Western view of Natchez 1861 by John Warner Barber

The Natchez slave market was a

slave market A slave market is a place where slaves are bought and sold. These markets are a key phenomenon in the history of slavery. Asia Central Asia Since antiquity, cities along the Silk road of Central Asia, had been centers of slave trade. In ...

Natchez, Mississippi Natchez ( ) is the only city in and the county seat of Adams County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 14,520 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located on the Mississippi River across from Vidalia, Louisiana, Natchez was ...

in the United States. Slaves were originally sold throughout the area, including along the

Natchez Trace The Natchez Trace, also known as the Old Natchez Trace, is a historic forest trail within the United States which extends roughly from Nashville, Tennessee, to Natchez, Mississippi, linking the Cumberland River, Cumberland, Tennessee River, ...

that connected the settlement with

Nashville Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...

, along the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the main stem, primary river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. It is the second-longest river in the United States, behind only the Missouri River, Missouri. From its traditional source of Lake Ita ...

at Natchez-Under-the-Hill, and throughout town. From 1833 to 1863, the Forks of the Road slave market was located about a mile from downtown Natchez at the intersection of Liberty Road and Washington Road, which has since been renamed to D'Evereux Drive in one direction and St. Catherine Street in the other. The market differed from many other slave sellers of the day by offering individuals on a first-come first-serve basis rather than selling them at auction, either singly or in lots. At one time the Forks of the Road was the second-largest slave market in the United States, trailing only New Orleans. The cluster of slave depots at the Forks of the Road was contemptuously called Niggerville as early as 1836 and as late as 1860.

History

The Forks of the Road slave market dates to the 18th century; slave sales in vicinity of Natchez, Mississippi were primarily at the riverboat landings in the 1780s but the widespread use of the

from Nashville beginning in the 1790s shifted the market inland to the Forks of the Road "located on the Trace at the northeast edge of the upper town." In the

Mississippi Territory The Territory of Mississippi was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that was created under an organic act passed by the United States Congress, Congress of the United States. It was approved and signed into law by Presiden ...

days there were slave markets at Natchez, Bruinsburg, and Selsertown. In the years immediately following the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 was fought by the United States and its allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom and its allies in North America. It began when the United States United States declaration of war on the Uni ...

, the most active slave markets in the South were at Algiers, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi. In the late teens, sales were held near St. Catherine's Toll Bridge over St. Catherine's Creek near what later was called Pharsalia Race Course. One traveler visiting the city in 1817 reported "fourteen flatboats loaded with Negroes for sale there." William Wells Brown, who accompanied a slave shipment to Natchez in roughly the 1828 to 1832 window of time, reported that there was a warehouse at the boat landing for temporarily storing newly arrived slaves while the pens were further inland, up the cliff and in or near town; he also described stopping to sell slaves at the village of Rodney, which had been known as Petit Gulf until 1828. In 1833, in response to fears of contagion stoked by the 1833 cholera epidemic, several traders signed a public letter agreeing to permanently move the slaves for sale in Natchez outside of the city limits. Prior to this, slave sales were held several places around the settlement, including at the boat landing and on the front steps of the Mansion House. According to an Alabama newspaper, the move was the consequence of Isaac Franklin dumping the bodies of several enslaved cholera victims (including a teenage girl and an eight-month-old baby, who had been shipped south from

Alexandria, Virginia Alexandria is an independent city (United States), independent city in Northern Virginia, United States. It lies on the western bank of the Potomac River approximately south of Washington, D.C., D.C. The city's population of 159,467 at the 2020 ...

) into a ravine or bayou near town. (This ravine may have been the one described 10 years earlier by a local doctor describing the town's deadly 1823 yellow fever outbreak: "Below the old fort, and in the gorge between the two hills, have been deposited all the animals that have died in and about the city, all the trash,

offal Offal (), also called variety meats, pluck or organ meats, is the internal organ (anatomy), organs of a butchered animal. Offal may also refer to the by-products of Milling (grinding), milled grains, such as corn or wheat. Some cultures strong ...

, and stable dirt of the city, making a

Golgotha Calvary ( or ) or Golgotha () was a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls where, according to Christianity's four canonical gospels, Jesus was crucified. Since at least the early medieval period, it has been a destination for pilgrimage. ...

—a hot-bed of pestilence and death.") The signers of the letter were just a fraction of the 32 "non-resident slave merchants" selling in Natchez that year, who collectively reported in taxable revenue. A visitor from New England to Natchez in 1834, the novelist J. H. Ingraham, reported that "elopements, sickness, deaths, and an expanding cotton belt created a continuous demand for slaves, and that Kentucky and Virginia marts supplied this demand. Ingraham observed that river boats landing in the ports of Natchez and New Orleans nearly always brought a cargo of slaves. During the year 1834, the New Englander estimated that more than 4,000 slaves passed through the 'crossroads' market one mile out of Natchez." According to Frederic Bancroft in '' Slave-Trading in the Old South'' (1931), "The chief market, about 1834, was described as 'a cluster of rough wooden buildings, in the angle of two roads,' a mile from Natchez. There were also four or five other pens in the vicinity, 'where several hundred slaves of all ages, colors and conditions, of both sexes, were exposed for sale.' At that time, Natchez had a population of about 3,000, a majority of whom were colored; and about as many slaves as the entire white population of the little city were annually sold in or near it." William T. Martin, who had been a county lawyer nearby, and who became an in-house attorney for Franklin & Ballard, and still later a politician and Confederate general, told Bancroft around the turn of the century: "In some years there were three or four thousand slaves here. I think that I have seen as many as 600 or 800 in the market at one time. There were usually four or five large traders at Natchez every winter. Each had from fifty to several hundred negroes, and most of them received fresh lots during the season. They brought their large gangs late in the fall and sold them out by May. Then they went back for more. They built three large three-story buildings, where several hundred could be accommodated." Forks of the Road appears in

Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (185 ...

's non-fiction polemical '' A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (1853), in a chapter on the ubiquity of family separation in the domestic slave trade, in which she disputes a Virginian's claim that it was rare to separate families, in the rare cases that slaves were sold to traders at all: The Forks-of-the-Road slave market was demolished in 1863 by U.S. Army troops who recycled the lumber into barracks for themselves and self-emancipated people known as "

contraband Contraband (from Medieval French ''contrebande'' "smuggling") is any item that, relating to its nature, is illegal to be possessed or sold. It comprises goods that by their nature are considered too dangerous or offensive in the eyes of the leg ...

." In 2021 the site was made one of four sites comprising the Natchez National Historical Park. Sexton's records for Natchez show that in addition to the Forks of the Road there were a group of traders at Natchez Under the Hill. Natchez-Under-the-Hill was a rowdy port famous for its debauchery. According to one visitor in 1822, "At the foot of the bluff is a small river bottom, along which are built a range of houses where the Prince of Darkness is, I believe, the only acknowledged superior. It is without exception, the most infamous place I ever saw—where villany, hardened by long impunity, triumphs in open day."

Traders

1854_survey_map_excerpt_Cli-forks-of-the-road_page_63

List of traders known to sell at Natchez: * Robert B. Brashear * Benjamin Eaton * R. H. Elam * Griffin & Pullum * Hitchens & Colco (?) * John D. James, Thomas G. James, David D. James (brothers) * John O'Ferrall - when selling out in 1857, he claimed the rental income from his slave depot was annually * Woodroof & Hundley * Matthews, Branton & Co. * John T. Hatcher * Rowan & Harris * John P. Phillips

History

Traders

See also

References

Sources

Further reading