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The Great Slave Auction, Known as “The Weeping Time”
The 2nd Largest Slave Auction in American History
Until as recently as 2022, the Great Slave Auction in 1859 was considered the largest slave auction in American history. That was before a graduate student at the University of Charleston discovered an 1835 sale in Charleston of 600 enslaved people. In February of 1859, 436 enslaved people were sent to Savannah, GA, for the auction to be held on March 2–3, 1859. Four days were allotted before the sale for inspection of the slaves who were held in barn stalls and sheds while awaiting their purchase.
Joseph Bryan was coastal Georgia’s largest dealer in the trading of slaves and was selected to handle the sales. He advertised the auction for a month straight in The Savannah Republican and The Savannah Daily Morning News. Other ads were placed in major cities across the South and New York, attracting speculators from several states. The ads also attracted a reporter for the New York Tribune, Mortimer Thomson, who later wrote of the atmosphere leading up to the event. Fearing for his safety, Thomson wrote under the pseudonym Q. K. Philander Doesticks.
“For several days before the sale, every hotel in Savannah was crowded with negro speculators from North and South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana, who had…
