Sale—Purchase—Barter—Mortgage—Auction—Coffle-gang—Shipments—As absolutely as in the case of any other Property, and by the same Tenure.

     THIS feature must result, of necessity, from “the legal relation” of ownership exhibited in the first chapter. The quotations there made cover explicitly this ground.

     “The master may sell him.” “Slaves shall be sold.” “Sold, transferred, or pawned as goods, or personal estate, for goods they were, and as such they were esteemed.”

     Any modification of this feature must evidently relax the application of the principle of ownership, and limit its operation. In the Spanish, Portuguese, and French colonies, such modifications, nevertheless, obtained. The Code Noir, art. 47, prohibits the selling of the husband without the wife, the parents without the children, or vice versa. In cases of voluntary sales, made contrary to this regulation, the wife or husband, the children or parents, though expressly retained by the seller, pass, by the same conveyance, to the purchaser, and may be claimed by him

without any additional price. (See Stephen’s Slavery, 69;* Stroud’s Sketch, 51.)

     What bearing this humane regulation would have upon our internal slave-trade, if it were established in this country, the reader will see by the following account of its operation.

     Says the compiler of the Annals of the Sovereign Council of Martinique:

     “This law has always been rigidly executed, whenever a claim has been set up on the part of the purchaser. I have known slaves who have been sent to Guadaloupe or St. Domingo to be expatriated and sold, to reclaim their children remaining in our colony, with success, through the action of the purchasers in the colonies to which they were sent.” (See Stephen’s Slavery, 69 and 70, citing Annals de la Martinique, tome i., p. 285. Vide Stroud, p. 51.)

     It would not, probably, be quite as easy for slave children to recover their aged parents, or for husbands to reclaim their feeble and sickly wives, by this “action of the purchasers.” Humanity, nevertheless, would gain much. The principle of human chattelhood would be weakened. Perhaps it was partly through the influence of this and similar relaxations of the principle that the entire system was swept away in Mexico and the South American Republics. By this feature of the Code Noir, the bondage under its jurisdiction

was made to resemble, in this aspect, the feudalism or serfdom of northern Europe, where the villein is attached to the soil, rather than the chattel slavery of the American slave States.

     In Pennsylvania, in New-York, perhaps in other American States, when measures were taken for the prospective abolition of slavery, the sale of slaves to be sent out of the State was prohibited by express statute. Except in these instances, we know of no departure, in the matter of sale and transfer, in our American slave States, from the principle of unrestricted and absolute human chattelhood, unless the anomaly be found in the State of Louisiana, as hinted in our first chapter, where it was stated that slaves are held in Louisiana as real estate. “In the slaveholding States,” (says Judge Stroud,) “except in Louisiana, no law exists to prevent the violent separation of parents from their children, or even from each other.” (Stroud’s Sketch, p. 50.) Again, after dwelling upon these cruelties of the domestic slavetrade, as being peculiar to “the republican States of North America,” the same writer adds in a note, (p. 52,) “From the generality of this remark, the State of Louisiana must be excepted.” “The slaves are declared to be real estate, to be ranked among immovable property. When, therefore, the owner of slaves is, as I presume is most commonly the case, possessed of land, the slave cannot be separated from it by process of law. Besides this humane regulation, there are several others which deserve to be signalized, viz.: ‘If, at a public sale of slaves, there

happen to be some who are disabled through old age or otherwise, and who have children, such slaves shall not be sold but with his or her children, whom he or she may think proper to go with.”’ (1 Martin’s Digest, 612; Act of July 7, 1806; Stroud’s Sketch, p. 52-3.)

     How far these provisions are, at this late day, available for the benefit of the slaves of Louisiana, we have no means of knowing. Louisiana has been a purchasing, rather than a slave-exporting State. The striking contrast between these enactments and the known usages and scenes of other States, mark their anomalous character, as exceptions which prove and illustrate the general rule of unrestricted chattelhood in our slaveholding States.

