The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1855-03-29

stripping VI ndtlEc Africans, CnOer penalty OF
deathP Or why it should hang a man as q
pirate for trading in one African savage, and
assume to regulate the trade in thousands of
American Christians, as they are sometimes rep
resented; thus Withdrawing its protection from
millions of its own native people, and lavishing
il on barbarous people in a distant land? If it
be piracy to steal men from Africa, and sell them
in the human shambles, how shall we character
ize the stealing Of Africo-V irginians and trans
porting them under the regulation of United
States laws, to be sold in the man-markets of
the South and Southwest? We even hear the
African aave-trade palliated in certain quarter,
as a grand missionary enterprise, By which its
DOOR, benigbted victims are translated out of
their heathenish darkness, into the marvellous
light of the Model Republic; )" but no such plea
can be urged in extenuation of the American
slave-trade, inasmuch as its victims are snatcbed
from under the blazing light of the save-breeding
States, and doomed to regions less blessed with
the beams of the day-star. The traders profit is
the sole consideration, at the expense of the
slaves interests and happiness
In the city of New York, man now awaits the
execution of the sentence Of death, pronounced
by a United States court, for buying and selling
Africans into Slavery. Two citizens of Wiscon-
sin have been condemned to fine and imprison-
ment, by United States court, for the alleged
crime of helping one American out OF Slavery.
Slavery, is piracy punishable with death; to assist
this stolen man to escape from the pirate, or his
successors, and regain possession OF himself, IS a
crime, to be expiated by felons cell, and line
of 81 900. To traffic in the people of Africa is
piracy; TO trade in the people of this country,
even TO the selling of white women for the vilest
purposes-why, sir, this is entirely innocent and
right, according TO lGU. Such are the faulty
and villany of human legislation, which courts,
conspiring with tyrants against the authority OF
Heaven, attempt to baptize by the sacred name
of law, and teach obedience to lis murderous
behests The Government of the United States
has virtually authorized and sanctioned this
execrable commerce in the people of this coun-
tryyby interfering to regulate the traffic which
annually tears tens Of thousands of persons from
all that they hold dear earth, and transports
them, to be sold into strange and weary land
Said Thomas Jefferson Randolph, in speech to
the Legislature of Virginia, i'll 1882:
1t is practice, an increasing practice, IN
parts Of Virginia, to rear slaves for market
How can an honorable mind patriot, and
lover Of his country, bear to see this ancient
dominion, rendered illustrous by the noble
devotion and patriotism of her sons in the
cause of Liberty converted into one grand me-
nagerie, where men o. reared for the market,
like oxen for the shambles? is ii better, is 1t
not worse, than the Africanl slave-trade-that
trade which enlisted the labor of the good and
wise of every creed and every cline to abolish
it2 The trader receives the slave, stranger in
language, aspect, and manners, from the mer
chant who has brought him from the interior.
The ties of father, mother, husband, and child,
have all been rent in twain; before he receives
him, his soul has become callous. But here, sir,
individuals, whom the master has known from
infancy, whom he has seen sporting in the inno
cent gambols of childhood who have been ac-
customed to look to him for protection, he tears
from the mothers arms, and sells into q strange
country, among a strange people, subject TO
cruel taSkmasters. In my opinion it is much
worse
Said the Synod of Kentucky, in 1925:
brothers and sisters, parents and children,
husbands and wives, are torn asunder, and
permitted to see each other no more These
acts are daily occurring in the midst of us.
The shrieks and the agony, often witnessed on
such occasions proclaim, with atrumpet-tongue,
the iniquity of our system There is not neigh
borhood where these heart-rending scenes are
not displayed There is not a village or road
that does not behold the sad procession of
manacled outcasts, whose mournful countenan-
ces tell that they are exiled by force from all
that their hearts hold dear
The Richmond Enquirer, Virginia, in lS47, held
the following language:
at is a melancholy fact that negroes have
become the only reliable staple of the tobacco
growing section of Virginia, the only reliable
means of liquidating debts, foreign and domes-
tic. They sold here by hundreds, under
the hammer of the auctioneer. The domestic
cannot compete with the Southwestern demand
for them, for the plain reason the tobacco
grower cannot make half Of one per centum
per annum on slave-labor, while the cotton and
sugar planters make, perhaps, from fifteen to
twenty per centum. Our negroes are going by
hundreds, yea, by thousands, to the Southwest"
Although the Census is cautiously silent, and
furnishes no statistics relative to this branch Of
American commerce in Americans, we are able,
by much labor, to CLEAN from it certain data from
which can form some estimate of the probable
amount of human exports from the slave-breeding
States, and the human imports into the save-buy-
ing States, during the last decennary. We find
the average increase of the whole slave popula-
ton TO have been 2S.S7 per centum. But in Viz
giuia the ratio of increase was but 5.2l per CEN
tum; in Maryland O.O7 in North Carolina Il SO;
in Delaware the decrease was l2.O9.
What became of the slaves thus disappearing
from these States They were not swept away
by peStilence or famine, but by the "soul-dri-
vers,' as they are technically called, into Georgia.
where the increase was 1886 per centum into
Missouri, where the increase was 500 per cent
UNI; into Florida where it was 50 50 per centum;
into Mississippi where twas 58.74 and into
Arkansas where it was 20 per centum.
MT. vi. ElN. Let me tel the senator from IOn-
necticut that the slaves brought into Missouri
are not brought there for sale we have a law
forbidding that; but they are brought by emil
grants from other States
Mr.. GILLETTE. Such is the Senator's ex-
PLANTATION in relation to his particular State but
it does not explain away the facts which / am
stating. The decrease from the old slave States
mentioned, goes somewhere to make up the in
crease in the new.
Nv DAWSON The incraosa be;u,, cn orraot
shows how well they have been taken care Of,
fed, and clothed
Sir. GILLETTE. What does the honorable
Senator from Georgia say in relation TO the facts
ap, ertaining to the old States which show large
decrease What does that indicate2
Mr.. DAWSON. Simply that they have been
taken to the newer States, where the land is bet
ter and cheaper, and there are better opportunities
for living freely and literally.
Mr. BUTLER Ny friend from Georgia ought
to have answered that the process very
much like that in Massachusetts, Connecticut,
and other States, where, when they had no further
occasion for their slaves, they sold them, and
sent them to other places. In some States, years
ago, when they had no further use for slaves,
they sold the mothers and kept the children.
Mr. GILLETTE. will only say, in reply to
the Senator from South Carolina, that there was
in Connecticut class of shareholders who sold
their slaves but another and much more
numerous class who emancipated them. AS for
slave mothers, he knows more about them than
| do. But, sir, to return to my argument.
In several of the slave-importng States other
than those which | have already mentioned, the
increase is much above the average ratio; thus
showing a vast domestic slave-trade which num-
bers many thousands annually. Surprising the
natural increase, in the four slave-exporting
States mentioned, to be thirty-three per cent,
which cannot be too high, considering the mild
IL. l.. &C. 4. IL.