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HISTORICAL ANNOTATION 639

native plants and herbs to treat illnesses, while slaves had more faith in their local
conjuror's ability to heal than the plantation doctor. Local slave healers employed a
mixture of homeopathy, traditional Western medicine, and claims that they possessed
magical powers. However, when a slave became severely ill, most owners would
demand treatment from a white doctor to prevent epidemics (and to protect their
investments). For minor illnesses, though, blacks were generally allowed some control
over their own medical care. Miller and Smith, Dictionary of Afro-American
Slavery, 312-17 .
5.36-37 black conjurer with his divination] Rooted in African religious and folk
medicine practices, conjuring, voodoo, and witchcraft persisted in the South long after
emancipation. Often identified as African-born, conjurers were believed to possess
special knowledge of magic and herbal medicine. Conjurers might provide a talisman
as a remedy for an ailment or as protection from an enemy. It was not unusual for
healing and harming aspects to be present in a single process, and it was not unusual
for black conjurers to have whites as well as blacks among their clientele. The conjurers
might find their aid solicited in finding "true love," ensuring economic success, or
thwarting enemies. Slave conjurers were regarded as powerful and often dangerous
members of the slave community. Thriving on the fear they could elicit among other
blacks, conjurers could work good or harm through their actions. Although the negative
applications of their "charms" were their most dramatic practices, conjurers possessed
knowledge of folk medicine that allowed them to perform a vital role as
medical practitioners in the slave community. Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The
"Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (New York, 1978), 80-86, 275-88;
Sharla M. Fett, Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave
Plantations (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2002), 38-40, 95-100; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll,
217-18, 223-24, 227.
5.37-38 Here was slave-breeding...beating to death] Shortly after the cotton
gin's invention in 1794, cotton supplanted tobacco as the primary cash crop of the
United States. This shift caused many slaveholders to relocate their plantations, paid
employees, and slaves from the Upper South to the Lower South where the climate
and soil were more conducive to growing cotton. Analyzing journals, diaries,
accounts, and receipts from small farms in the Upper South, some historians have
concluded that slave-selling and the separation of families were frequent, though
often covert. Other historians analyzing similar data taken from major plantations
claim that more often entire plantations were moved; in these cases, slave-selling was
rare and the separation of families rarer. Demoralizing slaves through forced breeding
and torture would have proven counterproductive to the goal of plantation profit.
Analysis of smaller farms' records suggests that because slave marriage required only
approval by the master and a male slave's selection of a mate, slave owners did
employ an informal, quasi-consensual breeding practice. High mortality among
slaves was most often a result of neglect; inadequate clothing, housing, sanitation, and
provision of food, rather than more sensational abuse like whipping and murder.