Archaeologists know that Robert Rumpkin's slave prison is located in the lowest place in Richmond, Virginia, which is a depression called Shoko Bottom. From 1930s to the Civil War, Richmond was the largest American slave trade center outside New Orleans, and the buildings in Lumpkin were called "Devil's Half-acre Land", which was located in a swamp of tobacco warehouses, gallows and African-American cemeteries. This winter, after five months of excavation, researchers found the foundations of two half-story brick houses, where hundreds of people were confined and tortured. The city's most notorious slave prison is buried nearly 65,438+04 feet underground, on a hill 8 feet below other buildings in Lompkin. Matthew Laird said: "The relevant content is the discovery of active fungi in Antarctica and the discovery of a lot of evidence in Southeast Asia." "People inside will feel surrounded and trapped." His company, James River Ecological Research Institute, discovered this land of 80× 160 feet. On a rainy day in June+February, 5438, the construction site was a deep and rough pit full of mud pits. Divide the soaked workers into two layers with an old brick wall.

A century and a half ago, there were many vehicles between the upper floors of the building complex, which was the place where the owners lived and entertained guests; The lower classes are slaves waiting to be sold. Lampkin is a "bully businessman" and is regarded as a person with cruel talent. He has five children with a black woman named Mary, who used to be a slave and later became his wife and took his name. Mary had at least some contact with her husband's unfortunate prisoner, and once she secretly sent a hymn to an escaped slave named Anthony Burns.

"Imagine the pressure and everything she has to go through," said dolores McQueen, chairman of the Richmond Slave Tracking Committee, which is responsible for promoting McQueen. People knew the history of the city before the war and sponsored most of the excavation work.

Although the prison in Lumpkin is only three blocks away from today's state capitol, "no one knows about it" except local history lovers. /kloc-razed to the ground in the 1970s or 1980s, Lampkin's prison and other buildings were buried under a university parking lot for a long time, and some of them disappeared forever under the roaring zone of Interstate 95. It was not until 2005 that the plan of the new baseball field threatened the site, and archaeologists used historical maps to accurately locate the site, and the protection work was coordinated.

Since McQueen first came to this place in 2003, this place has been bothering her since she first knew its existence. "I started crying and couldn't stop. Someone is present. " I feel a bond, "she said, which is a heavy feeling that I feel again and again.

From August to 65438+February, Laird and his team found evidence of kitchens and cobblestone courtyards on the upper floors of Lumpkin, just as James B.Simmons, the abolitionist minister, called the prison in 1895, but it was not until the last few weeks of work that they confirmed that they had found the prison. Even so, they can't do more, because the groundwater in the nearby stream fills the ditch almost at the fastest speed. However, decades of humidity also has its advantages. Because oxygen can't penetrate wet soil, bacteria that usually decompose organic matter can't survive. As a result, many details of daily life have been preserved: wooden toothbrushes, leather shoes and cloth.

Archaeologists have not found whipping rings, iron bars or other rough slave handicrafts, but there are traces of life in the compound. Tableware fragments include exquisite hand-painted British porcelain and rough pottery. Some dolls of a child were also found on the website, which is a hint of playing in a place where someone gave in because of hunger. Whose doll is this? Does its owner also belong to someone? "

PhilipSchwarz, Professor Emeritus of Robert Lenski, Department of History in virginia commonwealth university, said that he had been studying the Rumpkins for many years. Rumpkin's career began as a travel businessman. Before buying Richmond's existing prison compound in the 1940s, he traveled in the south and bought unwelcome slaves. There was a designated "whipping room" where slaves were whipped to the ground. This prison is a clearing house for people and a purgatory for rebels.

Burns, an escaped slave, was recovered in Boston after fleeing Virginia and returned to Richmond according to the Slave Escape Act. He was held in Lampkin prison for four months in 1854, until the abolitionists in the north bought his freedom. According to the description given by Burns to his biographer, Charles Emery Stevens, the slave was isolated in a room "only six to eight feet square" with a trap door on the top floor. Most of the time, he was handcuffed and shackled, which led to "his feet swollen badly ... the shackles also made him unable to take off his clothes during the day and night, and no one came to help him ... his room became dirtier and noisier than the animal hut; The abominable reptiles increase and make trouble in the filth. " He ate carrion and seldom drank water, and soon became seriously ill. Through a crack in the floor, he saw a slave girl in shopping clothes.

Meanwhile, Lampkin sent his two mixed-race daughters to Massachusetts to complete their studies. According to Charles Henry Corey, a former pastor of the Union Army, Lampkin later sent these girls and their mothers to live in a free state in Pennsylvania, fearing that "when his own beautiful daughters may be sold as slaves to pay their debts, financial accidents may occur." Schwartz said,

1865 When Lampkin was in Richmond in April, the city became an allied soldier. The businessman crowded 50 slaves with crying men, women and children, trying to board a train bound for the south, but there was no room. He died shortly after the war. Lampkin only described Mary as a person who lived with me in his will. Nevertheless, he left all his real estate to her.

1867, a baptist priest named Nathaniel Colver was looking for a place for the black seminary he wanted to open. After a day of prayer, he took to the streets of the city, where he met a group of "colored people" Mary, and recalled that she was a "tall white, almost white free woman, who said she had a place she thought I could have." Mary rented Lampkin's prison as the seat of Virginia United University, which is now located in Lombard Street, Richmond.

Simmons wrote: "The old slave circle is no longer the devil's half acre, but God's half acre."

Mary Lampkin and one of her daughters continue to run a restaurant in Louisiana. She died in New Richmond, Ohio on 1905 at the age of 72.

Mcqueen is also a minister, and he hopes this place will become a museum one day. She said that although the book has been reprinted for the time being, it will never be forgotten: "The sweetest part," she said, "is that now we have a story to tell."

Abigail Tucker is a full-time writer of the Smithsonian Institution.

Robert Rankin's sketch of a slave prison in Richmond, Virginia. (Provided by Richmond City Council Slave Road Committee) Prisons excavated by archaeologists must deal with the groundwater filled by trenches as soon as possible. (Provided by David M Duddy/Richmond City Council Slave Trial Committee) Mary Lampkin secretly gave a hymn to the captured slave Anthony Burns. (Library of Congress, USA)