National Geographic History - 11.2019 - 12.2019

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 79

Within the domestic trade, slaves were
sourced primarily in Virginia, Maryland, and
Delaware, through sales by owners who com-
modified and collateralized African Americans.
Some supplied the domestic trade through the
kidnapping of enslaved and free blacks, owing to
the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, from free states.
Others trafficked in jailed “runaway slaves.”
In the domestic slave trade, slaves were trans-
ported by sea, by train, by river, and by land,
forced to walk hundreds of miles from their
plantations or places of origin to southern and
western markets where they were sold to plan-
tation owners. Blacks viewed enslavement or
re-enslavement on southern and western plan-
tations as a death sentence because of the ardu-
ous nature of cotton production at an inhumane
pace and in sweltering heat. Their plight was
further exacerbated by the psychological
and emotional traumas experienced when
they were separated from their spouses,
siblings, and children. Slaves who dreaded
separation from their original plantations
and re-enslavement on new ones staged

revolts aboard vessels deployed in the domestic

slave trade.

The domestic slave trade continued through

the Civil War. As late as April 1865, one year af-

ter the U.S. Senate passed the 13th Amendment

that abolished slavery (when ratified), records

noted that Lumpkin’s Jail in Richmond, Virginia,

“shipped fifty men, women, and children... This

sad and weeping fifty, in handcuffs and chains,

were the last slave coffle that ever shall tread the

soil of America.” Before the end of the domestic

slave trade, more than 1.2 million people were

victimized (enslaved or re-enslaved), generating

tremendous profits for domestic slave traders

and for buyers who exploited their labor.

As the domestic slave trade thrived and

grew, illegally importing slave labor from

Africa did continue. The practice was more

common in the states of the black belt re-

gion where there was strong contempt for

the federal government’s anti-smuggling

efforts. Pro-slavery forces even attempted to

reintroduce the Atlantic slave trade back to the

United States. Southerners viewed efforts to

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

CASH CROPS

U.S. cotton

production

exploded in the

19th century

from 35 million

pounds in 1800

to 331 million in

1830, and to 2,275

million pounds

in 1860.

BRIDGEMAN/ACI

GROWTH OF COTTON

As demand for cotton rose in the

United States and Britain, demand for

slave labor grew in the South, resulting

in the displacement of approximately

one million people through the

domestic slave trade.