“In slaveholding States, except in Louisiana no law exists to prevent the violent separation of parents from their children.” (Stroud.) A slave has no more legal authority over his child than a cow has over her calf. (Jay.) John Davis, a dealer in slaves at Hamburg, S. C., advertises that he has on hands, direct from Va., “one hundred and twenty likely young negroes of both sexes; among them small girls, suitable for nurses, and several small boys without their mothers.”
Frederick Douglass relates that “when he was three years old his mother was sent to work on a plantation eight or ten miles distant, and after that he never saw her except in the night. After her days toil she would occasionally walk over to her child, lie down with him in her arms, hush him to sleep in her bosom, then rise up and walk back again to be ready for her field work by daylight.”—Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
The following incident occurred within the present year (1853.) We copy from the Cleveland True Democrat.
“It will be remembered by some of our citizens that about two or three months since, a colored man visited our city for the purpose of obtaining money enough to buy his child that was held as a slave in Kentucky. Through the generosity of J. H. Smith and his congregation, with some added by private individuals, the amount was raised, and the happy negro went on his way rejoicing. Now comes the saddest part of the tale. When the poor colored man arrived at his home, he immediately handed the money, to obtain which had cost him so much labor, over to a friend, who started immediately to Kentucky. Arriving there, the money was laid before the master by the gentleman, when to the utter astonishment of the latter, the slaveholder burst into a fiendish laugh, and said ‘he’d be —— if he would sell the boy at any price.’ He refused all terms, laughed at all exhortations, and finally ordered the gentleman who wished to purchase the boy out of the house. He left sorrowfully, knowing how his bad success would affect the father, who was in a delirium of joy at the idea of seeing his long lost son. Imagine the feeling of that man when it was communicated to him that his boy was lost forever. Our informant tells us that he said not a word, nor wept; but any one familiar with a human heart, could tell what agony that poor black man was in. He seems to have grown ten years older, and it is feared, unless some change takes place, that he will soon die. His life seems worse than death, and he loudly prays for the latter to come.”
The holder of that boy only did what the laws allowed him to do, and his conduct was in perfect consistency with chattel slavery. Men can do as they like about selling the property which the law allows them.
Scenes of the most provoking and heart-rending character, scenes in which humanity is outraged, scenes which would bring the blood to the cheek of a savage, even to behold, are enacted in all the Southern States from day to day, with seeming unconcern! The most bitter cries pierce the skies and go up to heaven apparently unheard by man. “Here is a man, a slave-trader, driving before him two boys with a hickory stick, and carrying a child under his arm. At a little distance is the mother with chains on her wrists, stretching out her hand toward the babe; but is prevented, because a strong man holds her while she endeavors to follow her shrieking babe and her sobbing boys. The owner who sold the two boys, stands calmly, unmoved, smoking a cigar, while the overseer holds the mother, and the trader whips off the boys and carries with him the screaming child.” This is precisely the way that other live stock is sold, and those dealers are only doing what the law allows. No one is surprised at them. They may be respectable citizens and good church members!
Christian reader, pass not over these facts with a light heart. I beseech you to think upon them as a man and a christian ought. You love home, you esteem family relations the dearest and most sacred upon earth, and you would resist with all your power a tyranny which would invade your own family circle and carry away your children for the exclusive benefit of others. For humanity’s sake let your sympathies go out in behalf of the millions of your fellow creatures who are deprived of all the blessings of family and home. Have you not a heart to bleed for those mothers whose children, in tender youth, are ruthlessly torn away from them for no higher object than the pecuniary advantage of their masters? J. G. Whittier, the “slave’s poet,” represents in mournful strains the Virginia slave mother’s lament for her daughters, sold and gone to the far South.
Gone, gone—sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,