Historian Joshua D. Rothman discusses his best-selling book about the brutal business of slave traders Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard. Based in Alexandria, Virginia, the Franklin & Armfield slave-trading operation was the largest in our country’s history. Thousands of enslaved men, women, and children – many from Northern Virginia – were forced on a grueling march or boat passage to the deep south where they were sold in the domestic slave trade. Countless people died along the way.