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OLD SLAVE MARKET, ST. AUGUSTINE,
FLORIDA

*Find on your map of Florida the city of St. Augustine. In what section of Florida is it?*

The building here seen has outlived the purpose
for which it was built. Beneath its roof were
formerly sold men and women who did work
without pay for the men who bought them. This
is the old slave market in the oldest city in the
United States—St. Augustine.

Most southern cities had a special market of
this sort set apart. Here, either on given days
of the week, or at announced times, great crowds
of negro men, women, and children were offered
for sale to the highest bidder. The auction was
conducted just as a sale of any goods is now
conducted. The auctioneer stood on a block,
placed the negroes on another block, and then
asked his crowd to offer sums larger and larger.
The bidders stepped up, pinched the muscles of
the negro, and looked him over just as a pur-

chaser of a horse does at a stock auction today.

Slaves were first brought to Virginia in 1619.
Slavery spread to all the earlier states of the
Union but never became fixed in the North.
The invention of the cotton gin settled the ques-
tion as to whether the South would or would not
free their slaves of their own accord. This in-
vention made the South a cotton-growing coun-
try. Negroes were necessary to the production
of cotton. Our Civil War was fought chiefly
because of slavery.

St. Augustine has a history that reaches far
back of the period of slavery. It was settled in
1565 by the Spaniards. The site of this old slave
market is not far from where Ponce de Leon
(pōn' thā dā lā-ōn') landed in 1513 in his search
for the Fountain of Eternal Youth. The city is
now a fashionable winter resort.

Copyright by The Keystone View Company.

Lat. 30° N.; Long. 81° W.

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