The Bay Lane buildings of what is now the City Market were the former center for slave trade. There is a movement to preserve the former trading floor of the Montmollin Building which has not been met with much enthusiasm from city officials who would rather forget this unfortunate period of history. I think the memory should be kept alive for if we forget our history we are more likely to repeat it. "Yes, we used to engage in slavery but we stopped, so we are good people now" is similar to "Yes, I used to beat my wife/girlfriend but I stopped, so I am a good person now".
On the top floor of this building on one infamous day in 1859, known as "The Weeping Time", 436 human beings were sold in the largest slave auction in the history of the United States. Young, strong, healthy males went for $600.
If they forget about it maybe it will go away? Not.
ReplyDeleteHistory is history, can't be changed.
Certainly a messed up period in the recent history of humanity. It's interesting that Canada also hides it's history of slavery. Of course it wasn't as widely practiced as in the American southeast, but it was there. In fact, I have a copy of my great-great-great-great-great grandfather's will from 1802 in Cumberland County Nova Scotia where it says "...before signing, it is my will that my sons jointly provide and comfortable take care of the black man and black woman slaves now belonging to me during their natural lives."
ReplyDeleteSlavery was abolished in Canada in 1833.
www.travelwithkevinandruth.com
Same statements apply to any country Kevin, including Canada. Canada did become, however, a terminus for the "Underground Railway".
DeleteWe've traveled the area you were in and we're absorbed by the slave trade history. Never to forget, say I.
ReplyDeleteWe can't forget. Keep it alive.
ReplyDeleteI think more people use "my forefathers engaged in slavery but we don't because we know it's wrong". Your example doesn't make sense as there are basically no people alive in the US that actually had slaves.
ReplyDeleteMy forefathers didn't take baths very often but I take one daily. They didn't know it was a good idea to bathe daily and they didn't quite understand you shouldn't own another human.
It's called evolving.
Well actually none of my descendants ever owned any slaves. At least none that we can find any records of.
The problem I have Don, is that the mentality that led to slavery still exists. Too many of us still think we are better than _____ (fill in the blank... Blacks, Native Americans, Mexicans. Gays...... you name it). The concept of equality seems lost among too many of us.
DeleteMan I couldn't agree more Croft. Starting with our current President, his Senate leader, and the previous Speaker of the House they all like to express how much better and smarter they are than the populous. And it goes right down the chain to my state's senators who are both huge tools.
DeleteWe are all smarter than Republicans, Don. Even Libertarians are smarter than republicans.
DeleteThe weeping time did NOT occur at Montmollin Building. It was held at the "racetrack" The Montmollin Building top floor (present day City Market home of Wild Wings)was occupied by The owners of the building John Montmollin and Alexander Bryan, who used the upper floor as a holding area for soon to be sold men, women and children. The Weeping Time is not associated with The Montmollin Building. In 1859,the largest slave sale in US history took place at the Ten Broeck Race Course, now an obscured landscape, on the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia. At the behest of Pierce Mease Butler (1810–1867), 436 enslaved persons from the Butler plantations near Darien were sold in an event known and remembered as "The Weeping Time."
ReplyDeleteOn the second and third days of March 1859, absentee Georgia planter Pierce Mease Butler of Philadelphia had arranged for the sale of 436 slaves in Savannah to pay off enormous gambling debts, recoup stock market losses, and stay solvent. The people to be sold constituted almost half of the total 919 bondsmen and women held on two coastal Georgia plantations Butler owned with Gabriella, his brother John's widow. This disastrous, ill-fated sale was known as "The Weeping Time," an apt expression of the angst and anguish that this sale caused the enslaved who were separated from their loved ones.
Pierce Butler had the impending slave sale advertised continuously in The Savannah Republican, The Savannah Daily Morning News, and in contemporary newspapers throughout the southeastern states by Joseph Bryan (1812–1863), Savannah's largest and most notorious slave-dealer. According to historian Malcolm Bell, Bryan "had a virtual monopoly of the coastal Georgia slave trade." The advertisement that Bryan published in The Savannah Republican began on February 8 and ran daily, except on Sundays, through March 3, the last date of the slave sale.
I suggest thorough, very thorough study and education of you and yours before just pisting fiction as fact.
Thanks Maynard, it was several years ago but as I recall I read something about a city battle to tear down that building by that faction and another faction was trying to preserve it because of what they claimed had taken place there. What I said was in direct reference to the reports i read, I did not make it up. I know everything we read on the Internet is not necessarily the truth but it seemed credible at the time or I would not have posted it.
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