common, in which a mother and her children are offered either in a lot, or separately, as may suit the purchaser. In one of these advertisements, I observed it stated that the youngest child was about a year old.[H]
[H] In Niles's Register, vol. xxxv, page 4, I find the following: "Dealing in slaves has become a large business. Establishments are made at several places in Maryland and Virginia, at which they are sold like cattle. These places are strongly built, and well supplied with thumbscrews, gags, cowskins and other whips, oftentimes bloody. But the laws permit the traffic, and it is suffered."
The captives are driven by the whip, through toilsome journeys, under a burning sun; their limbs fettered; with nothing before them but the prospect of toil more severe than that to which they have been accustomed.[I]
[I] In the sugar-growing States the condition of the negro is much more pitiable than where cotton is the staple commodity.
The disgrace of such scenes in the capital of our republic cannot be otherwise than painful to every patriotic mind; while they furnish materials for the most pungent satire to other nations. A United States senator declared that the sight of a drove of slaves was so insupportable that he always avoided it when he could; and an intelligent Scotchman said, when he first entered Chesapeake Bay, and cast his eye along our coast, the sight of the slaves brought his heart into his throat. How can we help feeling a sense of shame, when we read Moore's contemptuous couplet,
"The fustian flag that proudly waves,
In splendid mockery, o'er a land of slaves?"
The lines would be harmless enough, if they were false; the sting lies in their truth.
Finally, I have described some of the horrors of the slave-trade, because when our constitution was formed, the government pledged itself not to abolish this traffic until 1808. We began our career of freedom by granting a twenty years' lease of iniquity—twenty years of allowed invasion of other men's rights—twenty years of bloodshed, violence, and fraud! And this will be told in our annals—this will be heard of to the end of time!
While the slave-trade was allowed, the South could use it to advance their views in various ways. In their representation to Congress, five slaves counted the same as three freemen; of course, every fresh cargo was not only an increase of property, but an increase of political power. Ample time was allowed to lay in a stock of slaves to supply the new
slave states and territories that might grow up; and when this was effected, the prohibition of foreign commerce in human flesh, operated as a complete tariff, to protect the domestic supply.