SO

of slave-women by white fathers be rightfully slaves? Of what consequence, then, is the pollution of the soul of the mother, compared with the fact of her increased value as a commodity? How utterly insignificant is the fact that a father holds his own children in slavery, compared with the advantages notoriously derived from such an improvement in the slave-stock? In sober, literal truth, the brother owns the body of his sister, and the sister that of her brother, sacred is the marriage-state of slaves! If the father wishes to repair the wrong he has done, the law forbids his teaching his own child to read or write! If he is poor, too poor to pay his debts, a creditor may seize his child in its very cradle, and sell it at auction to pay the debt! It ought not to be otherwise! Is it not agreeable to the order of Divine Providence, that a child should be sold to pay his father's debts? How fitting it is for Mr. Jones and Bishop Freeman to teach such a vendible commodity to say, "Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother"!

Does any reader still doubt whether an owner thus has uncontrolled authority over the body of his female slave? Let him read the following extract from an opinon of the Supreme Court of the State of North Carolina, - the Old North State, whence Bishop Ives has long since ceased to weep over the "imaginary sufferings" of the slaves! To avoid a chastisement, a female slave ran off, and, on her refusal to stop when called, was shot at and wounded. Judge Ruffin, in delivering the opinion of the court (State vs. Mann, 2 Dev. Rep. 263), says:

"The inquiry here is, whether a cruel and unreasonable battery on a slave by the hirer is indictable? . . . In criminal proceedings, and, indeed, in reference to all other persons but the general owner, the hirer and possessor of a slave, in relation to both rights and duties, is, for the time being, the owner.

"With slavery it is far otherwise. The end is the profit of the master, his security, and the public peace. The subject is one doomed in his own person, and in his posterity, to live without knowledge, and without capacity to make any thing his own, and to toil that others may reap the fruits.

"What moral considerations shall be addressed to such a being to convince him what it is impossible but that the most stupid must feel and know can never be true, that he is thus to labor upon a principle of natural duty, or for the sake of his own personal happiness? Such services can only be expected from one who has no will of his own, who surrenders his will in explicit obedience to that of another. Such obedience is the consequence only of uncontrolled authority over the body. There is nothing else which can operate to produce the effect. The power of the master must be absolute to render the submission of the slave perfect. I most freely confess my sense of the harshness of this proposition. I feel it as deeply as any man can. And, as a principle of moral right, every person in his retirement must repudiate it. But, in the actual condition of things, it must be so. There is no remedy. This discipline belongs to slavery.'

Judge Ruffin had not enjoyed the benefit of the instruction imparted some years later by Bishops Ives and Freeman. If he had, he would not thus have followed the dictate of a desperately wicked" heart, and have repudiated the discipline of slavery as morally wrong!

The Rev. Robert J. Breckenridge, of the Presbyterian Church, himself a slaveholder, was a delegate to the State Emancipation Convention recently held in Kentucky. In a speech made by him before the Convention, he is reported to have said ("Louisville Examiner "), that

"The system of slavery denies to a whole class of human beings the sacredness of marriage and of home, compelling them to live in a state of concubinage; for, in the eye of the law, no colored slave-man is the husband of any wife in particular, nor any slavewoman the wife of any husband in particular; no slave-man is the father of any children in particular, and no slave-child is the child of any parent in particular."

Who will venture even to conceive, much less compute, the deep degradation caused by the denial of marriage to the slaves?

man.

* Colored persons are not competent witnesses on the trial of a white Any white man, therefore, can, with perfect impunity, commit any excess whatever upon any slaves, so long as they or their companions alone are witnesses. So carefully does the law guard the honor of the female slave!

CHAPTER VII.

"SOUL-DRIVING."

"A negro speculator, or a soul-driver as they are generally called among slaves."— Wm. W. Brown's Narrative, p. 39.

If we would most effectually degrade a man, we need only trample on the highest and holiest of all his rights, his right to himself; we have only to make him the subject of barter and sale, a thing for speculators to make money on, for jockeys to deceive about, and for buyers to depreciate. And yet how few act as if they admitted this truth, or even faintly realized the enormity of this wrong!

Slaves, as subjects of property, are continually spoken of and treated as horses and cows, and other live-stock! Tens of thousands of advertisements might be adduced to prove this. We have room only for a very few proofs. The Civil Code of Louisiana provides :

"Art. 2500. The latent defects of slaves and animals are divided into two classes, - vices of body and vices of character. "Art. 2501. The vices of body are distinguished into absolute

and relative.

