The Antebellum Domestic Slave Trade

The Antebellum Slave Trade in Regional and Historical Perspective

From HNet Calvin Schermerhor writes: Robert Gudmestad has made at least two important contributions in A Troublesome Commerce. The first is to account for regional differences in perceptions of the antebellum interstate slave trade, and the second is to account for why southerners accepted the trade while simultaneously maintaining ambivalence toward traders. Gudmestad argues that by the mid-1830s, white southerners came to view the long-distance domestic slave trade as necessary to southern society rather than as an embarrassing practice that tore apart enslaved families, corrupted the morals of slaveholders, and flooded the Lower South with potentially seditious slaves. Gudmestad orients his reader to think of the interstate slave trade in terms of regional capitalist-economic development and explores its social ramifications.

Robert H. Gudmestad. A Troublesome Commerce: The Transformation of the Interstate Slave Trade. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004

A Troublesome Commerce therefore adds to an historiography that includes Steven Deyle's Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life (2005), Walter Johnson's Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (1999), and Michael Tadman's Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South (1989).

Gudmestad investigates the perceptions and practices of the speculator or trader as a way to connect slavery's economic expansion with its social significance. In contrast to a slaveholder who may have bought or sold slaves locally and for a variety of reasons, traders earned a living primarily by purchasing enslaved people from slaveholders in the Upper South and selling them to buyers in the Lower South. In the popular imagination, according to Gudmestad, "The trader broke up families, emphasized profit above piety, manipulated reality, and ruined paternalism. The stereotype had all the qualities that slaveowners were supposed to control" (p. 190). Gudmestad argues that "when [the slaveholder] could not meet this idea, the speculator was one way to explain their failure.... [slaveholders] blamed all others--banks, debt, abolitionists, the slaves themselves--for the slave trade because to admit their own culpability would have undermined the whole basis of their society" (p. 190). The idea that slaves represented cash above any supposed membership in a slaveholder's extended family upset southerners and inspired reactions, from moral outrage to regulatory legislation. In response, traders joined southern politicians and other proslavery apologists to sanitize the image of the slave trade so that by the mid-1830s, southerners could defend slavery and slave trading in the same breath. Gudmestad argues compellingly that southerners ended up agreeing to ignore the realities of speculation in the interstate slave trade in order to preserve the social order it supported.

Issac Franklin watching slave caravans moving from the upper south to the lower south.

By the early nineteenth century the interstate slave trade developed in reaction to regional settlement in the southwest. Gudmestad contends that speculation "was sporadic and uncertain at a time before there was a crush of labor in the Old Southwest" (p. 17). Profits from the production of cotton and other commodities attracted settlers. Planters in the Lower South states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana increased demand for enslaved laborers, whom Gudmestad refers to most often as "bondservants" (p. 48, passim). Initially, planters moving to the cotton frontier forcibly transported slaves with them, but as white migration fell and established slaveholders sought to expand their holdings, more and more enslaved people were marched or shipped south in the interstate trade. "Rather than being relatively stable in the nineteenth century," Gudmestad argues, "the interstate slave trade increased in volume and proportion during the 1820s and 1830s as white migration declined and the demand for labor increased in the Lower South" (p. 20). Southern economic development and consequent demographic changes stand in the background in Gudmestad's narrative of what white southerners made of speculators' activities.

Slave auction.

Traders like Isaac Franklin and John Armfield, who had been in the transportation business before getting into the interstate slave trade, found a niche to exploit, transporting enslaved people on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to Natchez before investing in ships for the coastwise trade to New Orleans. By the late 1820s, Gudmestad argues, traders published newspaper advertisements offering to pay cash for large numbers of slaves for the first time. The scale of the interstate trade is difficult to calculate with precision, but traders' activities began to account for the majority of forced migration by the 1830s. Significantly, that development was a catalyst for the slave trade's social transformation.

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Slave Auction.

According to Gudmestad, the activities of speculators inspired resistance among potential victims of the trade and initially alarmed legislators in the nation's capital. In 1816, after a slave named Anna jumped from a third story window to avoid being sold away from her husband and children--shattering her arms and breaking her back--an outraged John Randolph of Virginia moved to regulate the slave trade in the District of Columbia. The measure failed, but his efforts represented the problems slave traders posed to white southerners' perceptions of slavery: the cash traders so prominently featured in advertisements belied an organic relationship between master and slave. "The irony," according to Gudmestad, "is that a business that labored mightily to reduce slaves to just another commodity accidentally promoted the fact of bondservants' humanity" (p. 48). In the 1810s and 1820s, men like Randolph anguished over what the slave trade did to the humanity of slaves and masters.

