Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/49

Rh the great cities of the South; the capital of the Union, called after "the father of his country," is a great slave mart. Droves of slaves, chained together, may often be seen in the streets of Washington; the advertisements of the dealers are in the journals of that city. There the great demagogues and the great drovers of slaves meet together, and one city is common to them all. If there be degrees in such wrong-doing, it seems worse to steal a baby in America than a man in Guinea; worse to keep a gang of women in Virginia, breeding children as swine for market, than to steal grown men in Guinea; it is cowardly no less than inhuman. But so long ago as 1829, it was said in the Baltimore Reporter, "Dealing in slaves has become a large business, establishments are made in several places in Maryland, at which they are sold like cattle; these places of deposit are strongly built, and well supplied with iron thumb-screws and gags, and ornamented with cowskins and other whips, often bloody.

The African slave trader perhaps even now is not unknown at Baltimore or New Orleans, but he is a pirate; he shuffles and hides, goes sneaking and cringes to get along amongst men, while the American slave-trader goes openly to work, advertises "the increase of his female slaves," erects his jail, and when that is insufficient, has those of the nation thrown open for his use, and all the States solemnly pledged to deliver up the fugitives who escape from his hands. He marches his coffles where he will. The laws are on his side, "public sentiment" and the "majesty of the Constitution." He looks in at the door of the Capitol and is not ashamed.

There are mean men engaged in that traffic who "are generally despised even in the slave-holding States," but men of property and standing are also concerned in this trade. Mr Erwin, the son-in-law of Mr Clay, it is said, laid the foundation of a large fortune by dealing in slaves; General Jackson was a dealer in slaves, and so late as 1811, bought a coffle and drove them to Louisiana for sale.

In this transfer of slaves, the most cruel separation of families takes place. In the slave-breeding States it is a common thing to sell a boy or a girl while the mother is kept as a "breeder." Does she complain of the robbery?—There is the scourge, there are chains and collars. Will