Slave hunting

“ In a fifth, it would be a petty negro chief disposing of twenty or thirty negroes taken alive in a recent attack upon a village at a little distance from his own. Sometimes these forays in quest of negroes to sell are on a very large scale, and then they are called slave-hunts. The king of one negro country collects a large army, and makes an expedition into the territories of another negro king, ravaging and making prisoners as he goes. ”

“ Yet when victims make their escape from this wild beast of Slavery, northerners consent to act the part of blood-hounds, and hunt the poor fugitive back into his den, "full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness." ”

“ Slavery is the curse of this beautiful region. Here for a loin-cloth or two a mother offers eagerly to sell one of her offspring and deliver it into perpetual bondage to his Belooch soldiers. Whole villages are destroyed, in the most remorseless manner, by the slave-hunters to obtain their victims. The chiefs of the interior are as fond of gain as those on the coast, and this sets one against the other, for the sake of obtaining slaves to sell. ”

“ I wish some of my old northern friends, who think Slavery a good thing, could witness the scenes in the slave auctions, which have so often made my blood run cold. I knew two runaway negroes absolutely starve themselves to death in their hiding-places in this city, rather than make themselves known, and be sent back to their masters. ”

“ When the heats are closely contested, the blood of the tortured animal drips from the lash and flies at every leap from the stroke of the rowel. From the breaking of girths and other accidents, their riders (mostly slaves) are often thrown and maimed or killed. Yet these amusements are attended by thousands in every part of the slave states. The wealth and fashion, the gentlemen and ladies of the 'highest circles' at the south, throng the race course. ”

“ The whole, or the greatest part of that immense continent, is a field of warfare and desolation; a wilderness in which the inhabitants are wolves towards each other That this scene of oppression, fraud, treachery, and bloodshed, if not originally occasioned, is in part (I will not say wholly) upheld by the slave-trade, I dare not dispute. Every man in the sugar islands may be convinced that it is so, who will inquire of any African negroes, on their first arrival, concerning the circumstances of their captivity. ”

“ Black's family that his wife turned against him for his cruelty to runaway slaves.
I have stated that some of the masters and overseers hired the hunters, on condition that they would capture and return the runaway slaves, unbruised and untorn by their dogs; while others, in a mad fit of passion, would say to them, "I want you to bring my runaway nigger home, dead or alive."
All of the slave hunters used to practice cruelty upon the runaway slaves; more especially upon those whose masters would say to hunters "bring them dead or alive." ”

“ The negroes purchased by the slavers on the coast of Africa were brought from the interior, convicts sold into slavery, children sold by heathen parents destitute of natural affection, kidnapped villagers, and captives taken in war, the greater part of them born in hereditary bondage. The circumstances under which they were consigned to the slave-ship evince the wretchedness of their condition in their native country, where they were the victims of idolatry, barbarism, and war. The negroes imported were usually between the ages of fourteen and thirty, two-thirds of them being males. ”

“ Neither the aged nor the sick are spared; women, and even children in the womb, fall a sacrifice to their fury; the huts are plundered, the little possessions of the unfortunate inhabitants carried away or destroyed, and all that fall alive into the hands of the robbers are led as slaves into the camp. When the negroes see that their resistance is no longer of any avail, they frequently prefer death to slavery ”

“ The slave-trade has been the great obstacle to the civilization of Africa, the development of her resources, and the welfare of the Negro race. The prospect of gain, which this traffic held out to the natives, induced one tribe to make war upon another, burn the villages, murder the old, and kidnap the young. ”

“ War and kidnapping supply the slave-market, and no captive, whatever his rank in his own tribe, can escape this fate, except by a heavy ransom offered soon after he is taken, and before his whereabouts becomes unknown to his friends. Children of slaves, whose fathers are never known, are forever slaves. ”

“ And this will continue to be the fact for years to come, unless more effectual measures are taken than any that government can adopt. The slave-stealers lie along the coast of Africa, and glide up and down her rivers, ready to seize upon every man, woman and child, who come within their reach. ”

“ In 1852, by an Act of Congress, heavy penalties were imposed upon all persons who knowingly entertained or aided a Fugitive Slave, or, in other words, to "feed the hungry or clothe the naked." It was also made the duty of the United States Marshals, and all good citizens, to assist in retaining them. Even in the Slave States, the Negro hounds and the hunters are great terrors to prevent the escape of Slaves. ”

“ The blacks frequently deceive the dogs by crossing and recrossing the creeks. Should the hunters who have no dogs, start a slave from his hiding place, and the slave not stop at the hunter's call, he will shoot at him, as soon as he would at a deer. Some masters advertise so much for a runaway slave, dead or alive. It undoubtedly gives such more satisfaction to know that their property is dead, than to know that it is alive without being able to get it. Some slaves run away who never mean to be taken alive. ”

“ The slave trade has well been called the systematic plunder of a continent. But in the irony of fate those Africans who lent their hands to the looting got nothing but deceptive rewards, while the victims of the rapine were quite possibly better off on the American plantations than the captors who remained in the African jungle. ”

“ As for the defeated negroes who were not killed, they were carried down to the sea and sold. And as time passed the passion for blood grew on the raiders until it was greater than their greed. They tortured to death many whom they might have sold. Before the end of the eighteenth century these raids, called wars by those who owned the slave-ships, were the chief source of supply for the coast market, and after the trade was declared illegal they were, practically, the only source of supply ”

“ The price of slaves (owing to the suppression of the Slave Trade) is very high, consequently the kings and chiefs in the interior go annually on a two or three months’ slave-hunt, which they call a war. The result of this hunt is, of course, the capture of a number of slaves. [Pg 116] These slaves, (with the exception of those detained as wives or slaves, for they are the same, or both,) are sold at a high price to the white men, which is consequently an encouragement to the kings in the interior to follow up these annual hunts. ”

