My first resource is http://omekahst251.jenniferandrella.com/admin/items/show/43 and my second source is http://omekahst251.jenniferandrella.com/admin/items/show/45.
The first resource talk about the situation of people at 1859 sold and brought slaves as an item and the second is the History Behind a Slave’s Bill of Sale This would be a terrible things for the world even all human being. People should not be marked as a price because people is priceless. Buying a slave is just like an item in the shopping mall. They used these salves to plant and mine sliver and gold. They did not receive any payment and even not enough food for them. Finally they will die because of starving or high intensity work. Slaves had no independent personality, no freedom or rights, and the descendants of slaves were slaves for generations. Slave owners possessed the means of production and full possession of slaves; slave owners and slaves were nakedly exploited and exploited, slaves had no personal freedom and worked entirely under the coercion of slave owners; and the products created by slave labor were all in the possession and domination of slave owners, who gave slaves only a minimum of living materials. Before the Civil War, plantation slave owners in the South tended to export industrial raw materials such as cotton, blue indigo and sugar cane to European countries such as Britain in exchange for high prices and cheap industrial goods from European countries. This has resulted in the loss of the North’s market for raw materials and industrial goods in the South. And the civil war solved the problem. In order to preserve their rule, slave owners also deceived and paralysed slaves ideologically, and they made up falsehoods that slavery was permanent in order to keep slaves at the status quo, to their own destiny, and not to resist. The vast number of slaves were bound by physical and intangible shackles, subjected to cruel exploitation and oppression, and living the darkest and saddest lives.
Its crazy to think as the Souther confederacy grew so much in power, and how the use of slaves as a form of capital gains was able to support a whole nation! Why do you think they needed able bodies for purchase? Do you think it was for mass producing cotton to sell to other communities? Do you think it was laziness so they saw an opportunity to exploit people? Do you think stereotypes enforced this kind of treatment? I think they saw it as an investment that would later pay off in the long run! Lastly do you think they had any form of morals that made them think they should stop this mistreatment?
These are great thoughts and context supporting your two sources, Yaoyu. From looking at the newspaper advertisement, the illustrations of enslaved icons in a variety of poses (performing work) stood out to me. I would imagine that in the Antebellum period, that type of imagery might have been incorporated on purpose to attract readers looking to purchase and enslave people.