Bolton, Dickins & Co.
Under the head of advertisements No. 1, let us humbly inquire what “assorted A No. 1 Negroes” means. Is it likely that it means negroes sold in families? What is meant by the invitation. “Call soon if you want to get the first choice”?
So much for Advertisement No. 1. Let us now propound a few questions to the initiated on No. 2. What does Mr. Benjamin Little mean by saying that he “will pay as high a cash price for a few likely young negroes as any trader in the city”? Do families commonly consist exclusively of “likely young negroes”?
On the third advertisement we are also desirous of some information. Messrs. Bolton, Dickins & Co. state that they expect to receive a large lot of Virginia negroes in the fall.
Unfortunate Messrs. Bolton, Dickins & Co.! Do you suppose that Virginia families will sell their negroes? Have you read Mr. J. Thornton Randolph’s last novel, and have you not learned that old Virginia families never sell to traders? and, more than that, that they always club together and buy up the negroes that are for sale in their neighborhood, and the traders when they appear on the ground are hustled off with very little ceremony? One would really think that you had got your impressions on the subject from “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” For we are told that all who derive their views of slavery from this book “regard the families of slaves as utterly unsettled and vagrant.”[[18]]
But, before we recover from our astonishment on reading this, we take up the Natchez (Mississippi) Courier of Nov. 20th, 1852, and there read:
NEGROES.
The undersigned would respectfully state to the public that he has leased the stand in the Forks of the Road, near Natchez, for a term of years, and that he intends to keep a large lot of NEGROES on hand during the year. He will sell as low or lower than any other trader at this place or in New Orleans.
He has just arrived from Virginia with a very likely lot of Field Men and Women; also, House Servants, three Cooks, and a Carpenter. Call and see.