American Slave Trade

American Slave Trade by Jesse Torrey is an account of the manner in which the Slave Dealers take free people from some of the United States of America, and carry them away, and sell them as Slaves in other of the States; and of the horrible cruelties practiced in the carrying on of this most infamous Traffic. It includes reflections on the Project for forming a Colony of American Blacks in Africa, and certain Documents respecting that project. "The author speaks of the Middle States, and the Southern States. He speaks of Maryland, of Delaware; and, then again, of Georgia, Carolina, Mississippi; but the English reader ought to be told, and have pretty clearly explained to him, how these several Countries lie with regard to each other; and, that he may judge of the magnitude of the evil, he ought to be informed over how large a part of the whole of the United States Slavery does actually extend."

Early in the nineteenth century, Philadelphia physician Jesse Torrey compiled a broad range of interviews, narratives and his own first-hand observations into an illustrated volume appropriately entitled, A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery in the United States, published in Philadelphia in 1817. Torrey's book contained several engravings related to slave kidnappings, a profitable underground industry that thrived during the period. Free blacks were especially vulnerable to kidnappers, who would sell them into slavery using forged documents.