This is the dread of all the slaves north of
Louisiana. The sugar plantations, and more than all, the rice
grounds of Georgia and the Carolinas, are the terror of American
negroes; and well they may be, for they open an early grave to
thousands; and to _avoid loss_ it is needful to make their
previous labour pay their value.
There is something in the system of breeding and rearing negroes
in the Northern States, for the express purpose of sending them
to be sold in the South, that strikes painfully against every
feeling of justice, mercy, or common humanity. During my
residence in America I became perfectly persuaded that the state
of a domestic slave in a gentleman's family was preferable to
that of a hired American "help," both because they are more cared
for and valued, and because their condition being born with them,
their spirits do not struggle against it with that pining
discontent which seems the lot of all free servants in America.
But the case is widely different with such as, in their own
persons, or those of their children, "loved in vain," are exposed
to the dreadful traffic above mentioned. In what is their
condition better than that of the kidnapped negroes on the coast
of Africa? Of the horror in which this enforced migration is
held I had a strong proof during our stay in Virginia. The
father of a young slave, who belonged to the lady with whom we
boarded, was destined to this fate, and within an hour after it
was made known to him, he sharpened the hatchet with which he had
been felling timber, and with his right hand severed his left
from the wrist.
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