"My brothers and sisters were bid off one by one, while my mother, holding my hand, looked on in an agony of grief, the cause of which I but ill understood at first, but which dawned on my mind with dreadful clearness as the sale proceeded. My mother was then separated from me, and put up in her turn. She was bought by a man named Isaac R----, in Montgomery county, Md., and then I was offered to the assembled purchasers. My mother half distracted with the parting forever from all her children pushed through the crowd, while the bidding for me was going on, to the spot where R. was standing. She fell at his feet and clung to his knees, entreating him in tones that a mother only could command, to buy her _baby_ as well as herself, and spare to her _one_ of her little ones at least." But this man thus appealed to "disengaged himself from her with such violent kicks and blows as to reduce her to the necessity of creeping out of his reach and mingling the groan of bodily suffering with the sob of a broken heart." These cases are presented as examples to show the meaning and intent of the code which declares that a slave is _property_--and _has no rights or interests_; and they are not rare and extreme cases brought in here only for effect, but are such as occur daily in all the slave states; and they are _perfectly in keeping_ with the spirit of American slavery. Those persons were sold precisely as _other property_ is sold. From these authorities and facts it is clear that a slave occupies a relation as far beneath the apprentice, miner, hired laborer, or even the villein of the Feudal Age, or the Russian serf, as mere _property_ is beneath _manhood_ with all its possessions and God-like powers--as far as a brute is below a man "made in the image of God." The American slave code is almost an exact copy of the old savage Roman slave code, which was conceived in the dark night of heathenism, and brought forth reeking with blood in the unholy travail of sanguinary wars, before that empire had been enlightened and conquered by the peaceful and just Gospel of Christ. That it may be seen _where_ English and American law-makers obtained the spirit of the American slave code, the following synopsis of the Roman law on slavery is inserted.