The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation by Daina Ramey Berry (review)

Abstract

gressional petitions. The limited legal archive also necessitated a narrative that is not entirely linear. Gilmer spares little detail in retelling the courtroom dramas, which read as colorful, suspenseful, and deeply intriguing. Together, they “reveal both the power of formal law and its limitations in antebellum [and post-emancipation] Texas life” (10). Thus, the claim that Gillmer really drives home is that the formal law, while seemingly static and unaffected by the personal whims of those charged to enforce it, was indeed malleable and accommodating to sometimes thorny and unconventional personal relationships and good old Texas pragmatism. Or, as Gillmer simply suggests, Texas was “no place for rigid rules” and “life was far more fluid” across the rugged frontier (179). Contingencies mattered in each profiled case, and without fail, the conclusions reached by judges and juries confirmed this Texas reality. Hence, the seeming rigidity of race or the precarity of freedom keeps the reader in full anticipation of every trial’s outcome. Likewise, the generous postslavery updates of key characters that Gillmer provides help underscore the long reach and consequences of evolving notions of race in Texas. So, southern-with-many-twists is the portrait of Texas that eventually emerges from this monograph. Altogether, the nineteenth-century Texas that Gillmer illustrates is laden with nuance and intricacy. In keeping with the late Ira Berlin’s insistence that we not view slavery as a monolithic institution across time and space, Gillmer demonstrates that there were indeed many slaveries (and freedoms) lived throughout Texas and at various moments in the state’s history. For up-and-coming slavery scholars and students of Texas history, this book should be required reading. While heavy on general Texas history, there were moments when engagement with the greater nation would have provided much needed additional context and avenues for comparison. One might also insist on moving beyond the traditional black/white binary to highlight the state’s Tejano and Native American heritage. Still, this work adds a great deal to our understanding of slavery in Texas, and it encourages a more critical view of how we have long understood slavery, race, and even place.