Q. Are they not sometimes discharged after you get them?
A. Not often. I don’t know that they ever are, except those Portuguese the counsel read about.
[I had found, in a Virginia report, a case of some two hundred Portuguese negroes, whom this John Caphart had seized from a vessel, and endeavored to get condemned as slaves, but whom the court discharged.]
Hon. John P. Hale, associated with Mr. Dana, as counsel for the defence, in the Rescue Trials, said of him, in his closing argument:
Why, gentlemen, he sells agony! Torture is his stock-in-trade! He is a walking scourge! He hawks, peddles, retails, groans and tears about the streets of Norfolk!
See also the following correspondence between two traders, one in North Carolina, the other in New Orleans; with a word of comment, by Hon. William Jay, of New York:
Halifax, N. C., Nov. 16, 1839.
Dear Sir: I have shipped in the brig Addison,—prices are below:
| No. 1. Caroline Ennis, | $650.00 |
| No. 2. Silvy Holland, | 625.00 |
| No. 3. Silvy Booth, | 487.50 |
| No. 4. Maria Pollock, | 475.00 |
| No. 5. Emeline Pollock, | 475.00 |
| No. 6. Delia Averit, | 475.00 |
The two girls that cost $650 and $625 were bought before I shipped my first. I have a great many negroes offered to me, but I will not pay the prices they ask, for I know they will come down. I have no opposition in market. I will wait until I hear from you before I buy, and then I can judge what I must pay. Goodwin will send you the bill of lading for my negroes, as he shipped them with his own. Write often, as the times are critical, and it depends on the prices you get to govern me in buying. Yours, &c.,