"Art. 2502. The absolute vices of slaves are leprosy, madness, and epilepsy.

"Art 2503. The absolute vices of horses and mules are short wind, glanders, and founder."

In the "National Intelligencer" of May 2, 1843, the administrators of Alexius Boarman advertise for sale "twelve or thirteen likely young negroes, among whom are two car

penters; four head of horses, two yoke of oxen, several head of cows, all the sheep and hogs belonging to said deceased." The same paper of December 2, 1843, contains the following:

"PUBLIC SALE OF VERY VALUABLE NEGROES AND STOCK.. The subscriber will offer at public sale at his residence, near Bladensburg, Prince George's County, Maryland, on Wednesday, the 20th of December next, if fair, if not, the next fair day thereafter, forty-five or fifty very valuable young negroes, consisting of men and women, boys, girls, and children.

"At the same time and place, he will offer his entire stock of blood horses, together with some farm stock.

"The terms of sale will be a credit of nine and eighteen months; the purchaser giving bond with approved security, bearing interest from the day of sale.

"Sale to commence at 10 o'clock, A. M.

SAMUEL SPRIGG.

"The Marlborough Gazette will copy till day of sale."

In the same paper of January 25, 1843, directly under an advertisement for sale of "a girl about 18 years of age, who is honest, industrious, and a good cook, fine washer and ironer, and a good seamstress," we find the notice of a "Blooded colt at auction. A thorough bred colt, two years old the coming spring, got by Farmer, dam by Lafayette"! D. H. Candler, the sheriff of Montgomery County, Md. in an advertisement now before us, states that he has seized on execution, and will sell "for cash only" at the Court House door in Rockville," one stallion, Red Buck, and one negro boy, John"!* To bring the case nearer home: in the "New England Weekly Journal" of August 27, 1733, printed in Boston, we find the following advertisement:

---

"SEVERAL LIKELY YOUNG NEGROES, best Barbadoes sugars, very good Bohea tea, bag Hollands, fine cambric muslins, and sundry other merchandise, to be sold by Hugh Hall, Esq."†

* The original of this advertisement may be seen at the Anti-Slavery office, Boston, 21, Cornhill, pasted on one side of a copy of the newspaper called "Spirit of Liberty"! How appropriate a heading!

† For this and other advertisements from Boston papers, I am indebted to my friend Wendell Phillips.

In the "Boston Gazette " of October 21, 1734:

"TO BE SOLD BY

Several likely young negroes, lately

imported, as men, women, boys. Also choice raisins of the sun, gunpowder, Newcastle glass, in crates and boxes."

Not only are slaves thus placed on the same level with other property, but they are treated in the same manner. As our horse-jockeys not infrequently color their horses, or put on false tails, for the sake of enhancing their value, so similar arts are practised by the slave-jockeys of the South! Wm. W. Brown thus describes a part of his duties, whilst hired to the slave-trader Walker ("Narrative," pp. 42, 43):

"In the course of eight or nine weeks, Mr. Walker had his cargo of human flesh made up. There was in this lot a number of old men and women, some of them with gray locks. We left St. Louis in the steamboat Carlton, Captain Swan, bound for New Orleans. On our way down, and before we reached Rodney, the place where we made our first stop, I had to prepare the old slaves for market. I was ordered to have the old men's whiskers shaved off, and the gray hairs plucked out, where they were not too numerous, in which case he had a preparation of blacking to color it, and with a blacking-brush we would put it on. This was new business to me, and was performed in a room where the passengers could not see us. These slaves were also taught how old they were by Mr. Walker ; and, after going through the blacking process, they looked ten or fifteen years younger; and I am sure that some of those who purchased slaves of Mr. Walker were dreadfully cheated, especially in the ages of the slaves which they bought." Pp. 45, 46: "The next day we proceeded to New Orleans, and put the gang in the same negro-pen which we occupied before. In a short time the planters came flocking to the pen to purchase slaves. Before the slaves were exhibited for sale, they were dressed and driven out into the yard. Some were set to dancing, some to jumping, some to singing, and some to playing cards. This was done to make them appear cheerful and happy. My business was to see that they were placed in those situations before the arrival of the purchasers, and I have often set them to dancing when their cheeks were wet with tears."

Can such treatment result in any thing but brutalizing every noble faculty? If advertisements of stallions and boys,