     It is to be noticed that these refreshing anomalies are witnessed in only one of the slave States: a State coming within our jurisdiction from under that of France, and receiving its earlier features of polity under the laws of Spain. Louisianian slavery took its type from the Code Noir, and from the usages growing up under what our citizens are pleased to denominate Spanish despotism and superstition. Anglo-Saxon civilization and religion, with all their “republican” and “Protestant” boastings, have not yet reached the same point of progress; nor do we learn that in Florida, acquired from Spain, the mild features of Spanish slavery have survived the transfer. The reason may be, that too many Northern citizens (the most merciless of all slaveholders) have planted themselves there. Be this as it may, it is

certain that the “legal relation of master and slave,” as commonly understood, practised, vindicated, and protected, in these United States, differs widely, in the feature now under consideration, from that defined by the Code Noir. We may venture to affirm that the commonly received exposition, as it exists in theory and practice, in the Church and the State, has been truthfully set forth by one of our most prominent and popular statesmen, the late Henry Clay, in his speech in the U. S. Senate, Feb. 7, 1839, in which he said:

     “The moment that the incontestable fact is admitted, that the slaves are property, the law of movable property irresistibly attaches itself to them, and secures the right of carrying them from one State to another.”*

     This definition, which is acted upon every day, identifies “the legal relation” and the slave system with the domestic slave-trade, and its constant and violent disruption of the most sacred and tender ties of consanguinity and affection. If the “legal relation” does not produce this effect in respect to each slave, it does, in each instance, uphold and sanction the principle of chattelhood upon which alone the traffic in slaves rests. It recognizes the rightfulness of the traffic by recognizing the rightfulness of slave ownership, which includes the right of purchase and sale. This is what Mr. Clay affirmed, and, thus far, he spoke truthfully. The moment the right of property in man is admitted, (and here lies the core of the “relation,”) that moment the right of purchase and sale is virtually conceded likewise. It was a triumph of human sympathy over legal congruity and logical consistency, that enacted the Code Noir.

     The exposition of Mr. Clay reduces slaves to a level with poultry and swine; it denies to them personality and the attributes of human beings. It does this not merely in theory, but on a point of the most pressing practical importance. It certifies us that the chattel principle is neither a dead letter nor an unmeaning abstraction. It exhibits the practical statesmanship, not of Henry Clay only, but of all

who admit the validity of the so-called “legal relation.”

     A similar exposition we have from Rev. James Smylie, of the Amite Presbytery, Mississippi, in a pamphlet written in defense of slaveholding. Alluding to the charges of abolitionists, he admits the facts adduced by them, but denies their criminality. And he says:

     “If slavery be a sin, and advertising and apprehending slaves with a view to restore them to their masters, is a direct violation of the divine law, and if the BUYING, SELLING, and holding a slave, FOR THE SAKE OF GAIN, is a heinous sin and scandal, then verily, THREE FOURTHS of all the Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, in eleven States of this Union, are of the devil. They hold, if they do not buy and sell slaves, and (with few exceptions) they hesitate not to apprehend and restore runaway slaves, when in their power.”

     It will be noticed that the holding, the buying, and the selling of a slave are here put together, as being essentially of the same character. And common sense as well as “the law” of the peculiar “relation,” as expounded by Henry Clay, attests the same thing.

     A large portion of “Wheeler’s Law of Slavery” is occupied with legal decisions connected, directly or indirectly, with cases growing out of the transfer of slaves. One division, or chapter of the work, treats “Of the Increase of Slaves—to whom the increase belongs—of the grant or devise of the increase.” Another topic is, “Of the Title to Slaves;” another, “Of Warranty;”

another, “Of Hiring of Slaves;” another, “Of Mortgage of Slaves;” another, “Of Dower of Slaves;” another, “Of the Division of Slaves;” another, “Of the Remainder in Slaves.” Upwards of one hundred and fifty pages of the book (nearly one third of the entire work) are occupied with these topics. From the extent and variety of litigation coming before the courts and demanding these complicated legal rules and decisions, it would seem that a very large part of the business transactions of the people must consist in the reception or transfer, in some form, of this species of property. And, at every step, it appears that transfers of slave property are made upon the same principles that govern the transfer of other property, that it is held and conveyed under the same tenure, and with as little sense of the impropriety of the transaction; thus placing, in practice, a human being upon a level with a mere thing. Thus, when the judge, the lawyer, or the law compiler or author would lay down the legal rule by which the decision should be made in a litigated case, in a matter of sale, delivery, possession, warranty, &c., he looks up the precedents and rules originally occurring or laid down in respect to “a mare” or “a colt,” and then, with the utmost coolness and gravity, applies it, as valid law, to the sale, delivery, or warranty of “a girl!” An instance of this occurs in “Wheeler’s Law of Slavery,” pp. 119, 120, in a note on the case of Smith vs. Rowzee, Spring Term 1821; a case in which “the girl” purchased was unable to travel home with her new master, eight miles distant, and

soon died. A lawsuit followed, and the law concerning other live stock determined the case!

