The season for this trade is generally from November to April; and some estimate that the average number of slaves passing by the southern railroad weekly, during that period of six months, is at least two hundred. A slave-trader told me that he had known one hundred pass in a single night. But this is only one route. Large numbers are sent off westwardly, and also by sea, coastwise. The Davises, in Petersburg, are the great slave-dealers. They are Jews, who came to that place many years ago as poor peddlers; and, I am informed, are members of a family which has its representatives in Philadelphia, New York, &c.! These men are always in the market, giving the highest price for slaves. During the summer and fall they buy them up at low prices, trim, shave, wash them, fatten them so that they may look sleek, and sell them to great profit. It might not be unprofitable to inquire how much Northern capital, and what firms in some of the Northern cities, are connected with this detestable business.
There are many planters here who cannot be persuaded to sell their slaves. They have far more than they can find work for, and could at any time obtain a high price for them. The temptation is strong, for they want more money and fewer dependants. But they resist it, and nothing can induce them to part with a single slave, though they know that they would be greatly the gainers in a pecuniary sense, were they to sell one-half of them. Such men are too good to be slave-holders. Would that they might see it their duty to go one step further, and become emancipators! The majority of this class of planters are religious men, and this is the class to which generally are to be referred the various cases of emancipation by will, of which from time to time we hear accounts.
[20]. This horribly expressive appellation is in common use among the slaves of the breeding states.
CHAPTER V.
SELECT INCIDENTS OF LAWFUL TRADE, OR FACTS STRANGER THAN FICTION.
The atrocious and sacrilegious system of breeding human beings for sale, and trading them like cattle in the market, fails to produce the impression on the mind that it ought to produce, because it is lost in generalities.
It is like the account of a great battle, in which we learn, in round numbers, that ten thousand were killed and wounded, and throw the paper by without a thought.
So, when we read of sixty or eighty thousand human beings being raised yearly and sold in the market, it passes through our mind, but leaves no definite trace.
Sterne says that when he would realize the miseries of captivity, he had to turn his mind from the idea of hundreds of thousands languishing in dungeons, and bring before himself the picture of one poor, solitary captive pining in his cell. In like manner, we cannot give any idea of the horribly cruel and demoralizing effect of this trade, except by presenting facts in detail, each fact being a specimen of a class of facts.
For a specimen of the public sentiment and the kind of morals and manners which this breeding and trading system produces, both in slaves and in their owners, the writer gives the following extracts from a recent letter of a friend in one of the Southern States.