Once Kemble found out about Butler's Georgia plantations, she begged him to take her down to witness first hand what she'd previously only heard and read about in her native England. Despite his better judgement, Butler brought Kemble with him in late 1838 to visit the plantations and what Kemble found was every bit as callous and horrible as she'd imagined. Kemble cataloged her stay in her diaries, which were eventually published some years later as Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation (1838-1839) and to this day it's considered one of the most detailed eyewitness accounts of slavery during that period.

(Kemble's journals weren't published until 1863—in the middle of America's Civil War—due to custody issues with Butler over their two daughters. Butler had “forbade” the publication of the journals during their marriage, but once their daughters were “of age” Kemble felt free to let her account of that time be known to the world. Her journals ended up playing a significant role in the anti-slavery debate raging at the time.)

Kemble was long out of the picture by the time the Butler slave auction took place (they were divorced in 1849). But the most virulent phase of great slavery debate was only just getting under way. Just a few months before the Butler auction, the now infamous slave ship the Wanderer had landed at Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia with more than 400 illegal slaves brought directly from the Congo. This was one of the last documented slave ships to arrive in North American and it created a roiling controversy. The transport of slaves from Africa had long been outlawed, but owners of the Wanderer, with the help of the pro-slavery “fire-eater” Charles Lamar, disguised their ship as a luxury cruise liner and brought back a hull-full of “human chattel,” thumbing his nose at federal law. Records indicate that nearly 80 slaves perished on the voyage.

The crew of the Wanderer were awaiting trial at the time of the Butler slave auction, but the sentiment in the South was such that they were all eventually found not guilty and set free with impunity. This was the atmosphere surrounding what would be the largest slave auction ever on American soil.

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The notorious slave trader Joseph Bryan was enlisted to conduct the Butler slave auction and it was originally scheduled to take place in Savannah's Johnson Square, directly in the city's center, where Bryan's slave holding pens and brokerage was. But it was soon determined there wouldn't be enough room to accommodate the buyers they expected, so the location was moved to the Ten Broeck Race Course two-and-a-quarter miles west of downtown.

For weeks before the auction, Bryan took out ads in papers across the south advertising the sale. It became the talk of the town and speculators from as far as Louisiana and Virginia came to Savannah to ply their bids. One of the ads that ran in the weeks before the auction in the Savannah Daily Morning News read:

It was said that the hotels and bars were all full to capacity in the days leading up to the auction and the city was abuzz with discussion about the great sale. Among the crowd was an undercover journalist from the north, Mortimer Thomson, who wrote under the pseudonym Q. K. Philander Doesticks. Thomson had been sent to Savannah by the New York Tribune editor and noted reformer, Horace Greeley, to report on the sale.