Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/78

64 established by law, any person whatsoever may seize the negro so manumitted, and appropriate him to their own use.

If a free colored person remain in Virginia twelve months after his manumission, he can be sold by the overseers of the poor for the benefit of the literary fund!

In Georgia, a free colored man, except a regular articled seaman, is fined one hundred dollars for coming into the State; and if he cannot pay it, may be sold at public outcry. This act has been changed to one of increased severity. A free colored person cannot be a witness against a white man. They may therefore be robbed, assaulted, kidnapped and carried off with impunity; and even the legislatures of the old slave States adopt it as a maxim that it is very desirable to get rid of them. It is of no avail to declare themselves free; the law presumes them to be slaves, unless they can prove to the contrary. In many instances written documents of freedom have been wrested from free colored people and destroyed by kidnappers. A lucrative internal slave trade furnishes constant temptation to the commission of such crimes; and the new States of Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, and the territories of Arkansas, and the Floridas, are not likely to be glutted for years to come.

In Philadelphia, though remote from a slave market, it has been ascertained that more than thirty free persons of color, were stolen and carried off within two years. Stroud says: "Five of these have been restored to their friends, by the interposition of humane gentlemen, though not without great expense and difficulty. The others are still in bondage; and if rescued at all, it must be by sending white witnesses a journey of more than a thousand miles."

I know the names of four colored citizens of Massachusetts, who went to Georgia on board a vessel, were seized under the laws of that State, and sold as slaves. They have sent the most earnest exhortations to their families and friends to do something for their relief; but the attendant expenses require more money than the friends of negroes are apt to have, and the poor fellows as yet remain unassisted.