4pp Handwritten document outlining the purchase and sale terms for a slave, “a negro boy named Ralph, about ten or eleven years of age and now in good health.” Of note, this transaction occurred in the nation’s capital, Washington D.C. The slave trade was legal in the District at this time, and the seller’s name that appears in this bill of sale was at the center of it: Leonard Robey.

Robey operated what is now called “Robey’s Slave Pen & Tavern,” a holding pen for slaves intended for auction. Brought in from surrounding areas, the slaves were subjected to brutal conditions before their sale, including forced marches through Washington. A 15 foot deep ditch surrounded the grounds to keep slaves inside. Pens like this one operated until 1850, when the federal government abolished the slave trade in the capital. We do not know what became of Ralph outside of the terms outlined in the document- he was sold to a John Costigan for the sum of $150.




[African American History, Black Americana, Slavery, Slave, Abolition, Abolitionist, Emancipation Proclamation, 13th Amendment] [John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Ulysses S. Grant, US Grant] [Civil War, Union, Confederate]