"Nostalgia. An unconquerable desire of returning to one's native country, frequent in long voyages, in which the patients become so insane as to throw themselves into the sea, mistaking it for green fields and meadows. The Swiss are said to be particularly liable to this disease, and when taken into foreign service frequently desert from this cause, and especially after hearing or singing a particular tune, which was used in their village dances, in their native country; on which account their playing or singing this tune was punished with death. Zwingerus.
Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms,
And dear that hill, which lifts him to the storms.
Goldsmith." Zoonomia, Cl. III. 1. 1. 6.
The late indefatigable Rush, in his Inquiry into the Causes of the Derangement of the Human Mind, states, that the slaves imported into the West Indies from Africa, frequently become distracted when they are about to commence the toils of perpetual slavery on the plantations.
N. B. This "indefatigable Rush" was, indeed, indefatigable in puffing himself off for a friend of humanity, in which he was pretty successful too. He made his court to the Quakers, and even exceeded some of them in cunning. It was as puny a creature, in point of talent, as ever contrived to get a reputation for wisdom. Principles he had none: he wrote about every thing, and about nothing well; but, as a pretender to humanity he was consummate. Only mind how he here calls for indignation against the "West India" planters. Not a word about those of his own "free country!" What a hypocrite! He was a Doctor of Physic; and he knew well that he would have lost his best patients, those that paid best for the blood-letting, (for which he was so famous) if he had made free with the Slave-holders of his own "free-country."—W. C.
[20] To those speculators in human flesh, who purchase free people as well as slaves, without discrimination, I must now apply the title of Man-Dealers, instead of Slave Traders.
[21] While interrogating him about the manner of his being seized and bound, he gave his chains a shake, by moving his feet on the floor, and with vexation muttered, "When the devil gets 'em he'll chain them." "No, no," said I, "you shouldn't make such speeches as that, perhaps they were brought up to such things, and don't know any better." "Well but," said he, "they know what's right." I have since been assured, that several instances of black man-stealing had occurred, in which fathers, sons, brothers, and even wives and daughters, were promiscuously engaged.
[22] I was informed, on my arrival in the neighbourhood where this affair was transacted, that this person, on hearing that the mulatto man had been intercepted at Washington, said he had a bad pain on his mind, and believed he should clear out; which he had done accordingly.
[23] Thos. Clarkson states, in his History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, that "the arrival of slave ships on the coasts of Africa was the uniform signal for the immediate commencement of wars for the attainment of prisoners, for sale and exportation to America and the West Indies." In Maryland and Delaware, the same drama is now performed in miniature. The arrival of the Man-Traffickers, laden with cash, at their respective stations, near the coasts of a great American water, called justly, by Mr. Randolph, "a Mediterranean sea," or at their several inland posts, near the dividing line of Maryland and Delaware, (at some of which they have grated prisons for the purpose) is the well known signal for the professed kidnappers, like beasts of prey, to commence their nightly invasions upon the fleecy flocks; extending their ravages, (generally attended with bloodshed, and sometimes murder,) and spreading terror and consternation amongst both freemen and slaves throughout the sandy regions, from the western to the eastern shores. These "two-legged featherless animals," or human bloodhounds, when overtaken (rarely) by the messengers of law, are generally found armed with instruments of death, sometimes with pistols with latent spring daggers attached to them! Mr. Cooper, one of the representatives to congress from Delaware, assured me that he had often been afraid to send one of his servants out of his house in the evening, from the danger of their being seized by kidnappers.
While at Wilmington (Del.) I accidentally heard a black woman telling the gate-keeper of the bridge, that she had set out to go to Georgetown, (Del.) but was returning without having reached it, for fear of being caught on the road by the kidnappers.
[24] I was informed in Delaware, that her seller absconded in about ten days after the outrage was committed.