Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455: Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852Various
History
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455: Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852
Various
Periodicals
Tom, we have hinted, was jet black in colour, trustworthy and valued
by his master, who was compelled by necessity to part with him to
Haley, a slave-trader. The separation of this honest fellow from his
wife Chloe, and his children, was a sad affair; but as Tom was of a
hopeful temperament, and under strong religious impressions, he did
not repine at the fate he was about to encounter, dreaded as that
usually is by persons in his situation. 'In order to appreciate the
sufferings of the negroes sold south, it must be remembered that all
the instinctive affections of that race are peculiarly strong. Their
local attachments are very abiding. They are not naturally daring and
enterprising, but home-loving and affectionate. Add to this all the
terrors with which ignorance invests the unknown, and add to this,
again, that selling to the south is set before the negro from
childhood as the last severity of punishment. The threat that
terrifies more than whipping or torture of any kind, is the threat of
being sent down river.
'A missionary among the fugitives in Canada told us, that many of the
fugitives confessed themselves to have escaped from comparatively kind
masters, and that they were induced to brave the perils of escape, in
almost every case, by the desperate horror with which they regarded
being sold south--a doom which was hanging either over themselves or
their husbands, their wives or children. This nerves the African,
naturally patient, timid, and unenterprising, with heroic courage, and
leads him to suffer hunger, cold, pain, the perils of the wilderness,
and the more dread penalties of recapture.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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