No. 41. Matilda, 25 years. For both, $2250. One family.
No. 42. Shad, field hand, 38 years—
No. 43. Rachel, 29—and
No. 44. James, their son, 6 years of age—all were sold at $2275. Dear family that! But how much dearer shall he pay at the day of judgment, who sells the ‘bodies and souls of men’ for gold, silver, and approved paper, like cattle!
No. 45. Louis Mare, bricklayer, 42 years.
No. 46. Yellow Mary, 23 years of age. For both was offered $1750.
Kind reader, I must make your heart sad again—sad with compassion for your unfortunate and oppressed fellow-men. But I will speak the truth, only the truth, and nothing but the truth. God has given me a feeling heart; and, certainly, I suffered, while being present at the slave auction, of which I am giving you a faint description. But I had to stay, and my face had to be as stern as any of the slave-buyers present, while my heart mourned. Is it not a vision? There stands a girl upon the platform, to be sold to the highest bidder; perhaps to a cruel, low and dissolute fellow, who, a day or two since, won a few thousand dollars by his playing tricks at the faro table. She is nearly white; she is not yellow, as they call her. She has a fair waist, her hair is black and silky, and falling down in ringlets upon her full shoulders. Her eyes are large, soft, and languishing. She seeks in vain to hide the streaming tears with her small and delicate hands. Her features are fair, like those of the girls of the Caucassian race; they remind me of those of the highland girls of my native country, Switzerland. Who in all the world can have anything against her color? In England, she would be called a ‘star’; in France, a ‘belle’; in Germany, a ‘nice little woman’; and in the free States of the Union, she would pass, when fashionably dressed, for a ‘fair French lady.’ But, in the Slave States, she is openly sold, as though she were nothing more than a ‘beautiful mare’ or a ‘splendid cow’!
They say, in the Slave States, that they are Christians; yet they consider a fair Christian girl as a brute, because she is not of pure white blood! Why do they not make company with the fishes in the lower Mississippi? Have they not ‘white blood’?
If Mary’s father, who is, perhaps, a very much honored gentleman, ‘one of the best members of his church’—if that great man could see his only daughter, his own flesh and blood, standing upon the platform, with tearful eyes, and sighing in untold misery to be sold like a quadruped—surely, his blood would turn ‘white’ for shame and terror!
No. 47. Josephus, accomplished blacksmith, 35 years old—and