Such stories could not be recounted without producing a strong effect. The glimpses thus opened into the dread regions of slavery gave a harrowing reality to all that conjecture or imagination had pictured. It was, indeed, true, that our own white brethren, heirs to the freedom newly purchased by precious blood, partakers in the sovereignty of citizenship, belonging to the fellowship of the Christian church, were degraded in unquestioning obedience to an arbitrary taskmaster, sold as beasts of the field, and galled by the manacle and the lash! It was true that they were held at fixed prices; and that their only chance of freedom was to be found in the earnest, energetic, united efforts of their countrymen in their behalf. It is not easy to comprehend the exact condition to which they were reduced. There is no reason to believe that it differed materially from that of other Christian captives in Algiers. The masters of vessels were lodged together, and indulged with a table by themselves, though a small iron ring was attached to one of their legs, to denote that they were slaves. The seamen were taught and obliged to work at the trade of carpenter, blacksmith, and stone mason, from six o'clock in the morning till four o'clock in the afternoon, without intermission, except for half an hour at dinner.[89] Some of the details of their mode of life, as transmitted to us, are doubtless exaggerated. It is, however, sufficient to know that they were slaves; nor is there any other human condition, which, when barely mentioned, even without one word of description, so strongly awakens the sympathies of every just and enlightened lover of his race. [Footnote 89: History of the War between the United States and Tripoli, p. 52.] [Illustration]