The Continuance of an Unholy Traffic: The Virginia Slave Trade During the Civil War

The Continuance of an Unholy Traffic: The Virginia Slave Trade During the Civil War Public Deposited

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Creator

Colby, Robert
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, slave traders conveyed nearly one million enslaved persons from the Upper to the Lower South and as many more between masters locally. During the Civil War, in Virginia the slave trade continued with surprising vigor until the war’s end. Masters and slave traders adapted to a declining long-distance trade and to the chaos of war by buying and selling in new areas and according to new economic and social rationales emerging from the conflict. The continuance of the slave trade suggests not only slavery’s continuing viability in Civil War Virginia, but also the deep connection between the survival of the institution and of the trade. For the enslaved, masters’ adjusted trading patterns often meant separation from family and community even as freedom beckoned, demonstrating slavery’s continued wartime power. The slave trade thus shaped the experiences of all involved in slavery until the end war’s end.

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