Domestic slave trade

“ These continual sales, often commonly by auction, not only of recently imported, but 137of homeborn and long-settled Negroes, are productive of the most acute sufferings to the Slaves, by tearing open, in the Africans, the old wounds, which might after many years have closed, and by forcing them once more from their homes, their families, and connections, when they had perhaps taken root in their West Indian soil, and multiplied their domestic and social holdings. ”

“ It is noteworthy that both Great Britain and the United States recognized the horrors of the slave trade as regards the seizing and transportation from Africa of the unhappy negroes, long before they could bring themselves to deal with the problem of slavery as a domestic institution. ”

“ It was not altogether a mistaken judgment that led the constitutional fathers to consider the slave-trade as the backbone of slavery. An economic system based on slave labor will find, sooner or later, that the demand for the cheapest slave labor cannot long be withstood. Once degrade the laborer so that he cannot assert his own rights, and there is but one limit below which his price cannot be reduced. ”

“ I do not question but humanity may have had a considerable influence in abolishing slavery in her West India possessions, aided, indeed, by the fallacious calculation that the labor of the negroes would be at least as profitable, if not more so, in consequence of the measure. She acted on the principle that tropical products can be produced cheaper by free African labor and East India labor, than by slave labor. She knew full well the value of such products to her commerce, navigation, navy, manufactures, revenue, and power. ”

“ The question of the suppression of the slave-trade is so intimately connected with the questions as to its rise, the system of American slavery, and the whole colonial policy of the eighteenth century, that it is difficult to isolate it, and at the same time to avoid superficiality on the one hand, and unscientific narrowness of view on the other. ”

“ Had the African source been kept freely open, the bringing of great numbers to meet the demand in prosperous times would quite possibly have so burdened the country with surplus slaves in subsequent periods of severe depression that slave prices would have fallen virtually to zero, and the slaveholding community would have been driven to emancipate them wholesale as a means of relieving the masters from the burden of the slaves' support. The foes of slavery had long reckoned that the abolition of the foreign trade would be a fatal blow to slavery itself. ”

“ In a state of nature, man had a right to the fruit of his own labor absolutely to himself; and one of the main purposes for which he entered into society was, that he might be better protected in the possession of his rights. In both cases, therefore, it was manifestly unjust that a man should be made to labor during the whole of his life, and yet have no benefit from his labor. Hence, the slave-trade and the colonial slavery were a violation of the very principal upon which all law for the protection of property was founded. ”

“ It is, however, a notable fact, that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans, upon those engaged in the foreign slave trade, the men engaged in the slave trade between the states pass without condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.
Behold the practical operation of this internal slave trade—the American slave trade sustained by American politics and American religion! Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. They inhabit all our southern states. ”

“ But when slavery came to be considered as the appropriate condition of one race, and the members of that race so highly qualified to engage in the production of cotton and sugar, tobacco and rice, the danger was, not only that slavery would once more come into favor, but that the African slave-trade would be replaced in the list of legitimate commercial pursuits, and become more extensive than it was in those days when it was defended by bishops and kings' sons in the British House of Lords. ”

“ It is the most gigantic system of slavery the world has yet seen, and therefore it is that freedom gradually disappears from every country over which England is enabled to obtain control, as witness the countries to which reference has just been made. ”

“ The negroes who were sold to the dealers in the African factories were most of them either slaves already to worse masters or were servi, servants in the old meaning of the word, prisoners of war, or else criminals, servati or reserved from death. They would otherwise have been killed; and since the slave trade has been abolished are again killed in the too celebrated 'customs.' The slave trade was a crime when the chiefs made war on each other for the sake of captives whom they could turn into money. ”

“ Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me, citizens, where, under the sun, can you witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave trade, as it exists at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States. ”

“ Still all slavers were greedy, more or less, and an immediate effect of the laws was to reduce the price of the slaves on the coast of Africa. Slavers, when the trade was lawful, had often paid as high as $100 for a good negro in Africa. ”

“ In this country protection has always, to some extent, existed; but at some times it has been efficient, and at others not; and our tendency toward freedom or slavery has always been in the direct ratio of its efficiency or inefficiency. ”

“ The grand, the decisive advantage which recommends the abolition of the slave trade is, that by closing the supply of foreign negroes to which the planters have hitherto been accustomed to trust for all of their undertakings, we will compel them to promote the multiplication of the slaves on their estates ”

“ These communities of small farmers and traders derived whatever opposition they had to the slave-trade from three sorts of motives,—economic, political, and moral. First, the importation of slaves did not pay, except to supply a moderate demand for household servants. Secondly, these colonies, as well as those in the South, had a wholesome political fear of a large servile population. ”

“ But the internal traffic was still lawful, and the breeding States soon reconciled themselves to a prohibition which gave them the monopoly of the interdicted trade, and they joined the full chorus of reprobation, to punish with death the slave-trader from Africa, while they cherished and shielded and enjoyed the precious profits of the American slave-trade exclusively to themselves. ”

