Document 10.1 Edward Strutt Abdy, Description of Washington, D.C., Slave Pen, 1833
Edward Strutt Abdy | Description of Washington, D.C., Slave Pen, 1833
Slavery and the slave trade had always been legal in Washington, D.C., and enslaved laborers cleared land and constructed buildings. As the debate over slavery increased in the nineteenth century, abolitionists often highlighted the incongruence of slavery in the capital city of American democracy. Visitors wrote with disgust about slave auctions held within sight of the Capitol steps. In the 1830s, the English writer Edward Strutt Abdy toured the United States and described the scene at a slave pen.
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Source: Edward Strutt Abdy, Journal of a Residence and Tour in the United States of North America, from April, 1833, to October, 1834 (London: John Murray, 1835), 2:96–97.
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