This American slave auction advertised slaves for sale or temporary hire by their owners. Buyers often paid as much as $2,000 for a skilled, healthy slave. Such auctions often separated family members from one another, many of whom never saw their loved ones again.
This undated painting of a slave auction shows well-dressed gentlemen making bids for slave labourers. By 1808 America had abolished the importation of slaves, and most northern states had outlawed slavery. The sole source of new slaves came from markets and auctions in the southern states.

 

An Acount of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa, by Alexander Falconbridge (1788)

Upon the Negroes refusal to take sustenance, i have seen coals of fire, glowing hot, put on a shovel, and placed so near their lips, as to scorch to burn them. The hardships and inconveniences suffered by the Negroes during the passage are scarely to be enumerated or conceived - the exclusion of fresh air the most intolerable. The deck...was so covered with the blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in consequence of the flux (dysentery) that it resembled a slaughterhouse.

Slave Trade Project
 Trianglular Trade Wales Slave Trade Abolition Bibliography