These interesting and mysterious packages are to be sold each to the highest bidder.
"Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School or The Parting of the Ways"
Jessie Graham Flower
So anxious are they at the South that every poor African should have a good, kind master to attend to the wants of his soul, and support him in old age, that, if a stray negro is taken up running at large without an apparent owner, and for any cause he cannot legally prove his freedom, even though he does really own himself, he is nevertheless advertised, and sold at auction to the highest bidder, to pay the expenses occasioned by his own capture and detention.
"Slavery and the Constitution"
William Ingersoll Bowditch
Husband and wife, parent and child, the prattling infant and the old man of seventy winters, might legally be placed upon the auction-block, and sold to the highest bidder, singly or in lots to suit, as might seem most calculated to advance the interest of the creditors.
"Slavery and the Constitution"
William Ingersoll Bowditch