And the slaves had a pretty clear idea of the meaning of the war. They knew that their own bondage was the real bone of contention. They believed that their chains were to be broken and that they would soon be free. Very early in the war the slaves saw the drift of events. As they met each other they gave joyful expression to their expectation of freedom, believing it to be near at hand. The morning after Camp Jackson was taken, all the equipage of the camp was carried in army wagons down the street near my door. Out of curiosity a promiscuous crowd had gathered at the corner of the street to see the sight. Two female slaves belonging to a family near by stood there grinning with delight. A young woman, a pronounced secessionist, from one of the Gulf States, said, with an air of triumph, stretching out her arm and excitedly shaking her hand, “We’ll whip you yet.” In response, quick as a flash, the two slave girls, pointing to the loaded wagons, gleefully cried out, “They’ve got all your tents.” I knew those slaves, but had not known that they had any interest in the war. However, it was now clear that they understood its real meaning and took sides with the Unionists.
But slave-pens were a necessary adjunct of slavery. Even though, by barbarous laws, men, women and children were made chattels, they still continued to feel, think and will. And since many of them abhorred their condition, it was necessary to pen them up so that they might be securely kept and safely handled. Without thick stone walls, windows barred with iron, strong doors locked and bolted, such property while being bought and sold might vanish.
When in my pulpit, facing my congregation, I also faced, only half a square away, a hideous slave-pen. It was kept by Mr. Lynch, an ominous name. I sometimes saw men and women, handcuffed and chained together, in a long two-by-two column, driven in there under the crack of the driver’s whip, as though they were so many colts or calves. Had they committed any crime? Oh, no, they had been bought, in different parts of the State, by speculators, as one would buy up beef-cattle, and were kept in the pen to be sold to the good people of St. Louis and of the surrounding towns and country districts; and those not thus disposed of were bought by slave-dealers for the New Orleans market.
In 1859, some preachers from the eastern States, who had been at New Orleans, attending the annual meeting of the Young Men’s Christian Association of the United States, on their return to their homes, stopped for three or four days in our city. They painted in glowing terms the lavish and delicate hospitality that they had received in the commercial capital of Louisiana. Appreciating the truth of all they said, I nevertheless asked them if they visited the famous slave market of that city. They said that they did not. I affirmed that they had missed a great opportunity of seeing the other side of the picture; that when they had seen and experienced the Christian hospitality of that old Spanish and French city, they ought also to have viewed in contrast a slave auction there—as heartless and cruel a scene as the wide earth afforded. Regretting that they had so superficially done New Orleans, they said, “Have you any slave markets here?” I replied, “We have some slave-pens, but they are as paradise to perdition to the slave market down there. Nevertheless, to-morrow I will show you the sights, slave-pens included.”
In the morning, three or four of the residents of the city joined us, so that we had a party of nine. We first visited the Mercantile Library with its treasures of art. “Now,” I said, “since we are always impressed by contrasts, let us go from tasteful rooms, books and art to Lynch’s slave-pen.” All were agreed, and we were soon on our way. I had some slight acquaintance with Mr. Lynch, having often spoken to him as he sat out on the sidewalk in warm weather before his pen. He was sitting there when we arrived. “Good morning, Mr. Lynch,” I said, “these gentlemen wish to go into your slave-pen.” “Certainly,” he said, “gentlemen, I am glad to see you.” He evidently thought that we had come to trade with him. As we entered the room immediately in front of the pen, one of the party, a tall ungainly-looking lawyer, full of humor and fun, said, “Mr. Lynch, look out for these fellows, they are a pack of abolitionists.” Lynch received the declaration simply as a chaffing joke and laughed heartily. It was, however, sober truth. He put his great iron key into the lock, turned back the bolt, swung open the door, and turning his face towards us, said, “Gentlemen, I have not much stock on hand to-day.” Every man in our company was shocked beyond expression by that brutal announcement. We filed solemnly in. He shut the door and left us alone and undisturbed to examine his “stock.” The room was in shape a parallelogram. It was plastered and had one small window high up near the ceiling. There was no floor but the bare earth. Three backless, wooden benches stood next to the walls. There were seven slaves there, both men and women, herded together, without any arrangement for privacy. Some of the slaves were trying to while away their time by playing at marbles. One fairly good-looking woman about forty years old, tearfully entreated us to buy her, promising over and over again to be faithful and good. In that sad entreaty one could detect the harrowing fear of being sold down South. Her plaint was more than a good pastor from Troy, N. Y., could endure. Coming up close to my side he said, “For God’s sake, Anderson, let us get out of here!” I rapped on the door; Mr. Lynch opened it; we thanked him for his kindness, bade him good day, and marched silently down the street. There was now no joking, no merriment. We turned the corner into another street. We were hidden from Lynch’s gaze. My friend from Troy stopped; in indignation he stamped his foot; he was in agony of spirit; he planted his heel on the brick sidewalk and, turning the toe of his foot hither and thither again and again, he ground the brick under his heel. It was an instinctive bodily movement, an irrepressible outward expression of his intense desire to grind slavery to powder. At last he exclaimed, “Thank God, I never had anything to do with that.” “Don’t be too sure about that,” I replied, “how have you voted? Now,” I added, “let us go to a slave-pen at the corner of Fifth and Myrtle Streets, where they keep little colored boys and girls for sale.” “No,” he vehemently replied, “I will not go a step, I have seen enough. You could not hire me to go there with all the gold in California.”
