was condemned, fined, or censured. But where were the poor captives, who were going to be returned to Africa by the city authorities, as soon as they could make it convenient? Oh, forsooth, those of whom I spoke, being under my care, were tugging away for the same man; the remainder were scattered about among different planters. When I returned to the north again, the next year, the city authorities had not, down to that time, made it 'convenient' to return these poor victims. The fact is, they belonged there; and, in my opinion, they were designed to be landed near the place where the revenue cutter seized them. Probably those very planters for whom they were originally designed received them; and still there was a pretence kept up that they would be returned to Africa. If all the facts with relation to the African slave trade, now secretly carried on at the south, could be disclosed, the people of the free states would be filled with amazement.'

"It is plain, from the nature of this trade, and the circumstances under which it is carried on, that the number of slaves imported would be likely to be estimated far below the truth. There can be little doubt that the estimate of Mr. Wright, of Maryland (fifteen thousand annually,) is some thousands too small. But even according to his estimate the African slave trade adds one hundred and fifty thousand slaves to each United States census."

The following extract will throw additional light upon the shifts by which the slave traders and their allies contrive to escape detection. It is taken from a late work entitled "Transatlantic Sketches, &c., with Notes on Negro Slavery and Canadian Emigration, by Captain J. E. Alexander, of the British Army; London, 1833:"

"The most remarkable circumstance connected with slavery in America is the following:-A planter in Louisiana, of forty years' standing, assured me that there are a set of miscreants in the city of New Orleans who are connected with the slave-traders of Cuba, and who at certain periods proceed up the Mississippi river as far as the Fourche mouth, which they descend in large row boats, and meet off the coast slaveships. These they relieve of their cargoes, and returning to the main stream of the Mississippi, they drop down it in covered flat-bottomed boats or arks, and dispose of the negroes to those who want them." Vol. ii. page 26.

This testimony reveals two important facts: 1st. That the slave traders of Cuba, who are known to be extensively engaged in the foreign traffic, are in the habit of smuggling their 'cargoes' by system into the United Statés; 2nd. That there is a class of

persons in our southern ports who regularly co-operate with the Cuba slave traders, and secretly but successfully aid in the introduction of African slaves. How extensively these secret combinations exist throughout the south cannot be known; but we have no reason to believe that they are confined to the city of New Orleans.

SIXTH QUESTION. What are the circumstances under which slaves are clandestinely introduced into the United States?

The answer to this query has been anticipated in the foregoing reply. It has been shown that the Florida ports afford abundant facilities for the introduction of foreign slaves, and that the Georgia ports are, by the gross connivance of the state authorities, but little less accessible. We have no reason to suppose that the ports of South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana are, a whit more scrupulous. Probably frequent importations are effected by the mode described in the foregoing extract from Captain Alexander. What mode would be peculiarly favorable for escaping detection; for the slaves being dropped down the Mississippi river, might be readily smuggled into New Orleans as Kentucky or Virginia slaves, or they might be disposed of before reaching that port to planters along the river, or these planters might make engagements beforehand with the traders to deliver the slaves at their plantations, and thus the latter might sell out their cargoes without the slightest risk of falling into the clutches of a custom house officer.

SEVENTH QUESTION. What are the features of slavery in the states of the Union, from whence slaves are sold?

While slavery is essentially the same everywhere, in Virginia and Louisiana,-in the United States, Cuba, and Brazil, its features are varied and modified by the peculiar interests it is made to serve. In one place there will be a greater waste of life, in another marked physical cruelty, in another special moral degradation. No conditions, however, in which slavery exists are more diverse than those which we are now considering, i. e. the breeding and the consuming. In our replies, we shall reserve for the latter all such observations as are common to both con

ditions, excepting where the features, though alike, result from different causes; in which case they will be adverted to under both heads. It may be well also to premise that the states called breeding states are not such exclusively, neither are those called buying or consuming states exclusively such. The former work their slaves, as well as breed and sell them, and the latter produce to a limited extent as well as buy; though in both cases these are subordinate operations.

The features of slavery naturally divide themselves into those which respectively relate to the slave and the slaveholder. The causes which tend to distinguish the slavery of the breeding states from that existing elsewhere, are chiefly the breeding system itself, and the comparative unprofitableness of slave How each of these affects the slave and the slaveholder will be briefly illustrated.

labor.

The unprofitableness of slave labor in the northern breeding states, which, compared with that in the more southern states, is very striking, arises chiefly from the want of lucrative and large staples, such as cotton and sugar, and that impoverishment of the soil which has been the result of long continued forced cultivation. Such products as corn, wheat, hemp, and even tobacco, afford employment comparatively for few laborers, and do not yield sufficient profit, especially on the worn-out lands of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, to support a large agricultural force, if that were needed.

