This lecture, sponsored by the Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project, presents an overview of  the 350 year history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It has a "before" which presents the African side and the effects of the trade on the Continent, a "middle" that includes how the experiences of the voyage itself affected these diverse captured people, and the "after" life in US territory which eventually led to civil war, the ambivalent Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, and ultimately the 13th Amendment.