For centuries slavery has been common among African tribes. Black slaves, usually taken captive during war, were bought and sold to enhance a leader’s wealth. Bartering for human capital is an age-old practice some African countries still practice today. Portuguese sailors, European sailors brought the first Africans to the New World. The voyage to America was arduous and if the shackled cargo became contaminated, succumbed to smallpox or dysentery, the sick were dumped at sea. Slave history is heart-rending. Roughly 8-15 million Africans reached the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries. Many of Alexandria’s early trading partners, such as Portugal, Spain and the Caribbean, not only sanctioned slavery but also engaged in its trade. Slave-traders accepted only the best African specimens. In 1740 the Virginia colony declared slaves “chattel [property] personal in the hands of their owners and possessors for all intents, construction and purpose whatsoever.” Pioneer farmer George Washington, in 1760, paid ten shillings for runaway slave Boson’s Mount Vernon return. Washington, unlike many contemporaries, freed his slaves upon his death. The slaves’ stories are many. James Armistead, a Virginia planter’s slave, served as a double spy during the Revolutionary War. Armistead infiltrated traitor Benedict Arnold’s camp; then later helped Generals Washington and Lafayette ensure Great Britain’s surrender at Yorktown. An empathetic Marquis de Lafayette asked the Virginia General Assembly to give the “essential” slave “every reward his situation can admit of.” Armistead’s freedom was granted in 1787. George Mason vigorously opposed that portion of the 1787 Constitution which permitted the continued importation of slaves. “We became callous to the Dictates of Humanity….,” Mason wrote in 1773. “Taught to regard a part of our own Species in the most abject & contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of the Dignity of Man….” Virginia “laid plans for…