Timeline of the Slave Trade in Richmond and Virginia

Chronology of the Slave Trade

in Richmond and Virginia

[Date; event; source]

1607: First permanent English settlement, Jamestown, is established.

1607-1699: Approximately 12,100 Africans imported into English mainland North America. (Eltis, 45.)

1619: Twenty enslaved Africans, from present-day Angola, are traded at Jamestown.

1660: Virginia legalizes slavery.

1698-1774: White Virginians bought ca. 100,000 imported Africans. Purchases of imported slaves took place on ships, along the colony’s major rivers, and in some towns. (Kul., 65; W/G, 123; Min; Wal)

1737: William Mayo laid out street plan for the town of Richmond on land provided by William Byrd II.

1742:Richmond chartered as a town.

1700-1775: At least 361,000 Africans imported into the Thirteen Colonies. (Eltis, 45.)

1769: One Richmond resident sold 80 slaves for a London slave trader. (Sidbury, 154.)

1775, August: Non-importation of enslaved Africans began in protest against British policies. (W/G, 22.)

1775: Approximately 650 people lived in Richmond. (W/G, 8.)

1775-1776: Manchester slave sale advertisements of numerous Virginia-born people appeared in the Virginia Gazette. Manchester was now a center of sales of enslaved Virginians to new owners. (W/G, 123)

1776: United States declares independence from Great Britain, July 4, 1776.

1777-1782: Purchases and sales of central Virginia slaves began to concentrate in Richmond. (W/G, 123)

1778, October: Commonwealth of Virginia prohibited importation of Africans as slaves. (McC, 165-67)

1780: Virginia’s state capital moved from Williamsburg to Richmond.

1780-1800: Richmond slave exporters mostly used ships to transport the enslaved to other markets. (Gud, 56)

1782: Richmond incorporated as a city in May 1782. Richmond's population was 1,031, of whom 428 were enslaved. (W/G, 8)

"Gang of Slaves journeying to be sold in a Southern Market" from Slave States in America, Vol. II, by James S. Buckingham, 1842, housed in Special Collections and Archives.

1787: Deep-South 1787 Constitutional Convention delegates to James Madison: prohibit African importation and Virginia slaves “would rise in value, and we should be obliged to go to your markets.” (McC, 170)

1787: Richmond trader advertised for one hundred men and women to be sold out of Virginia. (McC, 164)

1787-1807: The “organized interregional traffic in American slaves” became established. (Tad, 12-21; Gud, II)

1788: Virginia admitted to the Union - June 25, 1788. First Mayo Bridge constructed; two replacements constructed by 1800. (Sidbury, 205-8)

1790-1830: Alexandria dominated the slave sales market in the Upper South. (Gud, I, 12-13; Tad, 47-82)

1790-1859: More than 500,000 enslaved Virginians were moved to Deep South states. Most (300,000-350,000) were traded rather than transported by owners. (Tad, 11-46; Gud II, 18-20; Troutman)

1792: Virginia Governor “Light-Horse Harry” Lee reported one reason for slave rebelliousness in Norfolk and on the Eastern Shore was the “practice of severing husband, wife and children in sales.” (Sch, 198)

1800-1850: Richmond traders relied heavily on transportation of the enslaved by foot. (Gudmestad, 56-58)

1808, January 1: U.S. prohibited importation of Africans. British abolition occurred the same year.

1837-1840: Panic of 1837 damaged the slave trade; the business recovered in the 1840s. (Gud, 84-85, 101-102)

1840: Richmond began to require slave trader licenses, reflecting increasing number of such dealers. These traders became cohort of professional experts concerning the sale of human beings. (Gud, 29-30; Johnson)

1840s-1860s: Richmond dominated export of enslaved Virginians partly because of railroads. (Gud, 35-36, 106)

"Slaves Waiting for Sale, Virginia"

by Eyre Crowe (1824-1910)

from the London Illustrated News, Sept. 27, 1856.

For more on Crowe and this image see a site on

his work, Slavery Paintings and Sketches.

The image is part of Special Collections and Archives' collection of 19th Century Richmond Prints.

1841, October 25: Creole left Richmond, ca. 102 enslaved people on board, many shipped by Robert Lumpkin. These and others were bound for New Orleans slave market. November 7, Madison Washington and other men took over the vessel, severely wounded the captain and killed a passenger—two of the enslaved were killed—then forced a stop at Nassau, the Bahamas. Almost all the rebels escaped or were released by British authorities. (Sen. Doc. 51; Jones; Troutman, II)

1846-1849: R. H. Dickinson & Bro., a Richmond company, sold about 2,000 people a year. (Tadman, 64)

1850-1860: Richmond traders relied heavily on rail transportation of the enslaved. (Gud, 58-60; Gud, II, 22-26)

1852: Richmond levied taxes on slave-pen owners. (Gud., 30)

"Slave Auction at Richmond, Virginia"

by Eyre Crowe (1824-1910)

from the London Illustrated News, Sept. 27, 1856.

