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Photograph of the former Franklin and Armfield “Slave Pen,” during the Civil War. The building had been sold to Price, Birch & Co. in 1850.

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Alexandria to New Orleans: The Human Tragedy of the Interstate Slave Trade, Part III

Part III: The extent of the forced separation and sale of young slave children away from their mothers has long been a vexing question, and historians have often been especially concerned with this issue. In 1931, the historian Frederick Bancroft asserted that "the selling singly of young [black slave] children privately and publicly was frequent and notorious." He added that such children were "hardly less than a staple in the [interstate slave] trade."

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