The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860 Main Menu Yale University Press

“The Most Notorious of the Baltimore Negro-Buyers”

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In the fall of 1815 nineteen-year-old Austin Woolfolk arrived in the city of Baltimore. Over the next fifteen years he built one of the largest slave-trading firms in the country. Like so many new arrivals, he had grand ambitions yet humble acquaintances. Six feet one inch tall, athletic and imposing, Woolfolk was beckoned by riches in the slave trade. His firm’s rise is a story of the capitalist virtues of mastering the workings of a complex marketplace and developing competitive advantages. Merchant houses, wharves, taverns, and newspaper offices were his classrooms. Woolfolk’s calling card was cash, but his intangible resources were golden. He quickly learned the human and market geography. Other slavers operated in Baltimore and rival Chesapeake cities, but he advertised relentlessly and cultivated Baltimore shipping merchants. He allied with kinsmen to build a supply chain. That network catapulted him from itinerant to business insider. Woolfolk worked tirelessly and thrived on the pursuits of profit and advantage. He delayed family and marriage until his early forties while building an enterprise coffle by coffle.

Woolfolk's Baltimore was a rising commercial city.
He became a business insider.

 

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