and systematically pursued, appears to be among the late devices and illustrations of human depravity. Neither Cowper nor Wesley, nor Jonathan Edwards, nor Granville Sharp, nor Clarkson, nor any of the philanthropists or divines, who, in the last century, bore fearless and emphatic testimony to the iniquity of slave-making, slave-holding and slave-selling seemed to have had any clear conception of it. For the infant slave of the past ages was rather an encumbrance and a burden, than a valuable addition to his master's stock. To raise him, however roughly, would cost all he would ultimately be worth. That it was cheaper to buy slaves than to rear them, was quite generally regarded as self-evident. But the suppression of the African slave-trade, coinciding with the rapid settlement of the Louisiana purchase, and the triumph of the Cotton-Gin, wrought here an entire transformation. When a field hand brought from ten to fifteen hundred dollars, and young negroes were held at about ten dollars per pound, the new born infant, if healthy, well formed, and likely to live, was deemed an addition to his master's wealth of not less than one hundred dollars even in Virginia or Maryland. It had now become the interest of the master to increase the number of births in his slave cabin; and few evinced scruples whereby this result was obtained. The chastity of female slaves was never deemed of much account, even where they were white; and, now that it had become an impediment to the increase of their master's wealth, it was wholly disregarded. No slave girl, however young, was valued lower for having become a mother, without waiting to be first made a wife; nor were many masters likely to rebuke this as a fault, or brand it as a shame. Women were publicly advertised as extraordinary breeders, and commanded a higher price on that account. Wives, sold in separation from their husbands, were imperatively required to accept new partners, in order that the fruitfulness of the plantation might not suffer.”
