Page:A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853).djvu/149

 {|width=420
 * width=140 | States where published.
 * width=140 | No. of Papers consulted
 * width=140 | No. of Negroes advertised.
 * width=140 | No. of lots.
 * width=140 | No. of Runaways described.
 * Virginia,
 * 11
 * 849
 * 7
 * 15
 * Kentucky,
 * 5
 * 238
 * 1
 * 7
 * Tennessee,
 * 8
 * 385
 * 4
 * 17
 * S. Carolina,
 * 12
 * 852
 * 2
 * 7
 * Georgia,
 * 6
 * 98
 * 2
 * 0
 * Alabama,
 * 10
 * 549
 * 5
 * 5
 * Mississippi,
 * 8
 * 669
 * 5
 * 6
 * Louisiana,
 * 4
 * 460
 * 4
 * 35
 * 64
 * 4100
 * 30
 * 92
 * }
 * 4
 * 460
 * 4
 * 35
 * 64
 * 4100
 * 30
 * 92
 * }
 * 64
 * 4100
 * 30
 * 92
 * }
 * 30
 * 92
 * }
 * }

In South Carolina, where the writer in Fraser's Magazine dates from, we have during these same two weeks a sale of eight hundred and fifty-two recorded by one dozen papers. Verily, we must apply to the newspapers of his state the same language which he applies to "Uncle Tom's Cabin:" "Were our views of the system of slavery to be derived from these papers, we should regard the families of slaves as utterly unsettled and vagrant."

The total, in sixty-four papers, in different states, for only two weeks, is four thousand one hundred, besides ninety-two lots, as they are called.

And now, who is he who compares the hopeless, returnless separation of the negro from his family, to the voluntary separation of the freeman, whom necessary business interest takes for a while from the bosom of his family? Is not the lot of the slave bitter enough, without this last of mockeries and worst of insults? Well may they say, in their anguish, "Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of them that are at ease, and with the contempt of the proud!" From the poor negro, exposed to bitterest separation, the law jealously takes away the power of writing. For him the gulf of separation yawns black and hopeless, with no redeeming signal. Ignorant of geography, he knows not whither he is going, or where he is, or how to direct a letter. To all intents and purposes, it is a separation hopeless as that of death, and as final.

is it that constitutes the vital force of the institution of slavery in this country? Slavery, being an unnatural and unhealthful condition of society, being a most wasteful and impoverishing mode of cultivating the soil, would speedily run itself out in a community, and become so unprofitable as to fall into disuse, were it not kept alive by some unnatural process.

What has that process been in America? Why has that healing course of nature which cured this awful wound in all the northern states stopped short on Mason & Dixon's line? In Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky, slave labor long ago impoverished the soil almost beyond recovery, and became entirely unprofitable. In all these states ft is well known that the question of emancipation has been urgently presented. It has been diseased in legislatures, and Southern men have poured forth on the institution of slavery such anathemas as only Southern men can pour forth. All that has ever been said of it at the North has been said in four-fold thunders in these Southern discussions. The State of Kentucky once came within one vote, in her legislature, of taking measures for gradual emancipation. The State of Virginia has come almost equally near, and Maryland has long been waiting at the door. There was a time when no one doubted that all these states would soon be free states; and what is now the reason that they are not? Why are these discussions now silenced, and why does this noble determination now retrograde? The answer is in a word. It is the extension of slave territory, the opening of a great southern slave-market, and the organization of a great internal slave-trade, that has arrested the progress of emancipation.

While these states were beginning to look upon the slave as one who might possibly yet become a man, while they meditated giving to him and his wife and children the inestimable blessings of liberty, this great southern slave-mart was opened. It began by the addition of Missouri as slave territory, and the votes of two Northern men were those which decided this great question. Then, by the assent and concurrence of Northern men, came in all the immense acquisition of slave territory which now opens so boundless a market to tempt the avarice and cupidity of the northern slave-raising states.

This acquisition of territory has deferred perhaps for indefinite ages the emancipation of a race. It has condemned to sorrow and