This image was accompanied an essay written by Crowe entitled 'Sketches in the Free and Slave States of America', which began with the statement that 'no pen, we think, can adequately delineate the choking sense of horror which overcomes one on first witnessing these degrading spectacles'. For more on Crowe's work see a site on his work, Slavery Paintings and Sketches.  The image is part of Special Collections and Archives' collection of 19th Century Richmond Prints.

1857: The Richmond Enquirer estimated that 1857 receipts for Richmond slave sale auctions totaled $3,500,000. Another newspaper raised this estimate to $4,000,000. (Gud, 107; Tad, 63)

1859: John Brown raid on Harpers Ferry

1860: Fifteen slave-trade companies, nineteen auctioneers, and fifteen “general and collecting agents” operated in Richmond. (Gud, 123-24)

1861: Civil War begins.

		Topographic Sketch of the City of Richmond, Virginia with surrounding Civil War encampments, from the New York Herald. New York, Tuesday, November 12, 1861.

1862: Silas Omohundro turned his slave jail into a boarding house. (Gud, 120)

1865: Civil War ends on May 26, 1865. On December 6, 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, thus officially abolishing slavery.

1867: Robert Lumpkin’s jail became school for the formerly enslaved. (Corey; Negro in Virginia, 293-94.)

First African Baptist Church

corner of College and Broad Street

from Harpers Weekly, June 27, 1874.

Erected in 1802 at College and Broad Streets, the building served the congregation of First Baptist Church until 1841 when it was sold to their black brethren who formed First African Baptist Church, a congregation made up of Richmond slaves and free blacks. The building was demolished in 1874 and replaced by another church structure completed in 1876 (that building is now part of VCU's MCV Campus). Visit this site sponsored by the Richmond National Register Travel Itinerary for more information about the church. This image is part of Special Collections and Archives' collection of 19th Century Richmond Prints.

The Union Hotel became home to Richmond Theological Seminary, now Virginia Union University.  The first home to Richmond Theological Seminary was Lumpkin's Jail.

Gabriel Historical highway marker

The marker is located along the north side of East Broad Street immediately east of Interstate 95

Sources

Corey: Charles H. Corey, History of the Richmond Theological Seminary (Richmond, Va., 1895), 46-58.

Deyle: Stephen Deyle. Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life. Oxford U: New York, 2005.

Eltis: David Eltis, “The Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Reassessment,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, 58 (January 2001): 29-30, and 45-47, Tables I and II; The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge, Eng., 1999)

Gud I: Robert Harold Gudmestad. "The Richmond Slave Market, 1840-1860." Master's thesis, University of Richmond, 1993.

Gud II: Robert H. Gudmestad. A Troublesome Commerce: The Transformation of the Interstate Slave Trade. Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, La., 2003.

Johnson: Walter Johnson. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Eng., 2000.

Jones: Howard Jones. "The Peculiar Institution and National Honor: The Case of the Creole Slave Revolt." Civil War History 21 (March 1975): 28-50.

Kambourian: http://hometown.aol.com/elizabe309/; Richmond's Slave Market, 1852-1863" (This site is currently unavailable.)

Kul: Allan Kulikoff. Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800. University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986.

McC: Robert McColley. Slavery and Jeffersonian Virginia. 2d ed. University of Illnois: Urbana, Ill., 1973.

Min: Walter E. Minchinton and Celia King. Virginia Slave-Trade Statistics, 1698-1775. Richmond, 1984.

The Negro in Virginia. Edited by Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in Virginia. 1940; repr., Winston Salem, N.C., 1994.

Sch: Philip J. Schwarz. Twice Condemned: Slaves and the Criminal Laws of Virginia, 1705-1865. Louisiana State University:  Baton Rouge, 1988.

Sen. Doc. 51: Senate Documents, 27th Cong., 2d sess., II, no. 51, esp. p.37, and Senate Documents, 34th Cong., 1st sess., XV, no. 103, p. 52. (Creole incident documents.)

Sidbury: James Sidbury. Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion and Identity in Gabriel's Virginia, 1730-1810 Cambridge University Press: New York and Cambridge, 1997.

Tad: Michael Tadman. Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South. University of Wisconsin:  Madison, Wisc., 1989.

Troutman: Phillip Troutman. "Geographies of Family and Market: Virginia's Domestic Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century," http://fisher.lib.Virginia.edu/slavetrade/. University of Virginia Library Geospatial and Statistical Datat Center, Spring 1998.

Troutman, II: Phillip Troutman, “Grapevine in the Slave Market: African American Geopolitical Literacy and the 1841 Creole Revolt.” In The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas. Ed. Walter Johnson. Yale University Press: New Haven, 2004.

________. "Slave Trade and Sentiment in Antebellum Virginia." Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 2000.

Wal: Lorena S. Walsh. "The Chesapeake Slave Trade: Regional Patterns, African Origins, and Some Implications." William and Mary Quarterly 58 (January 2001): 139-170. The entire issue is about "New Perspectives on the Atlantic Slave Trade."

W/G: Harry M. Ward and Harold E. Greer Jr. Richmond During the Revolution. University of Virginia Charlottesville, 1977.