Forks of the Road

Forks of the Road. (Southwest Hub of the United States "Domestic Slave Trade"). , A half century before the United States legally abolished the importation of "slaves" directly from Africa in 1807, the northeastern colonies of Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia were engaged in domestic trading of enslaved persons. These colonies routinely transported enslaved persons to the southeastern colonies of the Carolinas and Georgia. , Internal enslavement "trading" existed roughly from the 1760's to the 1860's in the United States. By the 1790's, with westward expansion, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia became the main exporters to the lower South. Within a few decades, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee were major exporters to the southwest. , After the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and War of 18 12, hordes of migrants, many with enslaved persons in tow, occupied the lower Mississippi Valley which was destined to soon become the land of cotton and sugar bowls, kingdom and empire. , Enslaved African descent people from the upper old south were forcefully brought to these regions by professional "slave traders", and speculators and sold in chattel human investment markets to meet an insatiable demand for "slaves". Early on, Natchez, MS became one of two major southwest centers of America's long distance "domestic slave trade", the life blood of the southern slavery system. From the 1830's to the Civil War, this very Forks of the Road was reportedly America's second largest southwest, enslavement marketplace.