Thomas Anburey

Lieutenant Thomas Anburey, a British officer serving under General John Burgoyne, was captured after the Battle of Saratoga, an early turning point of the Revolutionary War. Anburey's captors marched him from the Hudson Valley to Boston, then to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he remained a prisoner until the war's end. On his forced march Anburey had ample opportunity to observe the customs of American slaveholders. In the Chesapeake region, planters were discovering that staple crops were best grown on large plantations, where economies of scale allowed a much greater margin of profit. To work these plantations, however, large numbers of laborers were needed—and the only ready sources of such labor were the auction houses where Africans were offered for sale.

This plantation system gave rise to a rapid growth in the slavery business that would continue into the...