This is a list of largest slave sales in the United States, as measured by number of people listed for sale at one time, usually all derived from the same plantation or network of plantations due to death or debt of owner.
Note: In compensation for advertising the sale, housing the "product" prior to the auction, and managing the transactions, traders typically took 2.5% of the sales.
[1]
Listing for the Joseph Bond sale - "Sales of Land and Negroes in South Western Georgia,"
Albany Patriot
via
Macon
Weekly Telegraph
, January 17, 1860
Under the auspices of the
U.S. Marshals
, 493 people, ranging from centenarian Old Sampson to 15-month-old Margarette, were to be sold from four plantations in Louisiana by auction at the
St. Louis Exchange
in
New Orleans
on Saturday, March 20, 1850 (
The New Orleans Crescent
, March 2, 1850, page 3); according to historian Damian Alan Pargas, there was a subsequent 1852 sale of property owned by the same man,
P.M. Lapice
, consisting of a plantation and 256 enslaved people: "The terms and conditions of the sale were simply 'cash on the spot'—no provisions for families to be kept together were specified."
[
4
]