The inevitable result of poor soil, poor crops, and poor staples is the poverty of the planter, from which the slave suffers in

various ways.

1. His wants must be very inadequately supplied. Though he is the tiller of the soil, and the cultivator of its crops, still he is a beggar at best, dependent upon his owner for food, clothing, and shelter. When the master's purse is stinted, the slave is the first to feel it. When the encroachments of poverty call for retrenchment somewhere, the knife is sure to fall first upon the slave's supplies. He feels it in the reduction of his scanty wardrobe and meagre table, and in his neglected crumbling hut, while the master still maintains his state, equipage, and princely residence. The slave women are clad in rags, and their children stripped to nakedness, that the planter's wife and daughters may

flaunt in finery and revel in accustomed luxury. On this point nothing can be more pertinent than the following, from “the testimony of the Gradual Emancipation Society of North Carolina, signed by Moses Swain, President, and William Swain, Secretary:"

"In the eastern part of the state (North Carolina) the slaves considerably out-number the free population. Their situation is wretched beyond description. Impoverished by the mismanagement which we have already attempted to describe, the master, unable to support his own grandeur and maintain his slaves, puts the unfortunate wretches upon short allowances, scarcely sufficient for their sustenance, so that a great part of them go half-naked and half-starved much of the time." See "American Slavery as it is," p. 60.

We leave you to conceive the sufferings of the slaves, when their supplies, stinted enough at best, are restricted to the utmost verge of endurance by the slaveholder's poverty. This is of necessity a feature of slavery in the breeding states.

2. The slave suffers also by being severely tasked and driven. The very sterility of his grounds tempts the planter to increase the burthens of his slaves, in order that he may, if possible, supply by forced labor the deficiencies of the soil. Thus while in the cotton, sugar, and rice growing states, hard driving and overworking are the natural results of great fertility, in the breeding states they are no less the natural consequence of extreme barrenness.

3. Again, the spleen of a poverty-stricken master often wreaks itself upon the slave. True, it is the land not the slave which is in fault, or rather the planter himself, through his own carelessness and persistence in a wasteful system of forced labor. But what of that? The rage of mortified pride has smitten him, and he asks not for the reasons of things, but for vengeance. If his fields could feel his fury, he might scourge them for their barrenness; but the trembling slave can feel, and he must be the victim. Such are the aspects of slave suffering which present themselves in connection with a wasted soil.

The evils entailed upon the master are scarcely less grievous. 1. He is involved in pecuniary embarrassments, from which nothing can relieve him but a resort to slave selling, or a removal from the state. Conscientious scruples remonstrate perhaps

against the former, and strong local attachments equally oppose the latter; meanwhile his embarrassments thicken apace, and call more loudly for relief. Conscience and local attachment still maintain their ground and advise retrenchment, but family pride sternly forbids that. Family name and dignity must be sustained; the hereditary style of dress, furniture, and equipage must be supported; the alternative therefore is thrown back upon conscience and love of homestead. The latter, always a powerful principle, is proverbially strong in the "Old Dominion,” where it is blended with and nourished by an ancestral veneration scarcely excelled even in the aristocratic countries of Europe. The Virginian, in his patrimonial halls, is not the man to embrace the noble sentiment of Algernon Sydney-“ When I cannot live in my own country but by such means as are worse than dying in it, I think God shows me I ought to keep myself out of it." If in so unequal a struggle conscience should surrender, it is what might be expected of frail human nature.

Thus it comes to pass that persons of naturally generous sentiments are seduced into slave breeding and selling as a means of retrieving their sinking fortunes, and upholding family importance. It is doubtless by this process, operating gradually and for a long time, that the most odious business in which man ever engaged, instead of being monopolized by outlawed kidnappers, infesting forest haunts, should be prosecuted by all classes, all professions, both sexes, and all ages, until now it has avowedly become the chief source of wealth in several states of this union.

2. Another effect upon the master is the perpetual galling of blighted fortunes; an evil to which the habit of exercising arbitrary power, and the previous possession of wealth, render the slaveholder peculiarly sensitive. Of all men in the world he is least prepared to bear the pinch of poverty. He is exasperated, and his family witness, if they do not like his slaves feel, the violence of his passions. Habitual sourness or gloom corrodes or beclouds his high spirits, and drives him perchance to dissipation for relief. He plunges into the whirl, and probably a street fight or a duel winds up the scene.

3. The entire want of agricultural enterprise characterises the slaveholder. Disheartened by the increasing sterility of his