"River" was a literal reference to the Mississippi or Ohio rivers. For much of the first half of the nineteenth century, Louisville, Ky., was one of the largest slave trading marketplaces in the country. Slaves would be taken to Louisville to be "sold down the river" and transported to the cotton plantations in states further south.
In his 2010 history of the Mississippi River, journalist Lee Sandlin said that "the threat of being 'sold down the river' was seen as tantamount to a death sentence."
Because white planters valued men over women as laborers, were far more likely to be "sold down the river." In addition to the tragedy of being separated from family to be sent down the river meant a sentence of brutally hard labor. As the global demand for cotton grew, the demand for more and more slave labor grew at an equally large pace.
