How were slaves transported to be sold in the slave markets at Pensacola and new Orleans?

Inter-Coastal

During the peak of the transatlantic slave trade when large slave ships brought enslaved Africans to the Americas to be sold in places such as Pensacola and New Orleans, the vast majority of enslaved people were sent to Brazil, the Caribbean islands, and British North America rather than to the Gulf coast of the present-day U.S. However, some enslaved Africans did pass through Gulf ports on their way to other parts of the Americas. Many of these enslaved people were sick or unfit to continue further in the Middle Passage, the sea voyage that constituted the transatlantic portion of the slave trade. For example, in 1798 a Spanish official reported that a slave ship brought 26 enslaved Africans to Pensacola because they were sick. The governor refused permission to land them, and they were taken to Jamaica.

Intra-Coastal and Regional

After the suppression of the transatlantic slave trade in 1808 many enslaved Africans were brought along the Gulf coast and up the Mississippi River from Florida to Louisiana and from Louisiana to Florida on boats and on foot in chains. Slave traders such as Eliza Bryan, who lived in Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, made many such trips by boat. A few enslaved Africans reached the Gulf coast from West Africa after having been smuggled out illegally.