Several years ago, while one morning employed in the duties of the nursery, a colored woman was announced. She was ushered5 into the nursery, and the author thought, on first survey, that a more surly, unpromising face she had never seen. The woman was thoroughly6 black, thick-set, firmly built, and with strongly-marked African features. Those who have been accustomed to read the expressions of the African face know what a peculiar7 effect is produced by a lowering, desponding expression upon its dark features. It is like the shadow of a thunder-cloud. Unlike her race generally, the woman did not smile when smiled upon, nor utter any pleasant remark in reply to such as were addressed to her. The youngest pet of the nursery, a boy about three years old, walked up, and laid his little hand on her knee, and seemed astonished not to meet the quick smile which the negro almost always has in reserve for the little child. The writer thought her very cross and disagreeable, and, after a few moments’ silence, asked, with perhaps a little impatience8, “Do you want anything of me to-day?”
“Here are some papers,” said the woman, pushing them towards her; “perhaps you would read them.”
The first paper opened was a letter from 6a negro-trader in Kentucky, stating concisely9 that he had waited about as long as he could for her child; that he wanted to start for the South, and must get it off his hands; that, if she would send him two hundred dollars before the end of the week, she should have it; if not, that he would set it up at auction10, at the court-house door, on Saturday. He added, also, that he might have got more than that for the child, but that he was willing to let her have it cheap.
“What sort of a man is this?” said the author to the woman, when she had done reading the letter.
“Dunno, ma’am; great Christian11, I know,—member of the Methodist church, anyhow.”
The expression of sullen12 irony13 with which this was said was a thing to be remembered.
“And how old is this child?” said the author to her.
The woman looked at the little boy who had been standing14 at her knee, with an expressive15 glance, and said, “She will be three years old this summer.”
On further inquiry16 into the history of the woman, it appeared that she had been set free by the will of her owners; that the child was legally entitled to freedom, but had been seized on by the heirs of the estate. She was poor and friendless, without money to maintain a suit, and the heirs, of course, threw the child into the hands of the trader. The necessary sum, it may be added, was all raised in the small neighborhood which then surrounded the Lane Theological Seminary, and the child was redeemed17.
If the public would like a specimen18 of the correspondence which passes between these worthies19, who are the principal reliance of the community for supporting and extending the institution of slavery, the following may be interesting as a matter of literary curiosity. It was forwarded by Mr. M. J. Thomas, of Philadelphia, to the National Era, and stated by him to be “a copy taken verbatim from the original, found among the papers of the person to whom it was addressed, at the time of his arrest and conviction, for passing a variety of counterfeit20 bank-notes.”
Poolsville, Montgomery Co., Md.,
March 24, 1831.
Dear Sir: I arrived home in safety with Louisa, John having been rescued from me, out of a two-story window, at twelve o’clock at night. I offered a reward of fifty dollars, and have him here safe in jail. The persons who took him brought him to Fredericktown jail. I wish you to write to no person in this state but myself. Kephart and myself are determined21 to go the whole hog22 for any negro you can find, and you must give me the earliest information, as soon as you do find any. Enclosed you will receive a handbill, and I can make a good bargain, if you can find them. I will in all cases, as soon as a negro runs off, send you a handbill immediately, so that you may be on the look-out. Please tell the constable23 to go on with the sale of John’s property; and, when the money is made, I will send on an order to you for it. Please attend to this for me; likewise write to me, and inform me of any negro you think has run away,—no matter where you think he has come from, nor how far,—and I will try and find out his master. Let me know where you think he is from, with all particular marks, and if I don’t find his master, Joe’s dead!
Write to me about the crooked-fingered negro, and let me know which hand and which finger, color, &c.; likewise any mark the fellow has who says he got away from the negro-buyer, with his height and color, or any other you think has run off.
Give my respects to your partner, and be sure you write to no person but myself. If any person writes to you, you can inform me of it, and I will try to buy from them. I think we can make money, if we do business together; for I have plenty of money, if you can find plenty of negroes. Let me know if Daniel is still where he was, and if you have heard anything of Francis since I left you. Accept for yourself my regard and esteem24.
Reuben B. Carlley.
John C. Saunders.
This letter strikingly illustrates25 the character of these fellow-patriots with whom the great men of our land have been acting26 in conjunction, in carrying out the beneficent provisions of the Fugitive27 Slave Law.
With regard to the Kephart named in this letter the community of Boston may have a special interest to know further particulars, as he was one of the dignitaries sent from the South to assist the good citizens of that place in the religious and patriotic28 enterprise of 1851, at the time that Shadrach was unfortunately rescued. It therefore may be well to introduce somewhat particularly John Kephart, as sketched29 by Richard H. Dana, Jr., one of the lawyers employed in the defence of the perpetrators of the rescue.
