Historical Context
A handful of Last Seen or Information Wanted advertisements appeared in newspapers prior to 1865, but the vast majority appeared after Emancipation as freed people searched for family and friends from whom they had been separated through the domestic slave trade and forced migration. Once free, freed people placed thousands of ads in African-American newspapers across the country; in them, mothers and fathers search for children separated through sale, daughters and sons seek parents, men and women inquire about partners and spouses, and siblings search for one another. In each ad, a survivor of the domestic slave trade includes names, describes events, and recalls locations where their loved ones were last seen.
Renewed scholarly attention to the domestic slave trade—which some historians are now calling the Second Middle Passage—has exposed the brutality of a system that commodified human beings. These ads reveal the stark consequences of this forced migration as enslaved people were “sold south” to the cotton frontier of the Mississippi Valley. Nearly every one of the estimated two million transactions that sent enslaved people to south broke up a family.
These family separations were fueled by three interconnected factors. The rise of cotton cultivation led to the expansion of southern plantation agriculture. This, in conjunction with territorial acquisitions such as the Louisiana Purchase, Florida, and the annexation of Texas, opened new territories to American settlement and cotton cultivation. Demand for enslaved labor increased in the Deep South and Southwest, and so too did the prices of the enslaved. In the Upper South, decreased agricultural production created a financial incentive for enslavers to sell the people they enslaved to the Deep South—where demand was at its peak and where they made significant profit.
Each of the almost one million people “sold south” knew that it was unlikely that they would ever see their family and loved ones again. These ads, published across the country, circulated from one person to another and read aloud in churches, reflect the enduring hopes freed people maintained as they attempted to reconnect with family.
For Further Reading
Rebecca Onion, “The Hopeful, Heartbreaking Ads Placed by Formerly Enslaved People in Search of Lost Family,” The Vault (blog), Slate, July 13, 2015
DeNeen L. Brown, "'My mother was sold from me': After slavery, the desperate search for loved ones in ‘last seen ads,'" The Washington Post, September 7, 2017
Maps of the Historic Slave Trade
Maps 1 and 2 illustrate the forced migration of enslaved people from the Upper South to the Deep South and Southwest. Based on census statistics, these maps show how the Domestic Slave Trade contributed to and resulted from westward expansion. Map 3 illustrates the movement of enslaved people to slave markets in the Deep South and Southwest. The cities shown were major trading hubs, but enslaved people might be sold at any point on the way south. Map 4 shows how the enslaved population increased over time as a result of the Domestic Slave Trade.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. "The domestic slave trade, 1790-1799" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 2005.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. "The domestic slave trade, 1820-1829" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 2005.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. "The Domestic Slave Trade 1808-1865" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 2005.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. "Progression of the slave population in selected Southern states, 1810-1860" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 2005.