Slave Auction

Accession number: 1991.70

"Slave Auction, Virginia." Richmond was second only to New Orleans as a slave-trading center. In the three decades before the Civil War, more than 300,000 slaves left the Old Dominion through sale. Based on his travels in Virginia between September 1859 and June 1860, English artist Lefevre James Cranstone completed his impression of a slave auction in 1862.

Image rights owned by the Virginia Historical Society. Rights and reproductions