Gadsden’s Wharf served as the sole landing site for enslaved people from 1806 to 1808

Christopher Gadsden purchased fifteen acres of high land and twenty-nine acres of marsh here in 1758. He began building a private wharf in 1767 to avoid paying fees at other docks. To create the structure, workers used 3,650 pine piles to outline a frame, filled the marsh with 1,100 cords of pine logs, and laid 64,000 bushels of oyster shells to create causeways for carts. By January 1774, the 840-foot wharf was complete.

For decades, ships carrying enslaved people docked at various locations throughout the city. This changed on 17 February 1806, when the Charleston City Council passed an ordinance requiring all vessels importing people from abroad to dock exclusively at Gadsden’s Wharf. The first ship to land under this law was a British vessel named the Duddon, which arrived on 20 February 1806 with 173 people on board. Its owners initially advertised the sale at Vanderhorst’s Wharf before moving the notice to Gadsden’s Wharf two days later.

Between February 1806 and the end of 1807, roughly 30,000 people arrived at this site across nearly 200 voyages. As the federal prohibition on the trade approached on 1 January 1808, merchants held people in the wharf’s warehouses, waiting for prices to rise. During those final months, captives died in the warehouses from fever, exposure, and frostbite.

The area now occupied by the Fort Sumter visitor centre at Liberty Square sits on the northeastern corner of the wharf's historic boundaries. Roughly 40 per cent of all enslaved Africans brought to what became the United States arrived through the port of Charleston.