and undress in it. The farmers here catch great quantities of fish, with which they manure their land.
There are still a considerable number of slaves in Long Island; they are treated with a degree of {13} humanity that slaves in some other parts of the world never experience; they are well fed, and the whip is very seldom resorted to. Notwithstanding their comparative advantages, they detest the unnatural yoke, and frequently run off. It often happens that the master neither pursues nor inquires after the fugitive. What becomes of the self-emancipated is not here well understood. I have heard that many of them get to Boston, or some other of the northern ports, from whence they are carried to the Southern States, sold, and placed under a harsher treatment.
A great part of the slaves of the State of New York are to be emancipated in the year 1827.[1] It is difficult to predict the consequences of this liberation. It is to be feared that people who have been compelled to work, will, of their own choice, become banditti, rather than adopt industrious habits. Arrangements must necessarily be made before the arrival of this revolution; but many satisfy themselves by saying, that the legislature will devise some plan that will enable them to get over the difficulty. Some suggest that the Negroes shall be returned to Africa. On this measure, the African Association, so much talked of in America, proceeds.[2] The expense of transporting,
- ↑ By act of legislation, 31st March, 1817, "Every Negro, Mulatto, or Mustee, within this State, born before the 4th day of July, 1799, shall, from and after the 4th day of July, 1827, be free."—Flint.
- ↑ The American Society for the Colonization of the Free People of Color of the United States, was organized at Washington, December, 1816. It rapidly gained favor, both North and South, and by February, 1820, sufficient money had been subscribed to send the first colony to Liberia. But the free negroes disliked it; the colonists suffered great hardships in Liberia; and the abolitionists soon opposed the project. William Lloyd Garrison began to denounce the Society in 1829, and thereafter it declined steadily in importance.—Ed.
