Newspapers and newspaper printers played a crucial role in brokering the sales of enslaved people in eighteenth-century North America. This dataset collects information from more than 2,100 newspaper advertisements that document printers’ involvement in trafficking thousands of enslaved people. It extends from 1704, when the first long-running newspaper was published in North America, through 1807, after which the transatlantic slave trade officially ended and gradual abolition schemes in the north meant that the internal slave trade shifted slowly to the South. The dataset is useful for those interested in newspaper printers’ involvement in the internal slave trade, as well as particular transactions involving enslaved people. It includes available information about the subjects of each advertisement, as well as the terms of sale or transfer proposed by the advertiser.

The newspapers utilized here were accessed via Readex's America's Historical Newspapers database and Newspapers.com. Note that while many of these newspapers continued publication past 1807, this dataset only includes advertisements through that year. Some newspapers were consulted for this project that are not included in the list above, or in the dataset, because they did not return any relevant results. Most of those are newspapers published for only a short time.