Where was this? St. Charles Avenue contained 25 separate places within a couple of blocks of the St. Charles Hotel (where was that? CBD? How many sales? Who were the buyers? stub)

Who were the buyers? Mostly plantation owners. The number of slaves in the city dropped because of the high prices the plantations were willing to pay. Starting in 1804 the US had a prohibition against importing slaves so most of the slaves in the deep south had been "sold south" from the Virginia and Maryland tobacco farms when the tobacco prices dropped.

What was the price of a slave in 1860? It seems like $1,500 to $2,000 was typical on the New Orleans slave exchange. In 2000 dollars that's $35,000-45,000 the price of a big SUV or luxury sedan. Of course if you were a plantation owner you had the equivalent of millions at your disposal.

Links to documents
A story
The complete story
Immigrants including slaves