SANKOFA'S SLAVE TRADE DATABASE
Abingdon Trading Hub
Location: Washington Co., VA
Year Established: 1778
Activity: Buying, Selling, Shipping
History: Between 1810 and 1860, in the United States, world demand for cotton triggered the largest internal forced migration of slave laborers that has ever occurred in the history of the world. As a result, Upper South slaveholders exported to the Lower South nearly one million black laborers between 1790 and 1860.
The Abington trading center was served by slave-trading hubs at Alexandria, Danville and Norfolk. Using river, canal and overland connections, traders moved southward through Richmond. Across this route between 1810 and 1860, Virginia masters exported 441,684 slaves to other states. Out of Richmond, traders proceeded southwest through Appalachian counties, triggering a small subregional trading nucleus. Abingdon provided market access for east Kentucky, southwest Virginia and upper east Tennessee buyers and sellers. To attract slave trader business, the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad implemented a policy to carry small slave children free of charge. Down the route southward through the Tennessee Valley, speculators were served by an east Tennessee trading hub around Knoxville. Further south near the triangular conjuncture of Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama, they could take advantage of major subregional markets in Chattanooga and Rome, Georgia.
Description of Locale
Associated Free White Names
Associated Black Slave Names
Importation
Exportation
RESOURCES