American Slave Trade: Or, An Account of the Manner in which the Slave Dealers take Free People from some of the United States of America, and carry them away, and sell them as Slaves in other of the States; and of the horrible Cruelties practised in the carrying on of this most infamous TrafficTorrey, Jesse, active 1787-1834
History
American Slave Trade: Or, An Account of the Manner in which the Slave Dealers take Free People from some of the United States of America, and carry them away, and sell them as Slaves in other of the States; and of the horrible Cruelties practised in the carrying on of this most infamous Traffic
Torrey, Jesse, active 1787-1834
Slavery -- United States
22. While at a public house, in Fredericktown, there came into the
bar-room (on Sunday) a decently dressed white man, of quite a light
complexion, in company with one who was totally black. After they went
away, the landlord observed that the white man was a slave. I asked him,
with some surprise, how that could be possible? To which he replied,
that he was a descendant, by female ancestry, of an African slave. He
also stated, that not far from Fredericktown, there was a slave estate,
on which there were several white females of as fair and elegant
appearance as white ladies in general, held in legal bondage as slaves.
These facts demonstrate that the peculiar hue, with which it has pleased
God to paint the surface of the body of an African, is not the only
circumstance which reconciles to the conscience of the European, (white
man) the act of depriving him of his liberty and the fruits of his
labour. Hence it appears to be a melancholy truth, that man, in a morbid
state of intellect, (which I consider to be the case with every
individual, whose rule of action is not founded upon wisdom and
virtue,) voluntarily and almost invariably, confounds right with might,
and when stimulated by avarice, frequently hesitates not to _bind and
sell_ his wife, his children, or his brother! I have received direct
information from a gentleman who witnessed the fact, that in one of the
slave states, a white man, having married one of his female slaves,
after she had borne him several children, sold the whole of them
together as he would a drove of cattle; and it is said such instances
are frequent. A _gentleman_ brought with him from the southward to
_Philadelphia_, (the city of brotherly love,) his half brother, the son
of his father by a slave, and attempted to sell him! He was happily
prevented from executing his sacrilegious design by the interposition of
a respectable citizen, who also procured the legal restoration of
freedom to the darker _faced_ brother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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