Separation of families at slave auctions.

Gudmestad explains regional differences regarding views of the slave trade by the 1820s: whites in the Upper South who were troubled by the effects of slave sales on the morals of masters, and whites in the Lower South who feared that their part of the country was becoming a dumping ground for rebellious slaves. "When southerners looked at the white image in the white mind," he contends, "they did not like what they saw" (p. 63). The dilemma confronting slaveholders in the Upper South concerned how to rationalize selling enslaved people away from their families to traders likely to transport them out of state. While many slaveholders tried to keep families together--or at least proffered that aim--the interstate trade tore families apart. Buyers in the Lower South, by and large, wanted individual laborers and not families. Observers in the Upper South who worried about the potential threats posed by a surplus slave population began to see the trade as a practical alternative to colonization. Evangelical Protestants, meanwhile, turned churches into the "'bulwark'" of slavery, at least in the minds of many abolitionists (p. 143). Gudmestad contends that churches solved the moral dilemma regarding the slave trade by shifting from opposition to noninterference in individual slaveholders' affairs. "By 1840 then," according to Gudmestad, "most southern evangelicals accepted the slave trade as a regular and necessary part of southern society" (p. 146). Ironically, the moral dilemmas slaveholders faced ended up strengthening slavery since slaveholders convinced themselves that they had no option but to sell slaves to traders. Perceived economic necessity became a solvent for moral guilt, as the interstate trade became an increasingly common and seemingly inescapable part of Upper South slavery by the mid-1830s.

The slave sale.

Citizens in the Lower South were not concerned about the moral health of masters and did not wait for religious leaders to come around to their position. Gudmestad contends, "residents there generally accepted the interstate slave trade--even with all its flaws--because of its importance in replenishing and augmenting the labor supply" (p. 95). Especially following the Turner Rebellion of 1831, Mississippi and Louisiana attempted to regulate traders' activities lest slaves become infected with the "contagion of rebellion" (pp. 104-105). Interstate slave traders found creative ways to evade restrictions on slave imports. If observers in the Upper South worried about moral decay among the slaveholding classes, whites in the Lower South worried about rebellion sweeping the country.

Interior of a slave jail.

Attitudes toward the trade in the Upper South caught up to those in the Lower South, and by the 1830s, "slave traders became a species of social workers who redeemed the dregs of society" (p. 171). Slave traders, who had been implicated in kidnappings, sexual abuse, and clandestinely dumping the bodies of dead slaves, used a variety of techniques to improve their image, including moving slave jails and auctions out of public view, keeping secret the details of their activities, and marching coffles of slaves out of cities under the cover of darkness. While abolitionists worked to publicize the terrors of family separation and the horrors of transportation at the hands of traders, traders represented themselves as respectable businessmen, which in Gudmestad's view "helped effect a change in opinions towards speculation from initial skepticism to grudging acceptance" (p. 164). Southern whites reacted to abolitionist criticisms by blaming the messenger and excusing slave traders for breaking up slave families. When southerners defended slavery, therefore, they had to defend traders' activities as well. At the issue's core, however, was the realization that there was little anyone could do to stem the interstate slave trade. Gudmestad concludes that "moralizing proved ineffective in blunting the force of economic and social considerations" (p. 177).

Slave traders Isaac Franklin and John Armfield office in Alexandria, Virginia.

A Troublesome Commerce contributes to an historiography in which the domestic slave trade stands at the center of antebellum southern politics and society rather than at the peripheries. Gudmestad's fresh perspective is interrupted by a section on "profits and piety," which revisits much familiar ground, and the reader may be seduced into ignoring broader historical and international contexts, such as the international slave trade (p. 118). Gudmestad is at his best narrating the values and business practices of traders and their observers, beginning and ending with the notorious trader Isaac Franklin, which makes this an interesting read, to lay readers and undergraduates, as well as to specialists. (source: H-Net, 2006)

Virginia Slave Sale 1812

AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE SALE OF ELEVEN SLAVES, FEBRUARY 17, 1812

This advertisement announced the sale of four men, two women, and five children that would take place on February 24, 1812, at the Eagle Tavern in Richmond. This broadside foreshadows Richmond's rise as a major market in the domestic, or interstate, slave trade by the middle of the nineteenth century. The woodcut depicting laborers suggests that the printer produced advertisements of slaves often enough to justify the expense of commissioning the artwork. Much of the slave-trading activity in Richmond took place in hotels located in the area of Shockoe Bottom. Venues like the Eagle Tavern, built in 1787 and located on the south side of Main Street between Twelfth and Thirteenth streets, the Exchange Hotel, and many others had special holding pens and showrooms where sales took place. In order to make the best impression with potential buyers, there were even businesses that specialized in dressing slaves for sale.

