They were once America's cruelest, richest slave traders. Why does no one know their names?
They were once Americas cruelest, richest slave traders. Why does no one know their names?
Isaac Franklin and John Armfield committed atrocities they appeared to relish
By Hannah Natanson
September 14, 2019 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
The two most ruthless domestic slave traders in America had a secret language for their business. ... Slave trading was a game. The men, Isaac Franklin and John Armfield, were daring pirates or one-eyed men, a euphemism for their penises. The women they bought and sold were fancy maids, a term signifying youth, beauty and potential for sexual exploitation by buyers or the traders themselves.
Rapes happened often. ... To my certain knowledge she has been used & that smartly by a one eyed man about my size and age, excuse my foolishness, Isaac Franklins nephew James an employee and his uncles protege wrote in typical business correspondence, referring to Caroline Brown, an enslaved woman who suffered repeated rape and abuse at Jamess hands for five months. She was 18 at the time and just over five feet tall.
Franklin and Armfield, who headquartered their slave trading business in a townhouse that still stands in Alexandria, Va., sold more enslaved people, separated more families and made more money from the trade than almost anyone else in America. Between the 1820s and 1830s, the two men reigned as the undisputed tycoons of the domestic slave trade, as Smithsonian Magazine put it.
As the country marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Jamestown, Americans are being forced to confront the brutality of slavery and of the people who profited from it. Few profited more than the two Virginia slave traders.
....
The exterior of the Franklin and Armfield Slave Office, today the Freedom House Museum, in Alexandria. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post )
....
Hannah Natanson is a reporter covering social issues in the D.C. metro area. She joined The Washington Post as an intern in June 2018. Follow https://twitter.com/hannah_natanson
The story just got this comment:
itsallpoo | 32 seconds ago
In an article in this month's Smithsonian magazine, is the story "In 1870, Henrietta Wood Sued for Reparationsand Won" at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/henrietta-wood-sued-reparations-won-180972845/
When I read it, I wondered why I'd never heard of this part of the slave trade, the use of bounty hunters and payoffs for the kidnapping of free Blacks. This article is very informative as is the one printed here, the Smithsonian tells it in a more unnerving fashion. Such a sad period and that Miss Wood won reparations only strengthens the case to consider them in a broader scope.
Docreed2003
(16,863 posts)It was only as an adult that I learned of Isaac Franklin. I had no clue of his history other than I knew that he built a large plantation home for his wife in my hometown. Today, the area around that plantation is one of the wealthiest subdivisions in our area. Former Rep Diane Black lives there.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)Of course, the Koch brothers are part of the Donors Trust network, using the DONORS groups to hide their own giving to a variety of corporate front groups. Because of the obscurity provided by DONORS, we don't know exactly who is getting exactly how much of the Koch payments to Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.
Americans for Prosperity ...For Billionaires (AFP), another big Koch org is also nearby in VA
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,499 posts)Last edited Sun Sep 15, 2019, 03:51 PM - Edit history (1)
Me.
The Trump 2020 campaign his its headquarters in adjacent Arlington County.
For grins, look up the results of the 2016 election to see who carried Arlington and Alexandria.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)Ive heard that Maryland and DC have far fewer Republicans. Even though nova went blue, right?
Pisces
(5,599 posts)cannabis_flower
(3,764 posts)Who the large slave owners were and who their descendants are? Maybe if they still have deep pockets they could be sued be descendants of their former slaves, but maybe not since it was all legal then.
Evolve Dammit
(16,743 posts)bucolic_frolic
(43,188 posts)Yes, there is the slave trade, and thanks for posting. For some reason I thought importing slaves stopped decades before the Civil War.
