What Became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation? (Illustrated): Great Auction Sale of Slaves at Savannah, Georgia

This volume was published in 1863.



One of the largest sales of enslaved persons in US history took place on March 2-3, 1859, at the Ten Broeck Race Course. To satisfy his creditors, Pierce M. Butler sold 436 men, women, and children from his Butler Island and Hampton plantations near Darien, Georgia. The breakup of families and the loss of home became part of African-American heritage remembered as "the weeping time." The event was reported extensively in the northern press and reaction to the sale deepened the nation's growing sectional divide in the years immediately preceding the Civil War.