To Be Sold: The 1774 Savannah Broadside That Counted 170 African People

This broadside is a surviving record of a sale notice, not a full record of the people it tried to sell. That is why it matters for E07 of Our History, Our Home, Our Future: it shows both the violence of a commercial count and the need to seek lives beyond the seller’s language.

Object Identity

The Library of Congress exhibition checklist identifies the item as To be sold . . . a cargo of 170 prime young likely healthy Guinea slaves, Savannah, July 25, 1774. It is a copyprint of a broadside held by the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, with reproduction number LC-USZ62-16876.

In the LOC exhibit section “Humans For Sale,” the broadside is described as advertising the sale of enslaved people and land, the availability of employment for an overseer, a recall of debts, and a reward for two runaways. LOC states that the Angolan Africans scheduled to be sold at auction in Savannah were described by the captors as “prime, young, likely healthy.” That description belongs to the captors and sellers; it is not a humane description of the people themselves.

What the Object Shows

The notice makes people countable within a market. Its language places African captives inside a sheet of commercial announcements, alongside property, labor and debt. The exactness of the date, place and advertised number is valuable evidence, but the document’s purpose was to summon buyers, not to preserve the lives of those being advertised.

For that reason, the broadside must be read with restraint. It can establish an advertised sale in Savannah on July 25, 1774, and the wording used to market captive Africans. It cannot establish each person’s name, birthplace, language, family, route, sale outcome or later life.

Series Connection

E07 begins with this kind of record because the American archive often preserves people through documents that were made by those who confined, sold or profited from them. The episode asks viewers to see the people beyond the count without inventing details the source does not contain. The broadside therefore becomes a lesson in evidence: the record is powerful, but it is not enough.

Watch the episode: The Lives and Histories Carried Across the Atlantic, published by Defeat History on YouTube on 2026-10-09.

Visit and Access

The holding institution is the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Astra verified the LOC online exhibit and exhibition checklist on 2026-10-08. A current physical gallery display, loan, appointment availability or exhibition window for this copyprint was not verified during this preparation pass. Readers should use the official LOC online exhibit and LOC Prints and Photographs access guidance for current research or visiting questions.

Financial Context

No reliable public sale result, published estimate or defensible comparable market range was found for this exact Library of Congress copyprint/broadside during this preparation pass. That does not mean the object lacks value. Its value here is historical and evidentiary: it preserves a seller’s public attempt to turn African lives into marketable property, while also showing the limits of a record made for buyers.

Defeat History does not sell this object. No current sale listing was verified.

Image Rights

The LOC online exhibit provides an enlarged image, but the image file contains rights language reading “Copyright (C) 1996 by the Library of Congress, All rights reserved.” Because that is not a clear reuse license, Defeat History links to the official LOC source rather than presenting the image as a reused featured object photograph here.

Sources

• Library of Congress, “Humans For Sale,” The African American Odyssey.
• Library of Congress, African American Odyssey exhibition checklist.
• Library of Congress exhibit image file for object 12.
• Library of Congress Prints & Photographs rights guidance.
• National Park Service, “The Middle Passage”.

Source-reported display status: Unknown / not verified. The effective availability above applies the supplied date window; unknown dates are not inferred. Confirm access with the venue.

Defeat History does not sell objects. Historical prices, published estimates and comparable ranges are context, not an offer or a current valuation. Unknown value does not mean zero.

Actual-object image not published; image or rights information is unavailable.

Published October 8, 2026 · Updated October 8, 2026 · Report a correction