300,000 Enslaved People Sold in the 1820s Alone

Historians estimate roughly 300,000 enslaved people were sold through the domestic interstate slave trade during the 1820s — the largest forced migration in American history to that point. Enslaved people were marched in chained coffles from Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The trade was the nation's second-largest industry, rivaling cotton itself.