I shall never forget John Caphart. I have been eleven years at the bar, and in that time have seen many developments of vice30 and hardness, but I never met with anything so cold-blooded as the testimony31 of that man. John Caphart is a tall, sallow man, of about fifty, with jet-black hair, a restless, dark eye, and an anxious, care-worn look, which, had there been enough of moral element 7in the expression, might be called melancholy32. His frame was strong, and in youth he had evidently been powerful, but he was not robust33. Yet there was a calm, cruel look, a power of will and a quickness of muscular action, which still render him a terror in his vocation34.
In the manner of giving in his testimony there was no bluster35 or outward show of insolence36. His contempt for the humane37 feelings of the audience and community about him was too true to require any assumption of that kind. He neither paraded nor attempted to conceal38 the worst features of his calling. He treated it as a matter of business which he knew the community shuddered39 at, but the moral nature of which he was utterly40 indifferent to, beyond a certain secret pleasure in thus indirectly41 inflicting42 a little torture on his hearers.
I am not, however, altogether clear, to do John Caphart justice, that he is entirely43 conscience-proof. There was something in his anxious look which leaves one not without hope.
At the first trial we did not know of his pursuits, and he passed merely as a police-man of Norfolk, Virginia. But, at the second trial, some one in the room gave me a hint of the occupations many of these police-men take to, which led to my cross-examination.
From the Examination of John Caphart, in the “Rescue Trials,” at Boston, in June and Nov., 1851, and October, 1852.
Question. Is it a part of your duty, as a police-man, to take up colored persons who are out after hours in the streets?
Answer. Yes, sir.
Q. What is done with them?
A. We put them in the lock-up, and in the morning they are brought into court and ordered to be punished,—those that are to be punished.
Q. What punishment do they get?
A. Not exceeding thirty-nine lashes44.
Q. Who gives them these lashes?
A. Any of the officers. I do, sometimes.
Q. Are you paid extra for this? How much?
A. Fifty cents a head. It used to be sixty-two cents. Now it is fifty. Fifty cents for each one we arrest, and fifty more for each one we flog.
Q. Are these persons you flog men and boys only, or are they women and girls also?
A. Men, women, boys and girls, just as it happens.
[The government interfered45, and tried to prevent any further examination; and said, among other things, that he only performed his duty as police-officer under the law. After a discussion, Judge Curtis allowed it to proceed.]
Q. Is your flogging confined to these cases? Do you not flog slaves at the request of their masters?
A. Sometimes I do. Certainly, when I am called upon.
Q. In these cases of private flogging, are the negroes sent to you? Have you a place for flogging?
A. No. I go round, as I am sent for.
Q. Is this part of your duty as an officer?
A. No, sir.
Q. In these cases of private flogging, do you inquire into the circumstances, to see what the fault has been, or if there is any?
A. That’s none of my business. I do as I am requested. The master is responsible.
Q. In these cases, too, I suppose you flog women and girls, as well as men.
A. Women and men.
Q. Mr. Caphart, how long have you been engaged in this business?
A. Ever since 1836.
Q. How many negroes do you suppose you have flogged, in all, women and children included?
A. [Looking calmly round the room.] I don’t know how many niggers you have got here in Massachusetts, but I should think I had flogged as many as you’ve got in the state.
[The same man testified that he was often employed to pursue fugitive slaves. His reply to the question was, “I never refuse a good job in that line.”]
Q. Don’t they sometimes turn out bad jobs?
A. Never, if I can help it.
Q. Are they not sometimes discharged after you get them?
A. Not often. I don’t know that they ever are, except those Portuguese46 the counsel read about.
[I had found, in a Virginia report, a case of some two hundred Portuguese negroes, whom this John Caphart had seized from a vessel47, and endeavored to get condemned48 as slaves, but whom the court discharged.]
Hon. John P. Hale, associated with Mr. Dana, as counsel for the defence, in the Rescue Trials, said of him, in his closing argument:
Why, gentlemen, he sells agony! Torture is his stock-in-trade! He is a walking scourge49! He hawks50, peddles51, retails52, groans53 and tears about the streets of Norfolk!
See also the following correspondence between two traders, one in North Carolina, the other in New Orleans; with a word of comment, by Hon. William Jay, of New York:
Halifax, N. C., Nov. 16, 1839.