There is also native Americans. Recently I read "Northwest Passage" by the great historian Kenneth Roberts. He also wrote "Arundel" about the US invasion of Quebec. But I never realized, though I supposedly have a native American New England ancestor somewhere, how many native American nations and tribes there were, nor what happened to them. King Phillip's War. After making peace with manufactured goods and plundering fur and learning a little agriculture, white men slaughtered those who wouldn't comply and called themselves tolerant. Native American (is it still ok to call them Indians?) tribes were pawns in the geopolitical wars of France, England, and the US to lay claim to the continent. Other European crowns followed, though I have no idea if they were too late to participate in conquering native inhabitants. Swedes, Scots, of course Dutch, Germans of several Protestant varieties - all had their locales, some names and descendants persist today.
Then there is my pet peeve, the Civil War - the underlying economic systems that grew as Lincoln surrendered the continent to his masters - the railroads and northern manufacturers. Lincoln is known as a simple country lawyer who spoke plainly, but he was also a railroad lawyer who earned exhorbitant fees, and did a few land deals of his own. Freedom to plunder the West and enslave the labor in wage penury made eastern investors wealthy indeed. Robber barons and the Guilded Age had their roots in Lincoln's economic policies. All this is almost never mentioned in history. Lincoln was the greatest! It's like historians remain unaware of what was going down.
It's happening again today. Cutthroat capitalism has been enabled by Trump, but the focus in on his corruption for which he makes headlines. Do you see a pattern in all of this? Systems of exploitation grind history onward, and then are covered up or ignored because they are the "new normal". They sanitized the Iraq War. They'll try again.
End of rant.
Evolve Dammit
(16,743 posts)He was Captain Gordon, of Portland Maine. The law prohibiting slave trade had gone into effect in Lincoln's presidency, and a Navy ship intercepted captain Gordon's vessel at the mouth of a river, leaving west coast Africa. He was tried and convicted in NYC (trial moved from Portland) and hung. I am fairly sure he was the ONLY one tried, convicted and sentenced per the guidelines at the time. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,499 posts)If you're referring to the prohibition of the importation of slaves, it was someone else on Mt. Rushmore who did that.
Long title: An Act to prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Eight
Enacted by: the 9th United States Congress
Effective: March 3, 1808
Citations: Public law 9-22
Statutes at Large: 2 Stat. 426
Legislative history: Signed into law by President Thomas Jefferson on March 2, 1807
The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (2 Stat. 426, enacted March 2, 1807) is a United States federal law that stated that no new slaves were permitted to be imported into the United States. It took effect in 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution.
This legislation was promoted by President Thomas Jefferson, who called for its enactment in his 1806 State of the Union Address. He had promoted the idea since the 1770s. It reflected the force of the general trend toward abolishing the international slave trade which Virginia, followed by all the other states, had prohibited or restricted since then. South Carolina, however, had reopened its trade. Congress first regulated against the trade in the Slave Trade Act of 1794. The 1794 Act ended the legality of American ships participating in the trade. The 1807 law did not change thatit made all importation from abroad a crime. The domestic slave trade within the U.S. was unaffected by the 1807 law. The United Kingdom, the major power involved in the Atlantic slave trade, had passed the comparable Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, on February 23, 1807 (achieving royal assent on March 25, 1807).
....
Background
Article 1 Section 9 of the United States Constitution protected the slave trade for twenty years. Article 5 said this clause could not be affected by constitutional amendment. Only starting January 1, 1808, could there be a federal law to entirely abolish the international slave trade, although individual states could and did ban it at any time.
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
In the words of Sarah Palin, slavery was one of our God-given rights.
Evolve Dammit
(16,743 posts)soldierant
(6,890 posts)but it's not easy to enforce a law that the citizenry doesn't agree with. Eventually the enforcement tightened up, but the last slave ship that arrived was the Clotilde in 1854. It was owned by a man who was furious with the law and made (and won) a bet that he could bring in a ship and get away with it. There were 150 slaves bought by the ship's captain in Dahomey. I don't remember who survived the journey, but two who did became ancestors of today's Questlove. That was on "Finding Your Roots." I saw it again this week, a re-run, but my local station has had hit and miss programming (on account of a fund drive) for several weeks now so I don't know if it was on any other stations.
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,499 posts)I saw that episode last week too. It was on my local PBS station, WETA, in Washington, DC. Dr. Phil was also getting a look at his family tree in that episode.
Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Southern Roots
Three guests of disparate backgrounds dig into their Southern roots, where slavery and its aftermath shaped families both black and white.
Questlove learns the name of his original African ancestors in the astonishing tale of the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to arrive in the United States. On board were his third great-grandparents, smuggled into Alabama illegally just months before the start of the Civil War.
Dr. Phil McGraw discovers his ancestors understood servitude from both sides: while his third great-grandfather was killed by his own slave in Texas, three generations further back, their original immigrant ancestor arrived in Virginia as an indentured servant, working towards his freedom.
Charlayne Hunter-Gault learns the truth behind a family rumor that her maternal grandmother was the product of an affair between a white man and the young black servant his family helped raise, and traces her fathers roots back to her great-grandmothers marriage on the Florida plantation of her probable owner.
These stories reassure our guests that they are not alone by exposing them to stories that, while painful, powerfully demonstrate that Americas racial history is shared by all.
It was an exceptionally powerful episode.
soldierant
(6,890 posts)Evolve Dammit
(16,743 posts)Perhaps the US Justice Dept. had no teeth (for 50 years)? No wonder we still can't prosecute crimes of the "elite," since slave traders were typically making the equivalent of millions today. It has been a problem since our inception apparently. Presidents that made a difference in this regard (both Roosevelts for example) were probably unique in this regard?
appalachiablue
(41,146 posts)Last edited Sun Sep 15, 2019, 05:50 PM - Edit history (2)
transporting of slaves- purchased or stolen- eg 'slave trading' took place from the early 1800s to the Civil War.
The Alexandria slave dealer 'Birch' was notorious and the head partner. His name was mentioned in the writings of Solomon Northup, the free black man who was kidnapped in 1841 from NY state, taken to DC and then shipped to New Orleans, 'sold South' in 1841 to labor on Louisiana plantations. The true story is portrayed in the movie, "12 Years A Slave" (2012).
By the 1830s, the invention and development of the cotton gin (1794) had revolutionized the cotton industry and increased demand for cotton production, machines, mills and industrial and agricultural workers.
Enslaved workers were sought to grow the crop on plantations in regions of the newer Louisiana Purchase- Deep South states Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. In the 'Upper South' where centuries of tobacco production was declining because of wear on the soil, large planters in Va., Md. and Ky. often sold their slaves 'down the (Mississippi) river' into bondage in the 'Deep South.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin
In the early 1800s after the1808 import ban on slaves, the kidnapping of free blacks also took place to 'meet the demand' for more plantation labor in the Lower South. One case was in the border area of 'Eastern Shore'/ Southern Del. and Md.- both slave states before the Civil War. There a notorious gang, the Cannon-Johnson group comprised of 50-60 locals and criminals kidnapped free and slave black children, young adults and runaways from rural areas, small towns and large cities such as Baltimore, Philadelphia, Dover and Washington. They sold their captives to slave traders or took them south to sell, by land or sea. (See posts #15, 16, 8) http://usslave.blogspot.com/2012/05/slave-kidnapping-marker-on-maryland.html https://www.capegazette.com/article/sussex-county-serial-killer/159135
"12 Years A Slave" (2012). The true story of freeman Solomon Northup who was kidnapped from NY state in 1841, taken to Wash. DC where he was held in a slave pen/prison and then shipped south by boat to New Orleans.
Evolve Dammit
(16,743 posts)eShirl
(18,494 posts)Evolve Dammit
(16,743 posts)LisaL
(44,973 posts)These two were involved in domestic slave trade.
IronLionZion
(45,457 posts)There are plenty of people who would like to erase history of very bad things that happened in America like sexual slavery, massacres, abuse, etc.
Of course they kidnapped free black Americans from the North and enslaved them, it's cheaper and faster than getting slaves from Africa. Just being black was enough to be a slave, papers are easily destroyed. Today being brown is enough to be an immigrant no matter how many generations of my family have been in the US after coming here legally.
pwb
(11,276 posts)For the sin of slavery. Small population red states should not have the power to bring the country where it is today. Holding us back.
