Richmond was the principal exporting hub of the Upper South's domestic slave trade, second only to New Orleans in the overall volume of people sold. Dozens of auction houses, slave jails, and holding pens were packed into a few blocks of the Shockoe Bottom district, concentrated along Wall Street (today's 15th Street) and Franklin Street. Robert Lumpkin's jail, nicknamed the 'Devil's Half Acre,' was among the largest of these compounds and later became the founding site of Virginia Union University.