“Fifty Dollars Reward.
“Ran away from the subscriber, on Saturday, the 21st instant, a slave named George, between twenty and twenty-four years of age, five feet five or six inches high, slender made, stoops when standing, a little bow legged; generally wears right and left boots and shoes; had on him when he left a fur cap, a checked stock, and linen roundabout; had with him other clothing, a jean coat with black horn buttons, a pair of jean pantaloons, both coat and pantaloons of handsome grey mixed; no doubt other clothing not recollected. He had with him a common silver watch; he wears his pantaloons generally very tight in the legs. Said boy is in a manner white, would be passed by and taken for a white man. His hair is long and straight, like that of a white person; looks very steady when spoken to, speaks slowly, and would not be likely to look a person full in the face when speaking to him. It is believed he is making his way to Canada by way of Ohio. I will give twenty dollars for the apprehension of said slave if taken in the county, or fifty dollars if taken out of the county, and secured so that I recover him again.
“Andrew Beirne, junior,
“Union Monroe City,
“July 31st, 1838. Virginia.”
The above is a curious document, independently of its proving the manner in which man preys upon his fellow-man in this land of liberty and equality. It is a well-known fact, that a considerable portion of Mr Jefferson’s slaves were his own children. If any of them absconded, he would smile, thereby implying that he should not be very particular in looking after them; and yet this man, this great and good man, as Miss Martineau calls him, this man who penned the paragraph I have quoted, as having been erased from the Declaration of Independence, who asserted that the slavery of the negro was a violation of the most sacred rights of life and liberty, permitted these his slaves and his children, the issue of his own loins, to be sold at auction after his demise, not even emancipating them, as he might have done, before his death. And, but lately, a member of congress for Georgia, whose name I shall not mention, brought up a fine family of children, his own issue by a female slave; for many years acknowledged them us his own children; permitted them to call him by the endearing title of papa, and eventually the whole of them were sold by public auction, and that, too, during his own lifetime!
But there is, I am sorry to say, a more horrible instance on record and one well authenticated. A planter of good family (I shall not mention his name or the state in which it occurred, as he was not so much to blame as were the laws), connected himself with one of his own female slaves, who was nearly white; the fruits of this connexion were two daughters, very beautiful girls, who were sent to England to be educated.
They were both grown up when their father died. At his death his affairs were found in a state of great disorder; in fact, there was not sufficient left to pay his creditors. Having brought up and educated these two girls and introduced them as his daughters, it quite slipped his memory that, having been born of a slave, and not manumitted, they were in reality slaves themselves. This fact was established after his decease; they were torn away from the affluence and refinement to which they had been accustomed, sold and purchased as slaves, and with the avowed intention of the purchaser to reap his profits from their prostitution it must not, however, be supposed that the planters of Virginia and the other Eastern states, encourage this intercourse; on the contrary, the young men who visit at the plantations cannot affront them more than to take notice of their slaves, particularly the lighter coloured, who are retained in the house and attend upon their wives and daughters. Independently of the moral feeling which really guides them (as they naturally do not wish that the attendants of their daughters should be degraded) it is against their interest in case they should wish to sell; as a mulatto or light male will not fetch so high a price as a full-blooded negro; the cross between the European and negro; especially the first cross, i.e. the mulatto, is of a sickly constitution, and quite unable to bear up against the fatigue of field labour in the West. As the race becomes whiter, the stamina is said to improve.
Examining into the question of emancipation in America, the first inquiry will be, how far this consummation is likely to be effected by means of the abolitionists. Miss Martineau, in her book, says, “The good work has begun, and will proceed.” She is so far right; it has begun, and has been progressing very fast, as may be proved by the single fact of the abolitionists having decided the election in the state of Ohio in October last. But let not Miss Martineau exult; for the stronger the abolition party may become, the more danger is there to be apprehended of a disastrous conflict between the states.
The fact is that, by the constitution of the United States, the federal government have not only no power to interfere or to abolish slavery, but they are bound to maintain it; the abolition of slavery is expressly withheld. The citizens of any state may abolish slavery in their own state but the federal government cannot do so without an express violation of the federal compact. Should all the states in the Union abolish slavery, with the exception of one, and that one be Maryland, (the smallest of the whole of the states,) neither the federal government, or the other states could interfere with her. The federal compact binds the general government, “first, not to meddle with the slavery of the states where it exists, and next, to protect it in the case of runaway slaves, and to defend it in case of invasion or domestic violence on account of it.”