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,499 posts)By the way, that's not how this works.
SleeplessinSoCal
(9,123 posts)Nothing to be proud of. Only something to overcome. Piracy, slavery and misogyny. All American.
appalachiablue
(41,146 posts)Last edited Sat Sep 14, 2019, 07:39 PM - Edit history (1)
-- (Wiki). The Franklin and Armfield Office, which houses the Freedom House Museum, is a historic commercial building at 1315 Duke Street in Alexandria, Virginia (until 1846, the District of Columbia). Built c. 1810-20, it was first used as a private residence before being converted to the offices of the largest slave trading firm in the United States, started in 1828 by Isaac Franklin and John Armfield.
"As many as [a] million people are thought to have passed through between 1828 and 1861, on their way to bondage in Mississippi and Louisiana". Another source, using ship manifests (lists of slaves) in the National Archives, gives the number as "at least 5,000". One million is generally historians' estimate of the total of all slaves who were moved to the Deep South in the domestic slave trade.
The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978, and has also been designated a Virginia Historic Landmark. The building is owned by the Northern Virginia Urban League; it is operated as a museum, with exhibits about the slave trading firm and the life of a slave. The building was constructed as a residence in the 1810s by Robert Young, a brigadier general in the District of Columbia National Guard. Due to financial reverses, Young was soon afterward forced to sell the house. It was purchased in 1828 by Isaac Franklin and his nephew John Armfield, who established it as their Washington-area office, and the residence of Armfield.
- The Franklin and Armfield house with its neighboring slave pens in 1836.
The property then extended further east, and they added structures for holding and trading in slaves. They also provided, for 25¢ a day, housing in their jail for slaveowners visiting Washington. The two-story extension to the rear of this house was part of the slave-holding facilities, which included high walls, and interior chambers that featured prison-like grated doors and windows.
Franklin left the business, starting in 1835, and Armfield sold the property to another slave trader in 1836. It continued to be used for slave trading until Alexandria fell to Union Army forces early in the American Civil War. The owners in 1861 were Price, Birch & Co., "dealers in slaves". The Union used the property to imprison Confederate soldiers. Late in the war, it was used as L'Ouverture Hospital for black soldiers, and as housing for contrabands.
After the war, the outlying slave pens, of which there are photographs, were torn down. The bricks may have been reused in the construction of the adjacent townhouses. After serving a variety of other uses, the main building is now used for Freedom House Museum, with exhibits devoted to the slave trade. The second floor houses the offices of the Northern Virginia Urban League. More, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_and_Armfield_Office
-------------------------------
-- (Alex. Times, Nov. 7, 2013) 'Out of the Attic: Notorious local slave dealer had hand in Solomon Northups kidnapping.' The new movie 12 Years a Slave documents the tragic tale of Solomon Northup, a black man from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., who was kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery by a notorious human trafficker from Washington, D.C. In his writings, Northup records the name of his kidnapper as Burch, but it was actually James H. Birch, who would later preside over Alexandrias largest slave pen at 1315 Duke St.
In 18th-century Alexandria, slave auctions often were held spontaneously on sidewalks or street corners. But by the early 19th century, with the importation of slaves outlawed and the tobacco crop dissipating in Northern Virginia because of soil exhaustion, shipping slaves from the commonwealth to the emerging cotton fields of the Deep South became extremely lucrative. It is during this time that permanent slave facilities were established along Duke Street. Alexandria became the second-largest slave center in the country, just behind New Orleans.
[Built as a private home] in 1812, the Duke Street dwelling was leased by the firm of Franklin and Armfield in 1828 and converted into a large slave jail and pen. The strategic location of the site between the bustling city to the east and vast farmlands to the west allowed the firm to efficiently contain and then ship off hundreds of slaves at any one time. In 1858, partners Charles M. Price and John Cook acquired the Franklin and Armfield property. Cook left the partnership soon after and was replaced by Birch. Soon the front facade was emblazoned with the name Price, Birch & Co. Dealers in Slaves.
