Scrambling for Slaves: Captive Sales in Colonial South Carolina

Based in part on previously neglected sales records, this article offers the first detailed analysis of slave sales by the method known as the scramble. In eighteenth-century South Carolina, the scramble was the preferred sales mechanism for newly arrived Africans, with auction sales generally reserved for slaves already in the colony. Analysis of the sales and other records suggest that the scramble was an economically rational way to sell imported slaves, but that it fell out of favor after the American Revolution as problems of currency and credit rendered it too cumbersome. The article concludes by proposing that the scramble helped to shape colonial slave society by allowing poorer whites greater access to slaves than the auction method. © 2013 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.