Notable in this broadside is the mention of the skills practiced by these enslaved African Americans. A carpenter, a “Brick Moulder,” a tanner, and “a good Crop Hand” or agricultural worker, are listed, providing evidence that many slaves were trained as artisans and craftsmen. This widespread practice was intended to save slave owners money, but it also had the effect of reducing the need for free white laborers. To avoid competition with enslaved laborers who were the mainstay of the southern workforce, many European immigrants to the United States during the antebellum period settled in the North. Between 1810 and 1820, a “prime field hand” sold for about $400. By the 1830s, that increased to $600 in Virginia, and $1,100 in Louisiana. Between 1810 and 1820, scholars estimate that 45,000 enslaved people were sold away from Virginia. As many as 300,000 enslaved African Americans were sold through Richmond to points in the lower South by the 1860s.

Being sold at an auction was an embarrassing and frightening experience for enslaved African Americans. Men and women were forced before a roomful of spectators to strip so their bodies could be inspected for defects. This included showing teeth and an inspection of mouths, eyes, and other extremities. Sales were especially frightening because slaves did not know who their new owners would be, or if they would be sold away from their loved ones. These conditions sometimes spurred some enslaved African Americans to run away from the South, and there were rumors that slave rebellions were inspired because of such forced separations. Outside of the South, the horrors of the auction block featured prominently in antislavery speeches and literature. (Virginia Memory)

William Wells Brown: The St. Louis Slave Market

William Wells Brown a former slave

William Wells Brown a former slave wrote: "I shall never forget a scene which took place in the city of St. Louis, while I was in slavery. A man and his wife, both slaves, were brought from the country to the city, for sale. They were taken to the rooms of Austin and Savage auctioneers."

St. Louis Courthouse Where Slaves Were Auctioned

"Several slave-speculators, who are always to be found at auctions where slaves are to be sold, were present. The man was first put up, and sold to the highest bidder. The wife was next ordered to ascend the platform. I was present. She slowly obeyed the order. The auctioneer commenced, and soon several hundred dollars were bid. My eyes were intensely fixed on the face of the woman, whose cheeks were wet with tears. But a conversation between the slave and his new master attracted my attention.

I drew near them to listen. The slave was begging his new master to purchase his wife. Said he, "Master, if you will only buy Fanny, I know you will get the worth of your money. She is a good cook, a good washer, and her last mistress liked her very much. If you will only buy her how happy I shall be." The new master replied that he did not want her but if she sold cheap he would purchase her. I watched the countenance of the man while the different persons were bidding on his wife. When his new master bid on his wife you could see the smile upon his countenance, and the tears stop; but as soon as another would bid, you could see the countenance change and the tears start afresh."

Reenactment of a Slave Auction in St. Louis, MO

"From this change of countenance one could see the workings of the inmost soul. But this suspense did not last long; the wife was struck off to the highest bidder, who proved not to be the owner of her husband. As soon as they became aware that they were to be separated, they both burst into tears; and as she descended from the auction-stand, the husband, walking up to her and taking her by the hand, said, "Well, Fanny, we are to part forever, on earth; you have been a good wife to me. I did all that I could to get my new master to buy you; but he did not want you, and all I have to say is, I hope you will try to meet me in heaven. I shall try to meet you there." The wife made no reply, but her sobs and cries told, too well, her own feelings. I saw the countenances of a number of whites who were present, and whose eyes were dim with tears at hearing the man bid his wife farewell."