“ No man of the least principle could for a moment think of engaging in such enterprises; and if he have any feeling, it is soon destroyed by familiarity with scenes of guilt and anguish. The result is, that the slave-trade is a monopoly in the hands of the very wicked ”

“ If a demand for slaves arose, a supply was forced in one way or other; and it was in vain, overpowered as we then were with positive evidence, as well as the reasonableness of the supposition, to deny that by the Slave-trade we occasioned all the enormities which had been alleged against it. ”

“ It is calculated that 30,000 Slaves, or more, are bought and sold annually; tens of thousands of poor Slaves are torn from their husbands, wives, and children, precipitated upon the Cotton-growing States, swelling in many localities an already over-crowded population. On many a Plantation, and in many a Slave-coffle, there is heard "a voice of lamentation and weeping, and great mournng; Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not." I have no doubt but the Foreign Slave Trade is quietly in operation in the United States ”

“ Indeed a very brief glance will show that slavery is inconsistent with economy, whether domestic or political.
The slave is bought, sometimes at a very high price; in free labor there is no such investment of capital. ”

“ The proposition to revive, or more properly to reopen, the slave trade is as yet but imperfectly understood, in its intentions and probable results, by the people of the South, and but little appreciated by them. ”

“ Experience has now sufficiently proved to us, that no one agency has been so effective in paralyzing the slave trade as the growth of any branch of profitable industry which convinces the native African chiefs that they can get a surer and, in the long run, larger profit by employing their subjects in peaceful labor, than they can even get from the large but uncertain gains of the slave trade. ”

“ But may we not be allowed to assume a higher tone, and to ask, if this practice, though by a strange perversion of words it is called the Slave Trade, ought indisputably to be considered as a most enormous crime, rather than a commerce, is it not clearly our own duty to abstain from it, and to prohibit and to punish the perpetration of it by our own subjects, however it may still prevail in other countries? ”

“ Can there be any other reason shewn why the same measures which are now in force for the extirpation of the slave trade should not have been adopted thirty years ago? The trade was then equally cruel and barbarous, equally disgraceful to man, and detestable in the sight of Heaven, as it is now rightly considered; but the merchant, the planter, and the factor, have been enriched by this lucrative commerce in their fellow-creatures, and they have received that patronage and countenance, which wealth, however obtained or employed, is seldom denied. ”

“ Every one, if he stirred from home, felt himself obliged to be armed.
Such was the nature of the slave-trade. It had unfortunately obtained the name of a trade, and many had been deceived by the appellation. But it was war and not trade. It was a mass of crimes, and not commerce. It was that which prevented the introduction of a trade in Africa; for it was only by clearing and cultivating the lands, that the climate could be made healthy for settlements; but this wicked traffic, by dispersing the inhabitants, and causing the lands to remain uncultivated, made the coast unhealthy to Europeans. ”

“ There is no need of extended argument to show that the importation of Africans into this country would directly and fearfully augment that evil which already to so great an extent is paralyzing industry, blighting commerce, and destroying the best interests of society. The disastrous influence of American slavery upon agriculture, the mechanical arts, education, public virtue, religion, has been fully set forth by others. ”

“ The cruelties of the African slave trade have never been written, — can not be written. No pen can describe them; and yet, how many American citizens, whose feelings will revolt at these details of suffering, will hear with comparative indifference of the revival of the iniquity in our land! ”

“ This was the primary excuse for the rise of the African slave-trade to America.
Every experiment of such a kind, however, where the moral standard of a people is lowered for the sake of a material advantage, is dangerous in just such proportion as that advantage is great. In this case it was great. For at least a century, in the West Indies and the southern United States, agriculture flourished, trade increased, and English manufactures were nourished, in just such proportion as Americans stole Negroes and worked them to death. ”

“ When the colonists united to oppose British oppression, the talk about slavery and slaves, which had reference to their own condition, turned their thoughts to the unfortunate negro slaves, and on Thursday, October 20, 1774, they signed an agreement that they would "not purchase any slave imported after the first day of December next; after which time we will wholly discontinue the slave-trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it." ”

“ What the second in so detestable a constitution of society may dictate, depends on the facilities for importing fresh slaves. If full-grown able-bodied slaves can be procured in sufficient numbers, and imported at a moderate expense, self-interest will recommend working the slaves to death, and replacing them by importation, in preference to the slow and expensive process of breeding them. Nor are the slave-owners generally backward in learning this lesson. It is notorious that such was the practice in our slave colonies, while the slave trade was legal ”

“ The consequences that have been so often drawn,—the tearing of the Slave from his country and family, would indeed, in this case, take effect, for the civilized and domiciliated Slave would be torn from his family and connections, to supply the deficiencies on those estates and islands where the Negro population does not increase. ”

“ The social stigma upon slave dealing doubtless enhanced the profits of the traders by diminishing the competition. The difference in the scales of prices prevailing at any time in the cheapest and the dearest local markets was hardly ever less than thirty per cent. From such a margin, however, there had to be deducted not only the cost of feeding, clothing, sheltering, guarding and transporting the slaves for the several months commonly elapsing between purchase and sale in the trade, but also allowances for such loss as might occur in transit by death, illness, accident or escape. ”