Can I Endure Such Agony? Forced Separation in the Richmond Slave Market

The words that supply the title of this paper were those of formerly enslaved man Henry “Box” Brown when he said an emotional goodbye to his wife in the 1840s as his family was sold away from Richmond, VA in the domestic slave trade. While Richmond was heavily reliant on enslaved labor, many captives who stepped foot there were swiftly transported by slave traders further south. As the nineteenth century progressed, the city developed into the largest slave trading center in the Upper South. The streets of the urban center were paved with the tears of captives stripped from the familiar and forced to confront the unknown. This paper examines forced separation and black plight in the city during the antebellum era. Brown has been famous for generations for his daring escape from slavery by shipping himself in a box from Richmond to Philadelphia with the help of allies. While his narrative has received significant attention from scholars, the impact of forced separation on his life from childhood to adulthood is often overlooked. The paper uses Brown’s life as a window into the struggles of enslaved African Americans to survive the real and anticipated pains of forced separation from loved ones in and around Richmond due to the city’s vibrant slave market.