Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe
Page 698
references.
Wright, Williams, & Co.
Williams, Phillips, & Co.
Moses Greenwood.
Moon, Titus, & Co.
S. O. Nelson & Co.
E. W. Diggs. 3ms.
New Orleans Daily Crescent, October 21, 1852: —
SLAVES.
JAMES WHITE, No. 73, Baronne-street, New Orleans, will give strict attention to receiving, boarding, and selling SLAVES consigned to him. He will also buy and sell on commission. References: Messrs. Robson & Allen, McRea, Coffman & Co., Pregram, Bryan & Co.
Sept. 23.
NEGROES WANTED.
Fifteen or twenty good Negro Men wanted to go on a Plantation. The best of wages will be given until the 1st of January, 1853.
Apply to
THOMAS G. MACKEY & Co., 5, Canal-street, corner of Magazine, up stairs.
Sept. 11.
From another number of the Mississippi Free Trader is taken the following: —
NEGROES.
The undersigned would respectfully state to the public that he has a lot of about forty-five now on hand, having this day received a lot of twenty-five direct from Virginia, two or three good cooks, a carriage driver, a good house boy, a fiddler, a fine seamstress, and a likely lot of field men and women; all of whom he will sell at a small profit. He wishes to close out and go on to Virginia after a lot for the fall trade. Call and see.
THOMAS G. JAMES.
The slave-raising business of the Northern States has been variously alluded to and recognised, both in the business statistics of the States, and occasionally in the speeches of patriotic men, who have justly mourned over it as a degradation to their country. In 1841 the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society addressed to the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society some inquiries on the internal American slave-trade.
A laboured investigation was made at the time, the results of which were published in London; and from that volume are made the following extracts: —
The Virginia Times (a weekly newspaper, published at Wheeling, Virginia) estimates, in 1836, the number of slaves exported for sale from that State alone, during “the twelve months preceding,” at forty thousand, the aggregate value of whom is computed at twenty-four millions of dollars.
Allowing for Virginia one-half of the whole exportation during the period in question, and we have the appalling sum total of eighty thousand slaves exported in a single year from the breeding States. We cannot decide with certainty what proportion of the above number was furnished by each of the breeding States, but Maryland ranks next to Virginia in point of numbers, North Carolina follows Maryland, Kentucky North Carolina, then Tennessee and Delaware.
The Natchez (Mississippi) Courier says, that “the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas imported two hundred and fifty thousand slaves from the more Northern States in the year 1836.”
This seems absolutely incredible, but it probably includes all the slaves introduced by the immigration of their masters. The following, from the Virginia Times, confirms this supposition. In the same paragraph, which is referred to under the second query, it is said —
“We have heard intelligent men estimate the number of slaves exported from Virginia within the last twelve months at a hundred and twenty thousand, each slave averaging at least six hundred dollars, making an aggregate of seventy-two million dollars. Of the number of slaves exported not more than one-third have been sold, the others having been carried by their masters, who have removed.
Assuming one-third to be the proportion of the sold, there are more than eighty thousand imported for sale into the four States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. Supposing one-half of eighty thousand to be sold into the other buying States — South Carolina, Georgia, and the territory of Florida — and we are brought to the conclusion that more than a hundred and twenty thousand slaves were, for some years previous to the great pecuniary pressure in 1837, exported from the breeding to the consuming States.
The Baltimore American gives the following from a Mississippi paper of 1837: —
“The report made by the Committee of the citizens of Mobile, appointed at their meeting held on the 1st instant, on the subject of the existing pecuniary pressure, states, that so large has been the return of slave labour, that purchases by Alabama of that species of property from other States, since 1833, have amounted to about ten million dollars annually.”
“Dealing in slaves,” says the Baltimore (Maryland) Register, of 1829, “has become a large business; establishments are made in several places in Maryland and Virginia, at which they are sold like cattle. These places of deposit are strongly built, and well supplied with iron thumbscrews and gags, and ornamented with cowskins and other whips, oftentimes bloody.”
Professor Dew, now President of the University of William and Mary, in Virginia, in his review of the debate in the Virginia Legislature, in 1831-32, says (): —
“A full equivalent being left in the place of the slave (the purchase-money), this emigration becomes an advantage to the State, and does not check the black population as much as at first view we might imagine, because it furnishes every inducement to the master to attend to the negroes, to encourage, breeding, and to cause the greatest number possible to be raised.” Again, “Virginia is, in fact, a negro-raising State for the other States.”
