Coffle
A coffle, sometimes called a platoon or a drove, was a group of enslaved people chained together and marched from one place to another by owners or slave traders. History

In the southern United States before the Civil War, slave traders such as Franklin and Armfield arbitraged slave prices by purchasing slaves at low prices in Mid-Atlantic states such as Virginia, and then reselling them at a higher price in deep-south, especially in New Orleans, Louisiana, and in Natchez, Mississippi, at the notorious Forks of the Road Market. Franklin and Armfield established slave pens near Alexandria, Virginia, to hold slaves, and when a sufficient number were gathered, some were transported by ship. Others were handcuffed to long chains in groups of 100 (a coffle) and force marched to the markets of the deep south, where they would be sold as slaves. Their professions were varied as some would be laborers, seamstresses, carpenters and "fancy girls", who would serve as sex slaves. The trader Austin Woolfolk reportedly wanted to collect nine or more enslaved people in a platoon before he began moving them from place to place. The slave traders rode horses, while the enslaved "women were tied together with a rope about their necks like a halter, while the men wore iron collars, fastened to a chain about a hundred feet long and were also handcuffed." A letter from Georgia written in 1833 described "During this and other days I have passed by many negro traders, who were crossing to Alabama. These negro traders, in order to save expense, usually carry their own provisions, and encamp out at night. Passing many of these encampments early in the morning, when they were just pitching tents, I have observed groups of negroes hand-cuffed, probably to prevent them from running away. The driver told us, that a thousand negroes had gone on his road to Alabama, the present spring." References

Slavery in the United States
Pre-emancipation African-American history
African diaspora history
African slave trade
African-American cultural history
18th century in the United States
19th century in the United States
Social history of the United States