A slave auction at the south / from an original sketch by Theodore R. Davis. Image from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division I've just come back from Turkey, where I was doing a project on the 100th anniversary of the genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks carried out by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. When you meet Turkish nationalists who are still stuck in denialist mode, one of the main arguments they use to excuse the massacres is: “what about the genocides done by the British and the Americans?” This argument has a name: ”. It was common among Soviet spokespeople during the Cold War. “What about British imperialism?!?!” the apologists cry, as if the crimes of my ancestors justify the crimes of your ancestors. I respond that I often criticise the British government, which still tries to avoid the word “sorry” wherever possible, arguing that such an admission of guilt would open up the possibility of legal action for reparations. Nobody likes others to point out flaws in their character, but sometimes a bit of criticism is useful. This seems to be equally true of political and social problems as personal ones.I was thinking about these things when I came across the story of the Weeping Time. A few years ago, my parents visited Savannah, Georgia. My father loves researching family history, and some of our ancestors had emigrated there. One of these was a woman called Fanny Kemble. Kemble came from a theatre family, and was travelling and performing around the US in the early 1830s when she met Pierce Mease Butler. Butler followed Kemble around the country, turning up at her performances in various cities to show he was a man of means, until his somewhat stalkery courtship display paid off and she agreed to marry him in 1834. Butler neglected to tell Fanny that his income came from cotton and rice plantations in Georgia. Frances “Fanny” Kemble When she visited his rice plantation on Butler Island in 1838, Kemble was shocked to discover that Butler owned hundreds of slaves. She began to write about her experiences and how badly Butler’s slaves were treated. She tried to persuade Butler to reduce his economic dependence on slave labour, but he refused. Kemble was also embarrassed by Butler’s infidelities, and noted in her writings the hypocrisy of the white men who argued that it was acceptable to enslave black people because they were “less human” than whites, while at the same time regularly fathering children by black women. Their disagreements eventually became too much, and they separated in 1845. Butler threatened to prevent Fanny from seeing her daughters if she published accounts of what she had seen on Butler island, but she eventually published her memoir, Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation, in 1863. Brick chimney and house on Butler Island, Georgia. Image by Doug Kerr (CC BY-SA 2.0) By 1857, Butler was heavily in debt from gambling and poor investment choices. With creditors after him, he had little option but to sell part of his property. An inventory done in February 1859 assessed the value of his human chattels at over $500,000. Butler decided to sell about half of his 919 slaves, and on March 2-3, 1859, at the Ten Broeck Racetrack in Savannah, Georgia, 429 of his slaves were sold for $303,850—about $700 per person. In the process, families were split up and sold to different plantations in different states. It was the biggest slave auction in US history. A reporter from the New York Tribune went there undercover to record the event. The event came to be called the Weeping Time by the slaves and their descendants, “because of reports that the sky opened up and poured down rain for the full two days of the auction. It was said that the heavens were weeping for the inhumanity that was being committed.” Part of the former Ten Broeck horse racecourse, Savannah, Georgia, now owned by the Bradley Plywood Corporation. Image courtesy Kwesi DeGraft-Hanson. Dr Kwesi DeGraft-Hanson, an academic and landscape architect originally from Accra, Ghana, became interested in the Butler plantations through his research on “tabby”, a building material produced and used by enslaved people in construction before concrete was invented. Kwesi read about the Butler plantation and learned that Butler often used slaves from the Gold Coast, many with names indicating that they were Akan, his own ethno-linguistic group. In 1998 DeGraft-Hanson was invited by the local historical society to talk about the Butler plantations on St Simon's Island, near to Hampton plantation, which is now a wealthy gated residential community.