'Sale of estates, pictures and slaves in the Rotunda, New Orleans.' Illustration by W H Brooke FSA, engraved by J M Starling.
The Rotunda in the St Louis Hotel in New Orleans is said to have inspired scenes of enslaved people being sold that Harriet Beecher Stowe described in her ground-breaking 1852 novel, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'.
Plantation owner Judah P Benjamin sold his sugar plantation and enslaved people in the Rotunda in 1852.