Now that the track is all pulled up; that the rolling stock has disappeared; that most of the operators and passengers have gone down into silence or are dwelling in forgetfulness of accumulating years, and that only a few of the old stations remain as they were, a new generation pertinently inquires, “What called such a road into existence and how were its gigantic operations so successfully and yet so secretly carried on?”
To the first of these questions it may be replied that the history of American slavery is older than the story of Plymouth Rock. In the year 1619 a cargo of Africans, kidnapped on the coast of the “Dark Continent,” was sold from the deck of a Dutch man-of-war at Jamestown, Va., to be used in the cultivation of tobacco along the river.
At that time very little was thought about the enormity of human slavery. The labor proved remunerative, and the institution spread over the original colonies, with little or no question, so that at the breaking out of the Revolution there were 500,000 bondmen, a standing menace to the cause of freedom, and yet technically said to be “armed in the holy cause of liberty.”
On the adoption of the constitution in 1787, public sentiment had become so strong against the African slave trade that provision was made for its abolition in 1808. Persistent effort was also made, particularly by the Quakers, for the ultimate abolition of slavery itself, but without avail, as it was claimed by its apologists that it would ultimately die of its own accord—a prophecy in some sense fulfilled, though in a manner all undreamed by those who made it.
THE TRACY WAGON SHOP.
SLAVE PEN IN ATLANTA, GA.
(PHOTOGRAPHED WHILST GEN. SHERMAN’S ARMY HELD THE CITY.)
Though Anti-slavery Societies had long been in vogue, of one of which Benjamin Franklin had been president, it was found by the census of 1800 that the country contained 893,000 slaves. From this time forward one after another of the Northern States abolished it, until it finally disappeared from New York last of all, July 4th, 1827. In the meantime it was strengthened in the South. The invention of the cotton gin and the extensive manufacture of sugar in the Gulf States, made the rearing of slaves in those farther north very lucrative, and slave marts were set up in many of their cities and towns to which men, women and children were brought and sold upon the auction block and at private sale.
The slaves thus purchased in Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and elsewhere for the more southern markets were either driven across the country like so many cattle, or, if more convenient, taken down the Ohio and Mississippi on steam-boats or in flats, all those deemed likely to give trouble being handcuffed together across a coffle chain, thus constituting a “coffle.”