In the prosecution of this traffic the feelings and interests, the parental, connubial and filial relations of slaves are utterly disregarded. They are sold for the benefit of the master, as a horse is sold, and bought to suit the purchaser. To all intents and purposes slaves are daily bought and sold like cattle. Alas, that my pen is compelled to write this fact.
A respectable gentleman (Dr. Elwood) was an eye witness to a sale of slaves in Petersburg, Va., in 1846. He saw some old men and women go upon the auctioneer’s stand to be sold to the highest bidder. The case of a beautiful youth affected him most deeply. “His hair,” said Mr. E. “was brown and straight, his skin exactly the hue of white persons, and no discernible trace of negro features in his countenance. Some vulgar jests were passed on his color, and 00 was bid for him; but the audience remarked that was not enough to begin on for such a likely young negro; some said a white negro was more trouble than he was worth. Before he was sold his mother rushed from the house upon the portico, crying in frantic grief, ‘My son, O! my boy, they will take away my dear’—Here her voice was lost as she was rudely pushed back and the door closed. The sale was not for a moment interrupted, and none of the crowd appeared to be affected by the scene. The poor boy trembled and wiped the tears from his cheeks with his sleeves. He was sold for about 250 dollars.”
After this boy was sold a woman was called upon the stand. She had an infant in her arms, but she dared not take it with her. “She gave it one wild embrace, before leaving it with an old woman, and hastened mechanically to obey the call; but stopped, threw up her arms, screamed and was unable to move!” Those who know a mother’s love can understand the agony which raged in her maternal bosom.
The following is from the pen of an aged preacher, now living in Canada, who escaped from slavery some years since. When the master to whom he belonged died, he, with his fellow slaves, were put up for sale. Said he—
“My brothers and sisters were bid off one by one, while my mother, holding my hand, looked on in an agony of grief, the cause of which I but ill understood at first, but which dawned on my mind with dreadful clearness as the sale proceeded. My mother was then separated from me, and put up in her turn. She was bought by a man named Isaac R——, in Montgomery county, Md., and then I was offered to the assembled purchasers. My mother half distracted with the parting forever from all her children pushed through the crowd, while the bidding for me was going on, to the spot where R. was standing. She fell at his feet and clung to his knees, entreating him in tones that a mother only could command, to buy her baby as well as herself, and spare to her one of her little ones at least.” But this man thus appealed to “disengaged himself from her with such violent kicks and blows as to reduce her to the necessity of creeping out of his reach and mingling the groan of bodily suffering with the sob of a broken heart.”
These cases are presented as examples to show the meaning and intent of the code which declares that a slave is property—and has no rights or interests; and they are not rare and extreme cases brought in here only for effect, but are such as occur daily in all the slave states; and they are perfectly in keeping with the spirit of American slavery. Those persons were sold precisely as other property is sold.
From these authorities and facts it is clear that a slave occupies a relation as far beneath the apprentice, miner, hired laborer, or even the villein of the Feudal Age, or the Russian serf, as mere property is beneath manhood with all its possessions and God-like powers—as far as a brute is below a man “made in the image of God.”
The American slave code is almost an exact copy of the old savage Roman slave code, which was conceived in the dark night of heathenism, and brought forth reeking with blood in the unholy travail of sanguinary wars, before that empire had been enlightened and conquered by the peaceful and just Gospel of Christ. That it may be seen where English and American law-makers obtained the spirit of the American slave code, the following synopsis of the Roman law on slavery is inserted.
“By the Roman civil law, slaves were esteemed merely as chattels of their masters; they had no name but what the master was pleased to give them for convenience. They were not capable of personal injuries cognizable by the law. They could take neither by purchase nor descent, could have no heirs, could make no will. The fruits of their labor and industry belonged to their masters. They could not plead nor be impleaded, and were utterly excluded from all civil concerns. They were incapable of marriage, not being entitled to the considerations thereof. The laws of adultery did not (among themselves) effect them. They might be sold, transferred, mortgaged, pawned. Partus sequitur ventrem was the rule indiscriminately applied to slaves and cattle.” (Harris and McHenry.)[4]
At a glance it will be seen that the Roman and American slave codes are identical in spirit—that the distinguishing principle of both is property in man. Our christian legislators therefore must acknowledge themselves indebted to Pagan Rome for the type of slavery which they have instituted and maintained in Christian America. All the main features of cruelty, injustice and savageness, inherent in that ancient system of oppression, have been faithfully copied, and not in the slightest degree modified or softened.