Despite the 1808 ban, New York was a hub of slave-trading activity in the 1850s. Dozens of slave ships bound for Africa were sent from Lower Manhattan each year. US-built slave ships also left Baltimore, Boston, Providence, Salem and other New England ports, and somewhere between fifteen and twenty-eight vessels either owned or outfitted in New Orleans were identified as slavers or caught trafficking people in the years 1857 and 1858 alone.7
