Dumb question maybe, but in the second picture, what are the large half-round things on the ground?
Very harsh living conditions...and then had to toil in the fields and plantation grounds all day....
Well, actually, for these pictures specifically, there was that even worse interlude, where they had to be sold first, shipped elsewhere, put under a new master or overseer, and
then toil in the fields.
I see that several posts have already answered this, but since I have this typed up, what the heck, I'll post it anyway.
These would be the temporary quarters where enslaved people would be housed by a slave trader, awaiting sale, hence the jail-like atmosphere. Slave catchers could also pay by the day to hold slaves in them, waiting for their masters to claim them. They really were just privately run jails, to keep slaves from escaping, while being temporarily held. There were usually hotels nearby for buyers, putting the relative living conditions of whites and blacks in stark contrast. Alexandria and similar upper-south port cities were popular areas for traders, since transportation was easy by ship along the coast down to New Orleans. Elsewhere, they might be taken on foot, by rail or by inland ship.
So, typically, an enslaved person from the surrounding area would be sold or consigned by his/her owner to an agent of a slave trader. When slaves were in high demand, traders would put ads in the paper, "Negroes wanted," or go to estate sales, or just keep in touch with friends of friends who might be selling. An enslaved person might expect what was going to happen, if the master was obviously going bankrupt, or if an owner died and an estate needed settled, or if he/she was caught running away or otherwise causing trouble and was going to be sold south to be gotten rid of.
Once sold or consigned off the plantation to an agent, he/she would be transported with others, acquaintances or strangers from the area, probably on foot, under guard, maybe shackled, and arrive at a slave pen like those pictured. The trader's goal was then to make the wares look as attractive as possible. Those with domestic skills might get new cheap servants' uniforms. The lighter-skinned, attractive females might be headed for the fancy trade in New Orleans, while prime field hands--healthy young men--would be destined for the cotton fields.
When auction day came, or traders arrived for private sales, the people would be brought out for display, sold, then shipped south. Or if the trader bought them on speculation, they might be shipped south to his New Orleans partner--lots of traders kept one partner in the upper south, one in the lower--where the person would arrive at a similar jail down there, then be sold to a final buyer.
Plantation owners were--or pretended to be--as horrified at these slave jails and slave auctions as anyone, because of course
they treated their slaves paternally and never sold them off like that, though of course they did. But slave traders were the scapegoats, credited with the evils of slavery even by slave-owners, and treated as not-quite-genteel citizens, even though they might be richer than those who looked down on them.
A
typical ad for a slave jail in the 1830s in Richmond, was picked up by the abolitionist papers and reprinted many times, offering a fertile field for sarcastic introductory remarks:
NOTICE
The commodious buildings which I have recently had erected in the city of Richmond, are now ready fo rthe accommodation of all persons who may wish their NEGROES safely and comfortably taken care of.
The buildings were erected upon an extensive scale, without regard to cost, my main object being to insure the safe keeping, and, at the same time, the health and comfort of the negroes who may be placed thereat.
The rooms and yards for the females are separate from those for the males, and genteel house servants will have rooms to themselves. The regulations of the establishment will be general cleanliness, moderate exercise, and recreation within the yards during good weather, and good substantial food at all times, by which regulations it is intended that confinement shall be rendered merely nominal, and the health of the negroes so promoted, that they will be well prepared to encounter a change of climate when removed to the south.
A description of a typical jail owner, written with an abolitionist slant, was the following one of Robert Lumpkin, again in Richmond, but things didn't vary significantly in any of the large upper-south trading cities like Alexandria (quoted from
here, p. 187-188, paragraphs added for easier reading):
Brent was accompanied to the jail by one Robert Lumpkin, a noted trader in slaves. This man belonged to a class of persons by whose society the slaveholders of the South profess to feel disgraced, but with whose services, nevertheless, they cannot dispense. He had formerly been engaged exclusively in the traffic in slaves. Roaming over the country, and picking up a husband here, a wife there, a mother in one place, and an alluring maiden in another, he banded them with iron links into a coffle and sent them to the far southern market.
By his ability and success in this remorseless business, he had greatly distinguished himself, and had come to be known as a "bully trader." At this time, however, he had abandoned the business of an itinerant trader, and was established in Richmond as the proprietor of a Trader's Jail.
In this he kept and furnished with board such slaves as were brought into the city for sale, and, generally, all such as their owners wished to punish or to provide with temporary safe keeping. He also kept a boarding-house for the owners themselves.
Lumpkin's Jail was one of the prominent and characteristic features of the capital of Virginia. It was a large brick structure, three stories in height, situated in the outskirts of Richmond, and surrounded by an acre of ground. The whole was enclosed by a high, close fence, the top of which was thickly set with iron spikes.