Forrest & Maples Slave Market

My point exactly. Your new cook may turn out to be a serial killer.:sneaky:

Of course that was a real problem, and states tried to deal with it various ways. Especially after Nat Turner, there was a fear in the lower south that the upper south was just dumping its criminals out of state. Some of the deep south states banned the importation of slaves unless brought in by their owners, but that didn't last long, because people needed slaves. Sometimes there was a certificate of good character required.

On an individual level, some slave traders offered money-back guarantees, but there were countless lawsuits about slaves that had been misrepresented. Traders did have ways of "fixing up" slaves like used cars, to make them appear at their best at least temporarily, and of course slaves played the game themselves, trying to make themselves more or less attractive depending on whether they wanted to be sold or bought by any particular buyer.

Juliet signal., August 16, 1864, Image 1
View attachment 18318

What the heck is that? :O o: I guess it's a spoof on people paying for substitutes for the army. Among all the slave trading ads and articles, one of these things is not like the other, LOL!
 
Here's another really ugly part of the slave industry: negro dogs -

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This ad was originally published in the Dadeville Banner (Alabama), and was republished in Frederick Douglass' Paper, April 8, 1859.

Runaway slaves were not the only people that had to worry about being chased down by a pack of dogs - this article is from the Charleston Courier, November 18, 1857:

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The use of Cuban bloodhounds in the earlier circa-1840 Seminole War was a big controversy.

I've been trying to understand more what typical slave-catching hounds were like. One complication is that Cuban bloodhounds weren't anything like what we think of as bloodhounds. They had upright ears, and were larger and more aggressive, probably looking something like this:

perro_de_presa.jpg


Here's a crude drawing of one, "Spot," a bloodhound kept at Andersonville prison:

Expired Image Removed

Those dogs were good at catching people, not so much at tracking a trail by scent, so slave-catchers also kept tracking hounds, which seem to be more like typical hunting hounds today. The testimony from General Wirz's trial goes into a fair amount of detail about the dogs and how they were used, and I suspect it was similar to how slave-catchers used their dogs. For example: http://books.google.com/books?id=SfELAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA257

But it's hard to tell from any given report what kinds of dogs were being referred to. For example, the "hounds" in the Dadeville ad, I suspect, would be hunting hounds, or a mixture. Frederick Law Olmsted said, "No particular breed of dogs is needed for hunting negroes: blood-hounds, fox-hounds, bull-dogs, and curs were used, and one white man told me how they were trained for it, as if it were a common or notorious practice. they are shut up when puppies, and never allowed to see a negro except while training to catch him. A negro is made to run from them, and they are encouraged to follow him until he gets into a tree, when meat is given them. Afterwards they learn to follow any particular negro by scent, and then a shoe or a piece of clothing is taken off a negro, and they learn to find by scent who it belongs to, and to tree him, etc. I don't think they are employed in the ordinary driving in the swamp, but only to overtake some particular slave, as soon as possible after it is discovered that he has fled from a plantation."

He has a footnote: "I have since seen a pack of negro-dogs, chained in couples, and probably going to the field. They were all of a breed, and in appearance between a Scotch stag-hound and a fox-hound."

So maybe something like this:

Expired Image Removed

There are numerous drawings and paintings of slaves being caught by dogs, but the vast majority are by anti-slavery people, who may have been using their imagination and research almost as much as us, rather than being eye-witnesses.

Here's an example of the foxhound type:
Expired Image Removed

And another of the Cuban bloodhound type, painted in England, c. 1860:

Expired Image Removed

And one, too big to post, that shows more of the staghound type than either foxhound or Cuban bloodhound:
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1863/november/bloodhounds.jpg

I'd be interested in any images or descriptions of slave-catching dogs by sympathetic southern eyewitnesses, if anyone knows of any, to eliminate the bias of being filtered through northern eyes.
 
