The Inland Slave Trade
Mounted whites escort a convoy of slaves from Virginia to Tennessee in Lewis Miller’s Slave Trader, Sold to Tennessee (1853). For white planters, the interstate trade in slaves was lucrative; it pumped money into the declining Chesapeake economy and provided young workers for the expanding plantations of the cotton belt. For blacks, it was a traumatic journey, a new Middle Passage that broke up their families and communities. “Arise! Arise! and weep no more, dry up your tears, we shall part no more,” the slaves sing sorrowfully as they journey to new lives in Tennessee. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Williamsburg, VA.