From the moment the slave is kidnapped, to the last hour he draws his miserable breath, the white man's influence directly cherishes ignorance, fraud, treachery, theft, licentiousness, revenge, hatred and murder. It cannot be denied that human nature thus operated upon, must necessarily yield, more or less, to all these evils.—And thus do we dare to treat beings, who, like ourselves, are heirs of immortality!
And now let us briefly inquire into the influence of slavery on the white man's character; for in this evil there is a mighty re-action. "Such is the constitution of things, that we cannot inflict an injury without suffering from it ourselves: he, who blesses another, benefits himself; but he, who sins against his fellow creature, does his own soul a grievous wrong." The effect produced upon slave captains is absolutely frightful. Those who wish to realize it in all its awful extent, may find abundant information in Clarkson's History of Slavery: the authenticity of the facts there given cannot be doubted; for setting aside the perfect honesty of Clarkson's character, these facts were principally accepted as evidence before the British Parliament, where there was a very strong party of slave owners desirous to prove them false.
Indeed when we reflect upon the subject, it cannot excite surprise that slave-captains become as hard hearted and fierce as tigers. The very first step in their business is a deliberate invasion of the rights of others; its pursuit combines every form of violence, bloodshed, tyranny and anguish; they are accustomed to consider their victims as cattle, or blocks of wood;[1] and they are invested with perfectly despotic powers.
There is a great waste of life among white seamen employed in this traffic, in consequence of the severe
- ↑ I have read letters from slave-captains to their employers, in which they declare that they shipped such a number of billets of wood, or pieces of ebony, on the coast of Africa.
Near the office of the Richmond Enquirer in Virginia, an auction flag was hoisted one day this last winter, with the following curious advertisement: "On Monday the 11th inst., will be sold in front of the High Constable's office, one bright mulatto woman, about twentysix years of age; also, some empty barrels, and sundry old candle boxes."
