"And if you'll pardon a younger and a porer man, Judge, it's jest sich gentlemen as you that lets it go on. You politicians give them people 'munity, an' let 'em alone because they fight fur you in 'lection times an' air popular with foresters an' pore trash, because they persecutes niggers an' treats to liquor. You know the laws is agin their actions on both sides of the Delaware line, but in Maryland they're a dead letter."
"You speak plain truth, James Phœbus, brave as your conduct. But the poor men must make a sentiment against these kidnappers, because among the ignorant poor they find their defenders and equals."
"Judge," the pungy captain said, "they'se a-makin' a pangymonum of all the destreak about Patty Cannon's. By smoke! it's a shame to liberty. In open day they lead free niggers, men, wimmin, an' little children, too, to be sold, who's free as my mommy and your daughter."
Judge Custis thought painfully of the scant freedom his daughter now enjoyed. Jimmy Phœbus continued:
"Now yer, we're raising hokey-pokey about the Algerynes and the Trypollytins capturin' of a few Christian people an' sellin' of 'em to Turkey, an' about the Turkey people makin' slaves of the Christian Greek folks. Henry Clay is cuttin' a big splurge about it. Money is bein' raised all over the country to send it to 'em. Commodo' Decatur was a big man for a-breakin' of it up. By smoke! they're sellin' more free people to death and hell along Mason and Dixon's line, than up the whole buzzum of the Mediterranean Sea."
The brown-skinned speaker was more excited now than he had been during all the collision with Joe Johnson.
"Indeed, Phœbus, they have kidnapped several thousand people, the Philadelphia abolitionists say, but the reports must be exaggerated. The demand for negroes is so great, since the cotton-gin and the foreign markets have made cotton a great staple, and the direct importation of slaves from Africa has been stopped, that there is a great run for border-state negroes, and free colored people seldom are righted when they have been pulled across the line."
"They never are righted, Judge Custis! I'm ashamed of my native state. Only a few years ago, when I was a boy, people around yer was a-freein' of their niggers, and it was understood that slavery would a-die out, an' everybody said, 'Let the evil thing go.' But niggers began to go up high; they got to be wuth eight hunderd dollars whair they wasn't wuth two hunderd; and all the politicians begun to say: 'Niggers is not fit to be free. Niggers is the bulrush, or the bulwork, or bull-something of our nation.' And then kidnapping of free niggers started, and the next thing they'll kidnap free American citizens!"
"Tut! tut! James! it will never go that far."
"Won't it? What did Joe Johnson say to me last night before the Washington Tavern? He said: 'I've sold whiter niggers than you, myself. I kin run you to market an' git my price for you!'"