Mr. Goode, of Virginia, in his speech before the Virginia Legislature, in January, 1832, said —
“The superior usefulness of the slaves in the South will constitute an effectual demand, which will remove them from our limits. We shall send them from our State, because it will be our interest to do so; but gentlemen are alarmed lest the markets of other States be closed against the introduction of our slaves. Sir, the demand for slave labour must increase,” &c.
In the debates of the Virginia Convention, in 1829, Judge Upsher said —
“The value of slaves, as an article of property, depends much on the state of the market abroad. In this view it is the value of the land abroad; and not of land here, which furnishes the ratio. Nothing is more fluctuating than the value of slaves. A late law of Louisiana reduced their value twenty-five per cent, in two hours after its passage was known. If it should be our lot, as I trust it will be, to acquire the country of Texas, their price will rise again.”
Hon. Philip Doddridge, of Virginia, in his speech in the Virginia Convention, in 1829 (Debates, ), said —
“The acquisition of Texas will greatly enhance the value of the property in question (Virginia slaves).”
Rev. Dr. Graham, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, at a colonisation meeting held at that place in the fall of 1837, said —
“There were nearly seven thousand slaves offered in New Orleans market last winter. From Virginia alone six thousand were annually sent to the South, and from Virginia and North Carolina there had gone to the South, in the last twenty years, THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND SLAVES.”
Hon. Henry Clay, of Kentucky, in his speech before the Colonisation Society, in 1829, says —
“It is believed that nowhere in the farming portion of the United States would slave labour be generally employed if the proprietor were not tempted to raise slaves by the high price of the Southern market, which keeps it up in his own.”
The New York Journal of Commerce, of October 12th, 1835, contains a letter from a Virginian, whom the editor calls “a very good and sensible man;” asserting that twenty thousand slaves had been driven to the South from Virginia that year, but little more than three-fourths of which had then elapsed.
Mr. Gholson, of Virginia, in his speech in the legislature of that State, January 18, 1831 (see Richmond Whig), says —
“It has always (perhaps erroneously) been considered, by steady and old-fashioned people, that the owner of land had a reasonable right to its annual profits; the owner of orchards to their annual fruits; the owner of brood mares to their product, and the owner of female slaves to their increase. We
have not the fine-spun intelligence nor legal acumen to discover the technical distinctions drawn by gentlemen (that is, the distinction between female slaves and brood mares). The legal maxim of partus sequitur ventrem is coeval with the existence of the right of property itself, and is founded in wisdom and justice. It is on the justice and inviolability of this maxim that the master foregoes the service of the female slave, has her nursed and attended during the period of her gestation, and raises the helpless infant offspring. The value of the property justifies the expense, and I do not hesitate to say that in its increase consists much of our wealth.”
Can any comment on the state of public sentiment produced by slavery equal the simple reading of this extract, if we remember that it was spoken in the Virginian legislature? One would think the cold cheek of Washington would redden in its grave for shame, that his native State had sunk so low. That there were Virginian hearts to feel this disgrace is evident from the following reply of Mr. Faulkner to Mr. Gholson, in the Virginia House of Delegates, 1832. See Richmond Whig: —
“But he (Mr. Gholson) has laboured to show that the abolition of slavery would be impolitic, because your slaves constitute the entire wealth of the State, all the productive capacity Virginia possesses; and, sir, as things are, I believe he is correct. He says that the slaves constitute the entire available wealth of Eastern Virginia. Is it true that for two hundred years the only increase in the wealth and resources of Virginia has been a remnant of the natural increase of this miserable race? Can it be that on this increase she places her sole dependence? Until I heard these declarations, I had not fully conceived the horrible extent of this evil. These gentlemen state the fact, which the history and present aspect of the commonwealth but too well sustain. What, sir! have you lived for two hundred years without personal effort or productive industry, in extravagance and indolence, sustained alone by the return from the sales of the increase of slaves, and retaining merely such a number as your now impoverished lands can sustain as STOCK?”
Mr. Thomas Jefferson Randolph, in the Virginian legislature, used the following language (“Liberty Bell,” ):
“I agree with gentlemen in the necessity of arming the State for internal defence. I will unite with them in any effort to restore confidence to the public mind, and to conduce to the sense of the safety of our wives and our children. Yet, Sir, I must ask upon whom is to fall the burden of this defence? Not upon the lordly masters of their hundred slaves, who will never turn out except to retire with their families when danger threatens. No, sir; it is to fall upon the less wealthy class of our citizens, chiefly upon the non-slaveholder. I have known patrols turned out where there was not a slaveholder among them; and this is the practice of the country. I have slept in times of alarm quiet in bed, without having a thought of care, while these individuals, owning none of this property themselves, were patrolling under a compulsory process, for a pittance of seventy-five cents per twelve hours, the very curtilage of my house, and guarding that property which was alike dangerous to them and myself. After all, this is but an expedient. As this population becomes more numerous, it becomes less productive. Your guard must be increased, until finally its profits will not pay for the expense of its subjection. Slavery has the effect of lessening the free population of a country.