     In one instance (p. 68) we find “a negro woman slave named Peg,” sold for $300, with leave to return her in three weeks, if the purchaser did not like her. With her new master she became frost-bitten, which rendered her “of little value.” Hence a suit between the parties, judgment given, an appeal taken, judgment reversed just as in the case of a horse or an ox.

     On page 79 we learn that “five years’ peaceable possession gives a title to a slave, and which, if lost, may be regained.” We infer that if possession, as between contending claimants of slave property, be thus potent, it would be at least equally powerful, as between the possessor and the slave’s legal right to freedom.

     Of the extent of the slave traffic between the slave-growing and planting States (of which we shall speak presently) some tolerably reliable approximation towards the true statistics may be gathered. But of the extent of local and neighborhood transfers, with which Wheeler’s reported cases seem mostly occupied, very little can be accurately known. We can only say that a perusal of “Wheeler’s Law of Slavery” has very greatly swelled our own estimate or apprehension of that extent. It can hardly be supposed that more than a tithe of such transfers would occasion lawsuits. But we seem to see the courts crowded with them, and a compilation of the reported cases swelling a law volume. It must be folly to pretend that the slave traffic occupies only the

vulgar portion of Southern society, when it figures so largely in the courts.

     “Slaves may be sold and transferred from one to another, without any statutory restriction or limitation, as to the separation of parents and children, &c., except in Louisiana.” (Wheeler’s Law of Slavery, p. 41.)

     It can hardly be necessary to cite witnesses to prove that this feature of the Slave Code, which licenses the slave-trade and the separation of families, is not a dead letter. But it might be useful to impress upon the reader some idea of the magnitude and the atrocity of this traffic. This would open a wide field. We might refer the inquirer to Weld’s “Slavery as it is,” to Jay’s “Inquiry,” and to Goodell’s “History of Slavery and Anti-Slavery,” for collections of facts and testimonies on this subject, upon which we cannot enlarge here.

     The extent of the slave-trade in America may be conceived, from the testimony of the Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky, that “these scenes” (i. e. coffle-gangs) are “daily occurring in the midst of us;” that “there is not a neighborhood where these heart-rending scenes are not displayed;” that “there is not a village or road that does not behold the sad procession of manacled outcasts, whose chains and mournful countenances tell that they are exiled by force from all that their hearts hold dear.”

     Its general prosecution may be seen by the numerous advertisements of both purchasers and venders, in the most respectable newspapers in the slave States, as, for example, the following:

     “NEGROES FOR SALE.—A negro woman, 24 years of age, and her two children, one eight and the other three years old. Said negroes will be sold SEPARATELY or together, as desired. The woman is a good seamstress. She will be sold low for cash, or EXCHANGED FOR GROCERIES. For terms, apply to

     “I will give the Highest cash price for likely Negroes, from 10 to 25 years of age.

     “FIFTY NEGROES WANTED IMMEDIATELY.—The subscriber will give a good market price for fifty likely negroes, from 10 to 30 years of age.

     Having obtained their supplies and driven or shipped them South, the dealers offer them for sale, in advertisements like the following, which appeared in the papers of Charleston, S. C.: “ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY NEGROES FOR SALE.—The subscriber has just arrived from Petersburg, Virginia, with one hundred and twenty likely young negroes of both sexes and every description, which he offers for sale on the most reasonable terms. The lot now on hand consists of plough-boys, several likely and well-qualified house servants of both sexes, several women with children, small girls suitable for nurses, and SEVERAL SMALL BOYS WITHOUT THEIR

MOTHERS. Planters and traders are earnestly requested to give the subscriber a call previously to making purchases elsewhere, as he is enabled to sell as cheap or cheaper than can be sold by any other person in the trade.

     “Hamburg, S. C., September 28, 1838.”

     The respectability and profitableness of the traffic may be inferred from the fact, that some of the largest shipping merchants are slave merchants, that they own, and charter, and freight numerous vessels to transport their slaves coastwise, and invest princely fortunes as capital in the business.

     The importance of this branch of commerce will be apparent from the speeches of leading statesmen, and the paragraphs of prominent editors.

