Systematic Family Destruction: One in Three Slave Marriages Broken by Sale

Historians Michael Tadman and Steven Deyle, analyzing slave trade records, Bills of Sale, estate inventories, and slave narratives, estimate that between 1820 and 1860 the domestic slave trade separated approximately one in three first marriages among enslaved people and one in two parent-child relationships. In a single decade in Virginia, an estimated 75,000 enslaved people were sold south. The New Orleans slave market sold over 100,000 people between 1804 and 1862. No legal mechanism protected these family bonds.