When Union troops entered Alexandria on May 24, 1861, they found the building hastily abandoned, with one slave still chained to the basement floor. This photograph of the facility, taken about 1862, shows the main building after it was turned into a prison by federal authorities. Although Solomon Northup was never actually associated with this site, the inhumane conditions maintained by his nemesis Birch in Alexandria were quite similar to those he experienced.. https://alextimes.com/2013/11/notorious-local-slave-dealer-had-hand-in-solomon-northups-kidnapping/
- Union Army guard outside Price, Birch & Co. slave pen in Alexandria, Va. c. 1862.
-----------------------------------
--(NPS) FRANKLIN & ARMFIELD OFFICE: Based in Alexandria, Virginia, Isaac Franklin and John Armfield were the largest traders of enslaved African Americans in the nation between 1828 and 1836. The men bought enslaved people at low prices in the Upper South and sold them at much higher prices in the Lower South. While Armfield remained in Alexandria to purchase bondsmen for shipment south, Franklin handled sales in New Orleans and Natchez. Franklin and Armfield orchestrated the trafficking of thousands of enslaved African Americans from their Alexandria office to the horrific labor conditions of the lower South in what has been called the Second Middle Passage.
Between 1810 and 1820, Robert Young, Brigadier General of the Second Militia of the District of Columbia, commissioned the construction of a house on Duke Street in Alexandria, Virginia. Shortly after completion, General Young was forced to sell it because of financial problems. In 1828, Franklin and Armfield leased the building for their slave-trading operation and later purchased the property. The main block of the house served as the firm's office and Armfield's residence. The two-story attached wing at the rear housed enslaved people at night. Both ends of the structure had partially roofed courtyards where captives passed their daylight hours. High walls of whitewashed brick surrounded these courtyards.
Every summer, slave drivers marched chained groups of enslaved people from Virginia through Tennessee to Mississippi and Louisiana. In the fall and spring, the firm used its fleet of sailing ships to traffic people to New Orleans. The firm had agents in almost every important Southern city. In the early 1830s, Franklin and Armfield bought and sold between 1,000 and 2,000 people each year. https://www.nps.gov/places/franklin-and-armfield-office.htm
- Freedom House
Judi Lynn
(160,545 posts)to toil forever knowing they would be beaten or whipped or tortured if they dared to slow down, always hated, and have to look forward to dying as the only escape.
All because the society devised a "legal" system which made it easy for them to kidnap and steal human beings for their own profit.
Thank you for this information. Clearly, a lot of it is not familiar to so many U.S. Americans. It was never acknowledged publicly all these long, long years. They were right to be ashamed, but not right to get by with it.
appalachiablue
(41,146 posts)mahatmakanejeeves
(57,499 posts)appalachiablue
(41,146 posts)"Like we descended from Hitler: Coming to terms with a slave-trading past," Washington Post, Feb. 8, 2018. The family secret lurked in the background as the cousins grew up in Maine, Maryland and Tennessee. Something about the Southern ancestors, back in the Civil War days, that most of the adults wouldnt talk about, although those who married into the family would occasionally give hints.
My grandmother was never really forthright about it, said Lyn Hoyt, 53, of Nashville. She called [her husbands ancestors] horse traders and said, You dont really want to hook your wagon to the Franklins.
When Hoyt and her cousins finally put the clues together, what they discovered horrified them: This family of educators, scientists and physicians was indirectly descended from Isaac Franklin, the biggest and most successful slave trader in the pre-Civil War United States, who with his partner John Armfield shipped thousands of black people from their slave pen in Alexandria into brutal servitude in the Deep South...More...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/like-we-descended-from-hitler-coming-to-terms-with-a-slave-trading-past/2018/02/07/3d65b0bc-f48a-11e7-b34a-b85626af34ef_story.html
- A slavery-related exhibit at Freedom House in Alexandria, Va., a museum in the former 19th c. slave trading offices.