Original set of Southern shackles c. 1850s.
Of the wide variety of restraints, these leg shackles have a larger chain link (seen at left) through which another chain might pass. When forcibly marching slaves en masse in a “coffle,” two individuals would be manacled together side-by-side at the wrist or ankle, and a long chain passed through it and others up and down the line.
Formed typically of a dozen or so individuals, upwards of 90 persons might form a single coffle, sometimes trekking many hundreds of miles – each mile excruciating, as told by Solomon Northrop (c.1808 – unknown), who was coffled from Alexandria, Virginia, all the way to the Mississippi River before boarding a boat for Louisiana in 1841, and recounted in his famous 1853 narrative, Twelve Years a Slave.
Between 1810 and 1860, some half-million slaves were transplanted to Louisiana.