To save a vessel worth at most $5000 from confiscation, Homans murdered 600 negroes. The story is told in detail in the _African Repository_, Vol. XXIII, p. 371. The profits in the trade are shown by the fact that slaves costing from $12 to $20 on the coast of Africa sold for $350, when delivered alive and able to walk, in Cuba. When smuggled into the United States, they sold all the way from $750 to $1000. Old ships of known speed were in demand. Speed was necessary because the British government maintained cruisers on the coast that captured and confiscated vessels found with slaves actually on board. Our navy department sold the schooner _Enterprise_ (the second of the name) to men in the slave-trade at a small fraction of her value. The swift privateers of the War of 1812 were also bought for the purpose. In later years it was the custom to build swift vessels especially for the trade. Baltimore and New York builders were patronized more than others, New York having the lead in later years. The builders always knew what trade the vessels were to enter, and charged accordingly. No builder ever lost standing in society because he turned out ships for this purpose. In fact, the slave-traders were well known, and they lived among the wealthiest society people of New York--at the Astor House, for instance, where they were in the habit of meeting to arrange the details of their voyages. Public documents show that the most respected merchants of the city were ready to go on the bonds of these slavers, when bonds were required. A New Bedford whale-ship owner who was convicted of fitting out one of his vessels for the trade was afterward elected mayor of his city. Even after the Civil War was begun, a United States district attorney--a man appointed by Lincoln--was seen dining at the leading New York restaurant with a slaver whom he should have been prosecuting at that moment; for while the two ate together, the slaver talked about a slave voyage that he intended to make. Though American packets had for years controlled the trade between the United States and Europe, and the American clippers were making records that stirred the whole nautical world, the flag from those proud ships was used to cover the reeking slime in the slaver's hold, and it was the only flag that could protect the slaver from inspection on the African coast. These facts were well known, but they roused not a tremor of indignation among the American people, not one, save only in the breasts of a few "fanatics," and the arguments of the fanatics were answered by asking, "How would you like to have your sister marry a nigger?"