“The gentleman has spoken of the increase of the female slaves being a part of the profit. It is admitted; but no great evil can be averted, no good attained, without some inconvenience. It may be questioned how far it is desirable to foster and encourage this branch of profit. It is a practice, and an increasing practice, in parts of Virginia, to rear slaves for market. How can an honourable mind, a patriot, and a lover of his country, bear to see this Ancient Dominion, rendered illustrious by the noble devotion and patriotism of her sons in the cause of liberty, converted into one grand menagerie, where men are to be reared for the market, like oxen for the shambles? Is it better, is it not worse, than the slave-trade — that trade which enlisted the labour of the good and wise of every creed, and every clime, to abolish it? The trader receives the slave, a stranger in language, aspect, and manners, from the merchant 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 innocent gambols of childhood who have been accustomed to look to him for protection, he tears from the mother arms and sells into a strange country among strange people, subject to cruel taskmasters.
“He has attempted to justify slavery here because it exists in Africa, and has stated that it exists all over the world. Upon the same principle, he could justify Mahometanism, with its plurality of wives, petty wars for plunder, robbery, and murder, or any other of the abominations and enormities of savage tribes. Does slavery exist in any part of civilised Europe? — No, sir, in no part of it.”
The calculations in the volume from which we have been quoting are made in the year 1841. Since that time the area of the Southern slave-market has been doubled, and the trade has undergone a proportional increase. Southern papers are full of its advertisements. It is, in fact, the great trade of the country. From the single port of Baltimore, in the last two years, a thousand and thirty-three slaves have been shipped to the Southern market, as is apparent from the following report of the custom-house officer: —
ABSTRACT of the NUMBER of VESSELS cleared in the District of BALTIMORE for Southern Ports, having Slaves on Board, from January 1, 1851, to November 20, 1852.
Date.
Denomina’s.
Names of Vessels.
Where Bound.
Nos.
1851.
January 6
Sloop,
Georgia,
Norfolk, Va.
16
“ 10
“
“
“
6
“ 11
Bark,
Elizabeth,
New Orleans,
92
“ 14
Sloop,
Georgia,
Norfolk, Va.
9
“ 17
“
“
“
6
“ 20
Bark,
Cora,
New Orleans,
14
February 6
“
E. H. Chapin,
“
31
“ 8
“
Sarah Bridge,
“
34
“ 12
Sloop,
Georgia,
Norfolk, Va.
5
“ 24
Schooner,
H. A. Barling,
New Orleans,
37
“ 26 Sloop,
Georgia,
Norfolk, Va.
3
“ 28 #” #” #” #42
March 10
Ship,
Edward Everett,
New Orleans,
20
“
21
Sloop,
Georgia,
Norfolk, Va. #11
“ 19
Bark,
Baltimore,
Savannah,
13
April 1
Sloop,
Herald,
Norfolk, Va.
7
“ 2
Brig,
Waverley,
New Orleans,
31
“ 18
Sloop,
Baltimore,
Arquia Creek, Va.
4
“ 23
Ship,
Charles,
New Orleans,
25
“ 28
Sloop,
Georgia,
Norfolk, Va.
5
M
ay 15
“
Herald,
“
27
“ 17
Schooner,
Brilliant,
Charleston,
1
June 10
Sloop,
Herald,
Norfolk, Va.
3
“ 16
“
Georgia,
“
4
“ 20
Schooner,
Truth,
Charleston,
5
“ 21
Ship,
Herman,
New Orleans,
10
July 19
Schooner,
Aurora, S.,
Charleston,
1
Septmbr. 6
Bark,
Kirkwood,
New Orleans,
2
October 4
“
Abbott Lord,
“
1
“ 11
“
Elizabeth.
“
70
“ 18
Ship,
Edward Everett,
“
12
“ 20
Sloop,
Georgia,
Norfolk, Va.
1
Novem. 13
Ship,
Eliza F. Mason,
Nor Orleans,
57
“ 18
Bark
Mary Broughtons,
“
47
Decem. 4
Ship,
Timoleon,
“
22
“ 18
Schooner,
H. A. Barling,
“
45
1852.