"Such are but common occurrences in the slave states. At these auction-stands, bones, muscles, sinews, blood and nerves, of human beings, are sold with as much indifference as a farmer in the north sells a horse or sheep." --William Wells Brown

Old St. Louis Hotel and Slave Market in New Orleans

On the corner of St. Louis and Chartres streets in 1838, the St. Louis hotel opened. It was also called the City Exchange Hotel. Two years later it burned down but was quickly rebuilt. The main entrance to the hotel led into the exchange, a beautiful domed rotunda where every afternoon between noon and 3 p.m. the auctions were held. In this elegant hotel, the center of Creole society before the Civil War, was located perhaps the most infamous of the slave auction blocks. There was more than one.

Auction Block: Saint Louis Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana

In 1842, George Buckingham reported walking through the rotunda. The auctioneers, he said, were "endeavouring to drown every voice but his own. ... One was selling pictures and dwelling on their merits; another was disposing of some slaves. These consisted of an unhappy family who were all exposed to the hammer at the same time. Their good qualities were enumerated in English and in French, and their persons were carefully examined by intending purchasers, among whom they were ultimately disposed of, chiefly to Creole buyers; the husband at 750 dollars, the wife at 550, and the children at 220 each."

Slaves were sold on this spot at the old St. Louis hotel, which had also served as the state Capitol and the site of Carnival balls. The hotel was on St. Louis between Chartres and Royal streets. Damaged in a 1915 storm, it was demolished two years later.

Indeed, in her 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe imagined a New Orleans hotel rotunda as the place where Uncle Tom and his fellow slaves from the St. Clare plantation were sold.

In the antebellum years, Creole gentlemen drank in the hotel's bar and attended with their wives and daughters fabulous balls and concerts. One of the most spectacular events held in the hotel was in honor of the visiting Henry Clay. During the winter of 1842-43, the great statesman paid an official visit to New Orleans, and a dinner and ball was held. Six hundred people sat down to dinner at $100 dollars each. While they dined, they were entertained by the French Opera orchestra.

Rotunda, Old St. Louis Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana

During Reconstruction, the hotel was used for a few years by the state Legislature. Then the hotel was renovated and given a new name: the Royal Hotel, but it soon became neglected and very run-down because visitors preferred the St. Charles Hotel. Writer John Galsworthy paid a visit to New Orleans in 1912. He and his friends were taken into the old hotel on a tour to view the rotunda and the slave auction block. Their guide was an old woman who reminisced: "Yes, suh. Here they all came -- 'twas the finest hotel -- before the war-time; old Southern families -- buyin' an' sellin' their property."

In 1915, the old closed-up building was a veritable haven for rats and a bubonic plague scare made way for the demolition of the hotel. In its place stands the Omni Royal Orleans hotel.

The luxurious Omni Royal Orleans hotel at the corner of St. Louis and Chartres streets stands on a site once home to a hotel rotunda that was the site of the city's most infamous slave-auction block.

The Constitution of the United States included a provision that abolished the international slave trade after 1808. This boosted domestic slave trafficking. Since there was a large demand for slaves in Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia for the cultivation of sugar and cotton, slave traders went throughout the upper South to purchase slaves to be sold at auction in the lower South. Slaves from Virginia were especially desired for their training and intelligence and brought the highest prices.

Slaves in the upper South feared being sold into the lower South because of the harsh conditions and the hot climate. But hundreds of thousands of African Americans were forced to migrate South, tearing apart families. New Orleans became the center of the slave trade, especially after 1840, and the slave auction was one of the most cruel and inhumane practices of slavery.

Slave-trading firms kept "slave pens," where they held the people waiting to be sold or auctioned off. The rooms usually held fifty to 100 slaves, crowded together in unspeakable conditions before they were taken to one of the markets: the St. Louis Hotel, the St. Charles Hotel or the exchange on Esplanade Avenue.

Old St. Louis Hotel, New Orleans

Frederika Bremer, a Danish writer who visited one of the slave markets in the 1850s, described the black men and women, "silent and serious" standing against the walls. "I saw nothing especially repulsive in these places," wrote Bremer, "excepting the whole thing." (source: Best of New Orleans)

Selling "Fancy Girls"

Slave Market, ca. 1850-1860.

New Orleans and Lexington, Kentucky, had active markets in "fancy girls," beautiful young girls and women, often mulatto or quadroon, who were sold not as domestics but as concubines. They were presented at auction well dressed and coiffed, sometimes with jewelry. In the 1850s, beautiful teenage girls were valued at more than $1,500 (close to $30,000 in today's dollars), which made them as "expensive" as prime male field hands. Buying a "fancy girl" was a status symbol for traders, gamblers, and saloonkeepers. Because New Orleans attracted a large population of gamblers, debauchees and revelers for Carnival, it was the largest market for those girls and young women who were sent there from the Upper South.

