[14] It is a notorious and afflicting truth, that in the United States, the head of a poor black man has been cut off with impunity, by a white man (or master;) that black men have been wantonly shot by white men; and that a free black man (whom I have seen myself) was hoppled, and being unsuccessfully offered for sale as a slave, was bound to a post in the winter, and left without food until his feet were frozen, where he would probably have perished, had he not extricated himself by his own struggles.
[15] This statement was furnished by a respectable citizen, who was one of the first that found the dead body, near his own house.
N.B. Nothing can more strongly indicate the true state of the case than this disguising of names. The Author dared put his name; but he was in Pennsylvania: he would, probably have exposed his Maryland-informant to death by naming him. W. C.
[16] It is a frequent custom in the district of Columbia, Maryland, and Delaware, for masters to endeavour to reform their bad slaves, by terrifying them with threats of selling them for the Georgia market, or "to Carolina" them; which is often carried into effect. There are, notwithstanding, several individuals, so conscientiously opposed to selling men against their will, that the most unpardonable conduct will not induce men to do it; and they prefer rejecting them, and letting them keep all the wages they can get for their own use.
[17] One of the members of the house of representatives (Mr. Adgate,) related to me, while at Washington, the following fact:—"That during the last session of congress, (1815-16,) as several members were standing in the street, near the new capitol, a drove of manacled coloured people were passing by; and when just opposite, one of them elevating his manacles as high as he could reach, commenced singing the favorite national song, "Hail Columbia! happy land," &c.
N.B. This is an excessively stupid song, written more than 20 years ago by one Hopkinson, a lawyer of Philadelphia, who seems to have been born to be an ornament of Grub-Street. But, however silly the thoughts or inflated the expressions, down it goes if national vanity or party strife lay hold of it. "Hail Columbia" is much about upon a level with "God save the king;" they have both had about the same cause to keep them in vogue; but, I must confess, that the Americans, with manacles on their hands and chains round their necks, singing songs in praise of the freedom of that Country, is going a little further than our fools when they bleat and bellow and bawl out that parcel of stuff, that low bombast, which the news-papers, in their cant, call "Our great National Anthem;" an "Anthem" that talks, amongst other things, of "confounding politicks and all their knavish tricks!" Come, come: we must not pretend to laugh at the Washington Negro!—W. C.
[18] Judge Morrel, in his charge to the grand jury of Washington, at the session of the circuit court of the United States, in January 1816, for the district of Columbia, urged this subject to its attention very emphatically, as an object of remonstrance and juridical investigation. He said the frequency with which the streets of the city had been crowded with manacled captives, sometimes even on the sabbath, could not fail to shock the feelings of all humane persons; that it was repugnant to the spirit of our political institutions, and the rights of man, and he believed was calculated to impair the public morals, by familiarizing scenes of cruelty to the minds of youth.
[19] Extract from the preamble to the first act passed by the legislature of Pennsylvania, for the gradual abolition of slavery in that state:
"Sect. 2. And whereas the condition of those persons who have heretofore been denominated negro and mulatto slaves, has been attended with circumstances which not only deprived them of the common blessings that they were by nature entitled to, but has cast them into the deepest afflictions by an unnatural separation of husband and wife from each other and from their children—an injury the greatness of which can only be conceived by supposing that we were in the same unhappy case," &c.
Darwin, who may well be styled an arch connoisseur, both in physiology and morality, in his classification of human diseases, includes one which he denominates Nostalgia, and thus defines it: