Franklin and Armfield: Largest Slave-Trading Firm in the United States

Isaac Franklin and John Armfield established the largest slave-trading operation in the antebellum United States, headquartered at 1315 Duke Street, Alexandria, Virginia (then part of DC). Their operation purchased enslaved people in the Upper South and shipped or marched them to Natchez and New Orleans for resale. At peak they sold over 1,000 people per year. Their Alexandria compound held enslaved people in pens before transport. The firm normalized industrialized human trafficking and made fortunes that were reinvested into plantations and banking.