     HENRY CLAY, in his speech before the Colonization Society, in 1829, said:

     “It is believed that no where, in the farming portion of the United States, would slave labor be generally employed, if the proprietor were not tempted to RAISE Slaves, by the HIGH PRICE of the SOUTHERN MARKET which keeps it up in his own.”

     Mr. GHOLSON, of Virginia, in the same speech in the State Legislature before quoted, after claiming his negro women as his property, like his “brood mares,” expatiated upon the profitableness and the rightfulness of the investment. “The owner of land had a reasonable right to its annual products, the owner of brood mares to their product, and the owner of female slaves to their increase.” “The value of

the property justifies the expense; and I do not hesitate to say that in it consists much of our wealth.” The Editor of the Virginia Times, in 1836, made a calculation that 120,000 slaves went out of that State during the year, that 80,000 of them went with their owners who removed, leaving 40,000 who were SOLD, at an average price of $600; amounting to twenty-four millions of dollars.

     Similar estimates and testimonies might be added. The annexation of Texas and the conquest of Mexico were openly advocated, and notoriously prosecuted, for the object of extending the area of slavery, and thereby opening a new slave market, for the breeders of slaves. And the coastwise slave trade has been protected by the National Government, and its diplomacy prostituted to this purpose[.] The particulars may be found in Jay’s “View of the Action of the Federal Government in behalf of Slavery,” and Jay’s “Review of the Mexican War;” also (briefly) in Goodell’s “History of Slavery and Anti-Slavery.”

     Of the character of this traffic little more need be said. By our own National Government the African slave-trade is branded “piracy.” But Thomas Jefferson Randolph, in the Virginia Legislature, in 1832, declared the domestic slave-trade to be “much worse.”

     About 1100 citizens of the Federal District, including Judge Cranch and the principal clergy of the District, petitioned Congress against it, (as there existing;) and, comparing it with the African slave-trade,

they said that it is “scarcely less disgraceful in its character, and even more demoralizing in its influence.” This was in 1828. The Grand Jury of the District had, many years before, (1802,) presented it as a nuisance.* Its character there, at that time, differs nothing from its character in the different States, at present.

     The New-Orleans Courier, February 15th, 1839, says: “The United States law” (prohibiting the African slave-trade) “may, and probably does put MILLIONS into the pockets of the people living between the Roanoke and Mason and Dixon’s line; still we think it would require some casuistry to show that the present slave-trade from, that quarter is a whit better than the one from Africa.”

     It may be asked, who are they, at the South, that prosecute this domestic slave-trade? The Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky, describing its extent, its common occurrence and its barbarities, inform us, in the same paragraph, that “professors of the religion of mercy,” “who hold to our communion,” have “torn the mother from the children, and sent them into returnless exile. Yet acts of discipline have rarely” [never†] “followed such conduct.” In the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1835, it was stated

by an elder, Mr. Stewart, of Illinois, and without contradiction, that “even ministers of the gospel and Doctors of Divinity may engage in this unholy traffic, and yet sustain their high and holy calling.” “Elders,” said he, “ministers and Doctors of Divinity, are, with both hands, engaged in the practice.” Yet nothing was done or said by the Assembly in condemnation of it. The testimony of Rev. James Smylie, already cited for another purpose, implicates “three fourths” of four leading religious sects in the practice.

     If a distinction be set up between the Virginian breeders and Mississippi purchasers, gentlemen planters, on the one hand, and the human drovers, commonly called “soul-drivers,” on the other, who ply between the two, disposing at the far South of their “stock” purchased at the North, we maintain that there is no legal or moral distinction between them. “The legal relation” is as innocent and as criminal in the one as in the other. The “growers,” the “consumers” and “dealers” so necessary to them, stand on the same level.

     Besides, the “dealers” are sometimes esteemed as respectable and as pious as the “growers” and “consumers.” A number of authentic narratives assure us that itinerant preachers, in more sects than one, carry on the double avocation of converting souls, and buying up the souls and bodies of men, women and children, for sale. An instance, in “the fine old Methodist preacher who dealt in slaves,” maybe found in Weld’s “Slavery as it is,” p. 7.80. In the higher

circles of society at the South, this would be thought low and vulgar—equally so with buying up horses and swine. But slave-trading on a sufficiently large scale is considered a reputable employment, just as the large importers and distillers of rum are respected among us, while the dealer of drams is despised. The items that follow are from the work of Mr. Weld, just mentioned, and which, for thirteen years past, has had an extensive circulation and eager perusal in our widely extended country, without having had one of its vast collection of facts disproved or even questioned, to our knowledge.

