The Tupelo journal., 1902-10-17

Gated and its officers arrested. The
Wanderer was built at Eestport, in
Maine, was equipped as a SLAYER in
New Fork, and Differed there and a
crew employed. He does not know
that Judge Story, chief justice of the
United States supreme court, when
presiding in Boston in 1884, charged
the grand jury that although Massa-
chusetts had freed their slaves, yet
the slave trade with Africa was SUI
going on and Boston merchants and
Boston Christians were stepped to
their eyebrows in it's infamy. He
does nor know that when our national
existence began the feeling against
slavery was stronger in the southern
states than in the northern. Georgia
was the first to prohibit it, but later
on the prohibition was repealed. New
England carried on the traffic until
1s45-and is doing it yet if they can
find a market, and can get the rum
to pay for them. The last record
of a SLAYER caught in the act was
in 1861 off the coast of Madagascar,
and it was an Eastport vessel. The
slave trade with Africa was for more
than a century a ~favorite and popu-
lar venture with our English ances-
tors. King James ii. and King
Charles Ii. and Queen Elizabeth all
had stock in it, and though Wilber-
force and others had laws passed to
suppress it, they could not do it.
New England and old England secret
ly carried it on (see Appleton) long
after slavery was abolished in the coll
onies. They could afford to lose half
their vessels and still make money.
No, no, my friend. If slavery was
a sin at all, which / deny, it was not
our sin, nor that of our fathers, nor
crate, low-liyeG negroes as you sup
pose. Our slaves were not educated
in books as they were in and
morals and industry, and, mark you,
there was not a heinous crime COM
mitted by them from the Potomac to
the Rio Grande. We did not have a
chain-gang nor a convict in all the
land, and now there are 4,400 in the
state of Georgia. Who is responsible
for that? Gen. Henry r. Jackson
said in the great address he delivered
in Atlanta in 1881: During the four
years Of war, when our men were
far away from home and their wives
and daughters had no protectors but
their slaves, there was not an out
rage committed in all the southland.
Where does history present a like
development of loyalty? Does it not
speak volumes for the humanity OF
the master and the devotion of the
slave? If l had power to indulge my
emotional nature l would erect some
where in the center of this southland
a shaft which should rise above all
monuments and strike the stars with
its sublime head, and on it l would
inscribe, ITO the loyalty of the slaves
of the confederate states during the
years '62, '63 and ga"
But this will do for the first lesson
to my friend. 1t may take some time
weeks or months-for us to har-
monte, and we will not until we get
the facts, straight, but I know that
he is a gentleman, and l think more
of Iowa and her people since I re-
ceived his letter. !,
But my friend is ~lamentably ig-
norant about the condition of our ne
groes before the war and their con-
dition now. I must resent ISLANDERS
upon our slaves. They were not low
lived. They were affectionate and
loyal. l believe that our family serv-
ants would have died for my wife or
for me or our children. They were
born hers and expected to die hers.
Tip was my trusted servant during
the war, and was twice captured and
twice escaped, the last time swim
ming the Coosa river in the night.
But / have done for this time, for /
am not well, and the doctor says 1
must not strain my mind.
BILL ARP.