under the glare of a lantern, as the real threat. He's not just a boat crewman; he's also a prison guard.

Even by the standards of a Kentucky slave's miserable condition, being shipped to New Orleans is a nightmare of cruel uncertainty. Being separated from all friends and family and sent away for resale creates a dangerous desperation. Slave rebellions have occurred during trips down the river, with flatboat crews killed during the bids for freedom.

Roy sees lights downstream, and they're getting larger—it must be a steamboat churning toward them. In daylight, he'd see the telltale smudge of stack smoke on the horizon. As the vessel gets closer, he can hear music on board and spies dark figures silhouetted in lamplit windows. To the steamboat's crew, Roy's slave skiff is a dot of light away from the river's center, but to the teenager, the steamboat is a reminder of the wider community on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Both are plied by watercraft of all sizes and are serviced by a network of forts, trading stations, and taverns on the banks. These built-from-scratch outposts are hubs for news, political machinations, and commercial negotiations. In the world's empty places, a saloon can become a beacon of civilization.

Each stop has been an education for Roy. Drinking, gambling, and fighting are a way of life for these rough, working rivermen, and the teenager proves to be a quick student. Best of all, he's not alone in the world while he's at a saloon. Or at least he's alone with everybody else.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

May 1841

Roy stands among the back of the crowd at the trader's yard, having shown up late to the auction's ten a.m. start. Attending the slave auction is not part of his job as a flatboat crewman, which ended on arrival. But he's never seen one before, and it seems like he should watch the end of his first trip.

New Orleans is slavery's unparalleled hub in the United States. Other cities confine their slave pens to one district, but this yard is just one of more than fifty sprinkled across New Orleans. Some are under rotunda domes; others, like this one, are conducted in open-air markets. Humans are bought and sold every Saturday and Sunday.

Taking in the place's high brick walls and armed staff, Roy can see that the facility is an auction house only part of the time; it's really a full-time prison for slaves awaiting sale. The enslaved are assembled to one side. Roy scans the glum faces for those he shipped here, but it's not easy among the throngs. The men, women, and children on sale are of varying ages, each freshly washed, with hair combed and wearing clean clothes. They seem a far cry from the huddled, moaning cargo lying on the hard deck of the flatboat.

"When spectators would come in the yard, the slaves were ordered out to form a line," an escaped slave Henry Bibb, will describe in his memoirs. "They were made to stand up straight and look as sprightly as they could; and when they were asked a question, they had to answer it as promptly as they could, and try to induce the spectators to buy them. If they failed to do this, they were severely paddled after the spectators were gone. And the object for flogging under such circumstances, is to make the slaves anxious to be sold."

When he and the flatboat crew dropped off their cargo at the yard, Roy was able to see the staff using their equipment to punish uncooperative slaves. Several had been pushed over, elbows touching knees, with a stick forced between the bends of their limbs. Hands tied and helpless, they endure beatings by the auctioneers, who use wooden paddles, the flat sides pitted with auger holes that form dark blisters on the skin. Roy notices that the blows only land where prospective buyers won't be able to see the damage.

He spots a throng of slaves, their faces unemotional, dancing in a courtyard under the watchful eyes of the trade pen overseers. The idea, he's told, is to increase their health with some light exercise. To this end, the slaves here are also scrutinized by doctors and given healthy portions of food. It's not humane; it's just good for sales.

There are slaves exposed for bidding (i.e., displayed on the auction block), but most of the action happens on the sidelines, where savvy buyers can get a good look at the humans they're considering for purchase. Prospects are often taken into rooms and stripped, then examined for indications of disease or scars from neck chains or beatings, signs of unwanted defiance. Once in a while a man or woman will act out, usually when a family is being split apart. There's begging and crying, but such outbursts are rare and quickly tamped with brute intimidation. "I would have cried, if I dared to," writes Solomon Northup, who that same year experiences an auction from the perspective of those being sold, after seeing a mother and child forcibly separated in a trade yard.

The final step is a trip to the notary tables. Under Louisiana law, all slave sales must be recorded by notaries in the city, who deliver this bureaucracy from several desks on-site.

After the novelty wears off, Roy finds slave sales a morose and dull process. He quickly gets bored and leaves. On the street, it's impossible to forget that he's unemployed. Flatboats can't navigate upstream, so he knew it would be a one-way trip. He idly wonders if the skiff's owner got even a third of its seventy-five-dollar construction cost when he sold it.

With his pay, he could take a steamboat north toward home. But with some money in pocket and New Orleans to explore, what's the rush? Roy turns his back on the slave market's tall brick wall and the miseries inside, strides down cobblestone streets toward the Garden District, and the city of New Orleans swallows him.

JAMES

Independence, Missouri

October 1844

The sound of rifle fire brings the town of Independence to attention. Dozens of dirty, weary men in a wagon train are heralding the end of their journey from Independence to Santa Fe and back again. Just as a seaside port town turns out when its residents hear the celebratory cannon fire of returning ships, many in Independence hear gunshots and reflexively go to the downtown square to watch caravans arrive.

James Bean heads specifically to the Owens & Aull store on the square. This is not only a logical and popular place to gawk—the establishment has been the premier local outfitter of wagon trains for years—but while he's there James can mix with the Santa Fe Trail merchants, learn their trade, and gather some market intelligence about the trip and the destination. And hopefully demonstrate his diligent interest to Samuel C. Owens, who not only owns the store but funds start-up traders with their first wagons for a cut of the profit.