Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/45

Rh tied her, and carried her off. Besides those I saw, about thirty negroes, destined for the New Orleans market, were shut up in the Paris jail, for safe keeping.

But Washington is the great emporium of the internal slave trade! The United States jail is a perfect storehouse for slave merchants; and some of the taverns may be seen so crowded with negro captives that they have scarcely room to stretch themselves on the floor to sleep. Judge Morrel, in his charge to the Grand Jury at Washington, in 1816, earnestly called their attention to this subject. He said, "the frequency with which the streets of the city had been crowded with manacled captives, sometimes even on the Sabbath, could not fail to shock the feelings of all humane persons; that it was repugnant to the spirit of our political institutions, and the rights of man; and he believed it was calculated to impair the public morals, by familiarizing scenes of cruelty to the minds of youth."

A free man of color is in constant danger of being seized and carried off by these slave dealers. Mr Cooper, a Representative in Congress from Delaware, told Dr Torrey of Philadelphia, that he was often afraid to-send his servants out in the evening, lest they should be encountered by kidnappers. Wherever these notorious slave jockeys appear in our Southern States, the free people of color hide themselves, as they are obliged to do on the coast of Africa.

The following is the testimony of Doctor Torrey of Philadelphia, published in 1817:

"To enumerate all the horrid and aggravating instances of man-stealing, which are known to have occurred in the state of Delaware, within the recollection of many of the citizens of that State, would require a volume. In many cases, whole families of free colored people have been attacked in the night, beaten nearly to death with clubs, gagged and bound, and dragged into distant and hopeless captivity, leaving no traces behind, except the blood from their wounds.

"During the last winter, the house of a free black family was broken open, and its defenceless inhabitants treated in the manner just mentioned, except, that