South Carolina Slave Auction Advertisement: March 5, 1855

Among the enslaved people who were sold at this particular auction in 1855, were 23 individuals that ranged from infants to 60 years old. Enslaved women represented an overwhelming majority of this sale (78%); Seventy percent (70%) were between the ages of 1-30 years old, 21% were between 31-40 years old and two 60 years old. This is a repeating pattern of the youthful skew of slaves who were sold at auction.



J.S. Ryan is the Old Slave Mart located in Charleston, South Carolina.

The Liquidated Slaves Of The William Barnwell Plantation House, Beaufort, South Carolina

The William Barnwell House is a historic Building in Beaufort, South Carolina and is a part of the Beaufort Historic District. It was built in 1816 by the critically acclaimed Gibbes Brothers for their sister, Sarah Reeve Gibbes. The property got its name from her husband, though, William Wigg Barnwell, who came from the prominent Beaufort family connected to Major William Hazzard Wigg, a Revolutionary War hero.

The William Barnwell House stayed with the Barnwells until 1895. It was then when the property was given to the city. The local government then used it as a schoolhouse, and then transformed it to an apartment building before shutting it down for disrepair. It was then rescued by the Historic Beaufort Foundation in 1973 from threats of demolition.

Estate Sale! By Order Of Executor. By Louis D. DeSaussure

On Wednesday, 19th Inst. at 11 o'clock a.m. will be sold in Charleston, South Carolina at the Ryan and Son's Mart in Chalmers Street, by the order of the Executor of the late Mr. and Mr. and Mrs. William Barnwell. A Prime Gang of 67 Negroes. Accustomed to the culture of Sea Island Cotton and Provisions, in Beaufort District. Amongst whom are several House Servants.



Conditions--One-third Cash; balance by Bond, bearing interest from day of sale payable in two equal Annual Instaments, to be secured by a Mortgage of the Negroes, and approved Personal Security. Purchasers to pay for papers.

The liquidation of the enslaved population of the William Barnwell Estate in Beaufort, South Carolina. According to the "List of Negroes," 70.1% 26 years old and under.

0-12 years old 18 26.8%

13-26 years old 29 43.8%

27-54 years old 18 26.8%

55- 70 years old 2 2%

Among the 18 children to be orphaned by this sale that are between the ages of 0-12 years old are: "Hector age 7, Affy age 5, Infant #1 nameless, Venus age 2, Young Patty age 3, Infant #2 without a name, Annie age 5, Ellen age 3, Isaiah a little 5 year old boy with one eye, Cimon age 3, Infant Mariah, Adam age 12, Infant Rose, an unsound Infant, Young Tannah 3 years old, and Jim age 10.

There were 29 teenagers and young adults between the ages of 13-26 years old. Children and teenagers represented the bulk of the enslaved population of the William Barnwell Plantation.

There were 18 adults between the ages of 27-55 years old, and only two people that were 70 years old.

New Orleans Slave Auction Advertisement

"Valuable Gang of Young Negroes," advertisement for a slave auction, 1840. Item # B0072. Emergence of Advertising in America. 2000. Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.

Thomas Thistlewood - sales and branding

An account of slave auctions by plantation owner Thomas Thistlewood.

"In regard to buying of Negroes, I would choose men-boys and girls, none exceeding 16 or 18 years old, as full grown men or women seldom turn out well; and besides, they shave the men so close and gloss them over so much that a person cannot be certain he does not buy old Negroes. Have observed those with cut faces (Chamboys I think they call them) do not do vastly well at Egypt plantation, yet as that may only be by chance, have no great objection to them.

Have also observed that many new Negroes, who are bought fat and sleek from aboard the ship, soon fall away much in a plantation, whereas those which are in a moderate condition hold their flesh better and are commonly hardier.

On the 7th December 1761 I paid Mr John Hutt 112 for two men and 200 for one boy and three girls. The new Negroes were soon branded with my mark TT on the right shoulder.

Coobah: 4 foot 6 inches tall, about 15 years old, Country name Molia, an Ebo. I put him to live with the Princess.

Sukey: 4 foot 8 inches tall, about 14 years old, I put her to live with Job.