Dear Sir: I have shipped in the brig Addison,—prices are below:
No. 1. Caroline Ennis, $650.00
No. 2. Silvy Holland, 625.00
No. 3. Silvy Booth, 487.50
No. 4. Maria Pollock, 475.00
No. 5. Emeline Pollock, 475.00
No. 6. Delia Averit, 475.00
The two girls that cost $650 and $625 were bought before I shipped my first. I have a great many negroes offered to me, but I will not pay the prices they ask, for I know they will come down. I have no opposition54 in market. I will wait until I hear from you before I buy, and then I can judge what I must pay. Goodwin will send you the bill of lading for my negroes, as he shipped them with his own. Write often, as the times are critical, and it depends on the prices you get to govern me in buying. Yours, &c.,
G. W. Barnes.
Mr. Theophilus Freeman, }
New Orleans. }
The above was a small but choice invoice55 of wives and mothers. Nine days before, namely, 7th Nov., Mr. Barnes advised Mr. Freeman of having shipped a lot of forty-three men and women. Mr. Freeman, informing one of his correspondents of the state of the market, writes (Sunday, 21st Sept., 1839), “I bought a boy yesterday, sixteen years old, and likely, weighing one hundred and ten pounds, at $700. I sold a likely girl, twelve years old, at $500. I bought a man yesterday, twenty years old, six feet high, at $820; one to-day, twenty-four years old, at $850, black and sleek56 as a mole57.”
The writer has drawn58 in this work only one class of the negro-traders. There are all varieties of them, up to the great wholesale59 purchasers, who keep their large trading-houses; who are gentlemanly in manners and courteous60 in address; who, in many respects, often perform actions of real generosity61; who consider slavery a very great evil, and hope the country will at some time be delivered from it, but who think that so long as clergyman and layman62, saint and sinner, are all agreed in the propriety63 and necessity of slave-holding, it is better that the necessary trade in the article be conducted by men of humanity and decency64, than by swearing, brutal65 men, of the Tom Loker school. These men are exceedingly sensitive with regard to what they consider the injustice66 of the world in excluding them from good society, simply because they undertake to supply a demand in the community which the bar, the press and the pulpit, all pronounce to be a proper one. In this respect, society certainly imitates the unreasonableness67 of the ancient Egyptians, who employed a certain class of men to prepare dead bodies for embalming68, but flew at them with sticks and stones the moment the operation was over, on account of the sacrilegious liberty which they had taken. If there is an ill-used class of men in the world, it is certainly the slave-traders; for, if there is no harm in the institution of slavery,—if it is a divinely-appointed and honorable one, like civil government and the family state, and like other species of property relation,—then there is no earthly reason why a man may not as innocently be a slave-trader as any other kind of trader.
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1
kidnapper
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| n.绑架者，拐骗者 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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auxiliaries
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| n.助动词 ( auxiliary的名词复数 )；辅助工，辅助人员 | |
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appendages
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| n.附属物( appendage的名词复数 )；依附的人；附属器官；附属肢体（如臂、腿、尾等） | |
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ushered
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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concisely
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| adv.简明地 | |
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auction
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| n.拍卖；拍卖会；vt.拍卖 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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redeemed
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| adj. 可赎回的，可救赎的 动词redeem的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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18
specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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worthies
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| 应得某事物( worthy的名词复数 )； 值得做某事； 可尊敬的； 有（某人或事物）的典型特征 | |
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counterfeit
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| vt.伪造，仿造；adj.伪造的，假冒的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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hog
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| n.猪；馋嘴贪吃的人；vt.把…占为己有，独占 | |
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constable
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| n.(英国)警察，警官 | |
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esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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illustrates
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| 给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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fugitive
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| adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者 | |
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patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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sketched
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| v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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33
robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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vocation
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| n.职业，行业 | |
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bluster
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| v.猛刮；怒冲冲的说；n.吓唬，怒号；狂风声 | |
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insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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40
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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indirectly
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| adv.间接地，不直接了当地 | |
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inflicting
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的现在分词 ) | |
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43
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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44
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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45
interfered
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| v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 )；调停；妨碍；干涉 | |
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46
Portuguese
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| n.葡萄牙人；葡萄牙语 | |
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47
vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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48
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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49
scourge
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| n.灾难，祸害；v.蹂躏 | |
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hawks
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| 鹰( hawk的名词复数 )； 鹰派人物，主战派人物 | |
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peddles
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| （沿街）叫卖( peddle的第三人称单数 )； 兜售； 宣传； 散播 | |
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retails
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| n.零售( retail的名词复数 ) | |
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53
groans
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| n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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invoice
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| vt.开发票；n.发票，装货清单 | |
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sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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57
mole
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| n.胎块；痣；克分子 | |
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58
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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courteous
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| adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的 | |
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61
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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62
layman
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| n.俗人，门外汉，凡人 | |
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propriety
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| n.正当行为；正当；适当 | |
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decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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66
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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unreasonableness
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| 无理性； 横逆 | |
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68
embalming
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| v.保存（尸体）不腐( embalm的现在分词 )；使不被遗忘；使充满香气 | |
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