Old Slave Mart - Charleston, SC
Posted by: 
YoSam.
N 32° 46.668 W 079° 55.704
17S E 600357 N 3627162
Originally Ryan's Mart, and once a firehouse
Waymark Code: WMY256
Location: South Carolina, United States
Date Posted: 04/05/2018
Views: 1
County of site: Charleston County
Location: Closed lot between Chalmers and Queen streets
Phone:
"The 1808 ban on the United States' participation in the international slave trade led to a renewed demand for slave labor, which was satisfied, in part, by the creation of a domestic slave-trading system in which Charleston functioned as a major slave collecting and reselling center. The Old Slave Mart Museum, located at 6 Chalmers St., recounts the story of Charleston's role in this inter-state slave trade by focusing on the history of this particular building and site and the slave sales that occurred here.
"In the seven decades between the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and the Civil War, more than one million American-born slaves were sold away from plantations in the upper South to work the rapidly expanding cotton and sugar plantations in the lower South. In Charleston, enslaved African Americans were customarily sold on the north side of the Old Exchange Building. An 1856 city ordinance prohibited this practice of public sales, resulting in the opening of the Old Slave Mart and a number of other sales rooms, yards, or marts along Chalmers, State and Queen." ~ City of Charleston