Draft:New Orleans slave market



A steamboat captain recalled seeing the city for the first time in 1840 as a young boy who had never before left his Indiana town: "When nearing the city Captain Lee said: "See that old deadening of trees away down thar." I said I did. "Well," said he, "right thar is the great city that you have longed to see." As we drew nearer and closer I could see the hulks of vessels all black painted, then I began to see the tall, selnder masts, the spreading yardarms, flags of all nations flying. My eyes stared with awe and amazement. It appeared to me that my mind was not right and my vision impaired, still I was thrilled with ·joy that I could not express. Those great masts (?f the vessels looked at a great distance very similar to the old deadened beech timbers where I was raised. But as the boat ran very near the ships it gave me a chance to take a satisfactory view of them. They were moored to the wharf three and four in a tier for a distance of five or six miles. You can imagine what an impression it made upon the mind of a young country boy who had never been outside of maternal surveillance before."

By the 1850s the city had what was essentially a dedicated "slave district" that was "dominated by traders' pens and offices: in 1854, there were no fewer than seven slave dealers in a single block on Gravier, while on a single square on Moreau Street there was a row of eleven particularly commodious slave pens".