Exploring American Histories: Printed Page 299

Document 10.1

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.

  • Question

    How does Abdy describe the construction of the slave penand its relation to the U.S. Capitol?

  • Question

    How are whites and blacks described?

  • Question

    How might northern and southern audiences have reacted to this description of a slave pen? How might readers in Great Britain, where slavery had just been abolished, have responded?

Put It in Context

Question

How did the gradual elimination of slavery in the northern United States and in other parts of the world affect views of slavery in the American South?