     “That they” (the smaller dealers) “are not despised because it is their business to trade in human beings and bring them to market, is plain from the fact that when some ‘gentleman of property and standing,’ and of a ‘good family,’ embarks in a negro speculation, and employs a dozen ‘soul-drivers’ to traverse the upper country and drive to the South coffles of slaves, expending hundreds of thousands in his wholesale purchases, he does not lose caste.

     “It is known in Alabama that Mr. ERWIN, son-in-law of HENRY CLAY, and brother of J. P. Erwin, formerly postmaster and late Mayor of the city of Nashville, laid the foundation of a princely fortune in the slave-trade carried on from the Northern slave States to the planting South; that Hon. H. HITCHCOCK, brother-in-law of Mr. E., and since one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Alabama, was interested with him in the traffic; and that a late member of the Kentucky Senate, (Col. WALL,) not only

carried on the same business a few years ago, but accompanied his droves in person down the Mississippi. Not as the driver, for that would be vulgar drudgery, beneath a gentleman, but as a nabob in state, ordering his understrappers.

     “It is also well known that President JACKSON was a ‘soul-driver,’ and that even so late as the year before the last war, he bought up a coffle of slaves and drove them down to Louisiana for sale.

     “THOMAS N. GADSDEN, Esq., the principal slave auctioneer in Charleston, S. C., is of one of the first families, and moves in the very highest class of society there. He is a descendant of the distinguished General Gadsden, of revolutionary memory,” and member of the Continental Conress,” “afterwards Governor of the State.” “The Rev. Dr. Gadsden, rector of St. Philip’s Church, Charleston, and Rev. Philip Gadsden,” and “Col. James Gadsden, of the U. States’ Army, are his brothers.” “Under his hammer, men, women and children go off by thensands; its stroke probably sunders, daily, husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, perhaps to see each other’s faces no more. Now, who supply the auction table of this Thomas Gadsden, Esq., with its loads of human merchandise? These same ‘detested soul-drivers,’ forsooth, (as they are sometimes called, even at the South.) They prowl through the country, buy, catch, and fetter them, and drive their chained coffles to his stand, where Thomas Gadsden, Esq., knocks them off to the highest bidder, to Ex-Gov. Butler, perhaps, or to Ex-Gov. Hayne,

or to Hon. Robert Barnwell Rhett,” (M. C.,) “or (it maybe) to his own Reverend brother, Dr. Gadsden.” (Weld’s “Slavery as it is,” p. 174.)

     One illustration more must suffice. During the great negro speculation of 1836, when all the negro-consuming States were insanely eager to purchase at high prices, and all the negro-breeding States were enriching themselves with the sales, the ‘soul-drivers,’ now multiplied beyond all former precedent, were separating wives and husbands, parents and children, with unwonted celerity, and driving them in chained coffles, or droves, as speedily as possible to the market. The whole South was feverish and in motion. Money for the operation was in brisk demand. The banks extended their loans, and were drained. Capitalists demanded high rates of interest. Through the banks they made loans to the speculators. Then it was that the Trustees of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, lured by these high rates of interest, though well knowing, as every body did, the purposes for which their capital was wanted, withdrew their funds, to the amount of $94,692.88, from a Northern institution where they were drawing the usual interest, and invested them in the Southwestern banks, where they would be loaned to the speculators in the bodies and souls of men, women, and children. In the re-action and general bankruptcy that followed, the Presbyterian Church lost $68,893.88 of their funds. Had the General Assembly and its Trustees understood and felt, as they should have done, the sinfulness of “the

legal relation of master and slave,” they would have understood and felt the sinfulness of this abominable slave-trade which the relation involves, and the consequent sinfulness of loaning money to carry it on. But they deemed it “ultra” and “fanatical” to recognize these self-evident truths. And therefore they lost the greater part of their funds.

     We dismiss this feature of the Slave Code, presuming that its paternity, its character, its vitality, and its practical workings have now been made sufficiently clear. In this feature of the system, its Slave Traffic, the people have been found no better than their laws, and the Church no better than the people.