Page:The African Slave Trade (Clark).djvu/25

Rh In the year 1620, the same year in which the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, bringing with them liberty, virtue, and a pure faith, a Dutch vessel landed twenty negroes at Queenstown, Virginia, who were sold to the colonists as slaves, thus opening the trade with our country. The traffic thus sustained by Portugal, Spain, France, and England, and having a new field on this continent, gradually advanced, producing every where its legitimate and terrible effects. So anxious were the petty African kings to keep up the trade, that when the French revolution lessened the demand for human merchandise, the king of Dahomey sent, in 1796, his brother and son to Lisbon, to secure the revival of the traffic, and entered into a treaty in favor of Portugal.

Before this traffic was opened, and the Africans were corrupted by drunkenness and avarice, wars seldom occurred; but the introduction of this wickedness opened the door to every crime, and it has frequently happened that thousands have been slain, while only hundreds have been captured. A surgeon, who sailed from New York to engage in the slave trade, made the following record in his journal: "The commander of the vessel sent to acquaint the king that he wanted a cargo of slaves. Some time after, the king sent him word he had not yet met with the desired success. A battle was fought, which lasted three days. Four thousand five hundred men were slain upon the spot!"

Some idea of the waste of life which this iniquity