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Charleston, South Carolina and Slavery

Having been captured by war and other means in Africa they endured the horrors of shackled transport across the Atlantic and then suffered unbelievable endless humiliation, suffering, anxiety, beatings, and more just to get to the docks of Charleston.

Chalmers Street is also the site of the Old Slave Mart Museum. Charleston was America’s sad epicenter of the slave trade. This great nation has never truly acknowledged the horrors of slavery or atoned for it. Reasons abound, and to analyze them is fodder for books. But in short, even the most well-meaning among us realize there is a near impossible futility in trying to do so. Also we must recognize that this nation was built in no small measure on slave labor. This must include many of the stately old Charleston homes, the White House in Washington, DC and much more. So how do we reconcile this while knowing that we are all benefiting from this horror?

Slaves were brought in to all Thirteen Colonies, but almost 40 percent of the total came in through Sullivan’s Island across the river, quarantined for weeks or months and then brought to Charleston.

Christopher Gadsden, famous for, among other things the “Don’t Tread on Me” coiled rattlesnake on a yellow background flag of the American Revolution, a war ostensibly about freedom, was Charleston’s biggest slave trader and thus perhaps this nation’s greatest ever hypocrite. He has some august company including the nation’s third largest slave owner, George Washington, father of our nation, and Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence who was one of America’s original Renaissance men.

Christopher Gadsden wharf was called Gadsden’s Wharf. Its dock and warehouse complex “processed” nearly all Charleston’s slaves, making it slavery’s Ellis Island. As I understand it, in 1805/1806, 100% of all slaves brought to the United States came through Gadsden’s Wharf. Adding insult to injury, much of the land once Gadsden’s Wharf is now named Liberty Square. It was anything but that.

Slaves were auctioned at Gadsden’s Wharf out in the open, their miseries visible to all as parents were peeled away in brutal horror from their children, never to see them again. Or husbands were separated from wives, etc.

I’m ashamed we never really think about this. Where is our empathy? Having been captured by war and other means in Africa they endured the horrors of shackled transport across the Atlantic and then suffered unbelievable endless humiliation, suffering, anxiety, beatings, and more just to get to the docks of Charleston. Then they were put on display and auctioned. Being sold was almost just the beginning; it would now lead to more of the same…

Finally, after many decades, under pressure of outsiders and in some cases Charleston’s own, the slave markets were brought indoors to spare Charlestonians the “agony of watching people suffer.”

Finally, after many decades, under pressure of outsiders and in some cases Charleston’s own, the slave markets were brought indoors to spare Charlestonians the “agony of watching people suffer.” Allow evil, but see no evil. In a short period, there were 40 slave markets in four blocks, ten per block. What is now the Old Slave Mart Museum was the first of these slave markets.

We Southerners are often very defensive about slavery. But the overwhelming majority of Southerners didn’t own slaves. Those that did often owned hundreds or thousands. Some people in the North owned slaves too, though far, far fewer than in our parts. And in the North, slavery became illegal prior to the US Civil War. Well, not quite: the border states like Maryland had slavery.

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