The building was constructed as a residence in the 1810s by Robert Young, a brigadier general in the District of Columbia Militia. A three-bayed townhouse built in the Federal style, the front facade was laid in
Flemish bond and the sides and rear of the building in common bond. Due to financial struggles, Young was soon afterward forced to sell the house.
Franklin & Armfield annotated this poem in
Genius of Universal Emancipation with a description of the
brig Comet, possibly the same coastwise slave ship that later landed in the British West Indies, resulting in the freedom of the prisoners on board|left The building was purchased in 1828 by
Isaac Franklin and his intimate friend and nephew-by-marriage
John Armfield, who established it as their Washington-area office, and the residence of Armfield. s in 1836. The property then extended further east, and they added structures for holding and trading in slaves. They also provided, for 25¢ a day, housing in their jail for slaveowners visiting Washington. The two-story extension to the rear of this house was part of the slave-holding facilities, which included high walls, and interior chambers that featured prison-like grated doors and windows. The firm also commissioned three slave ships for use as packets. One of their ads describing these was reprinted in William I. Bowditch's
Slavery and the Constitution (1849): "ALEXANDRIA AND NEW ORLEANS PACKETS. — Brig
Tribune, Samuel C. Bush, master, will sail as above on the 1st January; brig
Isaac Franklin, William Smith, master, on the 15th January; brig
Uncas, Nathaniel Boush, master, on the 1st February. They will continue to leave this port on the 1st and 15th of each month, throughout the shipping season. Servants that are intended to be shipped will at any time be received for safe keeping at twenty-five cents a day. JOHN ARMFIELD, Alexandria." Circa 1833–34, Franklin & Armfield had trading agents in at least five cities: •
R. C. Ballard & Co., Richmond, Va. •
J. M. Saunders & Co., Warrenton, Va. •
George Kephart & Co., Fredericktown, Md. •
James F. Purvis & Co., Baltimore • Thomas M. Jones, Easton, Eastern Shore, Md. Other agents associated with Franklin & Armfield included: • John Ware, Port Tobacco, Md. • William Hooper, Annapolis, Maryland • A. Grimm, Fredericksburg, Virginia. Franklin left the business, starting in 1835, and Armfield sold the property to their former trading agent
George Kephart in 1836. Franklin and Armfield sold more enslaved people, separated more families, and made more money from the trade than almost anyone else in the United States. They amassed a fortune equalling billions in today's dollars (2021) and were two of the nation's richest men. Franklin sold slaves from an office in
Natchez, Mississippi, with branch offices in New Orleans,
St. Francisville, and
Vidalia, Louisiana. His nephew Armfield handled the supply, sending agents door-to-door in Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware looking for enslaved people their owners might like to sell, and arranging transportation. Maryland and Virginia had surpluses of slaves and spoke of slaves as an export, like livestock. As portrayed in ''
Uncle Tom's Cabin'', there was a vast, internal forced migration of enslaved people from the
Upper South to the
Lower South, and Franklin and Armfield were central to that business. "In surviving correspondence, they actually brag about raping enslaved people who they’ve been processing through the firm." Price, Birch & Co. ceased business in 1861. Arriving at the Duke street office of the company on May 14, 1861, the
Union Army discovered that "The firm had fled, and taken with them all but one of the humans that they sold as slaves — an old man, chained to the middle of the floor by the leg." A letter to the Liberator in 1862 stated, "It is now occupied as a Police Office, and occasionally as a prison for rebel soldiers. The dungeons on the ground floor, formerly used for refractory slaves, are horrible dens, without a chance for ventilation; they look like a row of gas retorts." Union forces had possession of the building until February 2, 1866, using it as a military prison. Late in the war, it was used as L'Ouverture Hospital for black soldiers, and as housing for
contrabands. == Freedom House Museum ==