Maria: 4 foot 11 inches tall, about 15 years old. Country name Ogo. I put her with Lucy.

Pompey: 4 foot 9 inches tall, about 16 years old. Country name Oworia, a Coromante. Put to live with Plato.

Will: 5 foot 3 inches tall, about 22 years old. Country name Sawnno, alias Dowotronny.

(All of them were sent off to Egypt plantation as quickly as possible, arriving there by 8pm) as the smallpox is prodigiously here at Lucea. (I gave the sailor who brought them ashore 4 bitts, and provided them with 14 bitts worth of bread and saltfish.)" (source: Liverpool Museum of International Slavery, UK)

Notorious slave site excavated in Virginia

David Zucchino of the Los Angeles Times reports on Thursday, December 18, 2008:The place called Lumpkin's Slave Jail was indeed a jail, but it was much more than that. It was a holding pen for human chattel.

In Richmond's Shockoe Bottom river district, the notorious slave trader Robert Lumpkin ran the city's largest slave-holding facility in the 1840s and 1850s. Tens of thousands of blacks were held in the cramped brick building while they waited to be bought and sold.

Those who resisted were publicly whipped.

"The individual would be laid down, his hands and feet stretched out and fastened in the rings, and a great big man would stand over him and flog him," a clergyman wrote after witnessing the punishment.

On Wednesday, black and white Richmond residents walked together across the rain-slicked cobblestones, excavated this month, that mark the outlines of the old slave jail. This former Confederate capital's announcement that Lumpkin's Jail had been found was the latest acknowledgment of its painful slave history.

Since Richmond's City Council formed the Slave Trail Commission in 1998, the city gradually has been unearthing and commemorating both the enslavement of blacks and their contributions to the city.

"This is a part of our history that was covered up for too long," said Charles Vaughan, a retired bus operator and commission member.

Richmond, which is 57 percent black, long has honored its Confederate past with monuments to Gen. Robert E. Lee, President Jefferson Davis and thousands of rebel soldiers. But only with its decadelong examination of the slave trail - which includes the jail, an adjoining Negro Burial Ground, and the slave marketplace and docks - has it shone a light on its dark legacy of slavery.

"It was hushed for so long," said Ana Edwards of the Sacred Ground Project, which erected an historical marker for the cemetery buried under a parking lot. "Slavery was not something anybody wanted to address."

Blacks called Lumpkin's Slave Jail "Devil's Half Acre." Some died there from abuse or disease. Thousands more were fed and groomed for sale at nearby slave markets, then sent by boat or rail to toil on farms and plantations throughout the Confederacy.

"They were literally sold down the river," said Philip Schwarz, a professor emeritus of history at Virginia Commonwealth University, standing a few feet from the jail site and gesturing toward the nearby James River.

From 1808, when the United States outlawed the international slave trade, to the end of the Civil War, an estimated 300,000 slaves were bought and sold in Richmond. Lumpkin, known as a "bully trader" for his harsh treatment of slaves, sold the men, women and children who became slaves in Southern states, where slavery remained legal.

Archaeologists discovered that Lumpkin's jail was actually a complex of brick buildings. In addition to the 20-by-41-foot, two-story jail, there was a kitchen, Lumpkin's residence and a boarding house where antebellum slave owners stayed while their slaves were readied for sale.

Digging through 15 feet of muck and fill dirt beneath a city-owned parking lot, archaeologists unearthed cobblestones and brick drains that formed the jail's perimeter. The jail was torn down in the 1870s.

"We're standing on a time capsule of Richmond's history," Matthew Laird, an archaeologist on the dig, said as he led commission members across the waterlogged site. "It's exciting to find such an intact and well-preserved site."

The discovery of the jail site continues the city's "public acknowledgment of Richmond's enslaved African-Americans," said Delores McQuinn, City Council vice president and chair of the Slave Trail Commission.

Because of the Slave Trail and the commemoration of "this infamous jail," McQuinn said, "generations to come won't have to do as much work to find out who they are and where they came from."

Kathleen Kilpatrick, director of the state Department of Historic Resources, said the jail has national significance. She called it "ground zero" for understanding the slave trade.

When Robert Lumpkin died, he left his jail to his widow - Mary Lumpkin, a black woman and former slave. In 1867, she gave the property to a minister who established a school for freed slaves.

Over the years, the school evolved into what is now Virginia Union University, a historically black college. (source LA Times)