The Historic New Orleans Collection's newest exhibition, "Purchased Lives: New Orleans and the Domestic Slave Trade, 1808-1865," examines the individuals involved in the trade and considers New Orleans's role in this era of U.S. history. The free exhibition, which opened to the public today at THNOC's Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres St., will remain on view through July 18, 2015. The forced migration wreaked havoc on the lives of enslaved families, as owners and traders in the Upper South-Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia and Washington, DC-sold and shipped surplus laborers to the expanding agricultural lands of the Lower South-Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.