A weeping rainstorm marked the end of America's largest slave auction in 1859
In 1859, the largest sale of human beings in American history concluded in Georgia, an event so harrowing that contemporaries claimed the heavens wept for the 436 men, women, and children sold.
The Great Slave Auction, often called 'The Weeping Time,' concluded on March 3, 1859, at a racetrack in Savannah, Georgia. To pay off mounting gambling debts, planter Pierce Mease Butler sold 436 enslaved people over two days. Families were ruthlessly torn apart despite promises to keep them together, as buyers from across the South bid on lives in the pouring rain.
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