Page:The American Slave Trade (Spears).djvu/113

Rh carrying along the heads or other portions of the bodies, and telling the slaves that thus the dead would be wholly unable to exist, or, at any rate, to enjoy the life they hoped for after death. But the slaves smiled in contempt when they heard that. They were of a heathen race. ‘They had never learned the Christian's hope of heaven, but something had told them (who shall say how?) that the body, though it be "sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption" — that though it be "sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." And they — those heathen — trusted implicitly the light they had.

It is a most interesting fact that while the slave trade developed vikings when it was a legal and reputable traffic, it developed a race devoid of every manly instinct when 1t became unlawful. As illustrating this fact, it may be said that in the nineteenth century the slavers dealt in children as far as possible. Children did not bring as large a price as field hands, of course, but they cowered under torture, and there was no fear of their rising against the crew.

But many adult cargoes were shipped, and the American slaver Kentucky, Captain George H. Douglass, master, and Thomas H. Boyle, mate, was one that carried adults. On September 9, 1844, she sailed from Inhambane with five hundred and thirty slaves in her hold. On the voyage there was an insurrection. It was quickly subdued by force, but, through fear of more trouble of the kind, the captain determined to punish the ringleaders. In all, forty-six men and one woman were hanged and shot to death.

"They were ironed or chained, two together, and when they were hung, a rope was put round their