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BLASTING INFLUENCE
OF SLAVERY
ON THE SOCIAL CIRCLE
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"A FUGITIVE slave
mentioned some harrowing stories of slaves being sold to
go to the south. One woman was told by a
slave-dealer who lived near her, that he had bought her;
she said 'Have you bought my husband?' 'No.'
'Have you bought my children?' 'No.' She
said no more, but went into the court-yard, took an axe,
and with her right hand chopped off her left. She
then returned into the house as if nothing had happened,
and told her purchaser she was ready to go; but a
one-handed slave being of little value, she was left
with her children.
"Another slave, with whom the lecturer said he was well
acquainted, had been brought up as a house-servant, in
close intimacy with a little boy, his mistress's son.
His mistress sold him to a slave-dealer. The
little boy went down into the kitchen, and told Jim
that his mamma had just sold him. He instantly
went up to the drawing-room, to know if it were true.
His mistress told him that it was, and that he must go.
Jim went back into the kitchen; and rather than
be forced from his wife and children, to toil in the
southern cotton fields, he took a knife, cut his own
throat, and died on the spot.
"Washington, the capital of American freedom, is the
great slave-mart of the Union; and sales of human beings
are of almost daily occurrence. Sometimes, he
said, a mother would be sold in a separate lot from her
children. Her purchaser would turn to the seller
and say, 'Sir, I cannot force the children away, they
cling so together. 'In such cases, he said, a few
blows with the butt-end of the driver's whip would very
soon force them asunder, to meet no more." -
Northville, Cayuga County, 31st of 5th mo., 1846.
Leeds Anti-slavery
Series. No. 68
Sold by W. and F. G. CASH, 5,
Bishopsgate Street, London; and by JANE JOWETT, Friends'
Meeting Yard, Leeds, at 1s. 2. per 100.
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