January 1828

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.

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.

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 held enslaved people in prisonlike conditions with brick walls, barred windows, and separate male and female yards while they awaited sale or transport south. Visitors to Washington D.C. could see coffles of enslaved people marched past the Capitol building. The pens were still operating in 1861; Union forces used the building as a prison during the Civil War.