Witness a slave auction

If their masters had money problems, too many slaves or other reasons for not wanting them anymore, they sold the slaves.

Therefore they had auctions at the slave-market where they offered their slaves - sometimes the whole family, sometimes only one family member. The slaves where shown to the bidders and they had to say the price they would pay to buy them.

But who could have stopped the auction?

If the slaves had tried to run away, they lived on their own from then on. Lots of them had no experiences in living on their own, and therefore many died of starvation and illness.

The Clergyman would not stop the auction, because it was said that the bible supports slavery, and if a clergyman would have tried to stop the sale, he would have lost his congregation.

Also the Banker wouldn't stop the auction, because his bank would lose money and his collegues and friends would be upset if they heard about it.

The Justice and the Journalist wouldn't stop the auction either. I'ts possible that they owned slaves themselves to help them to work, and if they tried to stop slavery, they would loose customers.

It's certain that the Seller, the Auctioneer and the Bidder would not try to stop the auction.

So in this case, nobody would have stopped the auction, because everyone would have been in trouble after hindering the auction. The reason for that was that slavery was allowed at this time and there was no law against it.