of trade, and relieve cases of individual distress. There are men at the South who could tell, if they would, how, when they have spent the last dollar that they thought they could afford on one week, they have been importuned by precisely such a case the next, and been unable to meet it. There are masters at the South who could tell, if they would, how they have stood and bid against a trader, to redeem some poor slave of their own, till the bidding was perfectly ruinous, and they have been obliged to give up by sheer necessity. Good-natured auctioneers know very well how they have often been entreated to connive at keeping a poor fellow out of the trader's clutches; and how sometimes they succeed, and sometimes they do not.
The very struggle and effort which generous Southern men make to stop the regular course of trade only shows them the hopelessness of the effort. We fully concede that many of them do as much or more than any of us would do under similar circumstances; and yet they know that what they do amounts, after all, to the merest trifle.
But let us still further reason upon the testimony of advertisements. What is to be understood by the following, of the Memphis Eagle and Inquirer, Saturday, Nov. 13, 1852? Under the editorial motto, "Liberty and Union, now and forever," come the following illustrations:
NO. I.
75 NEGROES.
pointing_hand_02.jpg)
NO. II.
CASH FOR NEGROES.
NO. III.
500 NEGROES WANTED.
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Under the head of advertisements No. 1, let us humbly inquire what "assorted A No. 1 Negroes" means. Is it likely that it means negroes sold in families? What is meant by the invitation, "Call soon if you want to get the first choice"?
So much for Advertisement No. 1. Let us now propound a few questions to the initiated on No. 2. What does Mr. Benjamin Little mean by saying that he "will pay as high a cash price for a few likely young negroes as any trader in the city"? Do families commonly consist exclusively of "likely young negroes"?
On the third advertisement we are also desirous of some information. Messrs. Bolton, Dickins & Co. state that they expect to receive a large lot of Virginia negroes in the fall.
Unfortunate Messrs. Bolton, Dickins & Co.! Do you suppose that Virginia families will sell their negroes? Have you read Mr. J. Thornton Randolph's last novel, and have you not learned that old Virginia families never sell to traders? and, more than that, that they always club together and buy up the negroes that are for sale in their neighborhood, and the traders when they appear on the ground are hustled off with very little ceremony? One would really think that you had got your impressions on the subject from "Uncle Tom's Cabin." For we are told that all who derive their views of slavery from this book "regard the families of slaves as utterly unsettled and vagrant."[1]
But, before we recover from our astonishment on reading this, we take up the Natchez (Mississippi) Courier of Nov. 20th, 1852, and there read:
NEGROES.
He has just arrived from Virginia with a very likely lot of Field Men and Women; also, House Servants, three Cooks, and a Carpenter. Call and see.
A fine Buggy Horse, a Saddle Horse and a Carryall, on hand, and for sale.
Natchez, Sept. 28, 1852.
Where in the world did this lucky Mr. Thos. G. James get this likely Virginia "assortment"? Probably in some county which Mr. Thornton Randolph never visited. And had no families been separated to form
- ↑ Article in Fraser's Magazine for October, by a South Carolinian.
