Existing comment:
For Sale!
The rise of "King Cotton" in the Deep South and the 1808 ban on the importation of enslaved Africans fueled the growth of the domestic slave trade. Virginia was at the center of this interstate trade, supplying hundreds of thousands of enslaved people to other slave states.
For enslaved Virginians, being sold "down South" usually meant family separation, as well as harsher work conditions and shorter life expectancies. Many responded to such agonizing prospects with desperate acts of escape, suicide or murder, and other forms of rebellion. |