Slave Pens at Alexandria: Enslaved People Imprisoned within Sight of the Capitol

The largest slave trading complex in the upper South operated in Alexandria, Virginia, within sight of the U.S. Capitol. The Franklin and Armfield compound, then firms of Price, Birch and Company, held enslaved people in prisonlike conditions — brick walls, barred windows, male and female yards — while they awaited sale or transport south. Visitors to Washington D.C. could see coffles of enslaved people being marched past the Capitol building. Abolitionists prominently featured this proximity in their literature. The pens were still operating in 1861; Union forces used the building as a prison during the Civil War. The site is now the Freedom House Museum.