The use of Cuban bloodhounds in the earlier circa-1840 Seminole War was a big controversy.

I've been trying to understand more what typical slave-catching hounds were like. One complication is that Cuban bloodhounds weren't anything like what we think of as bloodhounds. They had upright ears, and were larger and more aggressive, probably looking something like this:

perro_de_presa.jpg


Here's a crude drawing of one, "Spot," a bloodhound kept at Andersonville prison:

Expired Image Removed

Those dogs were good at catching people, not so much at tracking a trail by scent, so slave-catchers also kept tracking hounds, which seem to be more like typical hunting hounds today. The testimony from General Wirz's trial goes into a fair amount of detail about the dogs and how they were used, and I suspect it was similar to how slave-catchers used their dogs. For example: http://books.google.com/books?id=SfELAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA257

But it's hard to tell from any given report what kinds of dogs were being referred to. For example, the "hounds" in the Dadeville ad, I suspect, would be hunting hounds, or a mixture. Frederick Law Olmsted said, "No particular breed of dogs is needed for hunting negroes: blood-hounds, fox-hounds, bull-dogs, and curs were used, and one white man told me how they were trained for it, as if it were a common or notorious practice. they are shut up when puppies, and never allowed to see a negro except while training to catch him. A negro is made to run from them, and they are encouraged to follow him until he gets into a tree, when meat is given them. Afterwards they learn to follow any particular negro by scent, and then a shoe or a piece of clothing is taken off a negro, and they learn to find by scent who it belongs to, and to tree him, etc. I don't think they are employed in the ordinary driving in the swamp, but only to overtake some particular slave, as soon as possible after it is discovered that he has fled from a plantation."

He has a footnote: "I have since seen a pack of negro-dogs, chained in couples, and probably going to the field. They were all of a breed, and in appearance between a Scotch stag-hound and a fox-hound."

So maybe something like this:

Expired Image Removed

There are numerous drawings and paintings of slaves being caught by dogs, but the vast majority are by anti-slavery people, who may have been using their imagination and research almost as much as us, rather than being eye-witnesses.

Here's an example of the foxhound type:
Expired Image Removed

And another of the Cuban bloodhound type, painted in England, c. 1860:

Expired Image Removed

And one, too big to post, that shows more of the staghound type than either foxhound or Cuban bloodhound:
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1863/november/bloodhounds.jpg

I'd be interested in any images or descriptions of slave-catching dogs by sympathetic southern eyewitnesses, if anyone knows of any, to eliminate the bias of being filtered through northern eyes.

August 26,1862.
"Released another negro from his iron yoke,and ball and chain,with which he had
traveled 18 miles.His ear had been cut off,to mark him,and he had been well
branded with the hot iron.His flesh was badly lacerated with the whip,and torn
by dogs,but he escaped,and I have just dressed his wounds with sweet oil.There
is little hope that he will live."
Diary of a Christian Soldier,
Rufus Kinsley and the Civil War,by Davis C.Rankin
 
In Army Life in a Black Regiment, Col. Higginson mentions his black soldiers shooting these types of dogs.

Thanks!
P. 230: "...turned out to be what was called in those regions a 'dog-company,' consisting of mounted riflemen with half a dozen trained bloodhounds. The men met these dogs with their bayonets, killed four or five of their old tormenters with great relish, and brought away the carcass of one. I had the creature skinned, and sent the skin to New York to be stuffed and mounted, meaning to exhibit it at the Sanitary Commission Fair in Boston; but it spoiled on the passage." These quadruped allies were not originally intended as 'dogs of war,' but simply to detect fugitive slaves, and the men were delighted at this confirmation of their tales of dog-companies, which some of the officers had always disbelieved."

Again, it's hard to tell what they looked like. They might have been called "bloodhounds" because they were truly the Cuban bloodhound type, or Higginson might have used the word for other hounds or hound mixes because that was generic word he was used to hearing for any dog that hunted slaves.
 
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