THE BEREAVED SLAVE MOTHER. Oh! deep was the anguish of the Slave Mother's heart, When call'd from her darling forever to part; So grieved that lone Mother, that heart-broken Mother, In sorrow and woe. The lash of the master her deep sorrows mock, While the child of her bosom is sold on the block; Yet loud shrieked that mother, poor heart-broken Mother, In sorrow and woe. The babe in return, for its fond mother cries, While the sound of their wailings together arise: They shriek for each other, the child and the Mother, In sorrow and woe. The harsh auctioneer, to sympathy cold, Tears the babe from its Mother and sells it for Gold; While the Infant and Mother, loud shriek for each other, In sorrow and woe. At last came the parting of Mother and Child, Her brain reel'd with madness, that mother was _wild_; Then the _Lash_ could not smother, the shrieks of that Mother, Of sorrow and woe. The child was borne off to a far distant clime, While the Mother was left in anguish to pine; But reason departed, and she sunk broken-hearted, In sorrow and woe. That poor mourning Mother, of Reason bereft, Soon ended her sorrows, and sunk cold in death; Thus died that Slave Mother, poor heart-broken Mother, In sorrow and woe. Oh! list ye kind Mothers to the cries of the Slave; The Parents and Children implore you to save; Go! rescue the Mothers, the Sisters and Brothers, From sorrow and woe. EXTRACTS FROM THE AMERICAN SLAVE CODE. The following are mostly abridged selections from the statutes of the slave States and of the United States. They give but a faint view of the cruel oppression to which the slaves are subject, but a strong one enough, it is thought, to fill every honest heart with a deep abhorrence of the atrocious system. Most of the important provisions here cited, though placed under the name of only one State, prevail in nearly all the States, with slight variations in language, and some diversity in the penalties. The extracts have been made in part from Stroud's Sketch of the Slave Laws, but chiefly from authorized editions of the statute books referred to, found in the Philadelphia Law Library. As the compiler has not had access to many of the later enactments of the several States, nearly all he has cited are acts of an earlier date than that of the present anti-slavery movement, so that their severity cannot be ascribed to its influence. The cardinal principle of slavery, that the slave is not to be ranked among _sentient beings_, but among things—is an article of property, a chattel personal—obtains as undoubted law in all the slave States.