If you go
› What: History walk, “Down a Dark Road: The Antebellum Slave Trade in Chattanooga”› When: 2-3:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30› Where: Moccasin Bend National Archaeological District (look for Special Event signs beginning on Manufacturers Road)› Admission: Free› Phone: 706-866-9241, 423-821-7786› Website: www.nps.gov/chch› Note: Wear comfortable shoes and dress appropriately for the weather. Lightweight portable chairs are permitted. Water is recommended.
At first glance, the antebellum watercolor drawing is as charming as one of William Blake's poetic fantasies. Twenty men, women and children walk through a pretty mountain pass. The men wear jaunty straw hats. Everyone is barefoot.
They could be going to a picnic were it not for the two ominous men in black hats riding on horseback, one in front of the group, one behind. They carry whips. Like a Grimm fairy tale, the heart of this scene is infinitely dark.
A verse in curvy script urges the journeyers to dry their tears as they enter Tennessee and leave Virginia behind.
These are slaves walking from Staunton, Va., to Chattanooga, more than 1 million humans bought and sold before the Civil War began.
Visitors won't see this Lewis Miller sketch Saturday, Jan. 30, but they will see and experience something perhaps more enriching: a walk along a similar path within Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.
Now known as the Brown's Ferry Federal Road Trace, the road was a key supply route for Union troops in 1863. Fall and winter of that year, Union artillery entrenched on the bend and periodically exchanged fire with Confederate batteries on Lookout Mountain.
During Saturday's program, "Down a Dark Road: The Antebellum Slave Trade in Chattanooga," park rangers will discuss this tragic, fascinating and essential chapter of local history during a free 1.5-mile walking tour focused on the city's pre-Civil War slave trade.
Participants can join a park ranger at the Moccasin Bend National Archaeological District at 2 p.m. for the 90-minute program along the historic route.
According to park historians, Southerners sold more than 1 million slaves from the Upper South to the Deep South between 1800 and 1860, making it one of the largest migrations of people in the history of the United States.
By 1860, the American slave trade was worth $1 billion - $22 billion in 2016 dollars - one-fifth of the U.S. economy. Rangers will explore just how much of America was built by slave labor: roads, rail lines, dams, government buildings and fields of crops.
Contact Lynda Edwards at ledwards@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6391.