"Slavery, having existed from time immemorial, is bound up with the whole social and economic organization of West African society. There are, broadly speaking, three kinds of slaves: those captured in war, those purchased from outside the tribe,--usually from the interior,--and the native-born slaves. _All alike_ are mere chattels, and _by law are absolutely subject to the master's will without redress_. But in practice a difference is made, for obvious reasons, between native-born slaves and captives taken from hostile tribes. _The latter are numerous, and the severest forms of labor fall to their lot. They are treated with constant neglect, and cruelly punished on the slightest provocation. Their lives are at no time secure; they serve as victims for the sacrifice; when sick they are driven into the jungle; in times of scarcity they starve._"[87] The master has the power of life and death over all slaves.[88] The same author adds: "_The pawning of persons for debt is exceedingly common. If the debt is never paid in full, the pawn_ and his descendants become slaves in perpetuity."[89] Surely the reader who has attended to these details which I have given from Mr. Tillinghast will admit that the southern master transferred the African into a condition far better than any he could find at home. In the south two agencies gave him beneficent favor to which he and his fathers had always been strangers. The law of the land protected his life and shielded him from cruelty; and his high market value made it the interest of his American master not to overwork or under- feed and clothe him. And he was introduced into the first stage of monogamic life, which he developed steadily and rapidly until he was freed. In this he was travelling the only true road up from barbarism. If he could have but stayed in it until, after some generations--perhaps centuries--chaste wives and mothers had been evolved, he would have stood firmly on the threshold of permanent civilization and improvement.