Slave trader

“ I do not see how we can escape from the conclusion that the slave-owner is an accomplice of the slave-trader. So long as a profitable market is kept open, the article will be supplied, despite of difficulties and dangers. The only way to stop the trade, is to shut up the market; and this can be done only by the entire abolition of the system of slavery. ”

“ Extremes thus always meet. The more splendid the palace of the trader, whether in cloth, cotton, negroes, or Hindoos, the more squalid will be the poverty of the labourer, his wife and children,—and the more numerous the diamonds on the coat of Prince Esterhazy, the more ragged will be his serfs. The more that local places of exchange are closed, the greater will be the tendency to the exhaustion and abandonment of the land, and the more flourishing will be the slave trade, North and South,—and the greater will be the growth of pro-slavery at the South, and anti-slavery at the North. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some people suppose, that the Ship Trade is rather the stealing, than the buying of Slaves. But there is enough to lay to the charge of the ships, without accusing them falsely. The slaves, in general, are bought, and paid for. Sometimes, when goods are lent, or trusted on shore, the trader voluntarily leaves a free person, perhaps his own son, as a hostage, or pawn, for the payment ”

“ The keepers and procurers are the paid agents of the men who foot the bill. Every dollar, with the burning name of God upon it, that any man spends there makes him a stockholder in the white slave market and a partner in the traffic in girls. The men who support the hideous business are the ultimate white slave traders, and when their hired men, the divekeepers and procurers, come to judgment and condemnation, the men who supported them in crime will be arraigned beside them and punished with them. ”

“ Choules, 'by providence opening a merciful safety valve?' Why, said the gentleman, I will tell you; the slave traders come from the cotton and sugar plantations of the South and are willing to buy up more slaves than we can part with. We must keep a stock for the purpose of rearing slaves, but we part with the most valuable, and at the same time, the most dangerous, and the demand is very constant and likely to be so, for when they go to these southern states, the average existence Is ONLY FIVE YEARS! ”

“ No other trade ever had such an exalted origin, and yet the cruelties and horrors of it far surpass those described in any other branch of history. The soldiers who have looted cities, the pirates who have made passengers and sailors walk the plank, and the religious zealots who have burned their opponents at the stake, were more merciful than the slave-traders. ”

“ The average slave driver of past days was only a trader who sold human beings instead of selling oxen or sheep. When his trade was prohibited, he took heavy risks and ran great danger of losing his fortune and his life. ”

“ Their central situation for the commerce of the known and almost of the unknown world, especially favored the slave-trade. Accordingly Phœnician slaves became more and more valuable, and a continually extending market produced a constantly increasing demand. In all probability the inland caravan excursions afforded the principal supplies for their immense slave traffic; but they also bought, [Pg 21] stole, and kidnapped from every possible place and by every conceivable stratagem—just as modern American slave-traders do. ”

“ The mere fact that foreigners purchase or capture slaves from savage tribes cannot, of course, account [413] for the existence of slavery among these savages; it may even result in the disappearance of slavery among them, if they find it more profitable to sell their slaves than retain them. But the slave-trade will often augment the opportunities of acquiring slaves. Slave-traders generally trade in other articles besides slaves; therefore they will often exchange some of the slaves they may have procured for something else. ”

“ Farmers, who make a business of raising slaves for the market, were there, and slave-traders, who make a business of buying human beings in the slave-raising States and taking them to the far South, were also in attendance. Men and women, too, who wished to purchase for their own use, had found their way to the slave sale. ”

“ The most respectable witnesses produced by the Slave Traders, some of whom had resided among the Africans many years, and on various parts of the coast, declared, that their stupidity, and still more their indolence, were so firmly rooted in their nature, as to be absolutely invincible ”

“ 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. ”

“ For who does not know that trading in "the persons of men" has ever been, and yet is, a main pillar in the fabric of slavery? Indeed, man-stealing and slave-trading are to slave-holding precisely what the business of the distiller and of the vendor is to the vice of intemperance. There is, in either case, a trio of associated evils ”

