The buying and selling of human beings in Washington, D.C., was not confined to dedicated slave pens — it was woven into the city's everyday commercial life. Establishments like the United States Hotel, Lloyd's Tavern, and Miller's Tavern routinely leased their basements and back rooms as holding cells and auction floors. Enslaved people — many of them separated from their families during sale — were held in these spaces while the floors above hosted politicians, merchants, and foreign dignitaries. This integration of the slave trade into Washington's hospitality and commercial infrastructure illustrates how thoroughly normalized the commodification of Black life was in the early republic. The trade continued openly until Congress, under pressure from abolitionists and as part of the fragile Compromise of 1850, finally prohibited slave trading — though not slavery itself — in the District.