The Duke Street Slave Pen, Alexandria Virginia 1861

The Duke Street Slave Pen

(Now the Offices of the Urban League)

     Alexandria, Virginia was a major center for the domestic slave trade during the antebellum period.  Hundreds of thousands of slaves were shipped to the labor hungry cotton fields of the Deep South. 

Slaves being sold to cotton planters further south were brought into Alexandria from the countryside and housed in the slave pen until the time for sale.  After sale, they were herded to the Alexandria wharves and shipped out in lots by steamboat.  Lewis Bailey, taken from his family and sold as a young boy walked back to Alexandria from Texas after the Civil War to be re-united with his mother. Masters were forced to explain why contented and well cared for servants ran away so frequently and in such large numbers.  Many owners concluded that frequent runaways were mentally imbalanced.  Masters devoted considerable energy to controlling the movement of slaves.  Written passes were needed to leave the plantation.  Overseers watched the slave quarters, slave patrols were formed, professional slave hunters were employed, and rewards were offered.

Slave trader George Kephart went out of business abruptly on May 24, 1861 as the Union army marched into Alexandria.  When Federal troops arrived at the slave pen on Duke Street, the pen was in complete disarray, the sole occupant one old slave still chained to the floor.

Alexandria 1861-1865

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Alexandria’s Military Prisons in the Civil War

The Cotton Factory

The Union Army operated five prisons in Alexandria, Virginia during the Civil War.  The Mount Vernon Cotton Factory, now transformed into luxury condominiums, housed some 1,500 Confederate POWs. Prisoners housed at this Washington Street prison were generally in route to prison camps in the North.  Spies and enemy sympathizers were housed in Odd Fellows Hall. 

The Duke Street slave pen

The Duke Street slave pen was used to house drunken and disorderly Union soldiers. Union deserters were imprisoned in the Prince Street prison (formerly Green’s Furniture Factory which had been requisitioned by the Army).  The old Alexandria Jail, in use since 1826 was also used.  Captain Rufus D. Pettit served as superintendent of U.S. Military Prisons in Alexandria (1864-65).    In November, 1865, Pettit was court-martialed for his brutal treatment of prisoners he believed to be deserters from the Union army, found guilty and dishonorably discharged.

Alexandria 1861-1865

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