Shambles
The OED gives the following example of a typical early modern usage: "This City hath an hundred and three score Butchers shambles, and in each of them an hundred stalls."
By the 19th century, "shambles" was sometimes being used somewhat metaphorically to describe slave auctions. OED also has an example from the abolitionist poet Whittier, who used the word that way: "Watching round the shambles where human flesh is sold." (Massachusetts to Virginia, 1843) It appears that Frances Harper is using the word in this way -- as a place where Black bodies are bought and sold (but not as a place where their bodies are literally butchered)