“ This, however, was only the case with the professional slave-driver, who was commissioned to convey the negroes to the coast; and if we wish to form a conception of the extent and intricate working of the curse inflicted upon the negroes by their contact with white men, we must set ourselves to imagine all the previous kidnapping and fighting which must have been necessary to procure every one of these droves which the Slatees carried down. What a number of processes must have conspired to bring a sufficient number of slaves together to form a drove! ”

“ Every night the woods resound with the deep-mouthed baying of the bloodhounds. The slaves are said by some to love their masters; but it requires the terrors of bloodhounds and the fugitive slave law to keep them in bondage. You in the North are compelled to act the part of the bloodhounds here, and catch the fugitives for the planters of the South. Free negroes are sold into bondage for the most trivial offences. ”

“ If the tradition of the early wars is of any value at all, it may give a general support to this opinion through the frequent references to the existence of rustic slavery. The devastation of an enemy’s country is the normal occupation of hostile armies. The capture of slaves [584] , as of flocks and herds and beasts of burden, is a common item in the tale of booty from the farms. That writers of a later age may have exaggerated the slave-element in the farm-labour of early times is highly probable. ”

“ A favorite trick of the slaver, fleeing from a man-of-war, was to throw over slaves a few at a time in the hope Page 115that the humanity of the pursuers would impel them to stop and rescue the struggling negroes, thus giving the slave-ship a better chance of escape. Sometimes these hapless blacks thus thrown out, as legend has it Siberian peasants sometimes throw out their children as ransom to pursuing wolves, were furnished with spars or barrels to keep them afloat until the pursuer should come up ”

“ That slaves were few in number during the earlier years of the trade is certain. That is to say, the great men of every tribe held a few of their neighbors as personal property. They were detained in various ways, but chiefly through taking prisoners in the fights with neighboring tribes, for strange as it may seem now, the presence of slaves in a tribe indicated some degree of mercy in the minds of the slaveowners. Instead of killing everybody, old and young, when attacking an enemy, these slave-owners saved some alive. ”

“ Slavery is universal, and as the life of the slave is of no value to the owner except as property, they are treated with extreme cruelty. Slaves the northern tribes purchase, kidnap, or capture in war from their southern neighbors, who obtain them by like means from each other, the course of the slave traffic being generally from south to north, and from the coast inland. ”

“ That matters not; the slaves will be thought to be transporting some wounded men taken from the ruins; conceal your faces somehow and moan as loud as you can. As to the Master of the Hounds, who has prudently stripped himself of his bear skin, he can boldly run through the crowd carrying the little slave in his arms as if he had saved some young girl from the flames in the women's apartment. ”

“ A slaver was thus to be taken, because she was a slaver; just as it is better to shoot the wolf before he has killed the sheep than afterwards. If a vessel, therefore, was found on the African coast with slave-irons, water in sufficient quantity for a slave-cargo, with a slave-deck laid for packing slaves—somewhat as the carcases of sheep and pigs in a railway train, with the exception of the fresh air—she was seized and condemned before committing the overt act. ”

“ A distinguished historian remarks: "When warlike people, emerging from the savage state, first set about agriculture, the idea of sparing the lives of prisoners, on condition of their becoming useful to the conquerors by labor, was an obvious improvement upon the practice of former times, when conquered enemies were constantly put to death, not from a spirit of cruelty, but from necessity, for the conquerors were unable to maintain them in captivity, and dared not set them free." [3] Possibly the practice was borrowed from the East, where the mention of slaves occurs in the remotest ages. ”

“ A grand hunt had accordingly been proclaimed, and at short notice a company of near a hundred men had been collected, planters, overseers, loafers, poor whites, with four or five professional slave catchers, and several packs of hounds, armed to the teeth, and prepared to make a search of the neighboring swamps, in which it was customary for the runaways to take refuge, lying hid by day, and coming out by night to supply themselves by killing cattle and otherwise, and to communicate with their wives and friends who remained behind. ”

“ The method of obtaining the slaves and of making the pretense of a contract with them is thus described: "When any slaves are wanted in the islands, the plantation owner informs the slave-traders on the mainland. The slave-trader goes to a strong chief, inland, and bargains with him for the number of slaves he requires, generally paying him in rifles and ammunition. {6} This chief will not send any of his own men to the islands, but, calling his braves, he goes to some weaker tribe, attacks it, and annihilates the tribe, taking the men, women, children, and cattle captive. ”

“ Thousands upon thousands of years ago, negro warriors sold their negro captives into slavery. Negro husbands would offer their wives and daughters to foreign travelers. Negro fathers would sell their children. In some of the oldest monumental inscriptions of the human race, the negro appears as the chained slave of foreign masters. ”

“ In the early days of savagery, one tribe would frequently make a raid upon another neighboring tribe and bring home with it some captives who became slaves, working without pay for their conquerors and possessing no more rights than beasts of burden. (This custom exists today in the interior of Africa, and was responsible for the infamous African slave trade. Black captives were sold to white traders through the greed of their captors, who forgot that their own relatives and friends might be carried off and sold across the seas by some other tribe of blacks.) ”

“ Every slave found on horseback, without a written permission from his master, shall receive twenty-five lashes.
Any freeholder may seize and correct any slave found absent from his usual place of work or residence, without some white person, and if the slave resist or try to escape, he may use arms, and if the slave assault and strike him, he may kill the slave.
It is lawful to fire upon runaway negroes who are armed, and upon those who, when pursued, refuse to surrender. ”