"The official plantocratic view of slave marriage sought to deny the slaves any loving bonds or long-standing relationships, thus conveniently rationalising the indiscriminate separation of close kin through sales." "From the earliest days of slavery, indiscriminate sales and separation severely disrupted the domestic life of individual slaves." Slaves could be sold so that spouses could be sold separately. "Slave couples were sometimes separated by sale ... They lived as single slaves or as part of maternal or extended families but considered themselves 'married. Sale of estates with "stock" to pay debts, more common in the late period of slavery, was criticised as separating slave spouses. William Beckford argued for "families to be sold together or kept as near as possible in the same neighbourhood" and "laws were passed in the late period of slavery to prevent the breakup of slave families by sale, ... these laws were frequently ignored". "Slaves frequently reacted strongly to enforced severance of their emotional bonds", feeling "sorrow and despair", sometimes, according to Thomas Cooper in 1820, resulting in death from distress. John Stewart argued against separation as leading slave buyers to regret it because of utter or period to their lives. Separated slaves often used free time to travel long distances to reunite for a night and sometimes runaway slaves were married couples. However, "sale of slaves and the resulting breakup of families decreased as slave plantations lost prosperity."