This pen where slave children were kept was much larger than Lynch’s. The traffic in children seemed to be specially brisk and profitable. The inmates of this grim prison-house were from about five to sixteen years old. Both sexes were there. When the slave-trader bought a mother and her children, she was sometimes for a season shut up with her brood in that hated place. Every few weeks there was an auction of these black children, with all of its repulsive, heart-breaking scenes. On one such occasion the auctioneer commended to a crowd a beautiful mulatto girl, about sixteen years old, as having the blood of a United States senator running in her veins. Some in that gaping throng listened with delight; but a gentleman from the East, a mild-mannered man, unexpectedly flamed out with indignation, and denounced the auctioneer and the whole vile slave-trade. For this drastic, burning denunciation he was threatened with violence. But this man of gentle spirit and manners, when aroused, proved to be a veritable “son of thunder,” and he defied his assailants. “When,” he said, “this shameless injustice is not only periodically enacted in our city, but our whole State is plunged into ignominy by offering for sale a daughter of a United States senator, I cannot and will not hold my peace. Do what you please. I denounce the outrage.” Those that threatened him were cowed into silence; the disturbance was only a momentary ripple; the auctioneer went on with his nefarious task; the girl with senatorial blood was knocked down to the highest bidder. And then another, and another, and another, boy or girl, was sold under the hammer till the fall of the curtain of darkness put temporary end to the shameless work.
A man connected with this pen defended the breaking up of families by the sale of slaves. He said that black mothers and children did not much mind being separated; that they had little, if any, real affection for each other; it was very much like separating a cow and her calf. A little while after, at that very slave-pen, I saw the disproof of his words. A man had just bought there, at private sale, a little boy about ten years old. The lad’s mother was with him. As he was taken away from the pen, he began in his grief to howl as though his heart was breaking. After he had been taken about two squares, his purchaser, annoyed by the wailing, returned with him to the pen, secured the loan of his mother till he could get his tearful chattel to his home, without attracting a curious and sympathetic crowd on the street. Once there his little slave could be quieted by a sugar plum or a whip. When the lad was at last under the roof of his new master, the bereft and sobbing mother was led back to the desolate pen to be sold to some other master in the city or State, or to some trader who would take her down to the rice or cotton plantations of the South.
But when the war came on, there was no longer any demand for slaves. The traffic in human beings suddenly ceased. Lynch shut up his pen. The military authorities seized the pen at the corner of Fifth and Myrtle Streets and transformed it into a military prison. No little colored boy or girl was ever again to be sold there. The place hallowed by the sighs and tears of bondmen and of motherless children was for a time to become the prison-house of those who had bought and sold their fellow men, and were now waging unholy war against the very government that had protected them and their slaves,—the government that had complacently caught and returned to them their chattels who had attempted by flight to cast off their bondage and secure freedom for themselves and their children amid the frosts and snows of Canada.
One morning in 1862, an old negro, who for many years had been a drayman for a mercantile firm on Second Street, was full of merriment. He was overheard mumbling something to himself and every now and then breaking out into a laugh. His employer said, “Joe, what is it? What’s the matter?” He responded with a chuckle, “Strange tings happen des days!” “So, what things?” “You kno’s dat slave-pen, corner Fifth an Myrtle?” “Yes.” “Well, de col’ed folks used to carry in tings dar fo der chillen to eat. Dis mawnin, boss, I seed white folks carrying in tings for der folks to eat. Ha! ha! strange tings happen des days.” Sure enough, the tables were turned. Wrongs were being righted. Justice, poetical justice, was being meted out. “With what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again,” saith the Lord.
“Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small,