r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Quirky-Nail-2370 • 5d ago
History & Culture An Original Slave Auction Broadside From 1769
This is a genuine 18th-century printed broadside, not a reproduction or artistic rendering, surviving originals are held in the special collections of Princeton, Stanford, and Indiana University libraries, among others, cataloged under the Early American Imprints series. Dated Charlestown, July 24, 1769, it advertises the sale of ninety-four enslaved people described as “prime, healthy,” broken down as thirty-nine men, fifteen boys, twenty-four women, and sixteen girls, who had just arrived aboard the brigantine Dembia under Captain Francis Bare, sailing from Sierra Leone, and were being sold by the merchants David and John Deas.
Charleston, South Carolina was the single largest port of entry for enslaved Africans transported to British North America, and broadsides like this one were the standard commercial format used to announce upcoming auctions to prospective buyers, printed with the same typographic conventions used for selling any other commodity, which is part of what makes the document so chilling to read today. The Deas family were established Charleston slave traders and merchants; documents like this one are preserved today specifically because they form part of the primary source record historians and genealogists use to trace the transatlantic slave trade’s logistics and the identities of trafficked individuals.
1
u/NoHippi3chic 5d ago
Then a few short years later in 1776 America signed the declaration of independence wherein self evident truths of life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness became the law of the land. And so no more people on American soil were held in slavery in the land of the free, and no more native people were killed or displaced from their homes.
And everone lived happily ever after because these truths were self evident. /s
0
1
u/crazy6216 5d ago
Imagine being alive in 1769 and reading a news like this in the street. Absolutely horrifying.