“ If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here, provisions, guns, powder, cotton cloths, and other goods, suitable for the purchase or subsistence of slaves, are sold at good prices for cash, or bills of exchange. The bills of Pedro Blanco, the notorious slave-dealer at Gallinas, on an eminent Spanish house in New York, and another in London, are taken as readily as cash. A large number of the vessels engaged in the African trade, whether English or American, do a considerable part of their business either with the slavers, or with natives settled at the slave-marts, and who, from their connection with the trade, have plenty of money. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I think it will be granted by unprejudiced people, that the colonist who sold me a few pieces of cloth, lodged me in travelling, or gave me his labor for my flesh-colored gold, participated no more in the African slave-trade than the European or American supercargo who sold assorted cargoes, selected with the most deliberate judgment in London, Paris, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, expressly to suit the well-known cupidity of my warriors, kidnappers, and slave merchants.
Commerce is sometimes an adroit metaphysican—but a bad moralist! ”

“ The poor slaves were first caught by the chiefs in their wars promoted by Europeans; they were then sold to the slave factors, who again bartered them for a monstrous profit, without any stipulation as to their destination or usage. No; to the avaricious slave dealer, it matters not what becomes of the wretched victim whom he sells, except that the sooner they are destroyed, the greater will be the demand for them. ”

“ And when good men, whose duty it was to mark him as the object of their destruction, began to assail him, he did not fly, but gnashed his teeth at them, growling savagely at the same time, and putting himself into a posture of defiance.
We see then, in whatever light we consider the Slave-trade, whether we examine into the nature of it, or whether we look into the extent of it, or whether we estimate the difficulty of subduing it, we must conclude that no evil more monstrous has ever existed upon earth. ”

“ Undoubtedly there were in the United States many people who were opposed to the trade because of principle. But the student cannot overlook the fact that the feeling against the trade was able to make headway because there was no financial interest in slaves or slavers at the North, outside of a few ports, and at the South there were increasing numbers of slave-owners who had slaves to sell through the natural increase of their holdings. ”

“ At these auction-stands, bones, muscles, sinews, blood and nerves, of human beings, are sold with as much indifference as a farmer in the north sells a horse or sheep. And this great American nation is, at the present time, engaged in the slave-trade. ”

“ Thus, out of every lot of one hundred shipped from Africa, seventeen died in about nine weeks, and not more than fifty lived to become efficient laborers in our islands.
Having advanced thus far in his investigation, he felt, he said, the wickedness of the slave-trade to be so enormous, so dreadful, and irremediable, that he could stop at no alternative short of its abolition. A trade founded on iniquity, and carried on with such circumstances of horror, must be abolished, let the policy of it be what it might ”

“ 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. ”

“ As to the slave-trade itself, there could not be two opinions about it where men were not interested. A trade, begun in savage war, prosecuted with unheard of barbarity, continued during the transportation with the most loathsome imprisonment, and ending in perpetual exile and slavery, was a trade so horrid in all its circumstances that it was impossible to produce a single argument in its favor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Thus according to this construction, we have here an institution of a universal slave trade, by which every man may not only become a merchant, but may rightfully become the merchandize itself of this trade, and be bought and sold like a beast. ”

“ But if the planters were thus to get their labourers from the births on their own estates, then the Slave Trade would in time be no longer necessary to them, and it would die away as an useless and a noxious plant. ”

“ All slaves, however, are not brought here by negro traders. Many of the planters prefer going on and purchasing for themselves, for which purpose it is not unusual for them to take on from twenty to forty and fifty thousand dollars, lay the whole out in slaves, and either accompany them through the wilderness themselves on horseback, or engage a conductor. By adopting this method they purchase them at a much greater advantage, than at second-hand from the professional trader, as slaves can be bought for fifty per cent. less there, than after they are once brought into this market. ”