Richmond, Virginia slave market

[2] Richmond's slave traders clustered their jails and auction rooms on Wall Street,[3] a narrow alley in a section of the city called Shockhoe Bottom, the valley created by Shockoe Creek, which bisected the city.

[5] A visitor of 1852 reported, "There are four [slave depots], and all in the same street, not more than two blocks from the Exchange Hotel, where we are staying.

These slave depots are in one of the most frequented streets of the place, and the sales are conducted in the building, on the first floor; and within view of the passers-by.

He reported that only three of 20 men so exhibited had "clean backs" unmarked by whip scarring.

[6] Some of the slaves collected in Richmond were resold to local buyers but in most cases it was a transit camp where slave traders from the cotton and sugar districts of Lower South collected shipping lots for resell at higher prices in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, and Texas.

Eyre Crowe , Slaves Waiting for Sale, Richmond, Virginia (1861), painted from a sketch made 1853 when he was touring the U.S. with British novelist William Makepeace Thackeray
Ellyson's map of Richmond, 1856
"Auction at Richmond" ( Picture of Slavery in the United States of America by Rev. George Bourne , published by Edwin Hunt in Middletown, Conn., 1834)